Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Motorola has finally confirmed the final price of the Motorola Xoom tablet. Two models will be launching which will include a 3G/4G model and then a WiFi only model.
The more expensive of the two is of course the WiFi+3G/4G model which has been confirmed to have a price tag of $799. The WiFi only model will cost $600 at launch. [Read more…]
The FlexT9 is a virtual keyboard for Android smartphones. It has four ways to input data in to the phone which includes voice input powered by Dragon.
The four input methods include Speak: which allows you to say something along the lines of “text fred: whatever you want to say”. This function is said to be reliable.
The next input is Trace: that appears to be very similar to how Swype works in that you trace your finger over the keys. Next it’s the Write method that allows you to scribble letters and numbers down that are recognised and converted to text. Finally, you have the regular tap type keyboard where you can enter text the usual way. [Read more…]
The HTC Flyer was first announced a few days ago at Mobile World Congress. The Flyer is a 7 inch tablet that when launched, will run the Android 2.4 Gingerbread operating system.
We now see that Amazon in Germany now has the tablet listed along with a price tag of 669.99. This price includes 19% VAT that is applicable to purchases in the said country. When converting the price to US without tax, it comes in at $755 which isn’t cheap although not far off other tablets that are launching around the same time. [Read more…]
MapQuest is a service I haven’t used for a few years. However, I see they are still in the game in that they have now just released an Android App that is available free for download in the Android Market.
The MapQuest App allows another option for turn-by-turn navigation on Android based devices. Other features include voice search, walking and driving directions, live traffic, voice guided directions and points of interest. [Read more…]
Reports indicate that Apple has managed to secure 60 percent of the global touch screen capacity and in turn, could possibly create shortages for the rest of the industry.
If the reports are correct, it appears that Apple is spending a large amount of cash to get the screens at the best price possible, much like they did with flash memory a few years ago. [Read more…]
Rovio Mobile has confirmed that the popular Angry Birds will be arriving on the Windows Phone 7 platform. No specific release dates have been provided for the WP7 version of the game although Rovio confirmed that they are “working on it”.
You might remember that when Windows Phone 7 was launched, a Rovio/Angry birds logo was seen on the home screen of the device. This caused problems for Rovio in that they didn’t authorise the use of it. However, they have confirmed that this is in the past now and that development of the game is running smoothly. [Read more…]
Dell has confirmed that when the Dell Streak 10 tablet launches, it will run the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. What we also learn is that Dell intend to use a degree of the same hardware that will also run a Windows OS.
For tablets, it’s Android Honeycomb and Windows, and we have customers with a preference for either one. We can create platforms that share a great degree of hardware commonality that can run both — or either — operating system, and we don’t see any other options that are worthy of consideration.
Orange is planning to launch contactless payments in the second quarter of this year. The new payment system will be installed in the UK, France, Spain and Poland and when in use, will allow NFC equipped smartphones to be used as a mobile wallet to pay for items.
The first device to be made compatible with the service will be the Samsung Wave 578 although NFC and the services wont be just restricted to this particular device. Orange will launch more devices on its network over the coming months and years. [Read more…]
Over at MWC, Google announced that the Android Market now has 150,000 apps available for download. This amount is triple what it was 9 months ago when developers had collectively submitted 50,000 apps in total.
Numbers were estimated at recently to be around the 200K mark, although it turns out that this was a slight over estimate. However, 150,000 apps is still a good achievement. [Read more…]
There seems to be plenty of rumors floating around today. The next hints at the next gen MacBook Air getting 3G connectivity built in.
The next gen MacBook Air isn’t expected till Q4 this year, but when it arrives it is expected to have more connectivity added so that it can be more easily connected online whilst on the move. [Read more…]
Although we think the Sony NGP (AKA PSP 2) is packed full of features that actually make it very “cool”, we learn now that it could have been better. Sony said in a recent interview that not everything they intended has made it to the PSP 2 so that they could keep the price down to an acceptable level. What that means is that you still will get the NGP you saw a few weeks ago, but had Sony not restricted it to a certain (unknown) price point, it would have been packed with even more features.
Sony doesn’t mention what those features are though unfortunately although a few lessons can be learned from the original PS3 when compared to the new one. Sony originally added a lot of features to the PS3 and gave it everything, basically you could say they “overcooked” it. Then, they realised that a huge loss was being made and when new models were launched, various features started dropping such as backwards compatibility to name one thing. [Read more…]
As expected, Apple [AAPL] has now launched subscriptions on the App Store. The new subscriptions service allows publishers of content on the app store to set up a regular automated billing cycle of weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly. The system will use the regular Apple billing system that is already used in the app store. By doing this, it makes it easy for the user to see all subscriptions on a single location and then cancel, edit billing frequency and make other changes when needed.
For content providers, Steve Jobs has explained exactly how the revenue model works between publisher and Apple: [Read more…]
