Gadget Venue

Yesterday, the BlackBerry Storm 3 was spotted in a document. Today, we noticed over on Engadget that they managed to get hold of a screen shot of a training manual that shows the smartphone is getting a few upgrades. The upgrades that will appear on the Storm 3 indicate that it will be more capable of running BlackBerry OS 6.

The RAM on the Storm 3 will be double that of the Storm 2 giving it 512MB to work with. The camera will increase to 5 megapixels and wireless connectivity is bumped up to 802.11n. Another decent feature is the ability to make the Storm 3 in to a wireless hotspot although that is listed under the “coming soon” banner which we assume will not be available at launch. [Read more…]

More leaked shots of the Motorola DROID 2 have been spotted. The new pictures come from a packaging facility and show what look to be a number of images being printed for the packaging.

The rumoured launch date of August 23 is still believed to be correct at the moment although Engadget hope that this moves closer due to all the leaks that are coming out over the last few weeks.

New features on the DROID 2 include an improved keyboard, an 8GB microSD card, and from what we understand, more memory on board. [Read more…]

We have previously seen the iPhone 4 FaceTime feature used when flying in a plane. The next video shows FaceTime being used from a boat 1000 miles away from any land in the Pacific Ocean.

The video call was made to Santa Cruz and uses a satellite connection that is commonly found on those who sail across the sea. The results are quite amazing when looking at the quality of the video stream and hearing the voice quality.

The sound does drop out slightly a few times but that could be related to it being hands free and surrounding noises muting the sound a little. [Read more…]

As well as introducing a new version of iTunes last night, Apple [AAPL] also pushed out a new version of iBooks for the iPad and iPhone. The new version is iBooks 1.1.1 and brings several new features to the eBook reader.

The new features include the following…

* Double-tap an image within a book to view it in greater detail.
* Experience books that include audio and video.
* Enjoy substantial performance improvements when reading PDFs.
* Look-up definitions to English words inside books without a specified language.
* Addresses an issue that may have caused some book downloads to not complete.
* Includes many stability and performance improvements. [Read more…]

Some users (a small amount) have reported problems with the DROID X smartphone that launched recently. The problems revolve around the screen that in a few cases shows flickering and problems with dead pixels on the lower section of the screen. Videos below show the types of screen issues some users are facing.

It doesn’t look to be a widespread problem at the moment as only a few reports have come in of this behaviour.

Some users on forums have indicated that they already have had their DROID X replaced. If you are getting the problems described here then it would be wise to take it back for a return. You’d be kind of crazy not to as it makes the screen almost impossible to use. [Read more…]

You can now get Android 2.2 FroYo for your HTC Desire although it’s not officially launched just yet.

The new software has been uploaded and has been made available to those who want to go the less official route and use unofficial roms on their smartphone.

“unrevoked3 is a tool to flash a custom recovery image to your Android phone,” explains the site where you can get the all-powerful application. “A custom recovery image allows you to perform advanced tasks on the system partition, such as flashing custom ROMs and taking a full backup of your phone (a ‘nandroid backup).”

[Read more…]