Asus Taiwan just unveiled a pretty cool accessory for its yet-to-be-released Eee Pad Transformer Prime quad-core Android tablet. Quite strangely called “sleeve” the accessory is actually a cover for the Transformer Prime screen that easily transforms into a stand that can be used for watching video on the slate.

Yeap, it’s much the same deal as with the Apple iPad 2′s Smart covers, save for the slightly different folding pattern. And before you start pointing any fingers, don’t forget that the Smart covers aren’t exactly a new idea either. Read more »

Today, Opera software released the latest version of its desktop browser. Opera 11.60 brings a few new features to the table, including new HTML5 parsing algorithm, which should help unify code discrepancies among browsers, new email client and improved speeds for SSL sites.

The new Opera browser also comes with a new star button, which lets you quickly add sites you like to your Speed Dial. The address field has been revamped with new search suggestions and you should now be able to find your favorite websites faster. The browser engine saw some updates as well so Opera 11.60 should be the most stable version of the browser so far. Read more »

LG just introduced a new member to its lineup of portable computers. The LG X-Note Z330 is a 1.21kg ultrabook with a 13.3″ screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. Just 14.7mm thick and with an extremely cool design, the Z330 is certainly among the hottest looking laptops to date.

The LG X-Note Z330 comes with either Core i7 2637M or Core i5 2467M CPU, 4GB or RAM and 120GB or 300GB SSD, which allow it to make a cold boot in the amazing 9.9 seconds. As per the ultrabook tradition, there’s no discrete GPU here, so the Intel HD 3000, built into the CPU, will have to do. Read more »

Yet another Android smartphone joined our review queue and here we are, rushing to give you some quick first impressions of it to give you an idea of what to expect. The Huawei U8850 Vision is a mid-range Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread smartphone that comes with surprisingly sophisticated design for its price.

You probably noticed that the back of the Huawei U8850 Vision is really reminiscent of some HTC smartphones, but you may be surprised to know that Huawei also matched their Taiwanese rivals for build quality and feel of the materials used. Read more »

One of the beauties of the open and free nature of Android is that it allows the creation of very affordable devices. The Chinese manufacturer MIPS technology seized this opportunity and created the NOVO7 – a 7″ Ice Cream Sandwich slate that only costs $99.

With its 1GHz single-core CPU and 444 MHz GPU (of unknown kind), the NOVO7 will hardly be a benchmark champion, but that’s hardly its purpose. What matters is that it comes with a capacitive touchscreen (most ultra-cheap slates still use resistive screens), and can play all kinds of video formats up to 1080p resolution. Read more »

Touch smartphones and tablets are all the rage these days, but there’s no denying the fact that working with them intensively makes a real mess out of their fromnt glass panels. Some manufacturer apply some kind of smudge-resistant coating to their screens to make cleaning easier, but it’s not a perfect solution.

Scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz have stepped up with a claim that they have developed a new smudge repellent coating that could eradicate the problem altogether. Read more »

Due to its relatively low popularity Windows Phone was having far less trouble with piracy until recently. Now though, Nokia joined the party and changed a couple of things. The interest towards the platform spiked and that drew the attention of the hacking community.

One of the hackers even went as far as submitting the XAP file of a normally paid navigation app to the Windows Market place as theirs offering it for free. What’s even more, the app was approved and was available for download for a short time. Read more »

The Huawei U8860 Honor is probably the biggest mystery of all the smartphones that have come to our office. Not only is Huawei still to make a proper name for itself as a smartphone manufacturer, but the Honor also comes with a custom UI that we saw for the first time.

As it turns out, the interface is pretty nice and the Honor has enough power to run it smoothly. It’s not perfect, but perfect doesn’t really live in this price range. And as you’ll see from the video in a bit, the Honor is not only a solid smartphone, but it also has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. Read more »

Yesterday, Nikon announced the newest addition to its lineup of dedicated flash units for digital cameras. The SB-910 Speedlight comes to succeed its former flagship, the SB-900, bringing a new simplified UI (similar to that of the SB-700), improved thermal cut-off (where the flash will charge slower, rather than turn off altogether, when a certain temperature is reached) and AF assist for multi-point AF.

The SB-910 also recharges quicker than its predecessor (3s on alkaline batteries and 2.5s on NiMH batteries). Read more »

The story of the Samsung Galaxy S II for Vodafone UK and their GPS issues came to a happy ending as the carrier quickly found the cause and issued a fix. The customized firmware that was distributed with the Galaxy S II on Vodafone had some bugs that caused the GPS inside the smartphone to hunt forever before it acquires a lock (if it manages to do so at all).

Vodafone acknowledged the issue last week and yesterday released a fix that should get rid of the problem. Read more »

Infinity Blade is hardly known for its immersive gameplay or engaging storyline, but it has always been the game with arguably the best graphics in the mobile world. Well, now we have its successor in the App Store and things are looking better than ever.

After all, what’s that use of having the beast of a chipset that is the Apple A5 under the hood if you are not going to make it sweat. Read more »

Samsung software engineers finally managed to fix the volume control bug that was plaguing the company’s Galaxy Nexus Android flagship. The Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone tended to readjust its volume on its own when it was connected to a 2G network operating at 900 MHz frequency.

Now we can all turn our backs to this issue as the fix is rolling out over the air. Samsung has also resumed the shipping of the Galaxy Nexus and the new batches that arrive at retailers are reportedly running the fixed firmware. Read more »

The rapid progress that cameraphone have been making over the past few years is no secret for anyone, but shooting a whole movie on one? Yes, please! – said phone directors Hooman Khalili and Patrick Gilles and proceeded to shoot their full length feature film Olive on a Nokia N8.

We are talking a full cinema-ready movie here that should be hitting theaters in the US soon. And all it took for the N8 to turn into a piece of cinematic gear was a 35 mm lens adapter, which was modified to fit the smart phone in order to achieve the needed shallow depth of field. Read more »

As the tradition with flagship smartphones goes, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus was taken apart by the crafty guys over at iFixit. The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich pioneer internals were mercilessly exposed and are now available for your viewing pleasure.

The first finding that the teardown brought is that the NFC antenna is inside the battery, rather than the back cover. It’s located underneath the paper that contains the battery specs, along with all the usual warnings, so if you are to replace the Galaxy Nexus battery, make sure that the replacement has an antenna too. Read more »

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on Twitter for the past few days you’d know that a trio of hackers claimed to have come up with a tool that lets you get root access on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Now they have a video to back up those claims.

Carrying the wildly inappropriate name Dingleberry, the tool is said to be compatible with both v1.x and v2.x of the PlayBook OS. Either RIM didn’t close the exploit that the hackers use in the upcoming release of the platform or it’s a hardware exploit. Read more »