News Archive for 08/11/17
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Memory chip maker Spansion has taken legal action that could result in import bans that would block shipments of iPods and Blackberry handsets, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company filed a lawsuit in a Delaware federal court and submitted a complaint to the US International Trade Commission. Although the memory company is not directly attacking Apple or RIM, it has accused Samsung of violating its flash chip patents. The components in question are contained in Apple, RIM, Lenovo, Sony Ericsson, and Telefon Ericsson products.
LaCie has announced the US release of its LaCinema Rugged multimedia storage device. The drive features HDMI output and HD upscaling, allowing content to be viewed on an HDTV. Users can load video, images, and music onto the drive via USB 2.0, and then play or view content from any television. The Rugged features aluminum shell protection, combined with internal anti-shock absorbers and an exterior rubber bumper. Users can view the content by navigating the graphic menus of the user interface.
The W580 has been a staple of GSM phone carriers ever since it was released simply because it does most things well (including music) at a low-enough price. Still, there were definite limitations, and the device now has a RAZR-like overabundance that signals a time for something new. The W760 promises to check off some the remaining flaws -- including the addition of 3G -- but also faces a tougher cellphone market. Sony Ericsson's ultimate challenge may be less to improve the device and more to consider the roles of the devices themselves. Read our full W760 review to see where the slider fits in.
Custom PC and notebook system maker CyberPower on Monday unveiled its newest and fastest gaming PC, the Black Pearl, which sports Intel's new Core i7 processor, the 3.2GHz 965 Extreme Edition CPU, along with 12GB of RAM. For video processing, there is a pair of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 PCI-Express cards, each with 2GB of dedicated video memory and two graphics chips.
An eBay auction for an example of Sony Ericsson's C905a handset, equipped with an 8.1-megapixel camera, reveals wireless provider AT&T may be considering adding the flagship handset to its line-up. The device in question features AT&T's firmware loaded onto it, complete with the start-up screen and logo, though there are no AT&T logos anywhere on the outside of the device.
Taiwan's dmedia System has recently showcased its G400 WiMAX mobile Internet device (MID). The G400 is to include a 3.8- or 4.3-inch, 800x480-pixel touchscreen via which users will be able to access the Internet and many applications it makes possible, including VoIP, streaming video and video conferencing, as well as NextWave's MXtv mobile broadcast service. Apart from access to the high-speed WiMAX mobile broadband network, the G400 also promises to bring with it Bluetooth support, a built-in GPS sensor and HSPDA/WCDMA data network access.
Korea's Maxian has recently unveiled its most feature-packed personal media player to date, the M1 Edu. The device sports a 3.5-inch, 1,600-color LCD and can be had in either 8GB or 16GB NAND flash memory capacities. An SD memory card slot lets users quickly share files or expand the capacity. The M1 Edu can support MPEG1 through to MPEG4-format video files, along with WMV, AVI and less popular codecs. WinCE 5.0 is the operating system for the device, which will also playback music and display photos.
Britain-based accessory producer Logic3 has launched a pair of new iPod speaker docks that each are said to bring something rare to MP3 player audio. The Valve80 combines both a stereo speaker setup and a vacuum tube amp that both creates a pseudo-vintage look and reportedly adds a layer of accuracy and warmth to the sound that doesn't occur with usual audio systems. Logic3 promises 80W of total power, a 20Hz to 20kHz frequency range, and an 86dB signal-to-noise ratio.
Nikon today quashed hopes of a camera press event this week. Speaking with an English company spokesman at the Foto 2008 expo, a Swedish site says the company has no plans for a November 20th announcement. Previous claims of an introduction are now thought to have been spurred on by a Danish press agency incorrectly relying on old material and then propagating the news through mainstream channels.
A new ASUS Eee PC 901 model has been spotted for sale in France that offers a high-speed 16GB solid state drive (SSD) along with a new, six-cell 8700mAh battery that is good for 7.2V and should provide users with as much as eight hours of battery life. An Italian Eee PC 901 GO offers the new SSD as well. The 8.9-inch netbook uses Windows XP or Linux operating systems. Previously, the Eee PC 901 offered 20GB of SSD storage for the XP version and 12GB in the Linux versions.
T-Mobile this afternoon shipped the second of its November phone updates. The Samsung Gravity is T-Mobile's rough equivalent to the Rant and gives non-smartphone owners a lateral slide-out QWERTY keyboard for quicker messaging: outside of e-mail, the phone comes with built-in support for AIM, ICQ, Windows Live and Yahoo chats. A 1.3-megapixel camera, media playback with microSD storage and stereo Bluetooth audio put it in the middle of T-Mobile's lineup.
Gateway has added to the mix of PC makers launching Core i7 systems on Monday through the launch of the FX6800. Besides using the new processor, each model adds a third RAM stick to exploit the third memory channel added through Intel's new X58 chipset and also comes with an upgrade to the baseline for graphics and storage over earlier models.
Fujitsu on Monday announced the launch of its 2.5-inch, 10,000RPM MBD2 RC- and 15,000RPM MBE2 RC-series of 6Gbps Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise hard disk drives. Compared to the previous-generation drives, capacity is doubled thanks to Fujitsu's use of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, which also reduced power consumption to class-leading levels, according to the company. As part of the company's Green Policy Innovation program, the drives in both ranges feature halogen-free construction and are RoHS-compliant.
The ExpressCard 2.0 format is nearing completion, the PCMCIA trade group has announced. The existing format is a popular means of expansion on notebooks, such as Apple's MacBook Pro; the updated edition will be based on both the USB 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0 standards, and should be substantially faster, achieving two to 10 times the speeds of ExpressCard 1.x. This will make it better suited to storage functions, such as connecting flash memory or SATA II drives. Systems with ExpressCard 2.0 slots will remain compatible with v1.x peripherals.
The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today revealed the full specifications for its namesake interface standard and so greenlit development of computer platforms and devices using the technology. The new peripheral format will now officially peak at 5Gbps, or about ten times faster than the 2.0 protocol. In actual tests, 25GB of data transfers in nearly 14 minutes over USB 2.0 but just 70 seconds over USB 3.0, significantly outpacing FireWire 800 as well as many hard drives.
Echoing a recent trend of Japan-first launches, Dell today introduced an option for the Inspiron Mini 9 netbook to add a 32GB solid-state drive. The capacity is twice that of any previous version and lets users choose to preload Office 2007 Personal to take advantage of the newly available free space. Dell's expansion comes as Microsoft has eased up on the storage levels of SSDs that can use Windows XP.
Late-night snackers now have another option of ordering pizza in addition to the phone and Internet, as TiVo has teamed up with Domino's Pizza to offer them the option of ordering using their TV sets. Via their Series 2, 3 or HD broadband-connected TiVo DVR boxes, subscribers to the service can order from Domino's menu, opting for delivery or pick-up options. The interface will also allow users to track when they can expect their order to arrive.
Rogers Wireless today became the first North American carrier to officially pick up the Nokia E71. The full QWERTY smartphone should take advantage of the Canadian provider's HSPA network and should be the thinnest smartphone available through the carrier. It should also carry the other features of the high-end device, including its 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS and Wi-Fi. Storage is handled mostly through microSDHC cards.
Developer Livescribe is releasing a beta of Mac software for its Pulse Smartpen, which simultaneously records hand-written notes with sound. The company is also adding features to the Windows version of the software, allowing users to print the special micro-dot paper used by the pen. Add-on software allows Windows users to transcribe handwriting into editable text.
Research in Motion hopes to avoid its earlier mistakes in wireless technology by leaping on 4G when it becomes available, according to a tip given to BGR. The Canadian BlackBerry designer is said to have created a team specifically to build a smartphone with much faster cellular Internet access using the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, which tops 100Mbps and should be used by most major North American carriers.
Dell today quickly seized on Intel's Core i7 debut by launching two new systems, including one completely new line. The Studio XPS upgrades the regular Studio desktop with features friendly to gamers and high-end media with Core i7 processors and dedicated video as the baseline. They further exploit the new Intel hardware with three memory sticks that both up the minimum storage and also the available bandwidth.
As promised back in September, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) on Monday announced it will once again launch its Give 1 Get 1 program that aims to put a simple, Internet-connected laptop to children in developing countries to help in their education. Anyone can participate in the program by buying two XO laptops for $399, one for themselves and another for a child in a poor country. The other option involves donating as many XO laptops as they want at $199 each. The nonprofit organization's program aims to put more than 1 million laptops into the hands of children in 2008 in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cambodia, among others, or more than double of what it did last year.
ASUS on Monday claimed a minor victory in smartphones with the launch of the P565. The Windows Mobile device uses an 800MHz Marvell processor that is said significantly faster than the roughly 600MHz chips used in better devices today. This helps multitask as well as crunching through particularly demanding tasks as much as two times faster, ASUS says. These tasks include graphics on the phone's 480x640 touchscreen as well as recording and playing back MPEG-4 video.
Adobe today said it would develop optimized versions of its AIR and Flash 10 apps for ARM11 and Cortex processors. The update will be part of the Open Screen Project initiative and is meant to bring both complex Internet apps as well as more advanced web video to more than desktop computers. The partnership specific to ARM includes a combination of chipmakers such as Broadcom, Freescale, NVIDIA, Samsung and Texas Instruments and should use both a newer, faster generation of ARM processors as well as OpenGL ES 2.0-capable graphics hardware to handle tasks that were previously impractical for lower-performance devices.
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