The Week’s Headlines
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Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Ten... Freesat TV receivers
Product round-up Orbital options for the digital switchover
Whether you’ve cut the cord and churned away from Sky, or need to survive the digital switch-over without recourse to Pay-TV or aerial, it’s worth considering Freesat. The gratis satellite TV service matches Freeview for SD channels, and offers a smattering of high-def plus the BBC iPlayer, hardware permitting. It’s a good bet …
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Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Colorfly Pocket Hi-Fi C4
Review The audiophiles' PMP
The true audiophile is likely to have many questions concerning the Colorfly Pocket Hi-Fi, but chief among them is likely to be ‘How f*%&ing much??!?’ At £549 this Chinese-made high fidelity portable music player is nobody’s idea of a bargain, but if you’re one of those brave souls who still cares about sound quality, who …
Mac demand helps Apple business bloom in Blighty
Rival PC players slump
Apple was the only major computer maker to increase its shipments into the UK PC market during the final three months of 2011. Figures posted today by Gartner, a market watcher, noted shipment declines for the four remaining players in the UK top five. Apple's shipments rose 17.2 per cent from 228,000 units in Q4 2010 to 267, …
Avast! Mobile Security
Android App of the Week Prepare to repel boarders
The security or lack thereof of the Android platform - real or imagined - is a common topic of conversation at the moment so it seems like a good time to take a look for a comprehensive security app. My preferred choice is Avast!. Avast! for Android is free and carries no advertising, making it perfect for anyone who is just a …
Parliament ponders £400,000 iPads-for-MPs plan
Representatives to get slated
Members of Parliament may soon be issued with an iPad each in a scheme that could cost the tax payer over £400,000. House members have been testing the Apple tablet throughout the past 12 months in a bid to modernise the Mother of Parliaments and save print costs. Now the cross-party Administration Committee has recommended a …
Toshiba releases 'world's thinnest' Android tablet
Sales limited to a single retailer
Toshiba's 'world's thinnest, lightest' tablet, the AT200 - aka the Excite in the US - goes on sale over here next week. The 7.7mm-thick, 10.1in 1280 x 800 tablet, announced in September 2011, runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb, on a 1.2GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor. It has 1GB of DDR 2 memory and either 16GB or 32GB of …
ViewSonic V350 dual Sim Android smartphone
Review For business and pleasure
Every now and again, a brand new product comes along that seems to hark back to days of yore, to a time when things were different. One of those things would be the steam-powered PC, another is the ViewSonic V350 – a smartphone that can work on two networks simultaneously. Dual of the dial: ViewSonic's V350 There was a time …
Nikon unveils mammoth megapixel DSLR
D800 does 36Mp
Nikon unveiled its much-anticipated FX-format D800 digital SLR camera this morning. The Nikon D800 - successor to the company's D700 - has been upgraded to sport a 36.3Mp CMOS sensor feeding the Nikon's latest image processor, the Expeed 3. The D800 features 1080p video recording with options for 24, 25 and 30fps frame rates …
Nokia posts 'major' Sym... er... smartphone OS update
Belle, end of Symbian?
Nokia may be obsessed with Microsoft's Windows Phone OS, but that hasn't stopped it rolling out the latest version of its other OS, Belle, to a seven handsets. Step forward owners of Nokia N8, E7, E6, X7, C6-01, C7 and Oro phones, you can now download Symbian - no, don't mention the 'S' word... - Nokia Belle for your gadget. …
YouView will launch this Spring, says TalkTalk
Consumer trials coming
ISP TalkTalk has reiterated its expectation that YouView, the would-be UK standard IPTV platform, will launch this coming Spring. The company's CEO, Dido Harding, told investors today that initial work getting customers to understand what YouView is all about has begun, laying the groundwork for consumer trials of the service …
Google goggles with Terminator HUD 'coming soon'
8GB of flash, front-facing cam, voice recog and head-tilting nav
Google is actually working on twitch-responsive sci-fi-style head-up display glasses, according to a report by 9TO5Google. And the new tech apparently includes a cursor that responds to head movements. The article includes great eye-candy, including a clip from CES 2012 on Motorola's headset computer and a Terminator clip. …
Raspberry Pi ship date slips
Crystal trips
Raspberry Pi won't make it into buyers' hands before 20 February and perhaps not until the end of the month, the organisation behind the $25 microcomputer has admitted. The compact yet fully laden motherboard went into mass production early in January. The hope was the gadget would be available to buyers by now. Alas not. …
Canon focuses on low-end with PowerShot snappers
Compact definition
Canon snapped into focus today with the launch of six 16Mp A-series PowerShots to slot into its lower-end range of compact cameras. First up is the PowerShot A810 and A1300, classic models that still run on AA batteries. The A1300 rocks up with an optical viewfinder too, an unusual rarity in this day and age. Both feature 28mm …
O2 quietly cans gratis Cloud Wi-Fi connectivity
Own-brand hotspots offered instead
O2 has quietly dropped The Cloud from the list of Wi-Fi hotspot aggregators it grants its mobile customers free access to. Until the start of the month, O2 customers could access the internet through The Cloud's many WLANs. Now, however, only BT Openzone and O2's own O2 WiFi hotspots are included for free. Punters tell us …
Apple eyes ISPs to sell 'iTV'
Analysis Canny marketing as World+Dog goes IPTV
What are we to make of the claims from moles within Canada's two key telcos that both companies have Apple HD TVs in their labs? That Apple is indeed working on an own-brand television now seems certain. Equally sure seems the notion that the so-called 'iTV' won't be remotely revolutionary, though it will be spun that way by …
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Monday, 6 February 2012
Motorola: refurb tablets shipped with former owners' data intact
Whoops
Motorola Mobility has admitted that some refurbished Xoom tablets were sent out to their new owners with previous users' data still present in the gadgets' memory banks. The company, which is waiting for a thumbs-up from the Feds before it can be swallowed by Google, offered its profuse apologies for the snafu. Some 6200 …
PSN renamed Sony Entertainment Network
SEN-sible name change?
The PlayStation Network is to undergo a major rebranding this week when it is integrated into an all-new Sony Entertainment Network. On Wednesday, 8 February, PSN account holders will find their details transferred to the SEN, tying Sony's digital entertainment offerings together in one sensibly-named platform. "PlayStation …
iOS 5 'crashes more apps' than Android
Is it an upgrade problem, or a user problem?
Recent data has shown that iOS apps crash more often than apps running on the Android platform. The data comes from Crittercism – monitoring software that records app crashes as a percentage of app launches and makes money by sending reports and diagnostics to the app's creators. After looking at data taken about app crashes …
Apple TV surfaces on Best Buy
Spec leak - or fishing expedition?
US electronics retailer Best Buy has begun asking punters if they'd be interested coughing up $1499 for a 42in HD TV from Apple. A customer survey form reprinted by the Verge pitches the notion of a 42in, 1080p LED-backlit telly running iOS. The telly, the form suggests, might provide access to iTunes downloads and rentals, …
Samsung Series 7 Chonos 15.6in Core i7 notebook
Review NOT a MacBook clone
Surely someone is having a laugh. Having read nothing but five-star reviews of this luxury notebook on other sources, I find myself surprised to be staring at a four-star product on my desk. Four stars is pretty good, you know, but that’s one less than five. All in good time: Samsung's Series 7 Chronos What am I missing …
Analyst touts iPad 'transformer' after CEO confab
Dual dock ports, clip-on keyboard for laptop-like use?
Will the Apple iPad 3 be an 'homage' to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, complete with clever clip-on keyboard accessory? One financial analysts comments, posted after a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, suggests it might be. Enter Citigroup researcher Richard Gardner, who late last week said he'd been chewing the fat with …
Scientists weave battery into clothing
Uses jumper leads?
Scientists charged into the fashion industry this week, unveiling a flexible battery that can be woven into fabric and used to boost the juice of everyday gadgets. The lithium-ion cells were produced by a group of boffins from the Polytechnic School of Montreal. The team claims their bendy power cells are the first wearable …
Windows Phone 8 to get NFC, HD and Skype
Rumours confirmed, details emerge
Following a leaked video which showed Windows Phone top dog Joe Belfiore listing the features adorning the next version of Windows Phone, beta testers have come clean on what we should expect. The video was intended for device manufacturers, but got into the hands of PocketNow, which promptly shared the details. The …
Printed jaw lets woman swallow again
Let's eat, Grandma
3D printing techniques have been taken to jaw-dropping heights after an 83-year-old woman was given a replacement mandible. She becomes the first patient ever to be fitted with a printed lower jaw. Given the old dear's age, and the fact that her lower jaw was so badly infected, traditional surgery was deemed too much of a risk …
Android dominates first-time smartphone buyer biz
Apple strong in upgrade arena
Punters picking their first smartphone are more likely to select an Android handset. When they come to upgrade, however, there's a good chance they'll defect to the opposition. So suggests market data from US research company NPD, released today. NPD looked at sales data for Q4 2011, focusing not simply on the number of …
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Saturday, 4 February 2012
Eight... HD camera smartphones
Product round-up Sharp shooters for parties and protests
You know that really annoying person who is videoing the gig with their camera phone to stick on Facebook when they get home? That's me. These days my TV is HD and my games console is HD, so it only makes sense that my phone – the device I use the most, day in and day out – should be HD too. Luckily, HD on smartphones is …
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Friday, 3 February 2012
Orange San Francisco 2
Review More hails of the city
The Orange San Francisco was the smartphone bargain of 2011. For £99 you got a solid little handset with a 3.5in 480 x 800 screen, Android 2.1 and a 3.2Mp camera. The fact it was falling-off-a-wet-log easy to root and change ROMs – even I managed it – was the icing on the cake. All Crescent and correct: Orange's San Francisco …
Fujitsu out bog standard 7in tab for big biz
Gingerbread do you?
Fujitsu has outed a non-descript 7in Android tablet that it'll be pitching at big business when the gadget goes on sale later this month. The 1970s disco-sounding Stylistic boasts a 1024 x 600 display and 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi. Fujitsu didn't say much else - anything, in point of fact - about the Stylistic's other attributes …
Next-gen Asus Eee Pad Transformer spied
TF300T snapped
A previously unseen Asus tablet has surfaced on the web prompting speculation that the Taiwanese company is working on the successor to the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Not that there's much in the leak that gives any hint one way or the the other. All we have is a snap of a tablet - a ten-incher by the look of it - and the …
RIM tempts tablet coders with free PlayBooks
Gratis gadget if you upload your Android app
RIM is offering software coders free tablets if they'll make their Android apps available through its PlayBook app store. RIM's 7in tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, runs Android apps using special translation software. Android code needs to be tweaked for the RIM runtime then repackaged and code-signed before it can be made …
Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 DNA splice is on - report
Apple-flavoured future features leaked
Windows 8 and Microsoft's next major phone operating system will merge, if reports are correct. Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, will reuse code from Windows 8, due this year - specifically the kernel, network stacks, security and multi media. That means Windows Phone 8 will ditch the current Windows Phone 7.5 core that uses …
Samsung 'Galaxy 4S' pic posted
Is S III stand-in snap real or Photoshop?
The Samsung Galaxy S II Plus, the smartphone the South Korean giant is said to be unveiling at this month's Mobile World Congress (MWC) show in place of the Galaxy S III, will be a skinny white boy. Well, if a picture posted by Russian mobile phone blogger Eldar Murtazin on Twitter last night is anything to go by, it will be …
TV tuner maker intros mobile Freeview pick-up
Streams digital telly over its own Wi-Fi
TV tuner maker Hauppauge has introduced a mobile gadget that streams Freeview content to you phone, tablet or computer over its own wireless network. The MyTV 2GO makes Freeview digital TV shows appear on a free app that's available for iDevices, Macs and Windows PCs. The gadget has its own lithium-ion battery for, the …
Toshiba Regza 40RL858 40in LED TV
Review Smart, but no mortarboard
Toshiba is a bit of a wild card when it comes to TVs. While some of its screens are genuinely exciting, others are merely bargain bin fillers. Buying a cheaper Tosh is a classic case of caveat emptor. Media savvy: Toshiba's Regza 40RL858 But while this 40in slimline LED LCD sits at the affordable end of the brand’s current …
Apple iPad beats Amazon Kindle Fire in satisfaction survey
Fanboys happier than Fireboys?
iPad owners are happier with their tablets than folk with other fondleslabs are with theirs, recent research reveals. The data comes from US-based pollster ChangeWave. It asked tablet owners last month how satisfied they were with their tablets. Some 74 per cent of iPad owners gave the Apple gadget the thumbs up, but only 54 …
Pentax pushes APS-C mirrorless camera with DSLR lens compatibility
K-01 clicks into action
Pentax has officially lifted the veil on its latest mirrorless camera, the K-01. It's the first of its kind to support DSLR lenses. The Pentax K-01 is the company's second interchangeable-lens camera, but unlike the Pentax Q, the latest model packs a K-mount lens connector, compatible with the firm's DSLR lenses. The chunky …
Nokia pours oil on burning Symbian
Exclusive Rips up roadmap, axes development
Nokia is said to be hastening the demise of its legacy Symbian platform, cancelling the development of all but one new Symbian-based device. Although Nokia Belle updates will continue to ship to existing customers, only one new model – a successor to the N8 high-end camera phone – will reach the market, the Register understands …
iPhones yanked from German shelves in Motorola patent war
Apple takes down 4 and 3G models - for now
Apple has removed the iPhone 4 and 3Gs from its stores in Germany, almost certainly in response to Motorola's December action rather than today's patent win. But today's German court victory for Motorola is probably more important: it covers Apple's iCloud service and – by extension – any device which uses it. Apple will be …
Sony throws smartphone party with Billabong
Blower out the water
Sony has gone surf-tastic, announcing a partnership with Aussie outdoors outfitter Billabong, which sees its Xperia Active handset branded with the extreme-sports logo and pitched towards the cool-dude generation. The Android smartphone is a tough little blower too, with resistance to dust, water and scratches, even adding …
ARM rains on x86 as smartphones outship PCs
Netbooks cop a hiding
Netbooks are so yesterday's technology. Shipments of the small, not-so-cheap computers plunged during 2011 by 25 per cent, figures from market watcher Canalys show. The decline worsened during the year, with year-on-year shipments down more than 32 per cent during the final quarter of 2011. All other PC categories experienced …
Gun controlled lamp hits the spotlight
Taking the pistol
One Taiwanese manufacturer took aim at traditional light switches this week and unveiled a lamp that can be turned on and off with the shot of a gun-shaped remote. The Bang! desk lamp from Bitplay is put into darkness with a pistol peripheral which causes the lampshade to tip as if the marksman has popped a real cap in it. …
Dead gamer sat unnoticed for nine hours in net cafe
Stiff competition
A Taiwanese gamer sat dead in a chair at an Internet cafe for up to nine hours before fellow players noticed the poor guy had popped his clogs. Chen Rong-yu, 23, was discovered lifeless by his computer on Thursday night, his rigid hands stretched towards the keyboard and mouse, Sky News reports. The unfortunate gamer had been …
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Thursday, 2 February 2012
LG HLX56S net savvy 3D Blu-ray soundbar combo
Review Smart deco
LG’s HLX56S is an audacious all-in-one home cinema system, cast in the guise of a mild-mannered soundbar. With integrated 3D Blu-ray player, copious amplification and IPTV portal, it’s got everything you need for the upmarket man-cave, in a package easily parked beneath a 40in or larger flatscreen. All bar one: LG's HLX56S 2. …
Apple iPhone 5 to debut at developer gig
WWDC or bust
Toss straw into wind, see where it blows. Ah, it's landed on the square marked 'Apple to unveil iPhone 5 in June'. That's what the Chinese-language paper Commercial Times is saying, quoting Japanese Securities, a local broker, but we'd say neither has cast-iron evidence for the claim. Apple traditionally unveiled new iPhones …
CNN
iOS App of the Week Here is the news
I’m a news junkie, and when I recently cancelled my Sky subscription I found that the one channel that I really missed was CNN. So I was pleased to find that there’s a free CNN app that is available in versions for both iPhone and iPad. The iPad version opens in 'front page' mode There are actually three separate apps for …
Snaps confirm new CPU for Apple iPad 3
But maybe not a quad-core chip, after all
Apple's iPad 3 will not have the same processor as its predecessor. Snaps of Apple's iBoot bootloader programming tool in action covertly emailed to BGR reference the model code 'iPad3,1'. They also refer to an ARM chip dubbed the S5L8945X. The iPad 2's Apple A5 chip was the S5L8940X, while the iPad's A4 processor was …
Samsung 'Galaxy 4S' spied in benchmark results
Galaxy S II Plus to stand in for Galaxy S III?
Samsung may be doing an Apple. Since it isn't releasing the Galaxy S III at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) show later this month, how about a tweaked version of its current flagship instead? Enter - maybe - a reference to the Galaxy S II Plus, seemingly keyed into the An3DBenchXL benchmark app by Samsung itself. All we can …
Ofcom: UK broadband speed on the up as punters' packages swell
More of a shunt than a glide
Average broadband speeds in Blighty are on the up, communications watchdog Ofcom concluded in a report published this morning. Of course, some might argue that it's impossible to define a national average given the disparity of broadband network connections across the UK. Ofcom said that as of November last year, the country' …
World's first bamboo smartphone to enter production
Concept blower branches out
A British student will see his bamboo blower blueprint brought to market, after backers took note of the ADzero, an eco-friendly smartphone carved entirely from the fast-growing wood. Conceived by Middlesex University scholar Kieran-Scott Woodhouse, this lignum-lined Android blower is around half the weight of an iPhone. The …
Android users more likely to put out
Open like their app ecosystem...
Android users are more likely to be slutty, it transpires – having more one night stands, signing up to dating sites more often and being more likely to have sex on a first date, according to a Match.com survey of single Canadian mobile users. The figures are a dramatic reworking of previous research in the area that suggested …
Boffins out earbuds that sound right when inserted wrong
Left is right regardless
Researchers have devised a method of automatically adjusting a stereo signal to match whichever ears a pair of earphones are squeezed into. At last, the days of squinting to see the tiny Ls and Rs on your phones may finally be at an end. A group from the Igarashi Design Interfaces Project in Tokyo put a proximity sensor into …
Robot rabbits take on Facebook, female orgasms
Poked by a rabbit, figuratively and literally
One waits ages for a story about robotic carrot-crunchers, and then two turn up at once as Karotz the robot rabbit starts talking to Facebook while app-controlled vibrator Vibease looks to sell value-added orgasms. Karotz is the older robot. Already capable of reading out a Twitter feed while cutely waggling its ears, it can …
Final Fantasy XIII-2
Review Terminal illness
Is it just me who remembers Final Fantasy III – actually, that’s FF VI if you’re Japanese – the mercurial tale of the evil Kefka and heroes Sabin, Edgar, Terra, et al? I recall the brilliant use of magical espers, its line-up of amazingly distinct fighters – Sabin even channelling Street Fighter-style special moves in a clever …
Star Wars MMO sales pip past 2 million mark
WoW, watch your back
EA revealed today that since the game's release in December 2011, over 2m copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic have been sold, with 1.7m users actively subscribed. The figures show that unique logins stand around 1m every day, with an average playtime of roughly four hours. Still in the red, though “BioWare Austin has …
Retailer drops Eee Pad Transformer Prime, claims quality issues
But Asus denies tablet problems
Asus has denied that its Eee Pad Transformer Prime is suffering from the quality issues one retailer has claimed have necessitated withdrawing the Android tablet from sale. UK mobile retailer Clove this week stopped selling the Prime because it isn't convinced that "all units we could provide you with are working correctly". …
Apple ousts LG from world phone biz top three
Nokia and Samsung still well ahead
Market watcher IDC has weighed in on the 'who sells how many mobile phones' debate with its own figures. It has followed the consensus that Apple is now the world's third biggest phone maker. Not 'smartphone maker' but 'phone maker'. It's worth stressing the difference because both Nokia and Samsung, the two companies placed …
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