Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Apple [AAPL] has confirmed that Steve Jobs will deliver the keynote address at WWDC at 10am June 7. The keynote will kick off the five day event that will be held in San Francisco.
It is expected that Steve will announce the new iPhone 4G (or whatever name it will get such as the iPhone HD for example). The press release can be found below. [Read more…]
The Sky Mobile TV app has been updated to now work with the yet to arrive Apple iPad in the UK. On Friday when the iPad launches, users will be able to stream Sky news and sports content to their iPad over the internet connection (WiFi and possibly 3G).
When using the iPad app you get access to 6 channels although those using the app on the iPhone or iPod touch get 8 channels. The downside is that to have access to the service, you need to cough up £35/month.
– Watch 6 live channels (Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, 4, Sky Sports News and Sky News)
– Enjoy our new high-quality iPad streams (Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2, Sky Sports News & Sky News only)
– New interface allows you to continue watching whilst browsing the 24-hour channel guide. [Read more…]
54,000 batteries are being recalled by HP after problems with them have been identified.
The recall follows a similar programme put in place a year ago and comes after HP “received 38 additional reports of batteries that overheated and ruptured resulting in 11 instances of minor personal injury and 31 instances of minor property damage” since then.
The batteries that have the problems were installed in laptops and sold between August 2007 and July 2008. Also, some batteries were sold alone through the same time period. [Read more…]
Team is about to launch a new SDXC card that has an impressive 64GB capacity.
SDXC cards are fairly new to the storage scene and follow along the lines of SD cards in that they have the same form factor, but also have capacities of up to 2TB in size.
Speed wise, the Team 64GB SDXC memory card achieves a 30MB/second read speed. With that amount of storage it makes it possible to store 136,000 high resolution pictures. [Read more…]
Seagate has announced the launch of the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Drive. The Momentus XT combines a mixture of a regular hard drive and SSD storage to create a fast hybrid storage solution.
The system uses what Seagate call Adaptive Memory technology that allows the drive to deliver SSD performance. The SSD chips can hold 4GB of data which is filled by the more commonly used files such as operating system files, programs and data. By moving them to SSD it allows fast access. As your computer usage changes the technology adapts and moves the new files to the SSD portion of the drive.
The Momentus XT can be used in regular laptops and the drive system runs completely separate to the drivers making it far easier to integrate with a system. [Read more…]
Persistent rumours about Apple [AAPL] and the AT&T exclusivity contract ending have been circulating for a few weeks (or even months now). In particular, Verizon [VZ] has been the other phone carrier that is said to be getting the iPhone. We now hear that Sprint [S] might get the iPhone later this year also.
In the “totally unlikely to come true” department, yesterday I was told that Sprint will be getting the iPhone this summer. You heard that right, while rumors have long pointed to Big Red getting the iPhone this year, never has it been mentioned that Sprint would be selling the iPhone. I can’t believe this is true, although the source has been reliable in the past and does work for Sprint.
Since this time, we had also heard similar rumblings from a Sprint-connected source that Sprint was going to be readying for the iPhone later this year. Likely in the September timeframe — placing it in the same timeframe as Verizon rumors.
Samsung announced in a press release earlier that the Samsung Wave launches in Europe today. The countries specifically mentioned include the UK, Germany and France.
The Samsung Wave uses the Bada OS which is Samsung’s new operating system. The OS is designed for those who enjoy connecting over socla networks. As well as launching the Wave today, the Bada SDK 1.0.0 will also be made available for download later on today allowing developers to start creating applications for the new smartphone. A competition has also been announced that will see a developer win a prize of $300,000 for the competition. Full details can be found at Samsung about that.
With the launch of the Wave, Samsung is actively constructing a total eco-system around bada platform including Samsung Apps. Samsung Apps will be available in 80 countries when the Wave launches, and will increase the premium content and applications pool through collaboration with partner companies and developers.
Although we had a bit of a let down when we heard the Nokia N8 wasn’t due to ship till August, we still hear good news today in that early benchmark tests reveal that the N8 is very quick.
The Nokia N8 has some decent specifications that include a nice 12 megapixel camera although the CPU was thought to be a little on the slow side at 680MHz. However, some benchmark tests have been performed that show the N8 is still quite quick and in fact, it maxed out the benchmarking software on some tests.
Finestfones managed to get some time with the Nokia N8 recently and they decided to use an app called Speedy Go! that allows Symbian users to test their phones and see what kind of frame rates they can get out of it. The Speedy Go! application lets users test various functions with or without the graphics accelerator on. When the accelerator was switched off the phone managed to beat the Nokia N97 by 180%. [Read more…]
The HTC EVO 4G hasn’t launched yet, and wont for another 11 days, yet some has already managed to root the new smartphone.
At the Google I/O event last week, the company handed out free HTC EVO 4G handsets to all those in attendance. One guy who attended the event decided to work with a couple of other friends over the weekend just gone and they managed to get root on the device allowing super user access to the smartphone.
Details of how to root the HTC EVO 4G have not been revealed just yet although we expect we’ll find out in the next few weeks after the launch of the new handset. [Read more…]
Pictures here show the BlackBerry Bold 9800. The new Bold 9800 when launched will use BlackBerry OS 6. The new BlackBerry 9800 is a slider phone where the screen slides upwards to reveal the usual BlackBerry style keyboard underneath.
As well as having a physical QWERTY the device also has a virtual keyboard on-screen that can be used when needed.
As for launch dates, we are hearing that the new BlackBerry Bold 9800 will start shipping in July sometime. [Read more…]
When browsing any website using the regular http protocol, your connection is unsecure and allows third parties to intercept what you are doing online. To prevent this the https protocol is used that encrypts data sent between your browser and the server. Usually you find https on login pages, credit card payment pages and other “secure” types of things you do.
Earlier this year, Google [GOOG] started securing GMail.com connections with https so that sessions on GMail were secure to prevent third parties snooping in.
On Friday, Google announced that the main search pages of google are now secured. The pages can be found at https://www.google.com. What this does is encrypt your search sessions with Google to prevent third parties snooping in. The https version is optional and by default you are still taken to the regular version. [Read more…]
If you decided to use your Apple iPad in the UK heatwave over the past weekend then you might have got the message seen in the image above. This indicates that when temperatures approach 30 degrees C that using an iPad outside might not be possible.
One import iPad user said “Don’t leave iPad in the Sun… Whoops” and Jon points out that the “iPad didn’t like being used in the garden in 30 degree heat.”.
The good thing for those who still want to use their iPad in the hot sun is that here in the UK, it wont last long and we’ll be back to rain, cold and what not in no time. [Read more…]
