The legions of CES tablet wannabes can give up now: Motorola just killed it with their much-rumored Xoom tablet, an iPad-sized black slab whose beauty is within, in its Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS. Designed by Google from the ground-up with touchscreen tablets in mind, it's the first software experience that looks like it can go toe-to-toe with Apple's iOS.
There weren't any fully working models for us to play with here at Motorola's press event, but several hardware-final tablets were on hand playing demo videos of Honeycomb's interface and features
Specs wise, the Xoom sports a 10.1-inch 1280x800 screen, Verizon 3G onboard (which is actually upgradeable to 4G LTE later in the year), 1080p HD video playback and streaming, front and rear cameras for videochatting, and an SD card slot for additional storage.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Razer Switchblade Gaming Netbook
From the annals of goofy might-or-might-not-happen CES concepts comes the Razer Switchblade, a 7-inch gaming netbook from venerable gaming accessory maker Razer. A 7-inch screen is a distinctly small size for a Windows 7 computer, and for gaming it seems particularly problematic. Razer has an interesting way of dealing with the problem of an undersized keyboard: Pop OLED screens under every single one, so you can totally change the configuration of the keyboard at will.
The Switchblade is sort of a conceptual combination of the Toshiba Libretto (with its dual 7-inch screens) and the Optimus Prime keyboard (the first keyboard to push the individual-OLED idea). The Switchblade's keyboard is of standard size for 7-inch netbooks, which means fairly small keys (and not a whole lot of them). To compensate, Razer used keys that are actually tiny OLED screens, which means you can put any image you want on them.
The possibilities for gaming are pretty obvious: You can map any shortcut to any key, and give it a nice logo to keep track. You can cut the keys you don't use, or change the configuration so it's easier to use on such a small keyboard.
It's such a cool idea that we hope it gets picked up like say, an Alienware gaming laptop.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Microsoft's Kinect camera based controller for the Xbox 360
Microsoft's Kinect camera based controller for the Xbox 360 has surpassed all its sales estimates. We had carried a report earlier about 2.5 million Kinects flying off the shelves within a month of its launch. But it's not just the sales, even the modding community and other entities are interested in developing content for the motion controller. Microsoft had upped its sales estimates to 5 million units after the first sales reports, but the Kinect has surpassed even those lofty expectations by pushing 8 million units in just two months.
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer dedicated much of his Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote presentation time advertising the reach and appeal of the Xbox 360 console and ancillaries like Live online community and Kinect. Kinects 8 million sales are especially impressive in this time frame considering there are about 50 million Xbox consoles worldwide.
Speaking on the online appeal of the Xbox Live Ballmer informed, "A new member joins Xbox Live every two seconds." Microsoft's keynote speech gives a clear indication that gaming will be a core area of interest for Microsoft this year. This is no surprise when you note the enormous success the Xbox 360, Kinect and Xbox Live have managed to achieve.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Pigs Run For You Life Angry Birds are Here on Netbook & notebook
Pigs Run For You Life Angry Birds are Here on Netbook & notebook
After charming mobile gamers with its crazy concept and sharp physics engine, Angry Birds is flying over to Intel’s AppUp app store, which offers software downloads for devices running on Intel’s chips.
The AppUp store launched in at the Intel Developer’s Forum in September. It took off pretty quickly and had around 450,000 users and 23,000 program members when it launched. But it has, for the most part, sat in the shadows of Apple’s App Store for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, and the Android Market for devices running Google’s mobile operating system.
Now it has one of the most popular mobile games of 2010. In Angry Birds, players take control of a batch of birds and fling them with a slingshot across the screen to blow up pigs and their fortresses. The gameplay is pretty simple and quite addictive. So much so that the game broke all of the records on the Apple App Store in its first 10 months after release, selling more than 6.5 million copies.
Angry Birds made its way over to other smartphones and the iPad
, where it also saw a rather absurd amount of success — forcing independent app marketplace GetJar to shut down temporarily due to demand for the Android version. More than 77 percent of Angry Birds players update the game as new levels become available. New updates with new levels come out every three or four weeks.
The game is supposed to run on any computer using an Intel chip — including netbooks and typical notebook computers. It expands to support the resolution of each device, and can be streamed out to an HD television at 1080p, according to Intel.
Either way, this should give Intel’s app store a little bit of a boost. The AppUp store has a good number of developers, and Intel also offers some incentives for developing top-of-the-line apps. But porting insanely popular applications over to a new app distribution channel isn’t necessarily the secret to success. Winning the App Store game isn’t necessarily a numbers game — it’s about having access to good applications and some great exclusives.
After charming mobile gamers with its crazy concept and sharp physics engine, Angry Birds is flying over to Intel’s AppUp app store, which offers software downloads for devices running on Intel’s chips.
The AppUp store launched in at the Intel Developer’s Forum in September. It took off pretty quickly and had around 450,000 users and 23,000 program members when it launched. But it has, for the most part, sat in the shadows of Apple’s App Store for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, and the Android Market for devices running Google’s mobile operating system.
Now it has one of the most popular mobile games of 2010. In Angry Birds, players take control of a batch of birds and fling them with a slingshot across the screen to blow up pigs and their fortresses. The gameplay is pretty simple and quite addictive. So much so that the game broke all of the records on the Apple App Store in its first 10 months after release, selling more than 6.5 million copies.
Angry Birds made its way over to other smartphones and the iPad
, where it also saw a rather absurd amount of success — forcing independent app marketplace GetJar to shut down temporarily due to demand for the Android version. More than 77 percent of Angry Birds players update the game as new levels become available. New updates with new levels come out every three or four weeks.The game is supposed to run on any computer using an Intel chip — including netbooks and typical notebook computers. It expands to support the resolution of each device, and can be streamed out to an HD television at 1080p, according to Intel.
Either way, this should give Intel’s app store a little bit of a boost. The AppUp store has a good number of developers, and Intel also offers some incentives for developing top-of-the-line apps. But porting insanely popular applications over to a new app distribution channel isn’t necessarily the secret to success. Winning the App Store game isn’t necessarily a numbers game — it’s about having access to good applications and some great exclusives.
Notebook at Netbook Price: HP Pavilion dm1
The netbook is all but dead. Instead, we now have the ultraportable notebook. HP’s new Pavilion dm1
takes some cues from the latest MacBook Air, squeezing almost-notebook performance into an almost-netbook sized body.
The 3.2-pound dm1 has one of AMD’s brand new Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units), a system-on-a-chip which combines multicore CPU, video-”card” and dedicated hardware hi-def video decoding into a single chip of silicon. This lets the 1.6GHz machine play movies without braking a sweat, something that most Intel Atom-powered netbooks have difficulty doing. But like the Atom, the Fusion processor consumes very little power. In fact, HP claims a battery life of 9.5 hours with a hard drive, and 10.75 hours with the optional solid-state hard drive.
The screen measures 11.6 inches and packs in 1366 x 768 pixels, and the body holds three USB ports, VGA, a card-reader, HDMI-out and Altec Lansing speakers with Dolby Advanced Audio. Finally, the dm1 has “CoolSense”, which is what HP calls its adaptive cooling tech. This detects when the notebook is mobile using accelerometers, and adjusts the interior air-flow to keep the base of the machine cool and lap-friendly.
The dm1 does inherit one thing from netbooks: looks. The chunky, plastic wedge shape is more MSI Wind than MacBook Air. The dm1 will begin at $450
takes some cues from the latest MacBook Air, squeezing almost-notebook performance into an almost-netbook sized body.The 3.2-pound dm1 has one of AMD’s brand new Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units), a system-on-a-chip which combines multicore CPU, video-”card” and dedicated hardware hi-def video decoding into a single chip of silicon. This lets the 1.6GHz machine play movies without braking a sweat, something that most Intel Atom-powered netbooks have difficulty doing. But like the Atom, the Fusion processor consumes very little power. In fact, HP claims a battery life of 9.5 hours with a hard drive, and 10.75 hours with the optional solid-state hard drive.
The screen measures 11.6 inches and packs in 1366 x 768 pixels, and the body holds three USB ports, VGA, a card-reader, HDMI-out and Altec Lansing speakers with Dolby Advanced Audio. Finally, the dm1 has “CoolSense”, which is what HP calls its adaptive cooling tech. This detects when the notebook is mobile using accelerometers, and adjusts the interior air-flow to keep the base of the machine cool and lap-friendly.
The dm1 does inherit one thing from netbooks: looks. The chunky, plastic wedge shape is more MSI Wind than MacBook Air. The dm1 will begin at $450
Dual-Core Mobile Devices: Motorola Olympus, LG Optimus 2x
Motorola in 2009 took aim at the iPhone in its ad campaign for the Droid smartphone. Motorola emphasized what “Droid does” to call out what the iPhone couldn’t do (video below) — a message that resonated with many consumers.
At CES 2011, Motorola and other handset makers are expected to flex a key muscle: dual-core processor
“Dual-core is going to be the key marketing,” said Tero Kuittinen, a telecom analyst at MKM Partners. “Why buy a single-core phone?”
Details already seem to be leaking about Motorola’s plans. Rumor has it that Motorola will unveil a smartphone codenamed Olympus, which may include a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, an 8-megapixel camera, an HDMI port and a front-facing camera.
Similarly, LG has already announced the Optimus 2x , also a Tegra 2-powered smartphone, which is launching first in Korea. At CES, we might hear big news about a similar LG device for U.S. customers as well.
Less visible will be the under-the-hood battle between Nvidia and Intel for dual-core mobile-processor supremacy. Nvidia has positioned itself well for big gains in 2011, having reportedly racked up orders from Android-focused outfits like Samsung, Motorola and LG for its Tegra 2 chipset. (Nvidia’s Michael Rayfield prefers to dabble in jargon like “superphone” rather than “tablet,” but his point of reference is clear.)
Intel, as you might expect, hasn’t raised anything resembling a white flag, since it’s expecting approximately 35 new Atom-based tablets in the coming year from such companies as Lenovo, Dell and Toshiba. Especially intriguing is the chipmaker’s Oak Trail line, which could make huge inroads when Microsoft decides to debut a truly native, tablet-optimized OS.
At CES 2011, Motorola and other handset makers are expected to flex a key muscle: dual-core processor
“Dual-core is going to be the key marketing,” said Tero Kuittinen, a telecom analyst at MKM Partners. “Why buy a single-core phone?”
Details already seem to be leaking about Motorola’s plans. Rumor has it that Motorola will unveil a smartphone codenamed Olympus, which may include a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, an 8-megapixel camera, an HDMI port and a front-facing camera.
Similarly, LG has already announced the Optimus 2x , also a Tegra 2-powered smartphone, which is launching first in Korea. At CES, we might hear big news about a similar LG device for U.S. customers as well.
Less visible will be the under-the-hood battle between Nvidia and Intel for dual-core mobile-processor supremacy. Nvidia has positioned itself well for big gains in 2011, having reportedly racked up orders from Android-focused outfits like Samsung, Motorola and LG for its Tegra 2 chipset. (Nvidia’s Michael Rayfield prefers to dabble in jargon like “superphone” rather than “tablet,” but his point of reference is clear.)
Intel, as you might expect, hasn’t raised anything resembling a white flag, since it’s expecting approximately 35 new Atom-based tablets in the coming year from such companies as Lenovo, Dell and Toshiba. Especially intriguing is the chipmaker’s Oak Trail line, which could make huge inroads when Microsoft decides to debut a truly native, tablet-optimized OS.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Android catching on iPhone
While the iPhone is still the most popular smartphone operating system in the United States, Android is hot on its trail and closing in fast.
According to the latest data from Nielsen, the iPhone OS has captured 28.6% of the U.S. smartphone market share, followed closely by Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS (26.1%) and Google's Android (25.8%).
While Apple's market share over the past six months has remained steady in the 27% to 28% range, the market shares of BlackBerry OS and
Android have been going in opposite directions. RIM was still the dominant mobile operating system just this past June, as it accounted
for nearly one third of all U.S. smartphones at the time. Android, meanwhile, accounted for a mere 15% of U.S. smartphones in June 2010 before seeing its market share nearly double over the span of five months.
Android also has a lot of the momentum heading into 2011. According to Nielsen, 40.8% of customers who reported buying a new
smartphone over the past six months purchased Android-based phones
. iPhones accounted for 26.9% of new devices purchased over
the past six months while BlackBerry devices accounted for 19.2% of new devices purchased over the last six months.
Nielsen also says that the share of smartphones in the overall mobile phone market has continued to grow steadily over the
past year, since smartphones accounted for 24% of all mobile phones in use in June 2010 vs. 31% of all mobile phones in use
in November 2010. Among users who had purchased new phones within the last six months, smartphones accounted for 34% of new
devices in June 2010 vs. 45% of new devices in November 2010.
Since last January, Android has doubled its total market share in the mobile operating system market, and devices based on
Android accounted for 44% of smartphones purchased in the third quarter of 2010, according to research firm ChangeWave. Research
firm Gartner has projected that by the end of the year sales of Android devices will exceed those based on the BlackBerry
OS and the iPhone OS, meaning that Android will trail only Symbian as the world's most-used mobile operating system.
Ever since its debut in the fall of 2007, Android has appeared on numerous popular smartphones for several carriers including
Verizon's Motorola Droid and Sprint's HTC Evo 4G. Next year Google plans on releasing a new version of the Android OS that
is catered specifically to tablet computers.
According to the latest data from Nielsen, the iPhone OS has captured 28.6% of the U.S. smartphone market share, followed closely by Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS (26.1%) and Google's Android (25.8%).
While Apple's market share over the past six months has remained steady in the 27% to 28% range, the market shares of BlackBerry OS and
Android have been going in opposite directions. RIM was still the dominant mobile operating system just this past June, as it accounted
for nearly one third of all U.S. smartphones at the time. Android, meanwhile, accounted for a mere 15% of U.S. smartphones in June 2010 before seeing its market share nearly double over the span of five months.
Android also has a lot of the momentum heading into 2011. According to Nielsen, 40.8% of customers who reported buying a new
smartphone over the past six months purchased Android-based phones
. iPhones accounted for 26.9% of new devices purchased overthe past six months while BlackBerry devices accounted for 19.2% of new devices purchased over the last six months.
Nielsen also says that the share of smartphones in the overall mobile phone market has continued to grow steadily over the
past year, since smartphones accounted for 24% of all mobile phones in use in June 2010 vs. 31% of all mobile phones in use
in November 2010. Among users who had purchased new phones within the last six months, smartphones accounted for 34% of new
devices in June 2010 vs. 45% of new devices in November 2010.
Since last January, Android has doubled its total market share in the mobile operating system market, and devices based on
Android accounted for 44% of smartphones purchased in the third quarter of 2010, according to research firm ChangeWave. Research
firm Gartner has projected that by the end of the year sales of Android devices will exceed those based on the BlackBerry
OS and the iPhone OS, meaning that Android will trail only Symbian as the world's most-used mobile operating system.
Ever since its debut in the fall of 2007, Android has appeared on numerous popular smartphones for several carriers including
Verizon's Motorola Droid and Sprint's HTC Evo 4G. Next year Google plans on releasing a new version of the Android OS that
is catered specifically to tablet computers.
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