When we had a brief, close encounter with the Toshiba Thrive Honeycomb tablet a couple of months ago in New York, we came out quite impressed with the slate except for its weight and looks. It appears that Toshiba’s second take on an Android Honeycomb device is about to fix those issues in a sweeping fashion. Today, we have a few shots of a yet unannounced Toshiba tablet, which looks more than promising.

As you can see from the picture above, Read more »

At first Samsung took its own sweet time bringing the Galaxy S II to the US and now nature decided to play spoilsport. The launch of the Galaxy S II which was meant to happen in New York on August 29, has now been postponed by a day.

The reason for this delay is the Hurricane Irene, which is currently terrorizing its way to the US shores. I’m sure anyone in the hurricane’s path would have bigger things on their minds than the launch of the Galaxy S II Read more »

One of the cool things about the Android Market on the web is that it pushes apps directly to your Android device instead of downloading it and then making you transfer it manually to the device. Nokia had a system on their Ovi Store where they would instead send an SMS to your phone with a link to download the app, but this wasn’t very convenient. So now they have Android Market style push support for sending apps directly to your phone, thanks to Nokia Drop.

This works similar to on Android phones. You go to the Ovi Store through your web browser, then click on an application and if it is a free app it is sent instantly to your phone and gets installed automatically. Read more »

A few days back Razer had launched a website, pcgamingisnotdead.com, where they talked about how, well, PC gaming is not really dead and that it is superior to console gaming. They also put up a counter on their site that hinted at an upcoming product but it wasn’t clear what it would be. But we know now.

Yesterday, Razer announced their first ever gaming laptop, the Razer Blade, which they claim to be the world’s first true gaming laptop. The focus in this product has been on achieving the highest possible performance in the thinnest possible form factor. Read more »

It’s been a long wait for all the fans of Counter Strike out there since the last release of the popular shooter. Today, we have the first trailers of the upcoming Counter Strike: Global Offensive, which is due for release in Q1 of 2012 and, dare I say, the latest CS looks more than promising.

The new video game Read more »

Samsung will showcase a revamped version of its Galaxy S II with LTE support and more, and it’s due to be unveiled next week at the IFA 2011 expo in Berlin. It will also launch a new version of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 slate, which could land in just three days on August 29th at an event held in New York.

The Galaxy S II will have a bigger 4.5″ SuperAMOLED Plus display, a multi-mode LTE/WCDMA/GSM radio inside, NFC, a slightly beefier 1850mAh battery and finally, a snappier 1.5GHz dual-core processor. Sounds a little like a Galaxy S II Plus, doesn’t it? Specs aside, it will feature a revamped back panel, which is quoted to look made out of brushed aluminum. Read more »

The PlayBook OS version 2.0.0.2992 has leaked in screenshots form and the screens show the Playbook’s new email client suspiciously lacks an option for setting it up with a BlackBerry BES and BIS account. Also there’s an Android Emulator icon in the main menu, which means that the compatibility project between droid apps and QNX may be late but is still coming.

The accounts screen in the settings menu shows the available options to configure an email account. They include Exchange/ActiveSync, IMAP, POP, CalDAV, CardDAV, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but there’s no BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) or BlackBerry Internet Server (BIS) on there. This could mean that QNX is on track to join the other smart OSes and use the same integrated email, calendar and contacts sync options. Read more »

Nokia Maps for Symbian is one of the best SatNav apps around and Nokia’s dev team is intent on making it better. Beta Labs just released a test version of Nokia Maps 3.08 with Weather, which brings a number of improvements, especially in the UI department.

The new version offers more information before you start and while you’re driving, with an emphasis on live traffic info. It also comes with an attractive-looking dedicated weather app, which shows forecasts by the hour. Read more »

It looks like someone only recently bought the burgeoning tablet market to Logitech’s attention and so now they are coming out with one tablet accessory after another in quick succession to make up for the lost time. The first one was Tablet Keyboard for the iPad and Android tablets, then came the Fold-Up Keyboard for the iPad and now comes with Joystick, again exclusively or the iPad.

The Joystick basically latches onto your iPad’s display and manipulates the virtual D-Pad on the screen. This gives better control over the game and being transparent doesn’t veil the screen content the way your non-transparent thumb does. Read more »

Although Samsung had announced bada 2.0 back in February during MWC 2011, it took them quite a long time to release it. But it seems Samsung has not forgotten about its little pet project as today we got news of Samsung making bada 2.0 live and also releasing the SDK to anyone willing to visit their website, register and download the 368KB file.

Among the list of changes in bada 2.0 include a new user interface, improved multi-tasking, support for OpenAL, NFC, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, Wi-Fi Direct, in-app ads, push notifications and HTML5. But then again, we already knew all that. Read more »

RIM is putting a clever new spin to the old “share what song you’re listening to” trick by letting you share the actual tracks, not just the mere artist/track name info. Enter BBM Music – it’s an add-on for BlackBerry Messenger 6, that lets people create a 50 song collection and share it with their friends.

You can listen to your 50 tracks and to the 50 tracks of each of your friends, or as RIM puts it “More friends = More music”. Read more »

And we have some more camera news for you today. Following Canon and Nikon’s lead Sony too has launched some new cameras. This time we have two EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder with Interchangeable Lens) cameras and two SLT (Single-Lens Translucent) cameras from their NEX and Alpha series respectively.

The first of the EVIL twins (sorry, couldn’t resist) is the Sony NEX-5N, which is the updated version of the NEX-5 launched last year. Sony claims it has the world’s shortest shutter lag for interchangeable lens camera (only 20ms) and an extremely quick auto-focus mechanism. The new 5N also shoots 1080p videos in 60fps, up from the 30fps in last year’s model. It also has a 16.1 megapixel sensor and will come with a 18.55mm kit lens for $700 in September. Read more »

After Canon announced it’s new range of cameras a few days back Nikon too has updated its range of point and shoot cameras. This includes four basic point-and-shoot cameras for beginners, one prosumer camera and their first every rugged, water-proof camera.

First we will talk about the AW100. It is Nikon’s first water-proof, shock-proof and cold resistant camera. It can function under-water for up to 10m, survive a shock of 1.5m and withstand temperatures as low as -10 degree Celsius. Under that tough body it has a 16 megapixel sensor with 5x optical zoom, 1080p video recording, 3.0-inch display, A-GPS and electronic compass with built-in maps for displaying your geo-tagged pictures on. The AW100 will be sold in five different colors for $379.95 starting September 8. Read more »

It is well known to everyone these days, that the Samsung made Super AMOLED screens are the standard to beat in the mobile industry. LG surely thinks so. The Korean company’s yet to be launched AH-IPS display for mobile devices, just received the prestigious Quality & Performance Mark from Intertek – a global testing and certification company. What’s particularly important about this award for LG, is that it has been achieved by comparing its display with no other but Samsung Galaxy SII’s Super AMOLED screen.

Now on with some numbers. The award winning AH-IPS display from LG measures Read more »

Samsung has worked up a new naming scheme for its Androids and today we’re seeing the first phones to abide by the new rules. Of course, old models fit the new naming scheme too, but what Samsung has done is codified the tiers (low, mid, high, premium, and “Super Smart”).

I’ll go over the four new models from Samsung (which hail from the M, W and Y lines) along with a few older ones (that conform to the new naming scheme) to see how well it works. You’re welcome to join me.

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