Archos G9 Turbo Tablets Ship with Android 4.0 ICS Preinstalled

After releasing the Android 4.0 ICS update for the entire G9 tablet series, Archos has now decided to preinstall this latest version of Google’s OS on all of its G9 Turbo slates. This means that you will not have to wait for the update to arrive OTA to your tablet, or manually install the firmware yourself, as Archos will take care of this for you. This will cover both the 8-inch Archos 80 G9 Turbo and the 10-inch 101 G9 Turbo, says Eurodroid. Archos’ G9 Turbo slates are basically supercharged versions of the regular G9 models as they are fitted with faster 1.5GHz processors. If you’re interested in getting your hands on these Android 4.0 tablets, you will be able to order them from Archos’ website, with the 80 G9 Turbo starting at £199.98,...

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Intel 22nm Haswell Processors Will Launch in March 2013, Says Report

Even though Intel has yet to release its new 22nm Core processors based on the Ivy Bridge architecture, sources in Taiwan have already found out when the chip giant plans to introduce its next-gen Haswell CPUs. According to DigiTimes, the outfit has scheduled the official introduction of these processors, and that of the accompanying Lynx Point chipsets, for March of 2013. No specific date was mentioned as we are still a year away from the alleged launch, but this report seems to confirm a leaked Intel slide, which made its appearance about a month ago, revealing that Haswell is scheduled for a March-June release. This previous report also mentioned that Intel would go for a multi-stage launch for Heswell, the first chips to arrive making...

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Gigabyte’s Factory Overclocked Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 Now Official

A little more than a week after AMD officially introduced its Radeon HD 7800 series GPUs, Gigabyte unveiled two new graphics cards based on the Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 designs that come factory overclocked in order to boost their gaming performance. The more powerful of the two solutions announced today is dubbed the GV-R787OC-2GD and, as its name suggests, this is based on the faster AMD Radeon HD 7870 design. Much like other high-end Gigabyte creations, the GV-R787OC-2GD also sports the company’s proprietary WindForce 3x cooling system, which relies on three 100mm anti-turbulence inclined fans to dissipate heat produced by the card. The advanced cooling system is also accompanied by a special Ultra Durable PCB that utilizes only high-end...

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Windows Phone Tango Officially Introduced in China on March 21

Microsoft is readying its official entrance on the Chinese smartphone market with its latest mobile platform, Windows Phone Tango. It appears that the Chinese press has already started to receive invitations to the event that will be held on March 21. Although the invitation does not hint to any devices announcements, Chinese customers can already purchase a Windows Phone device. True to its promise, HTC launched yesterday its Triumph device, a rebranded HTC Titan. The smartphone is powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone Tango operating system, which is the company’s lighter entry-level software. The HTC Triumph is currently available in China for about 700 USD (535 EUR) outright, which is exceptionally high if we take into consideration Windows...

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1150MHz Factory Overclocked PowerColor PCS+ HD7770 Now Official

A little more than a month after AMD introduced the Radeon HD 7770, PowerColor announced a new custom video card based on this design, which utilizes the company’s high-performance PCS+ cooling system and comes factory overclocked to an impressive 1150MHz. The graphics card in question is called the PCS+ HD7770 GHz Edition and comes as one of the highest clocked HD 7770 solutions we have seen to date. In order to do so, on top of the Cape Verde XT GPU PowerColor installed a large aluminum heatsink topped by a high-airflow fan, especially designed to dissipate the heat generated by the card without increasing the noise generated while running. In addition, the company included a custom-made plastic shroud which ensures that some of the resulting...

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Intel Adds Five New CPUs to Xeon E5 Processor Range

Officially introduced just the other week, Intel’s Xeon E5 processor range was quietly updated a little while ago with five new processors, two of these coming as embedded options while the other two target the OEM space. The OEM processors, which were uncovered by CPU-World, are called the Xeon E5-1603 and E5-1607.  According to the information gathered, the Xeon E5-1603 and E5-1607 operate at 2.8GHz and 3GHz, respectively, while featuring four processing cores, a 130W TDP and 10MB of shared Level 3 cache memory. Both of these processors are destined to be used in single-socket workstations and lack support for Intel's Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies.  Since the two E5-1600 series processors are positioned as entry-level...

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Nokia Gets Its Own Slide-to-Unlock Patent

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has got its hands on a slide-to-unlock patent of its own, though its procedure is a bit different than the one used by Apple.  Nokia’s patent involves the sliding of an icon across the screen to reveal at least one app icon. At the same time, the icon slid across the screen expands and is eventually overlaid onto the app icon.  If the user slides further across the screen to a specific unlocking area, the screen will be unlocked and the desired application launched.  Some owners of Android-based devices might have already met this, since manufacturers chose to implement it with their products.  While Nokia has filed for this patent back in 2007, Google reportedly filed for a similar patent...

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Samsung’s Windows Phone-Based i667 (Mandel) Spotted at the FCC

Nokia and HTC are the first mobile phone makers in the world to have announced the release of a Windows Phone-powered LTE-capable smartphones, but they are not the last, that’s for sure.  South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics is also gearing up for the release of a device to pack these capabilities.  The handset was previously rumored to arrive on shelves under the codename of Mandel, while featuring model number SGH-i667.  The mobile phone was expected to be officially introduced during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but the only Windows Phone device to be launched there was the Lumia 900.  Featuring support for LTE connectivity, the handset has just made an appearance at the FCC, which suggests...

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FCC Approves RIM’s PlayBook with HSPA+ and LTE

Research In Motion has been long expected to bring PlayBook versions with enhanced connectivity capabilities to the market, and it appears that the company is finally nearing the availability of these models.  Both HSPA+ and LTE-capable PlayBook versions have been spotted at the FCC, although no specific info on when they might be launched has emerged so far.  However, the documents that appeared over at the FCC confirmed some additional details on the new devices, such as the fact that RIM upgraded their dual-core processors to 1.5GHz.  Moreover, the upcoming PlayBook flavors are also said to arrive on shelves with support for NFC connectivity. Previously leaked details on RIM’s plans for the current year suggested that the...

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BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) 6.2 Available for Download in Beta Zone

Research In Motion recently updates it instant messaging application, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) to version 6.1, which is now available for download in the App World.  However, it appears that the company has more features to add to its popular application, which is why it has released a 6.2 beta version. BlackBerry Messenger 6.2 is now available for download via Beta Zone, but requires users to sign up for an account.  According to the folks over at BlackBerryCool, BlackBerry Messenger 6.2 will bring a new NFC (Near Field Communications) feature called “Tap to Auto-Add,” which allows users to set up their application to automatically add any contact that is shared by tapping. Other new features that are expected to make it in...

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Script: KinectJS

KinectJS is a JavaScript library for supporting motion gestures in HTML5. The motion gestures are acquired from a Kinect device via a custom built Adobe Air app. For now KinectJS support is limited to Google Chrome 15+ and Firefox 10+, but as more browsers implement the needed HTML5 features, they'll be able to interpret motion gestures and render out the desired action on the page as well. Usage scenarios for KinectJS include game engines mostly, allowing developers to port some classic NES and even newer, more powerful Microsoft Kinect games to the browser. Currently, KinectJS supports some cool features like 20 tracked joints per skeleton, motor controls, 2 people playing/tracking at the same time, the ability to take screenshots and save them locally, joints tracking relative to the...

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Google Is Using Sewage Water to Keep Its Servers Cool

Google is becoming increasingly creative with its data centers and we're not talking about the hardware, but the cooling systems. Google is trying to be as green and efficient as possible, but even the latest green technology can help you so much. To get the best results, you have to rely on the local conditions at any data center. That's why it built a huge data center in Sweden which uses sea water to keep cool. Now it's detailing how it uses recycled water, waste water that has been partially cleaned, to cool another data center in the US. "A typical data center can use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day. When we first built the Georgia facility in 2007, the water we used came from the local potable (drinking) water supply,"...

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NVIDIA Kepler May Include a New Anti-Aliasing Algorithm

NVIDIA's Kepler GPU is on the minds of many people right now, so it stands to reason that there are many eyes out for leaks, like the one that we stumbled upon just a short time ago.  Someone on the Expreview BBS forums posted a comparison picture of two Anti-Aliasing algorithms in action, side by side.  On the left we have the 8x AA often used by gamers, while on the right we have the new algorithm that the next-generation GPU will supposedly bring.  We aren't sure what to think about the picture really. While the source is pretty reputable, we can't help but wonder if 8x AA really does look as bad as that. Perhaps the monitor photographed had a particularly large screen, but still.  At any rate, there are many...

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Sapphire's Radeon HD 7970 OC Edition Graphics Card

There is a new graphics card in town, one that Sapphire created based on the Radeon HD 7970 from Advanced Micro Devices, the one that leads its single-GPU collection.  Making an already powerful video card stronger than ever takes a bit of effort and imagination, especially when it comes to cooling.  Sapphire managed it by means of the Dual-X multi-heatpipe cooler that has two fans and a heatsink that covers more or less the whole PCB.  The base specs of the HD 7970 OC Edition, as the card is called, are left intact, except for the clock speeds.  The GPU runs at 950 MHz instead of 925 MHz, while the 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM operate at 1,425 MHz (5.7 GHz) instead of 1,375 MHz (5.5 GHz).  What's more, the dual BIOS feature...

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Deepcool’s Gammaxx 400 CPU Cooler Targets Gamers on a Budget

Just one week after it was showcased for the first time, the Gammaxx 400 CPU cooler was launched officially by Deepcool, which has also started shipping this low-cost solution to retail stores all over the world. The CPU cooler itself is formed from one of the most compact tower heatsinks we have seen to date, equipped with four U-shaped direct contact copper heatpipes that are designed to draw the heat away from the CPU and into a large aluminum fin array, seconded by a 120mm fan. Like most other fans used for today's coolers, this one is also PWM controlled and its speed varies between 900 and 1500 RPM, depending on the CPU temperature. According to Deepcool, its noise level should never go above 32dBA, while, at the minimum rotation speed...

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Canon 5D Mark III Camera Almost Selling in Singapore

Canon was found to be the most popular camera brand in a recent survey conducted by Sortable, but even that reputation might not be enough to prevent people from fainting or crying at the sight of a certain price tag.  Said price tag belongs to the Canon 5D Mark III camera, which is supposed to go on sale in Singapore this Saturday, March 17, 2012.  The EOS 5D Mark III body alone costs S$4,699, or US$3,705, while the EOS 5D Mark III kit (body with EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens) will need S$5,999 / US$4730.  In case you're wondering what could possibly cost so much, the product has the new DIGIC 5+ processor, a 36 x 24mm full-frame CMOS sensor, ISO sensitivity of 100 – 25,600 (expandable up to L:50, H1:51,200) and a shooting...

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RIM Confirms BlackBerry OS 10 for the PlayBook

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is set to deliver an update to the BlackBerry OS 10 to the owners of the PlayBook tablet PC, the company has confirmed.  We already knew that the vendor planned the release of this OS upgrade for its smartphones, and it appears that tablet PC owners won’t be left out of this either.  Rob Orr, RIM's VP of product management, is the one to have confirmed the company’s plans on the matter. He was clear about this, and also detailed the availability of the update for BlackBerry smartphones.  "We've said publicly a number of times that our first BB10 handset will be available towards the end of 2012, and that's still firmly the case," he stated, a recent article on TechRadar notes.  At...

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Nokia’s Marko Ahtisaari Confirms Plans for a Windows Tablet

Before the end of this year, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia might bring to the market its first tablet PC, some of the latest reports on the matter suggest. The company has been long rumored to plan the release of a slate that could arrive on shelves with Microsoft’s Windows platform, and it appears that we’re finally nearing an official release.  In 2012, Nokia is expected to launch a tablet that would take advantage of Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released Windows 8 platform.  These are only suppositions, since nothing has been made official on the matter as of yet. However, Nokia hasn’t yet denied the possible release of such a device.  In fact, it appears that the company has confirmed the upcoming device. According to Reuters,...

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MSI Officially Introduces Its 7-Series Motherboards

The Intel Ivy Bridge central processing units may have been pushed back, but that doesn't mean motherboard makers have to delay their own product launches, and MSI definitely isn't willing to do so. The company has formally released the 7-Series motherboards based on the high-end Z77, the slightly less high-end H77 and the mainstream B75 chipsets. The Z77 models are called Z77A-GD80, Z77A-GD65, Z77A-GD55, Z77A-G45 and Z77A-G43. The H77 motherboards bear the names of ZH77-G43 and H77MA-G43. As for the B75, they are called B75A-G43 and B75MA-P45. We aren't going to start listing all the features of each platform, since that would take forever and people would be better off just going here if they want spec sheets. Still, for those...

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Alleged Rendering of Samsung Galaxy S III Emerges

What would allegedly be a leaked photo of Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone has started to make the rounds on the web recently, only to be considered more fake than the real deal.  We all know that Samsung is getting ready for the release of a successor for its Galaxy S II smartphone, and that it might make it official as soon as this month.  What we don’t know as of yet is how exactly the device would look like, or what specific features Samsung might include inside it.  Of course, leaked info on the phone’s specifications has already emerged online, suggesting that it might be released with a quad-core application processor inside, most probably running at 1.5GHz.  The handset was also said to be on its way to the market...

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