New Fermi with 512 shaders possible

Could be a new chip

Nvidia is far from over announcing new Fermi based products, as well as Fermi successor chips There are many projects in the pipe and among them is a 512 shader Fermi based card
The 512-shader card is possible and it should launch after the summer, of course if all goes well

 

 The twist is that there is a big possibility that this card won’t be based on the GF100, Nvidia's original Fermi chip

If Nvidia planned a single chip with 512 shaders based on Fermi it would have already launched it, and since the company's GF104 design has some 25 percent lower TDP it is more likely that the 512-shader card might be based on GF104 design fundamentals. The launch of such a card depends solely on ATI's next move. If ATI surprises the market with improved 40nm chips, Nvidia will have an answer

Doubling the shader count on GF104 should give you a 512-shader card with much better thermals than the original Fermi. Since Nvidia already has the fastest single chip card, they decided not to push with the 512-shader Fermi just yet and the 512-shader card is definitely part of the company's plans. We expect to see such a card in late Q3 or early Q4 of 2010.

New Surround system offered for PS3

Sony not making a big deal about the offering

Sony has launched a new sound bar system targeted at PlayStation 3 owners. The Surround Sound System for the PlayStation 3 will arrive this fall, and works by simply plugging it into the PS3.

The addition of a sound bar accessory for the PS3 is clearly better than the standard speakers that are found in the majority of televisions and monitors out there. Of course, the Surround Sound System for the PlayStation 3 will carry PS3 branding and is targeted to address one of the major issues that console makers continue to see:  the majority of people never connect their console up to get the proper kind of surround sound that is available from today’s games, which means that consumers are missing out on one of the best parts of the gaming experience

When it arrives this fall it will go for $199, and with the simple hook up, we expect it to be popular even if the sound is only half way decent

Intel set to release low-voltage resilient memories

Less juice

Intel is set to release details of its plans to build what it calls low-voltage resilient memory

At the 2010 Symposium on VLSI Circuits in Hawaii, Intel will claim that the technology will help enable ultra low-power circuits in processor designs. It will fix one of the problems involving registers which are tricky run at low voltages. This limits the factor for minimum operating supply voltage of a microprocessor core

To lower the power, Intel proposes to use low-voltage resilient memories, which are ''circuits that are tolerant to variations and leakage noises.'' According to an Intel press release, its technology can be scaled from 1-Volt to 340-mV, depending on the requirements. It is also said to have an energy-efficiency of 550 billion operations per Watt

Ubisoft announces Michael Jackson video game

Support for both PS Move and Kinect

The latest announcement from Ubisoft is not Michael Jackson's first game, but it's the first MJ game to put motion sensing technology to good use - as long as you can follow his lightning moves, that is

The company has announced the development of an interactive game dedicated to Michael Jackson, and calls it a “family entertainment at its best”. The players will be able to “re-live his most iconic performances through their own singing and dancing”, although we’re not sure whether the users’ singing and dancing will be set in courtroom settings and feature angry crowds as well

The game will feature classic tracks like Beat It and Billy Jean and will come with the latest in the motion sensing technology. Ubisoft lists support for both Kinect and PlayStation Move, but judging by the initial reports, we’re yet to see how they fare

The game is announced for holiday 2010 and will come out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and DS

AMD releases its Catalyst 10.6 driver

GPU acceleration with Adobe Flash Player 10.1

AMD has released the newest version of the Radeon Catalyst drivers, the Catalyst 10.6. The new driver supports all the cards in the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000 and HD 5000 series as well as Radeon HD 3000 and HD 4000 IGPs. In addition to the bunch of performance improvements, the new driver also brings a couple of new features mostly based around video content playback and GPU involvement in it

The full list of new features include the GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1, video "De-blocking" support for HD 5000 series cards which reduces blocking artifacts seen in low bit-rate video during playback, Mosquito noise reduction support for HD 5000 series which reduces mosquito-like noise in highly compressed progressive video, official support for OpenGL 4.0 (on HD 5000 series cards only) and Open GL 3.3.

Performance improvements list includes a bunch of latest titles like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Aliens vs. Predator DX 11 benchmark, Company of Heroes, Dirt 2, Crysis Warhead as well as the Unigine Tropics and 3DMark Vantage benchmarks. Most of the improvements are reserved for the HD 5800 Crossfire configurations or the HD 5970 cards in either single or Crossfire mode

You can find full release notes as well as the driver itself here

HP considers nanostores with memristors in future data centers

Possible successor to Intel MIC, other physicalization trends

Several months ago, Hewlett-Packard demonstrated memristor technology, a new system architecture that can be dynamically changed between logic operations and memory storage. Memristor innovator Stan Williams, a senior HP fellow and director of its Information and Quantum Systems Lab,claimed that the new computing paradigm could enable calculations to be performed “in the same chips where data is stored, rather than in a specialized CPU.”.

The company also revealed that it had designed the architecture to allow multiple layers of memristive logic to be stacked in a 3D fashion, resulting in a tenfold increase in memory density. Among many authors and analysts who read the news, some eventually reminisced on the innovative history of Moore’s Law and marveled at its progress over both prosperous times in the IT space and rough economic downturns that have stifled chip logic advancement. Now, HP researchers are exploring ways to make their memristor architecture useful in future server and data center designs where data has become an exponentially growing asset and management issue simultaneously

“Re-thinking the balance of computer, storage and communications will happen, and it will have big implications,” said Partha Ranganathan, a principal investigator and distinguished technologist in the exascale data center project at HP Labs

Researchers working with memristor technology intend to rebalance these fundamental core system components with a new chip called a “nanostore.” From an architectural perspective, a nanostore is just a 3D stack of processor cores connected to non-volatile memristor cores (NVRAM). The new processor-memory design will essentially place data at the heart of the computing transaction, rather than the CPU itself



With a new “stateful logic” paradigm that moves from observing the CPU as the “brain” of a computer system to the data itself as the center of a system (based on the nanostore concept), HP Labs has found the new design approach to have a ten times greater performance factor for the same cost of energy. “This is early work in [3D stacks and memristors], and we definitely think we can get better [performance] factors,” said Ranganathan

He also mentioned that it could take roughly five years before nanostore devices are ready for commercial use. He and other researchers at HP Labs plan to publish papers later this year on the initial ideas for nanostores and for a new low-power processor called a “microblade.” HP Labs has identified three unique kinds of server designs that could be optimized for different types of processing workloads. In an energy proportional design, server performance is dynamically scaled up or down based on an application’s particular needs. In a consolidated design, multiple jobs are packed into a system. In a microblade design, jobs are broken down into highly parallelized tasks than can be handled by multiple low-power processors (think ARM and Intel Atom chips). This last type of design is known in the HPC space as “physicalization,” or in other words, the concept of building high-density compute nodes out of clusters of very cheap, low-power processors

Of course, microblades using low-power processors are limited by the extent to which underlying algorithms can be split into separate tasks. In a recent article by Jon Stokes from ArsTechnica, he notes that a combination of high margins on server chips and the overall organization of the hardware on the die have left an opening for simpler, cheaper solutions like those from ARM and Intel’s Atom lineup

In addition, there is also newly envisioned potential for Intel to reassess its stakes in the HPC market with the introduction of its MIC (Many Integrated Core) server architecture. But whether or not MIC will be the last remaining highly parallel, low-power solution to power the data centers of tomorrow before HP mass produces nanostores with memristor technology remains unclear

FBI looking at iPad hack

We often do Apple's work for it

The Untouchables have swept into action to look at a data breach that exposed the email addresses of more than 114,000 owners of the Apple iPad

AP is reporting that the breach occurred on the US carrier AT&T's network and the FBI said it was worried that the intrusions could lead to a cyber threat. AT&T acknowledged Wednesday that it had exposed the e-mail addresses through a website, and had closed the breach

The vulnerability only affected iPad users who paid money for the outfits 3G wireless internet service. A hacker group that calls itself Goatse Security said it got the site to cough up more than 114,000 email addresses by guessing which codes would be valid

Of course the police are always keen to investigate something that is connected to Apple. When Steve Job's engineer left an 4g iPhone prototype in a pub, the coppers were only too keen to break into the house of a local journalist at his request. The fact that Steve had the phone returned by the journalist in question long before the police raid had nothing to do with it

Google accuses Apple of ad discrimination

Anticompetitive conflict between iAd and AdMob

Google, the world's leading Internet advertisement company, accused Apple earlier this week of severely limiting developer access to its mobile iAd platform. The new decision underscore the rising competition associated with selling ads on mobile smartphone platforms, a fast-growing market in which both companies hope to outpace each other

In the most recent battle between the two mega corporations, Google claims that Apple has amended its in-app advertisement policy for anyone who develops applications for its trio of iPod, iPhone and iPad mobile devices. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new language prohibits some ad companies from collecting usage data from mobile applications in the App Store, effectively blockading access from collecting data within Apple’s mobile device ecosystem

Apple, the fruit-themed toymaker, amended its rules on Monday to only allow an exclusive list of ad companies to compete with the iAd platform, as long as the ad companies aren’t affiliated with any company that produces or distributes mobile smartphones. In other words, Apple’s legal advisors have taken an alleged glimpse into the future by assuming that there could be potential for more competition than just Google

On Wednesday, Google AdMob founder Omar Hamoui said in a blog post that the new rules, “if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google’s advertising solutions on the iPhone.” He went on to express his belief that Apple’s new rules affect both large and small developers by “severely limiting their choice of how best to make money.”.

After Google announced the deal in November 2009 to buy AdMob, Apple responded by purchasing Quattro Wireless, an AdMob rival. However, AdMob has since undergone immense investigation by the FCC to ensure Google’s purchase wasn’t a monopolistic acquisition with anticompetitive intentions

Analysts are claiming that Apple’s advertisement policy change would not only affect Google, but would also have an impact on Microsoft, RIM and Nokia mobile application ecosystems. In fact, before Apple amended its policy, the Department of Justice and the FTC were already moving to examine whether Apple’s business practices are anticompetitive. At this point, it is unclear whether preliminary investigations have begun

“Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress,” said Hamoui on Wednesday

Asus slaps AMD Geode CPU in its Eee PC

Unimpressive battery life

Although we were quite happy to see something else than Atom in the Eee PC series, we certainly didn't think about AMD's Geode NX 1750 CPU. Still, this is exactly what Asus decided to use in its Eee PC 1201K

The AMD Geode NX series features 128Kb of L1 and 256Kb of L2 cache, and the NX 1750 works at 1.4GHz at 1.25V with an average and maximum TDP of 14 and 25W. Despite the fact that we are talking about a 1.4GHz CPU there is still a lot to be desired as with this CPU, Eee PC is capable of a mere 2-hour life on a 6-cell battery

The rest of the specifications include 1GB of DDR1 memory, up to 320GB of HDD space, 0.3M Web cam and an optional Bluetooth. It uses a 12.1-inch 1366x768 screen

Unfortunately, the only way that this device could make any impact on the market is if it ends up to be the cheapest 12.1-incher that we ever seen

Microsoft likely to touch on 3D at E3

Will make some sort of announcement

Our sources have indicated to us that with Sony’s focus on 3D at E3 this year, Microsoft will also announce a 3D strategy. Currently, it is known that the Xbox 360 can offer 3D support, but the question of what kind of 3D support and what Microsoft intends to do with it is still unknown

With all of the Natal talk preceding and that will be occurring at E3, the company might have a hard time fitting in their 3D plans. Don’t expect a big ‘to do’ about it, according to our sources; but instead expect something along the lines of, We are enabling 3D support in our next Dashboard update and we are making it available to the developer community. A number of titles both upcoming and unannounced will offer 3D support

We still don’t expect 3D to be the game changer that some are claiming that it will be, and most analysts seem to agree with us. At least for the moment, the software or lack of software is the issue, but this time around we think that the lack of 3D-enabled monitors could be the deal breaker for many gamers. As one analyst told us, It is great that the manufacturers want to hype 3D support, but talk to me the next time I have to replace the monitor that my console is connected to and then I might consider getting a 3D one; but I just purchased the HDTV and I am not ready to part with it just yet

Gelid shows its Icy Vision

The new VGA cooler

Seen back during Cebit in March, Gelid has now officially announced its new VGA cooler, the Icy Vision. The new VGA cooler supports all of the latest cards including AMD's Radeon HD 5800 cards as well as Nvidia's GTX 400 series

The Icy Vision comes with 216x95x52mm dimensions and weighs 465 grams, so it's neither the biggest nor the heaviest one around but still features two 92mm fans, a copper base connected to the 85 aluminium fins via five heatpipes. The two 92mm fans are UV-reactive with S-shaped blades and are producing 26dBA of noise at its maximum of 2000RPM

The new Gelid VGA cooler features a 5-year warranty and should hit retail/e-tail by the end of this month. The suggested pricetag is US $55/€46.

Point of View shows its Ubisoft bundles

For its GTX 400 series

In order to gain a slight edge over competition, Point of View decided to introduce a new Ubisoft bundle which will be available with its Geforce GTX 400 series trio

The new bundle includes a voucher for the download of either Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands or Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction. Despite the fact that neither of these games have anything to do with DirectX 11 it is still a nice touch and in the end you at least get a nice bonus for your money

The new "game included" boxes should start to appear in retail pretty soon



 

New Medal of Honor to have public beta

Those that pre-order to get access in July

Those looking forward to the release of the new Electronic Arts Medal of Honor title with multiplayer, developed by DICE, should consider placing their pre-order soon in order to lock themselves into the a public multiplayer beta that will go to those that pre-order the title

Sources tell us that the Medal of Honor multiplayer player beta will start July 5th and run until July 17th. It is expected that the multiplayer beta will be run similar to the Battlefield Bad Company 2 console beta that was run last year. The game itself is still slated for release on October 12th in North America and October 15th in Europe

Handbag fight over Apple and open saucers breaks out

Is it nice or bad? .
An open source advocate is taking on Apple fanbois over whether or not Jobs' Mob is the best thing since sliced bread for their community

It all started when DJ Walker-Morgan said that the open source developer community should thank Apple for raising the competitive bar and in using some open source technology in its products. The logic is that Microsoft had lowered the bar so low that open source developers were "doing just enough" to beat Microsoft

It wasn't until Steve Jobs took all of his open source based know how and technology and fused it into Apple, that the open source community had to really try its best in order to do one better than Apple, Walker-Morgan said. However Alan Shimel said that the argument is like police thanking the Mafia for making them work harder

“Apple is a parasite of open source. They have used the technology, they are not making the resulting products open source and are contributing zero back to the community. Why is that any different with that and what the Mafia does? They both are just taking, not giving back and living off of the work of others,” Shimel said

iPhone 4 and Samsung Wave have same CPU

Twins

Apple's iPhone 4  has the same CPU as the recently released Samsung Wave S8500. Young Choi, senior manager of the Technical Intelligence Group claims in a statement that the Apple A4 chip used in both the iPad and iPhone 4 is manufactured by Samsung

Samsung has a longstanding "foundry" relationship with Apple. Choi said that by looking at the Samsung S5PC110A01 application processor and comparing it to the A4 application processor found in the Apple iPad he could confirm that not only is Samsung the manufacturer of both application processors

He also identified that both application processors feature the same 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 core manufactured using a 45-nanometer low-power fabrication process. This means that Samsung is pushing its chip design across a range of products, it also means that the Apple A4 chip is not as unique  as the tame Apple press claimed. It also means that the new Android OS-enabled Samsung Galaxy S smartphone will also use the same processor

Not only does this push Samsung forward as an important player in the smartphone chip market, it means that some this gear will have the same crucial bits as Apple's. The data also suggests that the graphics chip engine the iPad and iPhone 4 use is the PowerVR SGX 3D graphics core from Imagination Technologies

J&W launches ITX 6 core motherboard

MINIX board for AMD up to 95W

J&W, the company that hides under the MINIX brand, has surprised us with one quite unique and feature packed ITX motherboard. J&W has announced the MINIX 890GX-USB3 board that supports all AMD socket AM3 CPUs including the 6-Core CPUs with 95W TDPs

The board also features Broadcom Gigabit LAN and NEC based USB 3.0 support, as well as core unlocking for single, dual, quad and six-core CPUs, so you should be able to unlock some cores with this motherboard

The chipset behind the board is AMD 890GX with an integrated graphics while the Southbridge or choice is SB850. The new Southbridge also brings the 6gbps SATA 3.0 support. This might be the world’s first ITX board to support 6Gbps RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 arrays



The board also has a full 16X PCIe slot and the only downside is the support for 2x4GB SODIMM memory, that tends to be somewhat more expensive than normal DIMM. The board also has VGA, HDMI and VGA put and let's not forget the mini PCIe slot for add on cards such as Wi-Fi

 The company considers to ship this board with a mini PCIe Wi-Fi card with antenna

The target group for this product are the home theater enthusiasts and most of them wont mind the $180 end user price

The board should be available shortly

Alienware finally updates its M11x netbook

Core i3, i5, i7 and Nvidia Optimus

Alienware has finally updated its vision of the netbook thus sending the old switchable graphics the way of the Dodo. The small M11x finally got its share of Core i3, i5, i7 CPUs and Nvidia's Optimus technology

In addition to the previous Pentium Dual Core ULV SU4100 and Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPUs, the smallest Alienware can now be equipped with Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs. To be precise, you can order the M11x with either Core i3-330UM, Core i5-520M, or Core i7-640UM. Although Alienware's UK site still hasn't added the Core i3 CPU, the company's Malaysian site has it

Although it has been updated with the new choice of CPUs, the M11x still uses the previously available Nvidia Geforce GT 335M GPU with 1GB of GDDR3 memory. The rest of the specs have remained the same and you'll still get a 11.6-inch 720p screen (1366x768), up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, up to 500GB of HDD space and Windows 7 OS

The base version with Core i5 starts at £849.00 and the Core i7 options adds £180.00 more to the price. The new CPU options should appear at Alienware US as well pretty soon. You can find the UK site here and the Malaysian one is here



 

PC shipments surge 22.7% in Q1

Thanks to Asia

According to iSuppli's latest figures, the global PC market in Q1 has jumped by 22.7 percent year-on-year. The market ate up 81.5 million units, compared to last year's 66.5 million over the same period

iSupply principal analyst Matthew Wilkins said that the quarter delivered the highest year-on-year growth since iSuppli started tracking the market in 2003. “This record growth resulted from strong sales in the first quarter of 2010 combined with weak conditions during the first three months of 2009. Early 2009 represented one of the weakest periods in the history of the PC market, as consumer and corporate demand plunged due to the economic downturn. With economic conditions improving, PC sales rebounded in early 2010.”.

Asus, Samsung, Lenovo and Acer posted the strongest growth. Asus led the way with 136.2 percent, while Lenovo and Acer grew by 58.5 and 47.1 percent respectively. Acer has managed to close in on HP. It grabbed 13.3 percent of the global market, while HP managed to hold on to 19.6 percent

Apple has also done rather well. Its shipments jumped 32.4 percent from last year, but its global market share is still rather low, 3.4 percent

More here

HP disconnects printers from PCs

Who needs them

Maker of expensive printer ink, HP has revealed a little more detail about its use of the WebOS

Apparently the outfit wants to use the OS to make it easier for users of smartphones and other devices to print documents without the need for a PC. HP said yesterday that it will start adding microchips and software to connect all its printers to the Internet. HP wants to get to a point where users from any location can send pages for printing using email

This means that you will not need software on devices to work with specific printers. The idea is that each printer will have an email address, and you just send your document to it like you would another email

All the content to be printed will be stored in HP's remote data centers and routed to the printer via the Internet, or the "cloud".  HP will connect all of our future printer products to the cloud, and by having that connection, we will enable new uses for our (printer) customers

It will practically mean the death of the driver

GoldenEye to be revived for Wii & DS

Activision to deliver new experience for Nintendo

While there have been many 007 games over the years, none of them were able to capture the excitement and praise that the N64 version of GoldenEye did. Activision apparently will attempt to recapture the magic of the original GoldenEye with a new revival of the game for the Nintendo Wii and DS platforms

According to what our sources tell us, the game will be an updated romp through the GoldenEye story that will use the latest technology advantages of the Wii and DS platforms to deliver an updated experience. Part of the title update will feature Daniel Craig in the role of James Bond

Stories of a golden gun-type shell for the Wii Remote have been hinted at, as well, for the Wii version of the title. Pictures suggest that a least a prototype has been built, but according to the whispers that we hear, no decision has been made whether the Wii version of the title will actually use it. Activision is a bit more cautious these days in its investment of money in game peripherals after the disaster that was Tony Hawk Ride with the skateboard peripheral that cost a lot and didn’t perform that well

From the word that we have heard from our sources, Activision is working with developer Eurocom and n-Space to deliver the new title. According to what we hear, Activision will be making the grand announcement of the title at E3; and apparently the game has been in development for some time and it is expected to arrive in November for the holiday season this year

Apple officially announces iPhone 4

Overview: “This changes everything. Again.”.


During the entirety of Apple’s WWDC 2010 keynote, we noted that many journalists were alarmed, surprised, shocked and even curious about the final hardware decisions that the company implemented into its fourth-generation iPhone. Nevertheless, Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO, just finished giving his two-hour keynote on the Apple ecosystem this year, including the highly anticipated new mobile device that everyone and their mothers have been dying to know about

Thankfully, Jobs was able to lay out the specifications and features of the company’s new smartphone in a straightforward, systematic fashion. He highlighted 9 features as being particularly important to the new device

Before we get into the specifics, we are going to start by giving the device a proper name. As of the WWDC keynote on June 7, 2010 at approximately 10:31am, the official name of the device is Apple iPhone 4. Earlier this week, Engadget posted a poll on its site asking users what they believed the new device would be called. Going with popular belief, the majority of participants unilaterally assumed that it would be named iPhone HD (58,479), followed by iPhone 4G (18,809), followed by iPhone 4 (12,512). The iPhone 4 is now presented on Apple’s front page with a rather arrogant motto: “This changes everything. Again.” Let’s take a look underneath the hood and determine whether this fourth-generation smartphone really changes anything, as the company so proudly insists






From the press shots, it is immediately noticeable that the physical dimensions of the screen have not changed from previous iterations of the hardware. Based on the announcement, the iPhone 4 features the same 3.5-inch display as its predecessors, but it manages to pack four times the amount of pixels into the same space. The phone now reps a 960x640 IPS-based LCD display with an 800:1 contrast ratio. In comparison, the three previous iPhone models feature mere 480x320 LCD displays. This new specification was rumored for many months on several occasions, and we are grateful that it is part of the final product. Steve did have a few comments to add to that spec, however. According to contemporary research, 300ppi (pixels-per-inch) is the maximum observable threshold that the human eye can perceive at 10 – 12 inches away from a small mobile display. Apple officially references this vision property as the “retina display.” Aside from the 960x640 resolution, the bigger announcement is the fact that the iPhone 4 display features 326ppi, and Steve notes that his company has gone “comfortably over the viewable limit” to feature the densest display on the market



Unfortunately, we were hoping that the physical size of the screen would rival the 4.3-inch smartphone monsters that have recently surfaced the market, including last year’s HTC HD2 and the recent HTC EVO 4G. However, it is important to consider Apple’s design approach marks a departure from conventional theory that “bigger screens are always better on the eyes.” The company has instead decided to focus its engineering efforts on ensuring that the most pixels are squeezed into the smallest space possible, ensuring that they go unnoticed to the user under normal operating conditions



Property of Engadget


Property of Engadget

iPhone 4G positioned alongside the recently-launched HTC EVO 4G from Sprint


The iPhone 4 is also one-fourth thinner than the iPhone 3GS. In fact, Steve Jobs claims it is “the thinnest smartphone on the planet.” Apple was able to redesign the frame of the device to keep it at a very slim 9.3mm thickness, roughly 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS. During the presentation, Jobs laughably insisted that the final device is "identical to the leaked prototype" that surfaced back in April. Volume controls are on the left side, as well as a ring/silent button and are in the same positions as they were on previous models but have been slightly revised to match the device's slimmer aesthetic. The iPhone 4 also features the traditional microphone port, 30-pin connector on the bottom, speaker, headphone jack, a second microphone, and a sleep-wake button. The 3G micro-SIM card slot has also been repositioned from the top of the device to the right side, and it is important to note that regular SIM cards will not be able to fit into this new slot type. This has already been demonstrated on the iPad, but the interesting question that seems to have everyone concerned is whether or not AT&T subscribers with the iPhone 4 will be able to use their micro-SIM cards with the iPad, or vice-versa






Thinnest smartphone ever, stainless steel for strength, glass for optical quality and scratch resistance (on front and back).


Jobs continued by noting that the iPhone 4 has a stainless steel band that runs around the edges, a primary structural element on the phone. “Three slits in it and its part of brilliant engineering,” he said. We went behind the scenes after the keynote to discover why this new antenna design was implemented. According to FCC documents that were posted literally minutes after the keynote, the Commission identifies the fourth-generation iPhone as a pentaband 3G phone with five bands of 3G compatibility. In other words, it supports UMTS 1, UTMS 2, UTMS V, UTMS VI and UMTS VIII. In addition, it also includes a Bluetooth radio, a GPS radio, and a much-appreciated 802.11n WiFi radio



Apple’s iPhone 4 also gets a processor upgrade to the same ARM-based 45nm Apple A4 1GHz chip used in the iPad, an upgrade from the 65nm ARM Cortex A8 600MHz in the iPhone 3GS that Anand Shimpi gave a detailed architecture analysis. Nowhere in the keynote presentation was there mention of how much RAM that iPhone 4 contains, but DigiTimes recently stated that it features a 512MB memory module from Samsung. If this claim is true, then the RAM capacity is also an upgrade from the 256MB found in the iPhone 3GS



The new iPhone 4 hardware also incorporates a new 3-axis gyroscope in addition to the accelerometer. The combination of these two sensors will ultimately provide 6-axis motion sensing (see: PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS Wireless Controller). With six degrees of rotation in a compact physical space, Apple hopes that its developers will design even more immersive gaming experiences that enable gamers to have full control over their virtual environments


Property of gdgt

One of the more anticipated features of the new device is undoubtedly the camera improvements that have been rumored for so long. Apple has finally put its loyalist customers at ease by announcing that iPhone 4 features a “whole new camera system.” It’s got a 5 megapixel CMOS sensor on the back and an integrated LED flash positioned right next to it for low-light photography and video recording (yes, the LED works for video recording as well). “We went from 3MP to 5MP and kept the pixels the same size,” Steve said during his demonstration. He also mentioned that the new camera system supports geolocation embedding for both photos and videos. In addition, the new phone features 5x digital zoom built into the new iOS 4 camera application with tap-to-focus. All in all, the new camera system will be able to record full 720p (1280x720) HD video at 30fps just like the HTC Incredible and HTC EVO 4G.

Randy Ubillos, Apple Chief Architect of Video Apps later went on stage to demonstrate iMovie for the iPhone. It’s a full-featured video editing app environment for the phone, where photos and videos can be added to a project timeline and special effects can be added with the tap of a finger. Photos automatically get the “Ken Burns effect,” and the most interesting feature is that the camera records geolocation information into the video, which then gets automatically picked up by iMovie and put into the screen. The app will be available in the App Store for $4.99.

Steve Jobs continued his keynote by presenting the new iAd mobile advertising platform, which we’ve covered here. At the end, he famously introduced his “One More Thing,” which happened to be a full-fledged video calling application exclusively for the new iPhone 4. The application will make use of the new device’s front-facing camera, currently without any announced specifications, but will unfortunately only be available over WiFi throughout the rest of 2010. Jobs has stated that the company is “in talks with network carriers (AT&T) to support it over 3G.” .

Of all the hardware innovations that were carefully introduced into the iPhone 4, one of the biggest improvements that we are most thankful for is the gigantic Lithium-Ion battery that Apple has planted into the back of this new smartphone. Steve Jobs himself claims that it will be capable of supporting 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music playback, 6 hours of 3G Internet browsing, 10 hours of WiFi Internet browsing, and 40 percent more talk time on 3G to 7 hours (up from 5 hours). In addition, this new battery is arsenic-free, BFR-free, mercury-free, PVC-free and highly recyclable


Property of ArsTechnica

There are many aspects of the iPhone 4 hardware and software feature set that we are both content with and moderately disappointed with. Aside from our discontent with FaceTime’s WiFi-only usability, we were also frustrated about the storage capacity options for the new phone models. After Steve had announced that the iPhone 4 would be available in both black and white colors, he also mentioned that they would only be available in 16GB and 32GB capacities just like the iPhone 3GS. Over the past twelve months, many iPhone 3GS 32GB users around the world, including ourselves, have accumulated a significant storage buildup on our smartphones with little space for application and media expansion. We were hoping that Apple would announce 32GB and 64GB capacities for its fourth-gen hardware iteration, but unfortunately it probably decided to use the same Toshiba NAND-flash memory chips it has been using for the past year in order to save costs associated with newer features of the phone. We will have more information behind the company’s decision as soon as the Bill of Materials list gets published in a few weeks


Property of Engadget


Property of Engadget

Apple did manage to keep the same pricing structure for its new phones. The iPhone 4 16GB (black and white models) will release for $199, while the iPhone 4 32GB models will release at $299.

Early on, Jobs did point out that his favorite statistic of the entire keynote was the fact that 70 percent of revenue from the App Store goes to the developer. Currently, the company just crossed the $1 billion milestone for developer revenue. “That’s what makes the App Store the most vibrant community on the planet,” he says. According to Nielsen research, iPhone’s market share was three times that of Android as of Q1 2010. In total, the iPhone has 58.2 percent of the entire mobile browser usage in the country, over two and a half times as much as Android, at 22.7 percent


Property of ArsTechnica

Full iPhone 4 hardware specifications can be found on Apple’s product page here. “Thank you very much,” said Steve. "This is our new baby. I hope you love it as much as we do.”.

The release date for the Apple iPhone 4 is Thursday, June 24, 2010, and pre-orders start on Monday, June 21.

Apple announces iOS 4 for iPhone, iPod, iPad

Over 1500 new features, new search provider options

The iPhone operating system has officially undergone a name change. What was once speculated to be named iPhone OS 4 in the proper continuation of mobile operating system revisions will now come to be known as iOS 4.

“We’ve taken a little longer to come up with a good architecture for multitasking.” New additions to Apple’s world renown mobile operating system include a new folder implementation, a significantly faster mobile Safari. All in all, the new operating system includes over 1500 new features. Among many of them include draggable map annotations, date formatters, power analysis tools, photo library access, in-app SMS, block-based animation, date data detectors, image I/O and performance profiling tools

However, the stars of the show seem to be a unified inbox, basic multitasking, conversation threading, homepage folder creation for better app organization and retina display integration. For enterprise and professional users, some of the newly touted corporate features include better data protection, device management, wireless app distribution, multiple exchange support, SSL VPN support and Exchange Server 2010 support

There has been quite a bit of controversy in the past few months regarding Apple’s decision to include more search providers into its mobile Safari web browsing experience. From directly from the horse’s mouth, we are now able to confirm that Google stays the default search provider, but the two new search providers to hop on board are unsurprisingly, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing

According to Steve Jobs, the final release candidate for iOS 4 is going to be ready for developers today and the final version will be shipping with new iPhone 4 hardware on Thursday, June 24.

HTC EVO 4G is Sprint's best-selling launch day phone

World's first 4G WiMAX smartphone rivals Apple iPhone


On Friday, thousands of Sprint customers around the US witnessed a revolution in smartphone innovation on their carrier’s network, lining up early in the morning before Sprint and RadioShack stores opened their doors early to anticipate enthusiastic demand. The launch of the HTC EVO 4G encouraged thousands of early pre-orders, happy faces and bragging rights as the world’s first “4G” smartphone to utilize WiMAX technology in the 2.5GHz frequency spectrum, marking a departure from the now overcrowded 3G bands that have contributed to the nation’s growing wireless spectrum crisis

The launch of the HTC EVO 4G has come and gone, and the fruits of its sales have heralded a great weekend success in retail stores. As many have expected, the new mighty and muscular smartphone on the block has shown no mercy to the Palm Pre, launched exactly one year ago, and now takes the top spot as Sprint’s best-selling phone on its launch day



"HTC EVO 4G has more than lived up to our expectations that it would be one of the most anticipated technology products of the year," said Kevin Packingham, senior vice president - Product Development for Sprint. "We are working closely with our partners at HTC to increase the supply and get EVO 4G into the hands of everyone who wants one as quickly as possible.".

Demand for the EVO 4G produced reasonably sized lines at several Sprint stores around the country. According to HTC, the overwhelming demand for the device crunched the company’s account-activation system. "When you activate this many phones at one time, any carrier is going to see a slowdown, and that's what happened," said Michelle Mermelstein, a Sprint spokeswoman

Many analysts have noted that the launch of the EVO 4G adds to the growing perspective that HTC is now becoming a very sizable competitor in the smartphone market space. Previous views held that the company was experiencing market “fragmentation” across the Google Android and Windows Mobile product ecosystems and might “cause a little bit of a problem,” according to Peter Chou, HTC’s chief executive. However, he notes that the company has fully embraced its “commitment to both Android and Windows Mobile because there are different people in the market.”.

The next phase in the success of the HTC EVO 4G is not whether the device continues to outsell its supply, but rather if Sprint’s 4G WiMAX network can efficiently operate with an increased user base until competitors like Verizon and T-Mobile can roll out their own 4G LTE and 3G HSPA+ networks respectively. According to a comprehensive HTC EVO 4G review by Chris Ziegler from Engadget, one of the biggest issues of Sprint’s new network is its consistency around large metropolitan cities already blanketed with WiMAX coverage. During his network tests in Chicago, a WiMAX blanketed city described as an “urban canyon in every sense of the word,” coverage ranged from four bars of 4G walking down the street, to “one or even no bars at all” when ducking into a coffee shop at the bottom of a tall building

The battle for 4G WiMAX coverage consistency will continue to be explored throughout the rest of the year when Sprint expects to launch service in other large markets, including Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Los Angeles, Denver, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. We will be personally testing coverage throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including northern Orange County, as coverage becomes available in the area this summer

Asus shows its ROG Immensity motherboard

Concept MB with Lucid Hydra chip

At Computex Asus showed a rather interesting concept with Republic of Gamers tag, the ROG Immensity motherboard. The Immensity is based on Intel's X58 chipset, but it features built-in discreet ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics as well as Lucid's Hydra chip

The Immensity comes with all of the features that you would expect from a motherboard with Asus' ROG tag, and even more due to a rather unique implementation of Lucid's Hydra chip. It comes with two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots which is connected to both of those PCI-Express slots and the discreet Radeon HD 5000 series GPU with dedicated GDDR3 memory. This gives it the unique ability to use any other GPU plugged in one of those PCI-Express slots and pair it up with the integrated Radeon HD 5000 series GPU

Other noted specs include a 8-phase VRM, two SATA 6Gbps ports, USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel integrated audio, four PCI-Express x1 slots, and that recognizable red on black colour scheme

It is still unclear whether this one will ever show up in retail but it certainly looks quite interesting

You can find more pictures over at Techpowerup





 

3D gaming is only a few months away

PrimeSense has a cunning plan

Israeli outfit PrimeSense said that 3D gaming is only a few months away. The outfit has come up with 3D sensing technology which is being jacked under the bonnet of Microsoft's latest Xbox

PrimeSense and several other Israeli companies have been developing hardware and software for Project Natal. The software means that XBox users will be able to place themselves literally 'in the game,' by attaching a box made by PrimeSense to their systems. When a user walks into the range of the PrimeSense 3D sensor, anything he or she does 'live' will be reflected in the actions of the avatars

The PrimeSense sensor has a new chip the company has developed based on a technology called "light coding." The device receives an infrared pattern as an input, and produces a VGA-size depth image of the scene. It works in full 3D, capable of translating depth and distance into games - unlike another Sony gaming device it has been compared to, called the EyeToy, which could only understand 2D.

Square Enix and Sony sued

Final Fantasy freezes gets class action
Square Enix and Sony Computer Entertainment America has been slapped with a class action lawsuit because the popular PS3 Game Final Fantasy XIII game freezes and sometimes even destroys the PlayStation 3 consoles

Daniel Wolf from San Diego, California sued claiming that the game caused severe and widespread damage since its release last March. While playing Final Fantasy XIII, consoles froze up causing them to be totally un-repairable, Wolf said. The game was much anticipated with players standing in line to buy on launch day

When the problems appeared Sony and Square Enix blamed each other Square Enix said the console was faulty, and Sony says it’s the software that caused the issue with the consoles. Meanwhile no one is actually fixing it. More than $5 million worth of consoles that were affected by the faulty systems

UFC 2010 sales slower than expected

Said to be a real surprise to publisher THQ

It comes as no surprise to us as we had already reported that retailers were not seeing the sales numbers that they expected from the recent release of UFC 2010. Now, other analysts are confirming what we already knew. In addition to the slower than expected sales, many retailers are overstocked on the title, which has prompted sales reducing the price of the recently released title to as low as $39.99 at some retailers in North America

Until NPD releases the actual numbers in July, the news has to be a big shock for THQ, who sees that the UFC is actually doing very well and is more popular than ever. The slower than expected sales means that it will be up to other THQ titles to pick up the slack created by the slow sales of UFC 2010: Undisputed. THQ does have some high profile tiles in development that could ease the sales pressure, but the publisher will need good performance from those releases as well as the other releases that it has upcoming

The latest talk confirms what we have known already: that the release and success of Red Dead Redemption does appear to have impacted the sales of UFC 2010 more than anyone could have expected. It is not only UFC 2010 that is suffering from slower than expected sales; both Split/Second and Blur have also been suffering slow sales, but not to the extent that UFC 2010 is

 Our retail sources tell us that they didn’t buy as many copies of Split/Second and Blur; so while sales are slow, they are not in as far on those titles. Still, despite the fact that they don’t have as many copies sitting on the shelf, we expect that some retailers will try to jump start the sales on these two titles by putting them on sale for $39.99, as well

Right now, none of the publishers of these three titles want to talk numbers or the impact that the diminished sales are having. The best news is that the titles are all still selling, so sales have not totally stalled yet. We suspect, however, that the sales that the retailers are using to jump start the momentum on these titles will not lead to a permanent price reduction just yet. The publishers will evaluate the numbers once they are released in July and then figure out how they will respond

Whispers that we heard today do suggest, however, that planning additional downloadable content for all three titles might be influenced by the slower than expected sales. While we have only heard vague rumors of additional content for all three titles, if the titles are not selling well enough, it could lead to the publishers suspending work on any DLC for them that they might already have in development. Look for THQ, Activision, and Disney to be put on the spot to answer questions about the possibility of additional content for these titles during E3.

Analyst downgrades Nvidia on downward trend concerns

Hold, there's a bear on the loose

Much of the tech sector has seen quite a bit of volatility over past weeks, as the weak euro and the European debt crisis have prompted concerns among analysts and Nvidia is no exception

Roth Capital analyst Arnab Chanda has downgraded Nvidia to hold from buy on concerns that Nvida is looking at a slowdown. Chanda believes that the European crisis will result in a significant drop in demand. Nvidia's stock shed around 30 percent since the start of 2010 and Chanda doesn't believe that the prices can recover in the short term

“Near-term business momentum is slowing. We believe that Europe has been weaker than expected, and business trends have been slow,” said Chanda

A month ago SmarTrend identified a downward trend for Nvidia and informed subscribers to quietly exit Nvidia when the price dropped below $15. Since then, Nvidia shed a further 15.9 percent of its market value. The stock closed at $12.70 on Thursday. Just one and a half months ago, on April 15, Nvidia was trading at $18.01.

However, it is worth noting that crisis has heavily affected the entire sector, including Intel and AMD, but at the moment Nvidia appears to be the hardest hit outfit.

More here and here

iPad is (not) a PC

Ballmer tells Jobs to get real

Steve Jobs' claims that his overpriced keyboardless netbook is not a PC have been dismissed as dafted by the shy and retiring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

In an interview at the D: All Things Digital conference in California this week, Ballmer dumped on the iPad. Ballmer said the iPad was just a new PC form factor and not a revolutionary new category. He said it was impossible to do notes with it in a meeting

"To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail," Ballmer pointed out

Earlier this week at the same conference, Jobs predicted an inexorable shift from desktop personal computers to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which he dubbed a "post-PC era". Ballmer said that PCs would be around for a long time to come and Windows was now getting a new lease of life in a new breed of touchscreen tablet devices

He said that he thought that people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come. Ballmer took a shot at Google, ridiculing it for peddling two different operating systems - Android and Chrome. Then he sheepishly admitted that Microsoft also had multiple operating systems, but that would be different wouldn't it Steve? .

Galaxy shows off dual-GPU GTX 470

Bring meat and forks for everyone

As you probably already know, Nvidia’s Fermi is one hot chip and this makes dual-GPU designs pretty difficult if not even impossible, especially if you intend to push these babies at full speed. Galaxy, however, seems to have felt adventurous enough and showed off a dual-GPU GTX 470 card at Computex

We're not sure what to make of it. The card features two GF100 GPUs on a single PCB and it features two 8-pin PCIe power connectors and three dual-link DVI outs. It's clearly a prototype, but the company obviously wasn’t shy of showing it off

Best case scenario - we’d say that the GPUs are modestly downclocked and/or crippled versions of the real deal. On the other hand, Galaxy has had enough time to practice their dual-GPU designs as of late, so we'll wait and see. Unfortunately, given the fact that Nvidia advises users to use Nvidia certified cases when using two Fermi based cards, it’s not hard to be skeptical

Worst case scenario? Well, you could turn your rig into a makeshift, passive fireplace

The card we saw was home to a duo of GF100 GPUs sharing a single PCB, it measured approximately 12" long, and featured two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and three dual link DVI ports. Unfortunately, lips were sealed on any more specifics as it's merely a prototype but it looks like the dual-GPU videocard crown could could belong to NVIDIA once again