2012 03/May 2:42pm

Samsung Galaxy S III official: 4.8-inch 720p Super AMOLED PenTile display, 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos

Samsung Galaxy S III in handNo surprises here, the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone is official. The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich device will now happily take the throne as Samsung’s flagship smartphone and it has been donned with some amazing hardware and software features.

First-off it features a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display with a 720p resolution. This is unfortunately not an AMOLED Plus RGB screen but rather it features the same PenTile Matrix RGBG technology as the Galaxy Nexus. You’ll find a new 1.4GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos 4412 SoC inside that should keep things speedy and a relatively large 2,100mAh battery to power it, and yeah that’s actually a removable one. The Galaxy S III can also do wireless charging.

The Galaxy S III will be offered in three storage capacities, 16, 32GB and 64GB and the ability to add more via the microSD card slot. It has 8-megapixel rear and 1.9-megapixel front-facing cameras with the a 990ms start-up time (they could have just said 1 second), 3.3 frames-per-second burst shooting ability and will also happily pick the best shot out of eight for you.
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2012 10/Mar 8:09am

The 3rd generation iPad is the first tablet with Bluetooth 4.0, what’s in it for you

3rd generation iPad multiplayer

Apple has been progressively bringing Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity to its mobile devices and personal computers. The mid-2011 MacBook Air (full review here) and Mac mini were the first to get Bluetooth 4.0 and were followed suit by the iPhone 4S, which was the first smartphone ever to get Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

All the above are Bluetooth Smart Ready devices, i.e. they can connect to every legacy Bluetooth device out there, like Bluetooth mice and keyboards, and new Bluetooth 4.0 Smart Ready and low power Bluetooth 4.0 Smart devices, like body monitors and watches. Here’s a table below of what can connect with what:
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2012 08/Mar 6:27pm

iPad 2 vs. 3rd generation iPad 3 comparison

3rd generation iPad with retina display - white and black

 

The 3rd generation iPad (a.k.a. iPad 3) has been announced and we’re sure you are itching to find out if it’s a worthy upgrade from an earlier device. Also given that the iPad 2 has just received a $100 price drop, you might want to consider it as a budget, but still very capable option.

In the table below we will be comparing the new iPad to the iPad 2. The key new feature in the 3rd generation iPad is the inclusion of a higher resolution display, a faster graphics unit necessary to push the extra 2.4 million pixels in the new display and a new 5MP iSight rear camera. You also get a few other nice features like Bluetooth 4.0 and 4G LTE connectivity options. Performance-wise the new iPad should be equivalent to the iPad 2.

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2012 12/Feb 6:09pm

Quad-core Tegra 3 HTC Edge smartphone becomes the HTC Endeavor

HTC Endeavor leaked image

We’ve been following the HTC Edge in its long road of becoming the world’s first quad-core smartphone for some time now. The Edge was first leaked back in November last year and while we are expecting an official announcement soon, it seems that it has been renamed to Endeavor.

Besides the name change, the HTC Endeavor is still the same at heart, said to be running on a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 SoC maxing out at 1.5GHz. It will have a large 4.7-inch optically laminated 720p HD display — optical lamination gets rid of the air gap between the touchscreen and the front glass, improving image quality and touch experience. HTC’s new flagship smartphone with run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC’s new Sense 4.0 UI.
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2011 26/Oct 5:10am

Bluetooth 4.0 devices get new Smart and Smart Ready branding

Bluetooth Smart compatibility mapping

Hoping that this move will actually help prospective buyers and users, rather than confuse them more, the Bluetooth SIG has introduced two new categories and respective logos for devices that include Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

The first is Bluetooth Smart Ready, these are devices like your laptop or phone, which are capable of communicating with any other Bluetooth device, i.e. they offer Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity but are also backwards compatible with every other existing Bluetooth device. They feature a dual-mode radio that can communicate over both classic Bluetooth and the new Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol. You can include the 2011 Mac Mini, the 2011 MacBook Air, the iPhone 4S and the Motorola RAZR in the list of Bluetooth Smart Ready devices.

The second is Bluetooth Smart, these are devices that run on small button-cell batteries, and their single-mode radios use only Bluetooth Low Energy. The devices gather information and then send data to Bluetooth Smart Ready devices only, they do not connect to legacy classic Bluetooth devices. These would be for example, blood glucose or heart beat monitors, sharing information with your app enabled Bluetooth 4.0 smartphone.

So to sum it up, when you see the Bluetooth Smart Ready logo on a device it means that it has Bluetooth 4.0 but it’s also compatible with all previous versions of Bluetooth. When you see the Bluetooth Smart logo, these will be small devices that can only communicate with Bluetooth Smart Ready devices.
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2011 18/Oct 12:54pm

Motorola Droid RAZR announced, coming November to everyone around the globe, U.S. for $299 on Verizon (specifications, pictures)

Motorola RAZR front and back

So no surprises here, we got what we expected. Motorola announced its latest flagship handset the Droid RAZR. It will be available in North America, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa starting November. Verizon will carry the phone under its Droid line in the U.S. for $299 under contract — the phone will be known as simply RAZR elsewhere in the world.

As rumored, the Motorola Droid RAZR flaunts a 4.3-inch 960×540 qHD Super AMOLED Gorilla glass display and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. It’s an LTE 4G device on Verizon and HSPA elsewhere in the world. It’s wrapped in Kevlar no less, while the phone has received a special nanotech splash-guard coating, so it should be able to take a beating (and splashing) despite its super-thin profile. Motorola is claiming “world thinnest smartphone” at just 7.1mm. Other features include 1GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in storage, Bluetooth 4.0 no less, GLONASS support on top of GPS, 1780mAh battery and it will weight 127g. Oh, it will run Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread on launch.

You can find the full specs and pictures after the break.

The RAZR can become friends with a bunch of accessories and docks, such as two lapdocks the 100 and 500 Pro, HD dock and wireless keyboard.
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2011 09/Oct 8:13am

iPhone 4S to be the first smartphone with Bluetooth 4.0, opening the doors to a host of new applications

iPhone 4S supports Bluetooth 4.0

You can count the number of devices supporting the Bluetooth 4.0 standard right now on the fingers of one hand. These include the 2011 Mac Mini and the MacBook Air, while the iPhone 4S is the first phone to support the standard. So what does Bluetooth 4.0 offer over the earlier versions.

Bluetooth 4.0 has two major advantages over earlier standards, first is BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), a low-energy and low-latency mode, second is that it can wake up other Bluetooth 4.0 devices and do no-code pairing. Nevertheless, it remains backwards compatible with all earlier standards, so you can still connect all your legacy devices.
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