Apple's commitment to the iPhone as a camera phone might have grown as a rumor late Wednesday said it might jump to a dual LED flash. Edison Opto, Everlight Electronics, and Lite-On have all been raised as possible candidates. Both Edison and Lite-On have been stepping up their shipments of LED flashes to major phone designers, Digitimes heard, making them ideal candidates.
A teardown and closer look at the Valhalla-powered slim Xbox 360 has been offered, thanks to AnandTech. The biggest change compared to the outgoing Jasper platform is what looks like the integration of the CPU, GPU and eDRAM onto a single chip. If true, this enables Microsoft to use a single heatsink and fan for these components.
Optical drive maker Lite-On on Monday announced the upcoming release of the industry's fastest internal DVD writers, capable of recording compatible blank DVDs at up to 24X speeds. Lite-On will release three versions of the fast drives, all with different additional capabilities, including Lite-On's LabelTag and SmartErase technologies that allow users to label data they are recording or erase data on CDs and DVDs, respectively.
The prices of entry-level, off-brand Blu-ray disc players are expected to fall to the equivalent of about $150 during 2009, according to a Tuesday DigiTimes report. Lite-On IT, Taiwan's largest maker of half-height optical disc drives, will enter the market of standalone Blu-ray players with its own entry and price it at about $150, says local Chinese daily, the Economic Daily News.
Best known in the Americas for producing add-in optical drives, Lite-On is building Blu-ray drives for Microsoft's Xbox 360, according to claims made within the storage industry. The firm is reportedly assembling read-only drives that would ship in the second half of this year and would allegedly be used for the next version of the Xbox 360 itself rather than a USB add-on, as was the case for the now defunct HD DVD drive. The reasons behind the decision are unclear, though the move is likely necessary to ensure native 1080p output for Blu-ray movies, as USB may affect the likelihood of support for the HDCP encryption needed to play back some titles at full quality.
