Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL Coming Soon to WIND Mobile

Unveiled back in September at IFA 2012 trade fair, Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL is about to make its debut in Canada. The smartphone is expected to go on sale by the end of the year, though we lack details on availability and price tag for the moment.

However, MobileSyrup reports the Ascend D1 Quad XL will be available for purchase via WIND Mobile, which is no surprise at all given the long-time partnership between the two companies. WIND Mobile is Huawei’s foothold in Canada, which is why most of the handsets launched by the Chinese handset maker are only available from WIND. Hopefully, this won’t be the case with Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL as the phone is pretty impressive and will certainly cost less than other high-end smartphones in the same category.  The Ascend D1 Quad XL is expected to ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform out of the box, but Huawei confirmed a Jelly Bean upgrade will be available for download in the following months.

This smartphone is equipped with a powerful 1.4 GHz quad-core K3V2 processor manufactured by Huawei. No details on the graphics processing unit are available, but we know the device will pack 1GB of RAM. There will be 8GB of storage inside, but users will be able to further expand it up to 32GB via microSD memory card. Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL sports a more than decent 4.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution and 16 million colors.

It also boasts an impressive 8-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash, autofocus and full HD (1080p) video recording, as well as a secondary 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls. We expect more details on Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL arrival at WIND Mobile to emerge pretty soon, so stay tuned for more updates on this one.

Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL ad
Image credits to MobileSyrup

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Potential iPhone 5 Touchscreen Bug Discovered

It appears there’s a new problem with the iPhone 5 and it involves the handset’s touch input recognition capabilities. A developer has discovered that diagonal scrolling confuses the handset in certain circumstances, causing the screen to drop out and even freeze.

British game developer CMA Megacorp wrote on Twitter, “iPhone 5 touch screen bug? Slide finger back and forth diagonally on screen, input events drop out or stop altogether.” Hardware review site Recombu caught wind of the alleged glitch and sourced four iPhone handsets, two 4S units and two of the latest iPhone 5s. They took the lot for a spin and concluded that CMA Megacorp were right. According to the video they published on YouTube, the iPhone 5 does seem to exhibit strange behavior during rapid finger swiping on the diagonal. As the testers themselves point out, this shouldn’t pose too many problems for regular use, but it could turn out to be a serious issue for games such as Fruit Ninja, which requires gamers to perform a lot of diagonal swiping.

Truth be told, we haven’t been able to replicate the so-called bug on our own iPhone 5 test unit. Which supports the theory that said glitch may be hardware-related. Though it might occur in isolated cases, Recombu showed that both their iPhone 5 test units exhibited the strange behavior. Which is not very reassuring. To make matters clear, a software bug is much easier to cope with both for the consumer and for Apple. Should this theory prove to be correct, expect iOS 6.1 to patch it up. Since we’re on the subject, we’d like to draw attention to an issue we’ve experienced that might be related to this supposed flaw.

In our extensive tests with the iPhone 5’s touchscreen, we’ve been able to notice that the handset often fails to respond to touch outright. The most noticeable such scenarios involved simple On/Off toggling of functions like Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, and Cellular networking. While this may well be limited to our handset, we’re curious to learn about other people’s experience with the iPhone 5. The comments await below.

iPhone test
Image credits to Recombu.com

The iPhone 5 has for the most part proved that the hardware and software at work are robust and efficient. Sure Apple Maps has caused people discomfort but as a slim, crafted smartphone, it's still on of the best. Be that as it may, game developers CMA Megacorp tweeted and posted on Facebook a glitch they'd encountered with no previous reports of it having existed so we had to check it out for ourselves. Using the two iPhone 4Ss on the most recent versions of iOS and the same split on two iPhone 5s, we testing the theory that the diagonal scrolling input drops out on the newer handsets at high speed. The problem is exacerbated by scrolling diagonally and as you can see only occurs on the iPhone 5s. We're unsure if this is iOS-based or an iPhone 5 hardware issue, but you can found out more on the matter at: http://recombu.com/mobile/news/iphone-5-scroll-glitch_M18548.html

See the original tweet here: https://twitter.com/CMA_Megacorp/status/266870789599531008
Video credits to recombu

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Imation IronKey S250 and D250 Hardware-Encrypted Flash Drives

Imation Corp has launched IronKey S250 and D250, two hardware-encrypted flash drives. The new models feature improved remote management capabilities, a high-security design, faster performance and a redesigned control panel.

The drives are available in various editions – Basic, Personal and Enterprise – each one being specially designed for a particular customer category. All the products offer protection against data loss, being developed in accordance with the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 standard. The Personal and Enterprise versions also feature an identity protection mechanism that protects users’ personal information while performing online tasks. User passwords can be stored in the IronKey password vault. Another noteworthy feature is the remote management capability which allows customers to remotely recover, reset and force the devices into read-only mode from Imation’s cloud security service. As far as physical protection is concerned, the aluminum enclosure is designed to allow users to easily recognize any attempt to compromise the device.

“While organizations are realizing the advantages of a mobile workforce, they are also coming to grips with vulnerabilities caused by lost or stolen data,” said Lawrence Reusing, Imation’s general manager for Mobile Security. “Imation has developed its new IronKey S250 and D250 offerings to provide choices for organizations around the world whose employees need to transport and access data remotely, while enhancing security, performance and reliability.” The capacities of the D250 model range between 2GB and 64 GB, while S250 capacities are between 2GB and 32GB. The new products are available worldwide through Imation’s network of channel partners or Imation Sales. The prices for IronKey S250 vary between $109 (€85) and $250 (€195), while the ones for the D250 model range from $89 (€70) to $599 (€467).

New IronKey flash drives
Image credits to Imation

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Voice for WhatsApp Beta Now Available for Download

One of the most popular instant messaging apps for mobile devices, WhatsApp has just received a small, but useful add-on, Voice for WhatsApp.

This software will allow WhatsApp users to manage the application by voice. They will be able to both listen and/or send messages using this service. It works pretty simple from the moment you receive a message on WhatsApp, it will automatically read it aloud. However, Voice for WhatsApp will only read the message if the device is on, otherwise it will wait until the user unlocks it.

Developed by XDA Senior Member pacosal, the application is still in beta, but those who wish to try it out can head over to the original thread for more details. Keep in mind that the service is only available for Android devices.

Voice for WhatsApp
Image credits to XDA Developers

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