CES 2012: PowerColor Shows Custom Radeon HD 7970 Graphics Card

Wanting to improve the reference Radeon HD 7970 design, PowerColor has developed a custom version of AMD’s graphics card that packs both an improved cooling system as well as an in-house designed PCB. The so called Radeon HD 7970 Vortex II was presented by PowerColor at this year’s CES fair and on a first look it resembles quite a lot last year’s Devil 13 HD 6970. The most obvious resemblance between them is the presence of the two 92mm fans, which in the Vortex II, just as in the Devil13, are accompanied by four large copper heatpipes with an 8mm diameter which have the task of drawing the heat away from the GPU and into a large aluminum heatsink. In the case of the Vortex II this covers most of the card’s PCB and is topped by a black,...

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CES 2012: Samsung Demos 14-Inch Transparent Screen

Samsung's exhibition at CES 2012 is not limited to Chromeboxes or the expected range of displays and media products.  What the company has also brought along, according to reports, is a very special mobile computer.  Only in prototype stage for now, the 14-inch notebook features a transparent screen.  Transparent panels aren't a new idea, but Samsung does stand apart through its use of an OLED solution instead of an LCD.  In fact, the company claims this is the first and largest OLED prototype ever presented to the public.  Average transparency for displays hovers at 25%, but Samsung's newcomer reaches up to 40%, when turned off.  Unfortunately, no specifications have been made public, and it is impossible to...

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CES 2012: Fujitsu Lifebook SH771 Has Pico Projector and 14-Hour Battery Life

Fujitsu has many things on display at this year's CES and one of them is a mobile personal computer whose greatest asset is a long battery life. The Fujitsu Lifebook SH771 is not exactly the newest of notebooks. After all, it was originally launched months ago, in late October, 2011. That didn't stop Fujitsu from bringing it over to this year's edition of the Consumer Electronics Show, though (CES 2012). The company was more than willing to present it to the public again, as well as draw attention to its ability to last for up to 14 hours on a single battery charge. Then again, that may not be entirely accurate: the notebook does have the ability to run for so long, but only if one skips on an optical drive and places an extra battery in...

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CES 2012: Samsung Shows Off Galaxy Tab 7.0N Plus Tablet

Samsung has a new tablet for the German market, the Galaxy Tab 7.0N Plus that sports many of the specs of the non-N version but was redesigned so that Apple would no longer call it an iPad clone as happened with the previous version. By taking just a quick look at the new Samsung tablet it becomes apparent that the most important design change made is the inclusion of a new forward-facing speaker. A long awaited upgrade by some, this does nothing to subtract from its overall style and right beneath it stands a 7-inch PLS-LCD display which has a resolution of 1024x600 pixels. Moving to the inside of the tablet, here we are greeted by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor that is paired with 16GB of storage space for your media consumption needs. If...

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Microsoft Releases AMD Bulldozer Performance Update for Windows 7

Anyone hoping that AMD would manage to make Bulldozer chips much faster on Windows 7 systems may want to give up on that lofty wish.  AMD has just posted a blog announcing the availability of a scheduler update for the Windows 7 operating system.  The hotfix was developed by Microsoft, based on the Windows 8 scheduler code.  Unfortunately, the performance benefits only amount to 1-2% on average, not to the 10% that AMD claims to have seen during initial testing of Windows 8.  Also, not every application got a performance boost in AMD's tests, especially the heavily-threaded ones which use all 8 cores of the AMD FX-8150.  This is explainable by the fact that such programs are “already maxing out the processor.”  “Our...

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Windows 8 Said to Arrive in October 2012

Microsoft is moving forth with the development of its next flavor of Windows, codenamed Windows 8, but has yet to confirm a specific availability date for the platform.  Recent reports around the Internet suggest that the release timeframe for this OS might have been set for October.  Windows 7 was launched in October, three years ago, and Microsoft might be determined to celebrate its anniversary with the release of a new platform version.  This week at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show, Janelle Poole, director of public relations of the Windows Business Group, suggested that fall could indeed be the release timeframe for Windows 8, Pocket-lint reports.  "We haven't talked about the release date and we...

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Micromax A85 SUPERFONE with Gesture Control Now Available in India

Micromax A85 SUPERFONE is the cheapest dual-core Android-based smartphone available on the market. Unfortunately for most Android enthusiasts, this one is only selling in India for the moment and there’s no chance that this one will be available outside the country as well.  The A85 SUPERFONE is equipped with a 1 GHz dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 8GB of internal memory, 512 MB of RAM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB). One of the downsides of the device is the fact that it runs Android 2.2 Froyo operating system instead of a newer version. However, the manufacturer confirmed plans to upgrade the smartphone to Android 2.3 Gingerbread in the near future. To make things even more appealing for Indian customers,...

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Nokia Suite 3.3.84 Beta Available in Light of Belle’s Arrival

Nokia is gearing up for the release of a new OS upgrade for some of its latest Symbian devices out there, namely the Symbian Belle platform. In this regard, the company made available for download a new version of its Nokia Suite application.  Currently available in Beta, the new Nokia Suite 3.3.84 release brings improvements in phone detection, while also paving the way for Belle’s release with better backup and restore capabilities.  Nokia started the preparations for Belle’s arrival ever since Nokia Suite 3.3.75 beta was released. The Finnish handset vendor notes that it aims at offering a smoother update process.  “New updated Nokia Suite 3.3.84 BETA contains following improvements compared to previous BETA release: Connectivity...

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iPhone 5 AWS Chipset May Put T-Mobile Back in the Game

T-Mobile's Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray has revealed in an interview that his company is ready to support the next-generation of iPhones, should Apple decide to add another carrier to its growing list of wireless partners. T-Mobile’s head says they use a unique band of spectrum called AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) that, so far, has prevented iPhones from running on their network. That’s all about to change (with a little luck), as the iPhone 5 will support the standard thanks to a new chipset Apple plans to use in the handset. "The next chipset will support AWS," CEO Neville Ray told Cnet. "The challenge that existed in the past will go away." In other words, the wireless operator isn’t moving a muscle to support the iPhone 5....

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LTE-Enabled Samsung R920 for MetroPCS Caught on Camera

We first heard about the Samsung R920 last year in August when the first test photos made with the device leaked in the wild. However, few details on the handset’s specs sheet emerged in the meantime and no pictures of the actual device were published until recently. The folks over at XDA Developers have just caught the Samsung R920 on camera, which wears MetroPCS’ branding logo. This seems to be the successor of the carrier’s R910 (Indulge) smartphone, which will probably be discontinued soon after the R920 hits shelves. According to the latest hearsay, the Samsung R920 is a Gingerbread-powered smartphone that comes with a WVGA capacitive touchscreen of unknown size, a 1 GHz single core processor and 512 MB of RAM. There’s also a rear camera...

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CES 2012: Nvidia Wanted to Showcase Kepler at the Fair, But Decided Not to

With AMD’s release of the 28nm Radeon HD 7970 at the end of last year, everyone’s attention has now turned towards the green camp, but Nvidia’s Kepler still seems to have a long way to go before it arrives, Jen Hsun Huang, the company’s CEO, advising us to be patient about it. Reportedly, at some point in time Nvidia wanted to present a Kepler GPU at this year’s CES fair during Huang’s keynote speech, but in the end it decided not to. This was a business decision according to Fudzilla who says that Kepler is actually in production and that the chip is scheduled for a H1 2012 launch, probably at the end of this quarter. Jen Hsun Huang told the same publication that we need to be patient when it comes to its next-gen GPU, which does indeed...

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How to Download and Install iOS 5.1 OTA (Over-the-Air)

With the introduction of iOS 5 last year, Apple kicked off over-the-air updates, a method of installing new software on your iPhone or iPad without downloading the whole IPSW file, but just the bits you need to apply the latest changes. Apple is currently testing iOS 5.1 internally. The update, expected to drop relatively soon, will deliver a number of important fixes addressing user-reported issues, as well as new features and security plugs. Developers with access to the latest iOS 5.1 betas are presented with the same two options to continue their testing: install OTA; or download the IPSW and do a manual install via iTunes. OTA delivers an incremental software update, which means that your download is considerably smaller, hence it can...

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Shuttle Outs XH61 7cm-Tall Desktop PC

In case you all missed it, Shuttle is ready to start selling the latest Barebone PC to ever come out of its labs. Since it is a barebone PC, it ships without a processor, memory and storage units. That means that owners have to get their own Intel Core-series chip, HDD / SSD and ODD. What the XH61 does have, though, is a motherboard with two RAM slots, four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and room for a 2.5-inch drive and a slim DVD/Blu-ray drive. In other words, up to a Core i7 can be used (max TDP is 65W), along with 16 GB of DDR3 memory. Other specifications include 7.1-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2.0 ports, PS/2 ports (two), HDMI and D-sub (graphics prowess comes from the CPU's own GPU). Finally, the total height is of 7 centimeters...

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ECS Unveils Mainstream H77 Black Series Motherboard

Since it dropped by the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, ECS didn't bring just one product, but several, one of which is the mainstream H77 Black Series motherboard. We have already talked about the Z77H2-AX Black Deluxe motherboard that Elitegroup Computer Systems brought over to CES 2012. It so happens that, in addition to that admittedly powerful platform, ECS also built a mainboard based on the H77 chipset. H77, otherwise dubbed Panther Point, is almost identical to the Z77, but lacks overclocking capabilities and also does not offer the Rapid Storage technology. For those unaware, Rapid Storage is a feature through which a solid state drive and an HDD are viewed by the OS as a single entity, so that the speed of flash...

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CES 2012: Zotac Debuts D2700-ITX WiFi Supreme Mini-ITX HTPC Board

Adding to a never-ending portfolio of mini-ITX motherboards, Zotac has now released the Intel Atom Cedar Trail powered D2700-ITX WiFi Supreme board that was designed to meet the needs of HTPC enthusiasts. Just as its name implies, this compact motherboard is built around an Atom D2700 Cedarview processor, and pairs together the dual-core 2.13GHz x86 CPU with an Nvidia GT 520 graphics card packing 512MB of DDR3 VRAM. Both of these are cooled by an active heatsink that covers most of the PCB space available on the board, forcing the company to drop support for DIMM memory and go instead with the smaller SO-DIMM modules that are usually found inside notebooks. Two such slots are provided offering users the capability to install up to 4GB of...

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CES 2012: Toshiba FlashAir Is the First SD Card to Feature Wireless LAN

A few days ago, the SD association announced a certain new standard for memory cards and, now, Toshiba has unveiled the first memory card to comply with it. Toshiba's exhibition at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) includes the FlashAir SD card. Basically, this is a memory card that complies with the Wireless LAN standard. In other words, that small storage unit has its own wireless network support. In fact, rather than hold the ability to join a wireless network, the FlashAir creates its own, or so reports say. More precisely, the card features an 802.11b/g/n hotspot, down to its very own web server. The implication is that any device connected to the card's hotspot can open a browser and see the pictures snapped with the...

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Shuttle XH61 3-Litre Barebone Supports Intel LGA 1155 CPUs

Shuttle has just announced that the company has updated its X-series barebone lineup with a new model, dubbed the XH61, which was designed to be compatible with Intel processors using the LGA 1155 socket. The smallish 3-liter case of the XH61 features an all-black design, but despite its compact size it does have enough room for quite a bit of hardware. This includes support for an optical Slimline drive and a 2.5-inch hard disk or SSD as well as a pair of DDR3 DIMM sockets, for installing as much as 16GB of system memory. Four SATA 3Gbps ports also make their appearance on the XH61’s specs list. Outside of the Gigabit Ethernet interface, the back of the unit houses four USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2 ports, D-Sub and HDMI video outputs as well...

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Allwinner A10 Is Almost Illegally Cheap at $15

There used to be a time when $200 (157 Euro) tablets and $50 (39 Euro) gadgets were considered low-cost, but perception has begun to change with the rise of absurdly cheap personal computers.  Rhombus Tech has just announced a product that will give the credit card-sized PC Raspberry Pi a run for its money.  It isn't exactly clear when the so-called Allwinner A10 will be ready, but it should not take overly long, not with the price already known.  In fact, the price is ridiculously low, at only $15 (under 12 Euro).  Things get even more interesting when one realizes that the Raspberry Pi has a price of $25, or about 18.5 Euro, while actually being slower.  Indeed, according to Rhombus, the Pi's 700mhz ARM11 is three...

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Samsung Galaxy 5 Gets CyanogenMod 9 Port Based on Android 4.0.3

The old Samsung Galaxy 5 will never receive an official Android 2.3 Gingerbread upgrade, so we can’t even think of the possibility of getting the Ice Cream Sandwich. Fortunately, the folks over at XDA Developers are making wonders. Those who still own one of these old Android smartphones, which was initially delivered with Android 2.1 Éclair on board, will be happy to know that there’s a new unofficial Ice Cream Sandwich ROM available for their devices. XDA forum user Myshu managed to cook a special CyanogenMod 9 ROM for the Samsung Galaxy 5. This ROM is based on Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich and is only available for the European variant. However, the alpha build is pretty unstable for the moment, so it’s not suitable for daily use....

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CES 2012: Kingston Shows Off HyperX Memory Modules

Since it wasn't about to miss out on the opportunity that CES gave it, Kingston came along and put several products on display. Predictably, since the HyperX line of memory modules has brought it a lot of fame over the years, its exhibition includes new additions to the series. VR-Zone reports three different types of HyperX memory. One of the offerings, bearing the customary blue heatsink, is called HyperX T1 and caters to the needs of high-end customers. Whenever Kingston decides they are ready to ship, they will feature high XMP 1.3 profiles, meaning that their overclocking headroom will be considerable. The maximum capacity of each module is reported to be of 8GB. Also, all of them are cooled by fairly thick and solid aluminum heatsinks,...

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