by Matthew on February 8, 2010
Documents were leaked online for BlackBerry Internet Services 3.0 that show two-way sync to GMail is finally going to arrive on BlackBerry devices. What this will allow the smartphone to do is update GMail with items read and sync them in both directions.
Although it must be interesting for BlackBerry users to finally get this functionality, this has been available on most other smartphones for several years now and shows how far BlackBerry phones are behind on some of the protocols.
Although the update will be made available soon it will be up to the individual carriers to push it out to BlackBerry phones which means a number of users could be waiting longer than others. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
The AV to USB video capture cable allows you to connect and stream video from various sources to your computer. Sources compatible include DVD players, camcorders, VHS player as well as video games systems. When playing content with the cable attached, the computer captures the video digitally and stores it on the hard drive allowing you to upload, email or keep an archive of your old content.
Reasons for using such a device could be to just clear out space used by old VHS cassettes that you might not want to keep anymore, but still want the content on them. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
Canon have released details of their latest EOS Rebel camera called the Canon EOS T2i. The new T2i will become the higher spec model in the lower-cost digital SLR camera range.
On to the technical specs we see it has an 18 megapixel sensor with the ability to use 9-point autofocus and a 63 zone dual layering metering system similar to like the EOS 7D camera has.
On the back of the camera is a 3 inch LCD screen that has a smudge resistive coating and is capable of showing live-view images. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
Microsoft [MSFT] have cut the prices of Zune HD models recently bringing the touchscreen media player down in price to $190 for a 16GB model ($32 cheaper) and the larger 32GB model has dropped to $250 by about the same amount.
As well as Amazon dropping the prices, Microsoft have also dropped prices along with Walmart and a number of other retailers although Amazon seems to have the largest discounts at the moment. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
The Garmin nuvi 285W is on offer over at Amazon at the moment bringing the price from $249.99 right down to just $99.99 giving a 60% saving.
The nuvi 285W satnav device has a 4.3 inch widescreen that’s a touchscreen. Maps can be seen in detail in both 2D and 3D formats and street details are also complimented with over 6 million points of interest.
The 285W satnav also has text to speech allowing street names to be spoken by voice rather than the older way of turning left in X yards. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
The LG Arena Max LU9400 has been leaked by a site over in Korea. The Arena Max has been spotted before clearing WiFi certification and this, as far as I am aware is the only other information available right now.
The phone appears to have a 3.5 inch screen that’s touchscreen. A step up from the original LG Arena shows this model to have a Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm that runs at 1GHz. For connectivity it has the usual WiFi and Bluetooth arrangement. GPS is also included on this phone allowing for location based services to be used as well as navigation if software permits. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
Google Translator is a very helpful service that allows you to put some text in one language and have it translated to another language. This can be done by either copying some words in to a box, or by translating a full webpage in to a different language. However, Google [GOOG] have some bigger goals in that they are now working on translating speech-to-speech, meaning that the service could arrive on a mobile phone in the near future.
When I say the near future, what I mean is it could take a few years to get to the stage where accuracy is good enough to use it as a service at a basic level. The system is broken in to two parts. The first listens to the voice speaking and works out what was said, secondly, good translation is needed to get the right message across to the other language on the other side of the call. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
Some leaked pictures of the HTC Incredible smartphone have appeared online that show off the Android 2.1 device running the HTC Sense UI.
The Incredible runs a Snapdragon CPU (we assume to be clocked at 1GHz) and has 256MB of RAM. The WVGA screen measures around 3.5 – 3.7 inches and from what the tipster says, the screen could be AMOLED due to how vibrant it is.
Towards the bottom of the device an optical mouse pointer can be found and around the back on the “different” orange coloured back plate a couple of LED flashes can be seen. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
ASUS have added a new Nettop to their lineup by introducing the ASUS EeeTop ET1610PT. The new EeeTop comes with a new Intel Atom D410 Pine Trail CPU along with 1/2GB of RAM and 160GB of storage on hard drive.
Two versions of the EeeTop model are being made available with one indicating a touchscreen and the other a regular screen (as denoted by the T at the end of the model name).
The ASUS ET1610 has a 15.6 inch screen that can display a resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels. Graphics power is provided by an Intel GMA X3150 graphics chipset. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 8, 2010
The Panasonic Lumix G1 has been removed, completely, from the Panasonic site in Canada. Also reports of the camera being completely out of stock in Japan are leading people to think that a Panasonic G2 could be just around the corner.
The Lumix G1 was the first micro four thirds camera launched that used a digital interchangeable lens and was launched back in November 2008 along with a few lenses that included a 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (28-90 mm equivalent) and a 45-200mm f/4-5.6 (90-400mm equivalent). [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 6, 2010
An image was posted on the ppcgeeks forum that shows the alleged date for the HTC HD2 to launch on the T-Mobile network in the US. The date shown on the image says we can expect the phone on March 24. No other information on the HD2 is provided other than it being Windows mobile based.
From what we learned recently, it seems like the HTC HD2 might come with some extra RAM and ROM which some say could be a preparation for Windows Mobile 7 although other hidden memory was recently found on other versions of the phone. It will be interesting to see if the T-Mobile version of the HD2 is the same as others when launched. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 5, 2010
If you’re a World of Warcraft fan then you might want to check out the World of Warcraft competition running on our friends site Zath.co.uk.
The competition ends this weekend, so get yourself over there now if you want to be in with a chance of winning one of the many WoW prizes on offer. Entry is quite simple too in that you just need to leave a comment, tweet or join the Zath facebook group. Good luck!
by Matthew on February 5, 2010
This week the Symbian Foundation announced that the sourcecode for Symbian devices was now completely open source. To achieve this about 20% of the 200 or so 3rd party developers had requested their code be stripped out due to now wanting to open-source their code.
The information on this was revealed in an interview with Symbian Foundations chief where the future of Symbian was discussed. One of the more interesting points in the interview was where the question was asked about the possibility of Symbian-based tablets and netbooks to which the answer came…
“It’s very likely that, in the next year or two, you would see such a product hit the marketplace. A lot of companies are experimenting with PDA-tablet-style form factors, also for stereo systems, and internet-connected devices running low power on primarily ARM architecture — we do get occasional interest for a few of those.” [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 5, 2010
Just in the last few days, Google [GOOG] announced multitouch support for the Nexus One. We now hear that a new update to the Google Maps software brings multitouch to DROID phones that use the latest version of the software.
If you have a DROID then load up the market and go grab the new version which is numbered 3.4. When installed you should have full pinch to zoom support in the mapping application. [click to continue…]
by Matthew on February 5, 2010
When a company design a mobile phone you might expect they simply design how they want the phone to look (being realistic) and then put a circuit board, screen and a few other functions inside such as a GPS receiver, BT radio and Wireless radio and give it a name. Google [GOOG] have put together a video showing what went in to designing the Google Nexus One phone that was recently released and from what I see in the video a lot more thought goes in to it than I expected.
The Nexus One was designed in detail from the material used for the casing right down to what microphone they use to pick up your voice when you talk on a call. More detail in the video reveals that the Nexus One in fact has two micophones with one listening to your voice and surrounding sounds and the second just listening to surrounding sounds. Waves are combined and all but your voice is removed from the conversation. [click to continue…]
