Continuing my NASA theme, here’s a really cool shot of the space shuttle Atlantis, taken few hours before its launch today. The picture is made by dawn, while the launch will be at 2:26 pm EST. Full res download link after the break.
I admit the discovery of the water on Mars thrilled me much more than those ice craters found on the Moon. Yet, it’s another significant discovery in the mankind history and may result in some groundbreaking answers about the very fabric of our galaxy. Or at least provide the opportunity to create the first permanent cosmic base up there.
After numerous recent evidences from different lunar mission, a few days ago NASA has officially confirmed in a press conference that they’ve found “a significant amount” of water in some of the Moon’s craters. As you may have guessed, it’s frozen, but NASA promises it is water like any other and will be suitable to drink after some filtration.
Casio Japan announced a couple of pretty interesting digital cameras today. The EX-FH25 superzoom and EX-FC150 compact both feature back-light CMOS imaging sensors that should be able to deliver better signal-to-noise ratio than conventional front-lit units.
Casio EX-FH25
Both cameras sport 1/2.3” 10 megapixel sensors and are able to shoot video at up to 1000 FPS. Of course that number is only achievable in the miserly resolution of 224 x 64 pixels but VGA @ 120 FPS ain’t too bad either.
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is one of the hottest names of the season and understandably none of its public appearances can go unnoticed. We just stumbled upon a new video demo of the handset, showing a much better side of it.
The XPERIA X10 unit that the guys over at Wayerless took for a spin has much improved performance compared to the one we saw at the official announcement event in London. It now looks more like a 1GHz CPU-powered device, and less like one that has a hamster running inside to power the whole thing. Check out the video after the break. It’s in Spanish but the handset does most of the talking you need anyway.
It’s either Intel are too often being caught red-handed or their lawyers are total crap. The company just lost another 1.25 billion US dollars, which should go to its main rival AMD.
In short, Intel have promised to behave themselves and pay the fine, while Advanced Micro Devices have agreed to drop the antitrust lawsuit filed in 2004. So offering inducements to customers and retailers in exchange to make them dealing with Intel and forget about AMD is now completely out of line. Did they really need to go to court (and lose twice) to learn that?
We all knew this was going to happen eventually but we are a bit surprised by that kind of speed. Only 5 months after the 720p videos started rolling on YouTube, here comes the 1080p support.
Obviously the rapid growth of Full HD devices available has sped up the upgrade process. So, starting next week, if you have a fast enough computer and a large enough monitor you can switch to 1080p for the best video streaming experience available online.
It’s time for some 3D action from the comfort of your home. 3D cinema may have been around for more than a century (yeah, really!), but it’s only now that it ventures in our homes in a way that’s relatively affordable and easy way to digest. And it’s not just movies – can you imagine playing a first person shooter in real 3D immersion?
HTML5 might be gearing up hopes to dethrone Flash as the online streaming video technology of choice, but Flash is here to stay for a while longer, and is now even gaining ground on mobile devices. The Palm Pre is going to be one of the first devices to get the new Flash Player 10.1, which was announced in October.
Our audio quality test points out the iPhone 3GS as the contemporary audio quality reference. But that was until we had the chance to test a now elderly Nokia N91, which I accidentally sourced brand new from a local mobile shop. I came upon it by chance as part of a strange series of events that deserve their own blog post altogether. But I digress.
Ever since Day One, the Nokia N91 has been praised with impeccable reputation of the best sounding mobile phone ever produced (the majority of stand alone portable music players can hardly compete with it either). It has nothing to do with loudness (though boy, that thing IS loud!), but it’s the audio reproduction that draws audiophiles (and me as well).
I know, it’s too big a phone to lug around all day and it’s even not that likeable by today’s standards of thin profiles and touchscreens. But I still find it as attractive as I fancied it years ago on all those billboards and magazine ads. Heck, it doesn’t even have a QVGA resolution screen, but who cares about the screen. It’s the music soul that sets it apart.
You never thought Microsoft would give Apple a free run here now, did you? Apparently the guys over at Redmond are working on a UMPC, which should rival the Mac tablet, whenever those two actually manage to hit the shelves. Microsoft Courier may not have gone much further away than the drawing board but the ideas those guys are having are amazing.
The Courier file browser is called library
If Windows Mobile has destroyed your fate in Microsoft and their ability to create a user-friendly UI, than you look no further than Courier to rebuild it. So unbelievably fluid and nicely intuitive this is easily among the best interfaces we have ever seen.
Of course, when something seems too good to be true it usually is and we don’t really believe any reasonable hardware will be able to provide as smooth real life performance as the first video suggested. But don’t let our negativism get in the way – enjoy it while it lasts with more screenshots after the break .
I’ve just spotted some of the first Acer Liquid live shots ever made. It’s a pre-release device we’re talking here, but it has obviously been enough to give the reviewers some positive impressions.
Acer Liquid is the first Android smartphone riding a Snapdragon CPU though downclocked to 768 Mhz in this particular case. I’ve seen many discussions on the matter, but Acer representatives confirmed that personally to us, but unfortunately didn’t share the reasoning behind that decision. I suppose it could be some overheating issue or just saving the battery life, but we may never learn.
The XPERIA X10 has been gobbling up a lot of attention lately but it’s not the only one in the lineup that deserves attention. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Pureness features a unique transparent display – a sure-fire attention grabber. Here we have a video of the unboxing and a quick look into the overall design and interface of the phone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you’re not in Kansas anymore, you’re on Pandora…”
The Avatar movie promises action packed combination of real actors and CGI and the new movie trailer is definitely worth a look.
James Cameron’s Avatar is the director’s first movie after Titanic. Yeah, it’s been some time, I know. The story behind the movie is simple – humans have found a distant planet, source of some precious minerals and there is an indigenous tribe of blue humanoid creatures that stands in the way of harvesting the minerals.
There was always talk of using Android as a netbook OS (a “smartbook”) but until that comes along we’ll have to settle for Android as an instant-on OS. In today’s example – the Acer Aspire One AOD250 dual-boots Android and Windows XP. The Android experience is sub-par but the important thing here is that Android runs on a x86 CPU at all.
We’ve seen lots of “dual-something” products (did somebody say dual-SIM phones?) but who would guess that there will be a dual-display netbook? Well, there is – the Singaporean company Kohjinsha has just announced one. And we have it caught on video.
HTC One E9+ performance benchmarks
Samsung Galaxy S6 updated to Android 5.1.1: exploring the differences on video
Oppo R1x battery life test
Lenovo A7000 Preview
Your verdict on Android M, iOS 9 and Watch OS 2.0