Hi-Tech Daily News: February 2013

February 28, 2013

Sony Xperia Z Now Available at Three UK

Today, wireless carrier Three UK announced the immediate availability of the Sony Xperia Z smartphone on its network, with a price tag starting at £69 ($105 / €80) on the carrier’s £34 per month plan.

When it comes to Android smartphones Samsung makes some of the best out there. The company’s Galaxy S III is one of the best smartphones on the market and has sold in huge numbers for Samsung. That smartphone is also one of the strongest competitors to the iPhone from Apple.

Prolimatech introduced the Black Series variant of its MK-26 GPU heatsink that went on sale last September. The variant features matte black anodized aluminum fins, while retaining the chrome finished nickel-plated copper heat pipes that produce a nice contrast.

The Spire Diablo PC case is a versatile ATX chassis with a modest gamer look. This tower structure is contemporary and cost effective.

Recently, the Micromax Canvas HD has been making some serious noise in our specs page, as being a very competitively priced device with an impressive specs sheet to boot. Now, Chinese company UMI is giving them some competition, as they're slated to release their own flagship, which joins the 5-inch 1080p club, and is set to be released in India for Rs. 14,000 (~$260).

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is now available to buy from US Cellular. And it’s even got 4G LTE connectivity built-in. Last month the tablet made its debut on the carrier’s website, complete with pricing, but it didn’t seem to sport LTE. The device is sold along with a data plan that ranges from 2GB to 10GB per month, with the lowest price point coming in at $25.

Apacer Reveals New SSDs for Industrial Computers

While SATA has spread quite far and wide, IDE drives are still used by many servers, data centers and industrial systems, which is why Apacer has introduced some PATA SSDs.

Chinese vendor Lenovo appears set to expand its presence on the Android segment of the market further, and the IdeaTab A1000 and A3000 7-inch tablet PCs that it has made official at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona should help.

Lenovo wasn't about to miss out on the opportunity provided by the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (MWC 2013), so it leaped forward and released a new tablet called S6000.

Alcatel is continuing its march here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona adding two more devices to the ones that it already announced a few days ago. Meet the One Touch Snap and its 4G-enhanced twin brother, the Snap LTE.

Panasonic is going to release 3 new models of its compact stereo system on April 19. They are attractive and about 75mm in thickness, so quite thin and space-saving.

This year's annual awards for the tops in the mobile industry were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today. The awards are given to the best devices, apps, and technologies as selected by the GSM Association.

While the full list of winners is rather large and a bit obscure, we've done the hard work for you and summarized all the top apps and devices from this years' competition.

Razer, the world leader in high-performance gaming hardware, software and systems, announced that its award-winning Razer Edge tablet will be available for pre-order on March 1, 2013, at 12:01 a.m. PST at this page. Purchased units will be shipped to consumers later that month.

MSI, the world-leading manufacturer of Gaming motherboards, graphics-cards and All-in-Ones PCs storms CeBIT with a new line-up of Gaming products. Hardware enthusiasts and gamers will flock to MSI's new Z77 GAMING motherboards with their new distinctive looks. To complement MSI's new Gaming motherboards MSI will also display a new concept of graphics cards that match the striking looks of the new gaming motherboards. CeBIT 2013 will also be the first opportunity to touch MSI's new AG2712, world's first Gaming All-in-One. 2013 is an exciting year in the computer industry and MSI has reserved a spot in the driver's seat, as can be seen on CeBIT 2013.

ECS Updates its G24 All-in-One Desktop

ECS today proudly announces the exclusive touch based All-In-One PC — G24, with a elegant and versatile design. In order to support the latest interface of Windows 8, ECS G24 has considered all the design and components to meet the Windows 8 requirements, including edge-to-edge 23.6" touch panel, 10-finger touch capability, realistic audio display and full HDMI capability. The unique of sleek and neat design is perfect for business productivity and also home entertainment platform.

Panasonic has announced that it has a new series of projectors that are now shipping that don’t have a lamp. The lamp inside normal projectors is a significant source of recurring cost because they have a limited lifespan and often cost several hundred dollars to replace. Panasonic’s new Solid Shine series LED/laser light source projectors have no bulb.

Samsung can’t help itself, spraying Android over every possible device, and the latest to get the Google treatment is the HomeSync. A media streaming set-top box – though not a Google TV box – the HomeSync is more a way to further integrate Samsung’s phones and tablets into your digital life, rather than a standalone gadget in its own right. In fact, your Samsung handset is what controls the whole thing.

One of the devices that Huawei is showing off at Mobile World Congress 2013 is its little Android-powered set-top box. The device is called the Huawei MediaQ M310 and was first unveiled at CES last month. This set-top box is a small and unobtrusive cube that’s only 14 mm thick.

China’s Lenovo has officially announced three new tablets, all running Android Jelly Bean: S6000, A3000 and A1000.

The Lenovo S6000 is the biggest among them, sporting a 10.1 inch IPS display with 1280 x 800 pixels and wide, 178-degree viewing angle. The S6000 is 8.6mm thin, and comes with a quad-core 1.2GHz processor (MediaTek MTK 8389/8125), optional HSPA+, and a battery that can provide a we browsing time of up to 8 hours (on Wi-Fi).

The Lenovo A3000 and A1000 are both 7 inch tablets. The A3000 has the same 1.2GHz quad-core processor found on the S6000, plus optional HSPA+, and MicroSD card support (up to 64GB). The A1000 features Dolby Digital Plus sound, and only a dual-core 1.2GHz processor of unknown provenience (probably also an MTK unit).

“Lenovo’s latest Android tablet family is designed to meet the demands of a wide range of customers, particularly young, active users who are always on the go, and have adopted the seven-inch form factor as their own. With these latest additions to our tablet portfolio, we’ve created devices that address these customers’ needs, as well as devices for more demanding gamers and multimedia users,” declared Chen Wenhui, vice president, Lenovo and GM Mobile BU.

All three new tablets will be released worldwide starting the second half of the year, and they should have affordable prices.

These aren’t the first Lenovo devices to run Android Jelly Bean. The company had previously announced the Lenovo P770 smartphone with Jelly Bean (for the Chinese market).

Source: News.lenovo.com

[MWC 2013] Fujitsu Launches Second Waterproof Arrows Tab

The company has officially introduced a certain slate called ARROWS Tab Q582-F, which is similar to the Arrows Tab Wi-Fi FAR70B in that it can shrug off splashes, rain and other water attacks.

ASUS today announced a new range of microATX motherboards with onboard HDMI and DVI ports for Intel and AMD processors with integrated graphics, and USB 3.0 ports with performance-enhancing ASUS USB 3.0 Boost technology. By removing the need for a discrete graphics card, the new motherboards provide a more affordable option for home entertainment PCs that can fully exploit high-performance USB 3.0 storage.

The latest trend of dust and waterproof smartphones continues with the newly launched Cat B15. The rugged device can withstand a 1.8 meter drop and being submerged in up to one meter of water for about 30 minutes.

Sprint has announced two new Android smartphones that are going to be available via its Boost Mobile prepaid brand: HTC One SV, and the ZTE-made Boost Force – both supporting Sprint’s 4G LTE network.

Chinese mobile phone maker ZTE unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, a new smartphone running under Google’s Android operating system, namely the ZTE Grand Memo.

46-megapixel Sigma DP3 Merrill Compact Camera to launch in March

Camera manufacturer Sigma has announced that it will be launching a new compact digital camera in March called the DP3 Merrill Compact digital camera. The street price for the camera will be $999 and it will have a very impressive resolution of 46-megapixels. The camera uses a 50 mm f2.8 lens is equivalent to 75 mm on a 35mm SLR camera.

The thing about the ARM architecture is that it is very energy-efficient, so efficient that chips based on it use a fraction of the energy needed by x86. Samsung has now shown how much farther the concept of efficiency can be pushed.

In addition to revealing the Padfone Infinity, ASUS has revealed the fonepad – a 7-inch tablet, that is. This device is not just a tablet though, it works with phone connectivity as well. This device looks extremely similar to the ASUS-made Google Nexus 7, this time a bit thinner, titanium gray and champagne gold, and working with a back-facing camera. This device was introduced with a completely straight face, one that’s approximately the same size as the tablet that you’ll be speaking into – soon!

Today, computer maker ASUS unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the new iteration of the Padfone – this time titled the Padfone Infinity. This next-generation dual-purpose device works as a phone and a tablet, with the phone plugging in to the tablet as a docking station. This version of the device – the phone part, that is, works with a 5-inch Full HD display at 1920 x 1080 resolution, that being 441 PPI – “better than the retina display” as ASUS made clear.

Intel has officially launched its new dual-core Atom processor-based platform that was formerly known as Clover Trail+. The new platform has officially launched at Mobile World Congress 2013 and will be featured in a range of new products, ecosystems, and other platforms including Android tablets. The new platform promises significantly improved power consumption among other features.

Alcatel is one of the mobile phone makers to announce support for Mozilla’s Firefox OS a while ago, and the company has made yet another step in delivering to this promise, with the unveiling of One Touch Fire, the first smartphone to arrive on shelves with the platform on top.

The new Nokia Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 were only two of the new devices that the Finnish mobile phone maker made official today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The Nokia 301 was also among them, featuring a classic Nokia design from all angles, and set to arrive on the market in the second quarter of the year with a price tag of only €65 ($86) attached to it.

LG's press event is over - six phones stole the spotlight there. All of them were already announced - LG Optimus G Pro, the newly introduced LTE-enabled Optimus F5 and F7, and the upgraded Optimus L II lineup with the Optimus L3 II, L5 II and L7 II. LG also showcased the now aging Optimus Vu and Vu II phablets.

Sony has confirmed US and global launch plans for its Xperia Tablet Z, the 10.1-inch Android tablet it revealed for Japan last month, with pricing kicking off at $499 in the US. The slate will arrive sometime in Q2 2013, offering a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quadcore processor and, like its Xperia Z phone sibling, immunity to spills and splashes thanks to IP55/IP57 water resistance.

This week at Mobile World Congress 2013 the folks at Nokia have revealed the new Lumia 520, a device that’s made to bring the Windows Phone 8 experience to the world along with the Nokia Pure design experience at an extremely low price point. This device has what Nokia calls high-end innovation while it does so with 3G connectivity – like the Lumia 720, this is another device made for the non-LTE networks around the world.

Today, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia made its Windows Phone 8-based Nokia Lumia 720 smartphone official with a sleek and stylish design, aimed at young and design-savvy people with busy social lives.

The small tablet that has fallen in our sights this time around is called HP Slate 7 and, as far as names go, isn't exactly the most original.

MSI Launches X79A-GD45 PLUS Motherboard

MSI launched the X79A-GD45 PLUS socket LGA2011 motherboard, targeting the US $200~250 price-range. The board uses a 9-phase DrMOS VRM to power the CPU socket, which is wired to eight DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 128 GB of quad-channel DDR3-2400 MHz memory; and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (gray). The other two PCI-Express x16 slots (black) are electrical gen 2.0 x4, and wired to the X79 PCH. A lone PCI-Express 2.0 x1 finds some room in there.

Today, wireless carrier Orange announced the upcoming availability of its first Orange 4G smartphone, the Orange Lumo, which is expected to become available for purchase in a series of European markets in the first half of the year.

Most of the tablets Coby is introducing this year feature ARM Cortex-A9 processors and support for the Google Play Store, suggesting that Coby’s cheap tablets are starting to bridge the performance gap with higher-end tablets from Asus, Samsung and others.And then there’s the Coby MID4331.

Thermaltake, an industry leader in computer chassis, thermal solution, and power supply unit today launched another new member of Chaser Series- Chaser A41 mid-tower gaming case. After introducing Chaser A31, Chaser A41 simulated the design concept that is also for computer gamers and enthusiasts that deliver a combination of strong cooling, powerful performance but a more, greater expandability.

ASUS today announced the GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, based on supercomputer-grade NVIDIA Tesla K20X architecture. The new card delivers the world's most powerful single-GPU performance to PC gamers and multimedia enthusiasts. It is optimized for DirectX 11.1 and PCI Express 3.0, with a GPU clock of 876MHz achieved by use of NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0 technology. The ASUS GeForce GTX Titan offers 6GB of GDDR5 video memory clocked at 6000MHz.

Google is getting into the premium laptop space with the new Chromebook Pixel. It’s the first Chrome OS laptop designed and sold by Google. It’s the first model with premium features including a touchscreen display and a backlit keyboard. And it’s the first Chromebook with a 12.85 inch, 2560 x 1700 (239 ppi) high definition display.

The Asus Transformer Book is a 13.3 inch notebook/tablet hybrid with a 1080p HD touchscreen display, Windows 8 software, and an Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor. Introduced in late 2012, it looks like the Transformer Book could be ready to ship soon.

LG is launching its Optimus G smartphone in Europe, which has seen some improvements since its launch in other markets last year, mostly software related.

HTC One official: 4.7-inch Android with 4MP “UltraPixel” magic

The HTC One is here, a new Android flagship wrapping the innovation we’ve known HTC for up in a sleek all-metal chassis with no compromise on specifications. A 4.7-inch Full HD smartphone packing a 1.7GHz quadcore Snapdragon 600 processor, beautiful crafting, and a slick new version of HTC Sense, it’ll begin its global roll-out in March 2013. There are some quirks on the spec-sheet, though, not least the “UltraPixel” camera with its 4-megapixel-equivalent resolution but which, HTC insists, is far more suited to the sort of everyday photography common among most users, and the “Zoe” system which blends stills and videos. In short, it’s the super-phone HTC is counting on to turn around its fortunes in 2013.

We got bit of a look at the MeMO Pad Smart 10 last week when ASUS unveiled the tablet during the Thailand Mobile Expo, however as of today we are being given a slightly better look. This latest look doesn’t come with much extra in terms of release dates, however it is in video form and touting some of the highlights such as processor and sound. In this case that would be quad-core with SonicMaster Audio Technology.

It looks like Sprint is about to add another affordable LTE-enabled Android phone to its portfolio, the Force.

Nikon has unveiled its new D7100 flagship camera, a 24-megapixel powerhouse with a variety of features and high-end specs, including wireless connectivity. Dubbed an HD-SLR, the D7100 is aimed at professionals, and is touted as offering exceptional image quality and high-definition video. The camera is slated for release next month, and will have an SRP of $1,599.95.

The world is about to get its first Super Phone working with NVIDIA‘s new Tegra 4 quad-core processor, and the manufacturer of this masterpiece has been announced as ZTE. This will be the first time the Tegra 4 will be available on a smartphone in the world according to ZTE and NVIDIA, with a release time set for somewhere before the half-way point through 2013. This announcement does not include a name for the device, nor many specifications or a price, but it does let loose that one important bit – first ever!

ST-Ericsson unveiled their latest 2.5GHz NovaThor L8580 CPU earlier in this year, but the company is now readying to showcase an even faster version of the chip at MWC 2013.

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