Nvidia’s Grey and Wayne CPUs to Arrive in 2013

It seems that Qualcomm has a free hand to rule the high performance tablet and smartphone market this year. Nvidia’s own Cortex A15 based design won’t be coming this year after all. Sure Samsung might have something to say about Qualcomm’s SnapDragon S4 Pro with the company’s Exynos 5 processors, but the Korean giant seems to be still working a dual core Cortex A15. Qualcomm has already sent its SnapDragon S4 Pro platform to select hardware reviewers and Samsung’s choice of a quad core Cortex A9 design for the Galaxy SIII phone seem to be proof that they’re not ready with the A15 generation of CPUs. Nvidia has just announced the LTE certification by AT&T of the company’s first 4G modem and now is getting ready to pair...

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Graphene Implementation in Traditional Transistor Design Demonstrated

We’ve recently reported on Samsung’s impressive breakthrough that will allow modern chips built using the company’s newly baptized barristor to reach 300 GHz to 1 THz working frequencies. We’ve also underlined that working on a combination of silicon and graphene such as silicene will most likely yield unsatisfactory results. While silicene seemed much closer to the market than a purely graphene chip, technologies that combine graphene and other materials were deemed less desirable than a pure grapheme implementation because of the fact that graphene’s main incentive was lost. Trying to transform a semi metal like graphene into a semiconductor will most likely lead to a considerable loss in electron mobility and it’s that electron...

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iPhone 6 Coming in 2014; No More Interim Upgrades, Analyst Proposes

Analyst Amit Daryanani with RBC Capital Markets suggests Apple might begin to refresh the iPhone once every two years, as opposed to once every year, which is the currently established model for the Cupertino, California giant. Arguing that Apple saw just 21 percent growth in iPhone shipments year-over-year in Q4 2011 (compared to 91 percent growth in Q4 2010), Daryanani is telling investors in a research note that in his company’s view, “a redesigned version of the iPhone every two years will likely result in higher unit sales.” This, “relative to the iPhone ’S’ versions as carrier contracts last roughly 2 years and consumers have historically been attracted to the new design concepts created by Apple,” he explained to investors...

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Dual-SIM Motorola MOTOSMART Android Phone Goes on Sale in Brazil

Motorola continues to bring its Android smartphones to South America with a new affordable device – the dual-SIM MOTOSMART. The handset has just been introduced in Brazil and is now available for purchase via authorized resellers across the country for 325 USD (260 EUR) off-contract. Those unfamiliar with Motorola’s latest Android phones should know that the MOTOSMART Dual-SIM is in fact the South American variant of the Motorola XT390, which has been confirmed for China Unicom. Aside from its dual-SIM capabilities, the smartphone offers users the advantages of Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. In addition, the MOTOSMART Dual-SIM comes with Motorola’s MotoSwitch user interface that learns whom the user talks...

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Japan’s Sharp Pantone 5 107SH Smartphone Can Measure Radiation

Smartphones launched on the Japanese market usually come with a set of features that make them quite different from those launched in other markets around the world, and the new Sharp Pantone 5 107SH is no different. In fact, the new smartphone ups the ante with the inclusion of a new sensor inside it, one that would provide users with info on the radiation levels around them. Sharp Pantone 5 107SH is the very first smartphone in the world to arrive on the market with such capabilities, which makes it truly unique. The handset features a dedicated radiation reading application, which can be launched through pressing a physical button on the phone’s front. The app should offer reading results in around 10 seconds. Launched...

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Dell Has Two New Inspiron All-in-One PCs Ready Too

Dell has formally launched three all-in-one PCs, one of which we have already covered in detail, being fitted with a special screen. The Inspiron One 23 and Inspiron One 20 are relatively tame in comparison, and that is not surprising, given their role as mainstream, affordable systems. The former has a 23-inch Full HD screen (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) and either a Core i3 Sandy Bridge CPU or a Core i7 Ivy Bridge chip. The latter measures 20 inches (1,600 x 900 display) and gets a dual-core Pentium or a Core i3 Sandy Bridge. Prices start at $749 / 598 Euro and $529 / 422 Euro, respectively, and will go up depending on what storage, memory, I/O and graphics options are selected (AMD Radeon HD 7650A is only available on the...

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Galaxy S III Features Come to Galaxy Nexus via CynogenMod 9 Add-on

Samsung’s latest flagship Android-based handset, the Galaxy S III, comes to the market with a hefty load of goodies loaded on top of Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich platform. Designed specifically for the new device, these new features can be downloaded and installed on other handsets as well, including the Galaxy Nexus, the latest Google phone out there. A XDA-Developers forum member managed to get these features out of a recently leaked Galaxy S III ROM, and has ported them to the older smartphone. The trick is that this feature add-on can be loaded only on top of CyanogenMod 9 software. Those who want to get a taste of them will need to flash a CM9 ROM on their Galaxy Nexus handsets before that. However, chances are that...

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Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 Finally Gets Priced Online

Lenovo's ThinkPad business line of mobile personal computers has been growing steadily, but some of its officially introduced members haven't yet made it to the market. The laptop we can finally report as having been listed online is the ThinkPad Edge S430, originally revealed during this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012). Two German retailers have posted it, as shown on this website. The price is of 809 Euro, which is roughly equivalent to $1,000 USD. That's quite a bit of cash, but the specs justify the sum, even though the screen could have gone a step higher. What we mean by that is that the native resolution of the 14-inch panel is 1,600 x 900 instead of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. Then again, this is...

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Nvidia’s Faster Tegra 3+ Coming Soon with LTE

Like we reported earlier, Nvidia is working hard on the new Tegra 3+ ARM low-power processing unit. Although a lot of Nvidia’s engineers are already busy with Tegra 4, the Tegra 3+ team is now going to put the Nvidia Icera to good use together with the new CPU. The launch date of the new Tegra 3+ upgrade is approaching, but the main things that are still holding it back are TSMC and the multiple Tegra 3 devices already in stock. TSMC has improved the yield of their 28 nm manufacturing line, but the company is having difficulty in supplying enough chips, as the demand for AMD’s GCN GPUs, Nvidia’s Kepler and Qualcomm’s S4, is very high. The Taiwan-based foundry has promised to make Nvidia a priority for the 28 nm manufacturing line and...

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Dell Launches WQHD 2560 x 1440 XPS All-in-One PC

All-in-One systems have reached the point where it takes real effort to differentiate them from the flock, so Dell figured it might as well put it all into it for once. The company has officially launched the XPS One 27, an all-in-one system whose screen stands out more than the rest of the hardware. The 27-inch panel features a WLED backlighting (White LED) and a native resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, which is otherwise known as Wide Quad High Definition (WQHD). Dell, for some reasons, calls the pixel quality Full Quad HD, but that is incorrect. Quad Full High Definition is the name of 3,840 x 2,160. The list of hardware components of the XPS One 27 is largely unsurprising otherwise, albeit top-tier. An Intel...

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Intel Pineview CPUs in Serious Shortage

The Intel Atom D525 processor, codenamed Pineview, would probably be better known to the world if it had scored more consumer electronics design wins instead of digital signage, gaming machines, embedded systems, and point of sales (POS) machines. There are other ways for a product to become known by the common folk, though not all of them fortuitous. This is one such case. According to murmurs among component makers, Intel hasn't managed to provide as many Pineview chips as required. In fact, the Santa Clara, California-based company has been hard-pressed to meet orders since last month (April 2012). The industrial PC market, overall, has only been receiving 20% of the chip shipments it is supposed to. Intel has been...

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AMD’s Official Stand on Trinity and Llano Transistor Count

There was quite a mystery last week concerning the transistor count of AMD’s latest APU and about the previous generation, the well-known Llano APUs. AMD has finally come clean about the whole thing and confessed they don’t really like to count billions of transistors and decided to ignore a couple of hundred of millions. AMD’s Peter Amos has graciously provided a response to BSN’s inquiry and that was: "Beginning in 2012, AMD updated its methodology for transistor counts to ensure consistency. The numbers provided for our recent Trinity launch (and all disclosures moving forward) are based on a flat device count minus de-capacitor cells. The numbers that were provided at last year’s Hot Chips conference were based on...

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Galaxy S III’s S-Voice App Works on Non-Samsung Devices Again

Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone, the latest flagship Android-based device from the company, arrives on shelves with a set of new, appealing features. Among them, we can count an S-Voice application that was recently extracted from a leaked Galaxy S III ROM, and which was already ported to other devices. Owners of Galaxy S II or Galaxy Note devices had the chance to taste it initially, but it was soon made available for non-Samsung Android phones as well. Following that initial leak, Samsung stepped up and blocked the app, preventing all users from enjoying its capabilities. However, it appears that some enthusiasts managed to find a workaround to make the software work again. While only the signed version of...

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Intel-Based Orange Santa Clara Confirmed for May 31

Orange and Intel have teamed up to offer the former’s customers a new Android phone based on the latter’s mobile platform, Santa Clara. The smartphone will be officially launched on May 31, and will probably hit shelves the same day. The smartphone has been on “Coming Soon” at Orange UK for quite some time now, but the carrier did not offer a release date until today. Although Orange mentions that the Santa Clara is the pre-release name of the phone and that the full name will be announced at launch, it appears that this will actually be the final name of the handset. The folks over at AndroidCentral have been invited to the launch event and the name Santa Clara is clearly stated in the invitation, though it says this...

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Pebble Blue Galaxy S III Shortage Explained by Samsung

Pebble Blue Galaxy S III’s limited availability has already been confirmed, though Samsung did not offer an official explanation behind its decision. After sending notifications to several UK-based carriers and retailers to let them know pebble blue Galaxy S III stock will be in short supply for the next few weeks, Samsung offered a statement that sheds some light on its postpone decision. It’s unclear whether Samsung’s official word has reached all those carriers and authorized resellers that have been hit by this shortage, but MobileFun.co.uk is one of those that have just been informed on the situation. According to the retailer, Samsung issued the following statement:  “Samsung’s Galaxy SIII Pebble Blue version...

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Nokia Preps New Updates for Symbian, Windows Phone Devices

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia is reportedly gearing up for the release of a new set of software updates for various Symbian and Windows Phone devices, the latest reports on the matter suggest. Recently, software update 111.30.610 has been seen in Navifirm for the N8, and now we learn via MyNokiaBlog that the same firmware emerged there for Nokia’s C7 and E7 smartphones too. Moreover, there are updates waiting in line for the Nokia 500, namely firmware 111.20.67, and for the company’s 603 handset, software 112.10.1406. Additionally, Nokia appears to be getting ready to release the Tango update for Lumia 800 (RM-801) and Nokia 800C (RM-802, China). The software will sport version 1750.805.8773.12140. The availability...

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Lian Li PC Case Is a Moving Locomotive (Video)

This is either a really funny project or an April 1 prank that reached the party a whole month later, but we are going to write about it anyway. It isn't often that something truly unusual shows up on the IT front after all. Lian Li has formally introduced the CK-101, a PC case that looks and behaves like a steam engine-based train locomotive. And by “behave” we mean just that: it has functional wheels and can travel along miniature rails, pumping out smoke all the while. We've embedded a video of the CK-101 in action below. You can expect to see that happening all day long during Computex actually. In order to attract the crowd, Lian Li will have the PC case drive in loops at its booth. And here is where we should...

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TP-Link Launches the N750 Dual-Band Gigabit Router

Network expert company, Shenzhen-headquartered company TP-Link is a well-known manufacturer of end user networking equipment and especially wireless devices. TP-Link has just announced the introduction of the new TL-WDR4300 N750 dual-band Gigabit router, on its official website. The company is known to be a provider of affordable high-performance wireless networking equipment and, when compared with leaders like Netgear and Linksys, their prices are considerably lower for potentially much more powerful hardware platforms. TP-Link’s products are not only about the best cost per performance ratio, but they are also known for having more modest and sometimes buggy firmware, especially when it comes with more complex products such...

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Details Emerge on Windows 8 Release Preview Flavors

Next week, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is expected to bring to the market a new version of its next-generation Windows platform, namely Windows 8 Release Preview. The new platform flavor was confirmed for release in early May, when Microsoft said that it would offer all the necessary details on the platform in the beginning of June. The Release Preview is expected to mark a big step towards the availability of the final version of Windows 8, though it will still lack some of the features that Microsoft plans for the gold release. The latest leaked details on the platform, however, show that Microsoft is gearing up for the launch of more than a single iteration of Windows 8 Release Preview. This is not the...

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EVGA’s GTX 690 Breaks World 3D Mark 11 Record

EVGA’s video card and mainboard products are mostly high-end parts and this has been proved over and over again by the fact that professional overclockers are using them to achieve new overclocking records. Pro-overclocker TIM from Taiwan has reportedly managed to set a new 3D Mark 11 record scoring a high P20962 using a single GeForce GTX 690 video card from EVGA and the expected liquid nitrogen. The mainboard used was also EVGA-branded, namely the EVGA X79 Classified and TIM used 16 GB of DDR3-2133 memory. The i7-3960X CPU was overclocked to 4500 MHz and the score can be broken down as follows: 25,179 points for graphics, 15,213 physics and 12,412 combined. This is truly a record, but we would really like to see it...

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Sapphire New B75 Motherboard “Pure White”

Sapphire has stealthily introduced a new motherboard, one that got the name “Pure White” even though there is little to warrant such a moniker. One would think that a motherboard maker would try to make its product live up to its name at least a little, especially when said name is deliberately flashy. Sapphire has become the exception to that unspoken “rule” though, having given a big name to an unassuming LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge platform. The Pure White B75M-MA does not have a white PCB to give some meaning to the name. Sure, it has a white box, but the product itself is colored brown/black. There isn't anything white about the whole thing actually, except for some of the circuitry. Then again, mainboard...

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