Google Retires Google Symbian Search Application

Symbian platform may still be supported by Nokia for a few more years, but developers seem to lose their interest in creating apps for this particular operating system. Google, the search giant, has recently announced it will discontinue Symbian Search app due to the fact that it hasn’t been updated in a long time and the company feels it needs to focus its efforts on its mobile web search experience. Moreover, it appears that Symbian Search doesn’t even work on the latest version of Nokia Belle with FP1, which was to be expected given the fact that the application is obsolete. Those who want to use Google Search within their Symbian smartphones are recommended to go to www.google.com and make it homepage or bookmark it. Unfortunately,...

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Nokia N9’s PR 1.3 Update Changelog

This week, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia started to deliver a new software update for its Nokia N9 users, namely PR 1.3. The company offered only a brief overview of the update, saying that it comes with various new features, but did not offer specific details on them. On the Nokia developer website, the changelog for the update reads: “Over 1000 quality improvements including Mail, Facebook, Twitter, minor network & connectivity improvements.” However, users who already received the new update on their devices, namely Nokia N9 40.2012.21-3 (PR 1.3) firmware release, already started to offer info on what they found to be new. A post on Maemo.org notes that many applications on the device got updated in the...

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iFixit Repair Manual Now Available for Android

Android users have access to a rather interesting application for their devices now, a repair manual from iFixit. Available for free, the app is meant to deliver step-by-step repair instructions on Android devices, so that users could easily repair various things. “iFixit — the free repair manual! Thousands of step-by-step guides and gorgeous images that make it easy to repair your stuff,” the app’s developer notes. Through this app, users will receive instructions on how to repair MacBooks and MacBook Pros, iPads, iPods, Xboxes, digital cameras, and more. Moreover, the app’s developer notes that new manuals are bound to be included in the application every week, for expanded options. The new application is available for...

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HP Trinity Pavilion Systems with AMD A8-5500 and A10-5700 APUs

Traditional AMD partner, American company HP has already built systems based on the CPU designer’s latest APU architecture. HP’s Pavilion systems are not really (physically) available in Walmart and BestBuy stores, but they can be ordered online with a “ship to store” option. The official model name is Pavilion p7-1235, and these systems are powered by AMD’s more modest Trinity version, the A8-5500. The A8-5500 runs at a default 3.2 GHz base frequency with a 3.7 GHz Turbo boost. The APU benefits from 4 MB of level 2 cache and comes with an AMD Radeon HD 7560D iGPU containing 256 shader cores. The VLIW4 shader cores inside AMD’s A8-5500 APU work at a default frequency of 760 MHz. HP is also offering a more powerful...

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Samsung Galaxy Chat with Android 4.0 ICS and QWERTY Keyboard

Spotted earlier this week in China, the GT-B5330 has just been officially unveiled by Samsung as Galaxy Chat. The smartphone will be initially launched in Spain in the following days and will go on sale in Europe, Latin America, Middle East, China Southeast and Southwest Asia soon after. No word on the pricing options yet, but by the look of it this is just an entry-level Android smartphone, which only stands out due to the fact that is powered by Ice Cream Sandwich. Another strong point of the phone may be the physical QWERTY keyboard, which provides users with an easier and more accurate typing method. According to Samsung, the Galaxy Chat has been designed for “socially-active users,” so we should expect this one...

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Richland is Next-Gen AMD APU and Fits in FM2 Socket

AMD has been quite on a roll lately. Its Trinity APUs are probably the best mobile solution for notebooks in thin & light mobile systems. Trinity is also the best suited office and all-in-one (AIO) processing solution and it’s the best way to go for casual gamers. The next move is Kaveri. This APU architecture is quite a bit different from today’s Trinity. We might say that Richland, as reported by Fudzilla, the codename for these new APUs, is 90% different from Trinity. There will be a new x86 processing architecture called SteamRoller that will replace today’s Piledriver. This is another evolutionary step from Piledriver, just like Piledriver was an evolutionary step from Bulldozer. The graphics processing core...

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Samsung EX2F Wi-Fi Smart Camera

Smart cameras haven't come as far as Smart TVs, but they aren't doing badly either, not with Sony and, in this case, Samsung giving them a good reputation. Admittedly, Samsung didn't start on the best of feet. Its Wi-Fi-equipped smart cameras, though not lacking in advertising, haven't been the most appealing of devices. The company has been promoting them for about a year but the wireless Internet support came at the cost of image quality. This tradeoff does not seem to apply to the new EX2F, thanks to the 12.4-megapixel CMOS sensor and the f/1.4-2.7 lens. Not that there aren't weak points. The zoom ratio of 3.3x is the most notable shortcoming. We doubt 10x would have been all that hard to implement cost-effectively. At...

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