Android 4.0 for Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note in Q1, Samsung Norway Says

Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note, two of the most popular Android-based devices from Samsung at the moment, are set to receive an update to the latest version of Google’s mobile OS before the end of this quarter.  Samsung Norway has reiterated such plans once more, and posted on its Facebook page that the owners of one of these devices, living in the country, would get a taste of the Ice Cream Sandwich OS flavor in Q1 2012.  Unfortunately, the company did not offer a specific release date for the new firmware update, yet it might not be too long before additional details on the matter are delivered.  Norway is only one of the countries where Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note are bound to get a taste of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich...

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AMD Launches Radeon HD 7950 Graphics Card

January 31, 2012 is finally here, so Advanced Micro Devices stepped up and made the genuine introduction of the second board from its Radeon HD 7000 series. The Radeon HD 7950 graphics adapter is powered by the same graphics processing unit as the HD 7970 (the GPU codename is Tahiti). Based on the 28nm manufacturing process technology, it is the latest and second greatest accomplishment, of the Sunnyvale, California-based company, on the video market. The specifications are the ones that rumors, reports and early listings clearly spelled out a while ago. With the GPU operating at 800 MHz, the memory, 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, has a clock speed of 5 GHz. That said, the board features two mini DisplayPort outputs, a DVI connector and, as is common...

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Intel Core i7-3960X & i7-3930K C2 Revision CPUs Listed in Japan

Intel has finally started shipping the C2 revision of the Core i7-3960X and Core i7-3930K processors based on the Sandy Bridge-E architecture. The first country to get them is not so surprisingly Japan, where Akiba-PC has spotted them in the wild listed for Yen 83970 (US $1095) and Yen 48980 (US $639). For those of you who aren’t up to speed with Intel’s LGA 2011 CPUs, the chips based on this new revision feature the same specs as their predecessors, but Intel has now fixed the VT-d errata present in the C1 stepping, which is definitely good news for its workstation clients. If you want to go for one of these two C2 processors, you should know that these can be identified using their S-Spec code, which should read either SR0KF or SR0KY. Sadly,...

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Asus Details Workaround for Transformer Prime Android 4.0 Lockup Issues

Asus has recently published a workaround fix for those users who have been experiencing random lockups on their Transformer Prime tablets after upgrading the slate to Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich. This is just one of a series of two solutions to this problem that the company is working on, the second one being expected to arrive in early February. The workaround was detailed in a post on the XDA Developers forums by Asus US Technical Marketing Manager Gary Key, who wrote: "One option to try is to revert back to the last Honeycomb image through the manual update process, set the unit power mode to balanced performance and screen brightness manually to 50%, and then manually update to the latest ICS build using these instructions –...

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Samsung May Launch 11.6-Inch 2560x1600 Tablet at MWC 2012

At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) fair, Samsung is said to unveil a new tablet design that supposedly features an 11.6-inch screen and will run Google’s Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, operating system. The existence of the tablet was mentioned for the first time in December last year, when BGR claimed the Korean giant planned to unveil the device during MWC 2012. Now, a new report published by Android and Me comes to support these initial rumors by also claiming that the tablet will be released in Barcelona, Spain, at the Mobile World Congress. The most striking feature of this new tablet will be its 11.6-inch display that Samsung has paired together with a high-resolution panel pushing out a stunning 2560x1600 pixels. Despite...

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This iWatch Concept Takes the Air out of the Room

ADR Studio is proud to unveil its latest iWatch concept - a companion to the Steve Jobs-inspired iPhone SJ, also created by the studio’s designers. The amazing iWatch2 not only looks stunningly beautiful, but also boasts some incredible specs. The designers envisioned it would have WiFi and Bluetooth, an integrated RSS reader, 32GB of storage (God knows for what), a weather forecast system, the possibility to connect to iPhone / iPad, an LCD projector, and a frontal camera (now that would be cool!). According to its creators, “iWatch2 is like a jewel, in its black slide-to-open-box, with a new slim design like its brother iPhone SJ.” The surreal accessory features a polycarbonate main body with an aluminum chassis, a PK2 Kevlar insert, and...

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Windows Phone 8 Will Support Windows Phone 7 Apps

Applications built for the Windows Phone 7 operating system will work on the next generation mobile platform from Microsoft, Windows Phone 8.  The company had announced before that it planned on making all apps built for Windows Phone compatible with future versions of the OS, and it has reiterated it.  Windows Phone 8 is said to have been built on the Windows 8 kernel, which arose questions regarding the platform’s compatibility with software built for the current version of the mobile OS.  However, Brandon Watson, director for Windows Phone 7, put these rumors to rest with a recent tweet, in which he reinforced Microsoft’s previous announcement on the matter.  “We were pretty clear on this. Any app built today will...

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AMD Radeon HD 7970 Graphics Card Now Available from AVADirect

With AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 now available in retail, system builders have started integrating this monster of a graphics card in their systems and one of the latest companies to do so is AVADirect, who has added AMD’s latest creation as an option for its gaming desktops. Officially introduced in the second part of December 2011, AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 is based on the company’s Graphics Core Next architecture and is the first graphics card to be manufactured using the 28nm production process. At its heart, the card packs 32 Compute Units for a total of 2048 stream cores that are joined by 128 texture units, 32 ROP units and a 384-bit wide memory bus. This connects the GPU to 3GB of GDDR5 video buffer, which runs at 1.375GHz (5.5GHz effective),...

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BlackBerry DevCon Europe 2012 Kicks Off Next Week

Next week RIM will hold a new developers conference as part of its DevCon series, namely BlackBerry DevCon Europe 2012. The event is planned to take off on February 7 in Amsterdam and will run for two days.  The company saw great interest in the event, and announced that BlackBerry DevCon Europe had sold out.  At the event, developers will be able to learn some more info on what the building of applications for the BlackBerry operating system is all about.  There will be hundreds of people present at the event, and they will have the chance to collaborate with platform experts from Europe and from other parts of the world.  There will be various breakout and hands-on lab sessions aimed at focusing on various aspects of...

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SanDisk Speaks of 19nm Technology, Bets Much on It

Though CPUs are still at the 32nm node, NAND Flash memory is actually further along, something SanDisk intends to make the best of. SanDisk is one of the better known makers of NAND Flash products, such as memory cards, flash drives and SSDs. It so happens that the company has begun production of memory based on the 19nm manufacturing process. Both MLC (multi-level / 2 bits per cell) and TLC (three bits per cell) memory is being made, though the yields were not disclosed. The company hopes to get more customers in both the consumer and enterprise fields, as the new type of Flash has better performance and lower costs, among other things. The TLC NAND is going to be used mainly for PC storage, while MLC is good for both PCs and servers /...

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RIM Debuts BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365

Owners of BlackBerry smartphones from the Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion can now take advantage of Microsoft Office 365 while on the go, courtesy of a new service from the handset vendor, called BlackBerry Business Cloud Services.  The new product is aimed at business and government organizations and extends the Microsoft Exchange Online offering to BlackBerry smartphones, providing customers with the ability to manage deployments while on the go.  The new service was made available for free for current medium-sized or enterprise subscribers of the Office 365 suite. Exchange Online customers can also enjoy it on their BlackBerry smartphones on business or consumer data plans. “Microsoft’s partnership with RIM exemplifies...

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Samsung Offers Engraving Service for Galaxy Note Buyers in South Korea

Samsung Galaxy Note is already among the most popular Galaxy family smartphones available in the market. To make things even more worthy for those who purchase the Galaxy Note in South Korea, Samsung is offering an engraving service. According to the folks over at SammyHub, starting this week and through March 31, customers who purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note can personalize their newly acquired devices with a special message at Samsung’s Digital Plaza stores. Only the back cover can be engraved, but Samsung offers a wide range of fonts that can meet any user’s demands. There’s no word whether or not this engraving service requires customers to pay some sort of fee, but this should be done free of any additional charges. Unfortunately,...

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Samsung GALAXY S Advance Now Official

Today, South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics announced the release of Samsung GALAXY S Advance, the latest addition to its popular GALAXY lineup of devices.  The new mobile phone is expected to arrive on shelves in Russia in February, and should hit the market in CIS, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Southeast and Southwest Asia, Latin America and China afterwards.  Packing a dual-core application processor, the new mobile phone brings along a balance of style and performance capabilities, Samsung announced.  The handset sports a curved design and a 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display, while being powered by a fast 1GHz application processor. The new mobile phone also includes support for HSPA 14.4 Mbps connectivity.  "The...

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Scosche reVOLT c2 Dual-USB In-Car Charger Now Available

How often did you find yourself having to recharge two USB devices from a single charger when driving around in your car? If the response to this question is something along the lines of “quite often,” then Scosche has just the solution for you. The rather simple device pictured above is called the reVOLT c2 and is basically a shotgun shell sized car charger, designed to fit flush inside a car power socket.  When installed, the reVOLT c2 provides each of the two USB ports with 2.1 Amps of current and paired with the special reVIVE app it can also inform users about how much time it will take to recharge their phone’s battery. If all this sounds good to you, the Scosche reVOLT c2 is available now on the company’s website for $19.99 (15...

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Notion Ink Explains Why It Chose OMAP Over NVIDIA's Tegra for Adam II

If anyone was wondering how it is that Notion Ink's Adam Tablet II doesn't use an NVIDIA Tegra platform, the company actually took some time to clarify that. It wasn't too long ago that the Adam II tablet from Notion Ink was officially introduced to the general public in all its glory. What immediately followed was a bit of confusion amongst the people who surf the web often, as many had expected NVIDIA's Tegra platform to be chosen. “We had a lot of similar questions while we wanted to opt for one. If you followed Kernel developments you’d know that OMAP was definitely the next SoC supported by Google, so this decision had to be made on our end and fast,” the company said on this blog. Adam II will not use Tegra 2 or Tegra 3, despite the...

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Asus G55 and G75 ROG Notebooks with Ivy Bridge CPUs Will Arrive in April

Asus has recently unveiled that the fifth generation of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) G55 and G75 notebooks are scheduled to arrive in April this year, featuring Intel’s upcoming mobile Ivy Bridge processors. The two notebooks haven’t suffered too many changes compared to their predecessors as far as their outside design is concerned, but on the inside Asus will swap the previous Sandy Bridge processors with CPUs based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. Asus hasn’t mentioned the specific models that it plans to use for these two ROG-series notebooks, but we do know that they will be paired with discrete GPUs based on the Nvidia Kepler design, the GTX 670M being a highly likely candidate. As far as storage is concerned, Notebook Italia suggests...

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Nokia Belle Officially Confirmed for February 8

Nokia Belle has already been delayed once, but the Finnish company is determined to keep its promise and deliver the long-awaited update in February. Shortly after the handset maker confirmed that some of its Symbian Anna smartphones, such as the N8, C6-01, C7 and other were already shipping with Nokia Belle on board in some regions, Nokia’s Vietnamese branch made it official on its website that the update would be released on February 8. Obviously, the update will be released in stages and is expected to go live only in several countries at first, but Nokia plans to complete the roll-out process by the end of February. No additional details have been unveiled by Nokia Vietnam, which is the only one that confirms plans to deploy Nokia Belle...

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Sony LT22i Nypon Launching in April as Sony Xperia P

Earlier this month, Sony unveiled two new Android smartphones at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the Xperia S and Xperia ion.  These are the first smartphones that will be released with Sony’s brand logo, after the Japanese company bought Ericsson’s share in the joint-venture. However, Sony plans to launch more Android devices during 2012 and some of these smartphones will be announced next month at the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona. Sony’s Android roadmap for the Q2 and Q3 has already leaked online about two weeks ago, along with prices and release dates. One of the smartphones that appear in this leaked document, Sony LT22i Nypon is expected to arrive in stores in April. The Android-powered smartphone is priced...

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KFA2 Officially Launches Quad-Display GTX 580 MDT Graphics Card

Almost a month after KFA2 made official the GTX 580 MDT X4 EX OC graphics card with quad-display support, the company announced the European launch of this flagship solution based on the GF110 core. KFA2 was able to overcome Nvidia’s two monitors per card limitation 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 MDT version drops the usual dual-link DVI outputs in favor of three mini-HDMI...

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Windows 8 on ARM Now Stable, Devs to Receive It in February

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system is bringing along support for ARM chipsets, among other great new features.  The platform is increasingly stable on ARM configurations, and Microsoft is quite happy with the way things evolve. In fact, the company is so content, that it plans on pushing the platform to developers as soon as next month.  Sources familiar with the matter confirmed this state of facts, CNet reports. People who had the chance to play with Windows 8 on ARM claim it is impressive and stable. Apparently, Microsoft is working hard with its hardware partners on the release of Windows 8 devices that sport ARM chips, and will be able to deliver them to devs next month.  ARM devices that run Windows 8 are...

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