Leaked Roadmap Unveils Windows Phone Tango and Apollo Timeline

We already knew that Microsoft was working on the release of new Windows Phone platform versions, but no specific info on when they might arrive had been unveiled before. Today, however, we can have a look at a leaked Windows Phone roadmap that provides more details on the matter.  Following the release of Windows Phone 7 in October 2010 and of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in  October this year, we should see two new platform releases being pushed to users in 2012.   Codenamed Tango and Apollo, they should bring along a variety of features and enhancements, further improving the experience that users can receive from the OS.  The first of them to arrive will be Tango, which is expected to open the door for cheaper Windows...

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Intel to Release 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs on April 8, Say Taiwan PC Makers

After many rumors and suppositions regarding the release date of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors hit the streets, a recent report citing sources from Taiwanese PC makers has revealed that the chip giant plans to launch these new 22nm CPUs on April 8, 2012. Previously, all we knew about the launch date of Ivy Bridge processors was that Intel wanted to go for the March/April timeframe, with some recent rumors claiming that May could also be a potential launch target. However, sources cited by DigiTimes have now revealed that Intel is actually planning to release its first Ivy Bridge chips on April 8, 2012. The initial release will cover the third-generation Core i5 and Core i7 desktop products with prices ranging from $184 to $332 (141 to 254...

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AMD to Launch Three 28nm Radeon HD 7000 GPUs by March 2012

During the course of the coming months, AMD is expected to increase its lineup of Radeon HD 7000 graphics cards with new models based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture ranging from the just released HD 7970 to the HD 7750. The first card to arrive after the Radeon HD 7970 announced earlier this month is the HD 7950 that is based on the same Tahiti GPU, but this time coming with some of its Compute Units disabled. As we have detailed previous, this move will leave the Tahiti Pro graphics core used for the card with 1792 shaders, 112 texture units, and 32 ROP units while its frequency will be limited to 900MHz. Just as it’s the case with the HD 7970, the 3GB of video buffer installed in this card is connected to the GPU via a 384-bit...

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PS Vita Quad-Core Processor Developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba

It seems like the trio that was behind the CELL processor found inside Sony’s PlayStation 3 was reunited to develop the quad-core CPU used by the Japanese company for the PS Vita portable console. Previously believed to be fabricated by Samsung, the chip, which is marked as CXD5315GG, was revealed by a Tech Insights teardown to be manufactured as a joint effort between Sony, IBM and Toshiba. As it was the case previously, IBM is in charge of the production process with the other companies being limited to developing the CPU. Other info is not available at this point in time, but the end result is a CPU comprised out of four ARM Cortex-A9 cores that are installed in the same package with 512MB of DDR2-S4 SDRAM memory. The rest of the chips...

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Asus makes Official Intel Cedar Trail Powered Eee PC 1225C Netbook

After being spotted in an online store a little bit more than a month ago, Asus’ Eee PC 1225C netbook powered by Intel’s upcoming Atom Cedar Trail processors was made official by the Taiwanese company who just posted the netbook’s manual online. Notebook Italia has caught a glimpse of this document and managed to save some images from the manual right before this was removed from Asus’ website. These reveal the silhouette of the notebook which from the listing that made its appearance in November we know that it will sport a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N2600 dual core processor. This chip is built using the 32nm production process and includes dual processing cores clocked at 1.6GHz with support for Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology and improved...

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5MB IBM HDD Was as Big as a Washing Machine

People know, in principle, that tech products used to be a lot bigger and weaker than PCs are today, but it might be hard to gain perspective. Fortunately, there were ways of taking photos even half a century ago, so we can see for ourselves what a hard disk drive looked like. The Next Web dug up some things on the IBM 305 RAMAC, a 'super' computer with a hard disk drive of no less than 5MB. Don't be fooled: that thing up there in the photo is just the HDD. Indeed, back in 1956, 5 MB HDDs were as big as a washing machine (or two) and needed forklifts to be moved around. This goes to show just how much and how fast technology advanced once the world recovered from the convalescence of the world wars...

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Microsoft Finds Root for WP7 SMS Bug, Promises Fix for It

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, the latest flavor of Microsoft’s mobile operating system, was recently discovered to suffer from a security issue, one that resulted in the handset to crash when a specific message was received.  Microsoft has been hard at work during the past few weeks to find the cause for this issue, and it appears that they finally got a sense of it.  Moreover, they promised a fix for the issue in the not too distant future, Khaled Salameh, the developer who found the bug, notes on Twitter. “MS Security Team contacted me today, they've confirmed the WP7 SMS Bug and found the root cause, a fix is currently under testing,” he tweeted.  One other thing that we should add on this is that the bug appears to be widely...

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Bold 9900 and 9930 Get a Porsche Design Look via New Theme

RIM’s Porsche Design P'9981 BlackBerry is set to make an official appearance on shelves before the end of the ongoing year, with a price tag fit for a high-end device.  Yet not all users out there will be willing to pay almost $2,000 (around 1,500 Euros) for a new BlackBerry, that’s for sure.  For those who own a Bold 9900 or a 9930 smartphone, the appealing looks of Porsche Design P'9981 BlackBerry are now available to enjoy courtesy of a new theme pack.  The theme also brings along new icons to these devices, extracted from the Porsche Design P'9981, it seems, so that more users can benefit from them. New fonts are also available. Basically, the full customizations on the luxury device are available for Bold 9900 and 9930...

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Official Ice Cream Sandwich Launcher for CyanogenMod 9 Now Available for Download

It looks like the CyanogenMod team is one step closer to releasing the final version of CyanogenMod 9 ROM, which is expected to bring Ice Cream Sandwich platform to a range of Android smartphones.  While the developer team is working hard to deliver the ultimate Ice Cream Sandwich experience to all Android fans out there, we are given short sneak peeks of their work that are slowly completing the CyanogenMod 9 ROM like big puzzle. The latest piece of the puzzle is called Trebuchet Launcher, which is the official Ice Cream Sandwich launcher for CyanogenMod 9. Even though this is just an alpha release, the launcher is now available for download. According to the folks over at XDA Developers, the Trebuchet Launcher was especially designed...

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Gran Turismo 5 XL Edition Leaked by Retailers

Turismo 5, as several retailers from the U.S. have listed a brand new product called Gran Turismo 5 XL, which is set to appear towards the end of January. Gran Turismo 5 impressed legions of PlayStation 3 owners with its high quality graphics and great simulator gameplay when it was launched over a year ago, and saw the release of quite a lot of patches and new downloadable content since then. Now, just as Japanese customers are getting ready to receive a special Gran Turismo 5 Spec II title, which includes the full game plus all the DLC and updates that appeared for it, as well as some future content, U.S. retailers are listing a special Gran Turismo 5 XL edition on their websites, via GT Planet. While Sony made no mention of releasing...

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RIM Says BlackBerry ‘Thank You Gift’ Apps Only Available Until December 31

Research In Motion is by far the company most affected by the changes in the smartphone market. The company’s problems culminated with the BlackBerry outage in October, which left most BlackBerry users without RIM’s services for three days. To compensate its customers for the BlackBerry outage, RIM offered them a free apps package comprising several productivity tools and games. Today, RIM issued a reminder for all BlackBerry users that the so-called “Thank You Gift” apps package is only available for download until December 31. The package can be downloaded for free via BlackBerry App World and includes the following applications: Shazam Encore, Vlingo - Virtual Assistant, DriveSafe.ly Pro, Bubble Bash 2, The Sims 3, Nobex Radio Premium,...

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Samsung Galaxy S III First Test Photo Unveiled

It was just a matter of time until the first details on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III leaked into the wild. There was much talk on the phone’s specs sheet that might include innovative technologies, as well as 3D features.  Until we have more info concerning Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy smartphone, the folks at Pocketnow have just published a test photo that seems to be taken with the Galaxy S III. The full-size picture is available, just click on first photo below. According to the EXIF data, the picture is taken with an unknown Samsung GT-I9500, which might indicate that this is the next top-tier smartphone in the Galaxy family. In this regard, Samsung previously used lower model numbers for its Galaxy S (GT-I90xx), Galaxy...

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MSI Voice-Activated Motherboard Becomes Reality at CES 2012

There are features that one wouldn't expect to find on a motherboard but MSI thinks at least one of them could prove useful, that of voice activation.  Anyone thinking that MSI's motherboards already have more than enough overclocking features will find that the company itself disagrees.  Granted, what Micro-Star International is about to officially launch is not some new clock speed-altering or performance-enhancing technology.  Instead, it is more of a functionality-enhancing feature, a perk for people willing to buy high-end gear as it were.  Simply put, the company has made it possible for motherboards to be controlled by talking to them.  We actually picked up on MSI's voice-activated and controlled motherboard...

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Credit Card-Sized PC Raspberry Pi Debuts in January 2012

There aren't many personal computers that can stand out nowadays, not with tablets and consumer electronics drawing the eyes of customers, but those few that do manage to enrapture onlookers do it in style.  The Raspberry Pi is one of these few that we have been keeping track of for the last couple of months.  Even a video of it in action surfaced just at the beginning of December.  Now, this computer that has the same size as a credit card is almost ready to start selling.  In fact, contrary to what some may fear, the compactness does not involve a higher monetary cost than what regular PCs sell for.  If anything, the item is very cheap, priced at as little as $25, or about 18.5 Euro according to exchange rates.  The...

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Tranquil PC MMC-12 HTPC Packs Sandy Bridge CPU Inside 1.5-Inch (38mm) Tall Case

Tranquil PC, a company specialized in developing computers tweaked for silent running, has just announced a forthcoming design for a new media center system dubbed the MMC-12 that will pack Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors inside its 1.5-inch case. The system is constructed from metal and finished in a satin-textured matte black, its front panel showing only a power button, a badge with the company’s name on it and a slot loading optical drive. Users have the option of going for either a DVD or Blu-ray ODD when they configure their system and will also be able to choose from various Intel Sandy Bridge processors. Judging by a post on the company’s official blog, the CPU options list will include chips from the Core i3, i5 and i7 product families,...

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KFA2 Quad-Display Capable GeForce GTX 580 MDT X4 Gets Priced

A little more than a week after KFA2 announced the introduction of the quad-display capable Nvidia GTX 580 MDT X4, the graphics card has become available for purchase from several retailers in Europe with prices starting at 5,100 SEK including VAT (569 EUR or $743 US). KFA2 was able to overcome Nvidia’s limitation for two monitors per card by using a third-party IDT VMM1400 controller, a chip that is usually found in multi-display hub devices. Despite this change, KFA2's latest creation somewhat resembles the company's previous GeForce GTX 580 Anarchy as it uses a similar tri-fan cooling solution, but which was now painted black together with the PCB for a more aggressive look. However, unlike the other GTX 580 model in KFA2 lineup, the...

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