Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
The Amazon Kindle Fire is one tablet that looks worthy to take on the Apple iPad. Although the Kindle Fire doesn’t have the same specs as the iPad 2, its price tag of just $199 and the fact that its built with some quality components such as an IPS screen, mean that this tablet will sell extremely well.
As they always do, iFixit has dissembled the Kindle Fire to see what is inside and what exactly makes it run.
A report created comments that the iPhone 4 and 3GS are at the top of the list for the best selling smartphones in the US. The iPhone 4 is in top place followed by the 3GS which is then followed by the HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Droid 3 and on to the Samsung Intensity II. The numbers are from the 3rd quarter and also indicate that smartphones now account for 59 percent of sales which is an increase of 13 percent from the previous quarter.
The Samsung Galaxy Note is coming to O2 in the UK this month according to the coming soon page on the O2 website. Although the device is listed on the mentioned page, the link for more details is actually broken and just loads up a 404 page. We assume that all the details are being put together now for it.
The Amazon Kindle Fire might be getting voice services in a similar way to how the iPhone 4S has Siri. Amazon has quietly purchased a speech recognition company called Yap from what reports are hinting at today.
Amazon or Yap hasn’t commented on the deal and from what we see, it has been done quietly through a company called Dion Acquisition Sub which is listed as being at an Amazon owned building.
iOS 5 has a hidden feature that when enabled, allows you to use an Android-style autocorrect bar above the virtual keyboard. Just like the hidden panorama camera feature found the other day, the autocorrect bar is also found within the code of iOS and is simply just switched off. This was found by Sonny Dickson.
What we are looking at here is a new smartphone that will soon be released called the HTC Ville. BGR managed to get some details about the device including some of the technical specs.
The HTC Ville is expected to be thinner than the iPhone 4S and measure less than 8mm at the widest point.
Windows Phone now has a video chat app thanks to a new app called Tango. The app allows second generation Windows Phone smartphones to be used for making video calls.
The application works on devices such as the Samsung Focus S and the HTC Radar as well as others.
The report from earlier today about Adobe killing Flash for mobile has now been made official by Adobe. The company is stopping development and support for Flash on mobile although it will continue to support it on the PC.
It appears that the Toshiba AT200 tablet will not be launching until January 2012. The new slim tablet was expected to launch sometime this year although confirmation on the official Facebook page says otherwise.
Mozilla has launched Firefox 8 and the download is now available. Although those who knew how could get FF8 a couple of days ago via the Mozilla FTP server, it is now available to all on the main Firefox download page. New features include Twitter search integration amongst several other things we’ll mention below.
Asus has officially announced the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. The new transforming tablet will be made available in the US in December with a price tag of $499. What you get for your money is a unique device that comes with a tablet and detachable keyboard. This allows you to use the device as just a tablet, or carry around a keyboard in a laptop form factor for typing whilst on the go.
Adobe is stopping development of Flash for mobile devices. Instead, it will focus its efforts on HTML5.
Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.
