Samsung unveils Honeycomb-based Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus

Friday, September 30, 2011 in Tech News

Samsung added another tablet to their lineup today in the form of the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. As the name suggests, Samsung’s latest Galaxy Tab features a 7-inch PLS (Super Plane to Line Switching) display operating at 1024 x 600 pixels running Android 3.2 Honeycomb and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, likely the Exynos 4120.

The device has quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE support and tri-band 3G with 21Mbps HSPA as well as two cameras. The front 2MP lens is used for video calls while the rear camera shoots 3MP images and 720p video. One gig of RAM and a 4,000 mAh battery come standard on all models.

Android 3.2 Honeycomb gets the Samsung TouchWiz UI treatment. There will be a 16GB and 32GB model available at launch and both include dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, GPS and Bluetooth. The slim 7-inch Tab measures 193.65 x 122.37 x 9.96 mm and weighs only .76 pounds, or 12.16 ounces.

"Samsung pioneered the seven-inch tablet market with the launch of the GALAXY Tab, marking an innovation milestone in the mobile industry. Building on the success of the GALAXY Tab, we're now delighted to introduce the GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus reloaded with enhanced portability, productivity and a richer multimedia experience" said JK Shin, President and Head of Samsung's Mobile Communications Business

The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus will be available in Indonesia and Austria by the end of October and worldwide shortly after that. 

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Adobe's Flash 11 coming soon with GPU-assisted 3D graphics engine

Thursday, September 22, 2011 in Tech News

Adobe's Flash Player is about to receive its largest update since the introduction of hardware-accelerated H.264 video decoding in 2009. Version 11 of the software is set to go live early next month and will reportedly introduce a GPU-assisted rendering API called Stage 3D. Adobe claims this addition will boost Flash's ability to render 2D and 3D games by one thousand times, enabling "console-quality games."

The company explains that Stage 3D can display millions of objects on screen while maintaining a smooth 60 frames per second. This was demonstrated in a few clips that show gameplay in "Tanki Online" and "Zombie Tycoon" (we've included the former below). Even dated budget machines with integrated graphics and Windows XP can expect a 2-10x boost over Flash Player 10 when rendering software.

Adobe estimates that some 70% of Web games are powered by Flash, including 9 out of the top 10 games on Facebook and 70% of the titles on Google+. That supposedly amounts to an audience that's over 11 times larger than Nintendo's Wii, and nearly half the Web upgrades Flash Player within four weeks of a new release. Naturally, the company feels like it's paving a fresh avenue for developers to pursue.

Flash Player 11 and Air 3 allow game publishers to instantly deliver engaging games to anyone with a PC, tablet, smartphone, or connected TV," wrote Adobe's Tom Nguyen. "And with Stage 3D, game publishers and developers can take their games to a new level, creating new opportunities for game developers and publishers to deliver and monetize their content." You can find more details and videos here.

Alongside that announcement, Adobe said it's preparing an emergency patch for Flash. The update should drop tomorrow and will address a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2011-2444) that is being actively exploited in the wild by tricking users into clicking on a malicious link via email. Attackers can potentially gain control of compromised machines. Chrome users should have already received the fix automatically.

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Google, Intel collaborate to release Android phones early 2012

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 in Tech News

Intel and Google have announced a new partnership that will see low-powered Atom CPUs and their successors running with Google's Android platform as the chipmaker attempts to launch itself into the smartphone market. 

Intel executives stated at their annual developer conference on Tuesday that Android phones featuring Intel CPUs should be available in the first half of 2012.

Both companies say they will work together to optimize Android to run on the x86 architecture, a move that should speed up development and reduce the time to market of Intel based Android devices. 

ARM based chips dominate the Android smartphone market. In contrast, Intel's architecture is unrivaled for desktop usage, but to date it has been rather inefficient in devices with limited battery life due to high power drain.

"The smartphone business is not established in terms of the ultimate shakeout of who's going to win and who is going to lose... You saw what happened in terms of how fast Android took share from Apple. So good products on good platforms can really still make a big difference in this industry," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini during his speech at the conference.

While Android should technically already support x86 architectures, the new partnership will make it much easier for manufacturers of Android devices to release their Intel-based products to the market. Until now it has been the responsibility of manufacturers to make the chips they use compatible with the Linux derived OS.

Intel hopes the close collaboration with Google will help win over manufacturers currently using ARM based chipsets by making the transition to Intel processors as painless as possible.

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Microsoft confirms Xbox Live integration on Windows 8

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 in Tech News

Microsoft has re-confirmed that the company's Xbox Live service will be built into the next version of its desktop operating system. There are few details about the integration at this point, but according to a blog post by Microsoft's Director of Programming for Xbox, Live Larry Hryb (also known as Major Nelson), this week at the BUILD 2011 conference they will be showing how easy it is for developers to integrate the service into Windows 8 applications.

"We are very excited about Xbox LIVE coming to Windows 8.  Xbox LIVE brings your games, music, movies, and TV shows to your favorite Microsoft and Windows devices.  Bringing Xbox LIVE to Windows 8 is part of our vision to bring you all the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, made easy," wrote Hryb.

He promised more information about Xbox Live on Windows 8 in the near future and posted the image above as a teaser. Microsoft has already brought Xbox Live integration to Windows Phone. Now, as the company tries to push Windows 8 to desktops, laptops, tablets, and other form factors, this could provide huge exposure for the service.

Earlier this year rumors started to emerge that Windows 8 would even let users play Xbox 360 discs on their PCs, though online gameplay would specifically prohibit cross-platform matchups to keep the playing field leveled. Microsoft hasn't commented on those rumors but we're taking them with a sizeable dose of skepticism for now.

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Lenovo presents IdeaPad A1 tablet with $199 starting price

Monday, September 05, 2011 in Tech News

Lenovo has added a new member to its growing Android tablet lineup. The IdeaPad A1 will be squarely aimed at the budget-conscious market with a starting price of just $199, and though it may not be a cutting-edge device, it offers quite a bit of features for the price. You'll get a 7-inch capacitive multi-touch screen tablet with a Cortex A8 1GHz single-core processor, 8GB of storage, dual cameras (3MP back, VGA front), microUSB, and a microSD card slot for expansion.

Its display offers a higher than average resolution compared to other devices its size -- and even the iPad 2 -- at 1024-by-600 with a pixel density of 170ppi. In terms of connectivity, the A1 is limited to Wi-Fi, but there is a GPS chip in there that can be used without a data connection. Using the Navdroyd global map database, Lenovo's tablet behaves just like any other off-the-shelf GPS system by communicating directly with GPS satellites to determine position

Perhaps the main letdown is that the tablet is pre-loaded with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, as opposed to the tablet-specific Honeycomb release, though that was probably necessary to keep things running smoothly on ARM's last-generation chip. Nevertheless the A1 is fully equipped with all of Google's Android services, and Lenovo will be including the Lenovo App Shop on the device in addition to providing access to the official Android Market.

The tablet's overall thickness comes in just under half an inch and its exterior casing color options include black, white, blue and pink. In addition to the base 8GB version, 16GB and 32GB models should be available for $249 and $299 when the IdeaPad A1 arrives later this month. Unfortunately, according to Engadget, only the latter two will make it to the U.S.

The recent $99 sale of the discontinued HP TouchPad showed that a lot of folks would buy a tablet if the price were cheap enough -- though I believe webOS played a bigger part in sparking up interest than the hardware itself. It will be interesting to see how well the A1 performs at this price point. Granted, Lenovo is not the first company to hit the $200 - $250 mark, but the A1 does offer better features than most budget-priced Android tablets.

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Google To Shut Down 10 Products

Sunday, September 04, 2011 in Tech News

Google announced yesterday that it is closing a number of its current products and merging others into similar services. Many of them will continue to be available in the near future to facilitate the transition. The list of affected services includes Aardvark, Desktop, Fast Flip, Maps API for Flash, Google Pack, Google Web Security, Image Labeler, Notebook, Sidewiki, and Subscriber Links. Google's Alan Eustace wrote. "This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience. It will also mean we can devote more resources to high impact products—the ones that improve the lives of billions of people. All the Googlers working on these projects will be moved over to higher-impact products. As for our users, we’ll communicate directly with them as we make these changes, giving sufficient time to make the transition and enabling them to take their data with them."

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