Samsung announced the Series 7 Slate PC – it packs new generation dual-core Intel processors, runs Windows 7 and puts an emphasis on sleek looks and a compact frame.
Not to be confused with the Sliding PC 7 Series, the Samsung Series 7 Slate PC packs a 11.6″ capacitive touch display with 1366×768 pixels resolution and 400 nits of brightness. The tablet comes with a Wacom digitizer.
Samsung showed off the Series 7 laptops, which will keep the Series 7 Slate PC company. The laptops come in 14″ and 15.6″ flavors and go up to quad-core Core i7 and to make sure the powerful CPU is busy, there’s an 8GB SSD cache for the hard drive.
Prices start at $999 and for that price you get a brushed aluminum body that’s under 2.5cm thick and weighs 2.29kg (for the 15.6″ model, the 14″ model is 1.95kg).
The HTC Puccini leaked enough number of times that we are now well acquainted with it. All that was remaining was for HTC to make it official, which they just have. The device will be launching on the AT&T network in the US on September 4.
Let’s go over the spec sheet again. The HTC Pucc… I mean the Jetstream will have a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 resolution display and will support for AT&T’s 4G LTE and HSPA+ networks. It will run on a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 Snapdragon processor and Android 3.1 Honeycomb, with the Sense UI layer on top.
Sony has announced the HMZ-T1, a new Head Mounted 3D Display, which they like to call “Personal 3D Viewer”. It’s basically the equivalent of watching a 750-inch 3D TV from a distance of 20m, along with a pair of surround sound headphones, except this time it’s personal.
The crux of the HMZ-T1 are the two OLED panels. Each of these panels is only 0.7-inch in size and have a resolution of 1280 x 720, which gives them a mind-blowing pixel density of 2098-PPI.
Following the official launch of their two new Honeycomb tablets, Sony has now announced a new eReader for those who like simpler things in life. The new Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-Ti) is claimed to be the lightest 6-inch eReader in the world with a weight of just 168g, which coupled with the 8.9mm thickness would make it very easy to hold in your hands.
The Reader Wi-Fi has a multi-touch touchscreen, underneath which lies a 600 x 800 resolution, 16-level gray scale E Ink Pearl electronic paper display. The Reader Wi-Fi has 2GB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 32GB usig microSD card.
Sony went ahead and announced their two slates, previously dubbed S1 and S2. The two Honeycomb tablets are now called (officially) the Tablet S and Tablet P.
The Tablet S is a 9.4-incher and runs on Android Honeycomb 3.1, a dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor and has a display resolution of 1280×800 pixels. It should launch in the US in September for $499.99 for the 16GB version and $599.99 for the 32GB one. The Tablet S will only offer Wi-Fi versions for now.
The Dolphin browser is among the most popular mobile browsers out there and now it’s available on the iPhone. If offers a special finger-drawn gestures feature so that you can easily and quickly go to a specified page (your blog, Google, Facebook, etc.), scroll up or down, and more.
The gesture system offers you preset gestures (hand-drawn – like letters, numbers, symbols, etc.) or you can opt to create custom ones. Creating your own custom gestures, however, is a bit dodgy as the browser mistakes what you’re drawing to be something only remotely similar to it and would make you erase the preset, instead of creating a new gesture.
Google has just announced that the latest version of the Android SDK in now available to developers. Classified as a minor feature update, the new Android SDK brings, as usual, a new set of APIs that should allow developers to create better apps that are compatible with a wider range of devices.
The focus of the SDK update is mainly on making compatibility with different screen sizes and resolutions easier. Previously Android 3.2 was said to be the Honeycomb version best suited to 7″ tablets and now you can see why – it’s just that it will be much easier for developers to make apps that are better suited for such tabs.
The popular mobile software developers from SPB Software have released a Symbian^3 compatible-version of their SPB Shell 3D user interface. The customization package is available immediately through the company website, so everyone with a Symbian^3 device and $15 to spare can get a taste of it.
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The SPB Shell 3D UI brings a complete overhaul of the user interface of the smartphone that solves most of the usability issues (illogical menu navigation, one click-two click inconsistency etc.) and adds some welcome eye-candy to the mix. And while the pricing might seem a bit steep at first, it’s probably worth it as it comes as a novel facelift to the widely criticized for their usability Symbian smartphones.
The HP TouchPad is due for a comeback – well, sort of. HP will produce “one last run of TouchPads” to meet the unfulfilled demand.
Since HP introduced the price drop of the 16GB and 32GB versions to $99 and $149 respectively the interest in the tablet has risen so much that it actually scored the second spot as the hottest slate around after Apple’s iPad.
The Mozilla team is actively working on their Android offering and one of them took the time to show off their latest work – Firefox for Android Honeycomb tablets. The changes affect the UI, making it more Honeycomb-like and more suitable for big screens.
The theme is the first thing that changes – it’s cleaner, so it fits better with the Honeycomb style, which differs quite a bit from the non-tablet versions of the OS. The distinctive Firefox elements have been preserved however (like the tabs, the big back button, etc.).
Today we are meeting with Nokia 500 – a small Symbian Anna-based smartphone and the first one in Nokia’s portfolio with a 1GHz processor.
The 500 fella packs a 3.2-inch nHD capacitive screen, a 5 megapixel camera, decent connectivity package and comes with exchangeable battery covers.
We’ve got some great news for those the Samsung Galaxy S II owners (or at least for those that find its battery life not quite satisfactory). The Korean company has just announced an official extended battery for its top dog smartphone that has 2000 mAh worth of juice.
The price that needs to be paid for the extra endurance is an increase in thickness of 1.5mm over the original 1650 mAh battery. Naturally, the new thicker battery doesn’t fit under the old battery cover, so Samsung is shipping the new battery with a replacement back panel.
Microsoft has published a very detailed blog post about the new Explorer in Windows 8. It brings the ribbon interface well known from the latest MS Office packages. Many of you may not like it, but wait until you hear all about it.
The Explorer in Windows 8 brings at front a lot more functions thanks to those ribbons, there are a lot more customizable settings and even some old goodies back from XP are brought once again to life.
Yesterday, we played with the Nokia 701 and we focused mainly on its Symbian Belle software. It turns out that the display is worthy of our attention too – Nokia just tweeted that it offers some good 1,000 nits of brightness.
That means it takes the title of Brightest display off the NOVA display on the LG Optimus Black., which clocked it at “only” 700 nits.
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