Nokia expands C series with dual SIM mobile phones

It will not be a surprise to anyone if I say that our blog does very few covers of, so to say, talk phones. They are not very interesting to write about as well as to read about, so we often go for something more vibrant and gripping. But I do want to talk about the ones Nokia  has announced today in Nairobi, Kenya – the four new C series devices. Nokia’s budget mobile phones are one of the only in the market that I think are any good. That’s because they do really stick with them as this is how Nokia has become what it is today. The last time I checked their website they had no less than ten cheap to buy, easy to use upcoming mobile phones.

So, the new C series. Despite being plainly cheap, two of the whole C series lineup have a very important feature for a talk phone – dual SIM. C1-00 priced just €30 by Nokia apart from one SIM active one on standby sports 3.5mm headphone jack, flashlight and microSD card support up to 32GB. Another dual SIM mobile phone is C2-00. For €45 it can keep both SIMs active and one of them will be hot-swappable. Appearance of both and the other two single SIM C series Nokias is evenly spread between Q3 and Q4 with C2-00 coming out last.

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Intel Computex keynote roundup

Computex 2010 computer technologies exhibition has started today in Taipei and will be going on for the whole week until Saturday, the 5th of June. No doubt a lot will be showcased in this period, but in the meanwhile Intel’s keynote takes our attention with its three major announcements: Sandy Bridge processor architecture, Oak Trail netbook / tablet platform and Canoe Lake demo.

Sandy Bridge

This is the nearest future of Intel’s Core series processors. Going into production in late 2010 and appearing in the market in 2011 Sandy Bridge architecture features 32nm fabrication process, better energy efficiency, etc. The biggest notable improvement to date is 3D graphics performance and media formats decoding. This, of course, befits well notebook platforms rather than desktops. Anyway, to see for ourselves we’ll have to wait for 2011 when Sandy Bridge goes mainstream to face competition with some new discrete graphic cards we hope will appear by then.

Oak Trail

Oak Trail was obviously designed with growing tablet market in mind. Derived from Intel Atom’s latest N series it is also DDR3 compatible, power efficient, full HD capable and runs so cool that can do with just a low profile passive heat sink. But above all that Oak Trail is fully compatible with the range of operating systems starting with light on their feet Chrome OS, MeeGo, probably Android as well and up to Windows 7. More choice means better user experience? – right so, but it also means Intel can sell Oak Trail chips to OEMs regardless of operating system they choose for their gadgets. International appearance of the platform is targeted for early 2011.

Canoe Lake

Another very interesting demo. Canoe Lake platform with advanced cooling solution from Intel themselves coupled with leading at the moment Pine Trail platform and dual-core N series Atom processor cuts netbook’s height to just 14mm. No word on what exactly has been done to it or who will be the first to eventually offer it. All we know is that in average Canoe Lake allows netbooks to be 50% thinner. The netbook on the picture is entirely built by Intel, has a 10-inch display and GMA 3150 GPU. Canoe Lake solution will come out somewhere in second halve of the year.

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ASUS Eee Pad & Eee Tablet get announced ahead of COMPUTEX 2010

Just ahead of COMPUTEX 2010 starting tomorrow, June 1st, we have some straight-forward iPad  competitors appearance to discuss. These are ASUS  Eee Pad and ASUS Eee Tablet. The Eee Pad model number EP121 is a 12-inch full-on Windows 7 Home Premium touch sensitive device with Intel Core 2 Duo CULV doing all the processing. It also has a webcam, a couple of connectivity ports I suppose and a dockable physical keyboard. Battery on this one will be going on for 10 hours. 10-inch Eee Pad EP101TC on the other hand runs Windows Embedded Compact 7 so it can very well have less processing power and longer battery  life. Anyway, prices on both fit in $399 - &36;499 range.

ASUS Eee TabletThere is also ASUS Eee Tablet coming out. Compared to the Pads above this one is much limited in functionality, but still has a 2 megapixel camera, touch sensitive 2450 dpi screen, Micro SD card reader, USB, 10h battery life, all the rest for a rich-featured e-book reader (I’d be careful calling Eee Tablet something else).

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Acer Aspire One AO533 leaks with latest Intel Atoms and Bluetooth 3.0 under the hood

Looks like Intel Atom N455 and N475 processors quietly make their way to OEMs. Just like we said, June is the month when updated Pine Trail lineup becomes available. I’m sure there will be a lot more Intel  Atom N455 and N475 machines at the time, mind you we are looking forward to them because they are DDR3 compatible, but for now we only have a new Acer  Aspire One 533 with the choice of both of these processors. Naturally, AO533 features DDR3 system memory and thanks to its lower power consumption battery life is prolonged to 10 hours compared to AO522 which looks much of a donor for AO533. No goodies such as USB 3.0 or DirectX 11 support therefore. However, you can have it with Bluetooth 3.0.

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Happy iPad international availability day!

Yes, Apple iPad does so much noise these days that we have to write about it several times in a row. This time it’s because today it has gone on sale in countries of Europe and Asia. Not in all of them though – non U. S. iPad availability pertains to United Kingdom, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Japan and Australia. In early July Apple plans to add Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg to the list.

Prices for the tablet in the Old World are a bit higher than in the U. S.: £429 for 16GB Wi-Fi version and top models exceeding £600 barrier.

Major European carriers are now struggling to provide happy iPad owners with best data plans, so we are still to see what they will accomplish. In the meanwhile we are more interested in demand on the tabled. At the moment, of course, it is more than high, but, as we know, European market can saturate quicker than expected.

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Apple exaggerates iPad demand, underrates its customers

AdMob – one of the largest mobile Internet advertising companies has compiled a report on ad requests by iPhone  OS and Android as of April, 2010. All in all it is very interesting to see how these two mobile giants stack up as well as to forecast dynamics considering recently announced Android 2.2. You can find the report on AdMob official web site to see all the data for yourself. Some simple calculations helped me to work out that more than 25% of April’s iPad ad requests have been done from outside the U. S. And that is when we are only one day away from iPad international launch.

Of course, AdMob tracks ad requests – not device units. So, say U. S. citizen could buy himself an iPad and take it to a world tour making an ad request in every country he happened to visit. But then April is not quite the tourist season to rise up 25%. This probably means that at least some of AdMob indexes refer to iPads used by citizens of other countries (China mostly by the way).

I have to conclude here that iPad sales in America have been juiced up at least a bit by those who now use them outside the U. S., hence will not buy a new one when Apple starts selling it there. Boy oh boy does Apple have some enthusiastic customers!

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ASRock Vision 3D HTPC will be out in July

ASRock has come up with a 3D video playback kit, which looks pretty solid. It is based on Intel  Core mobile processor  and graphics powered by NVIDIA GPU for 3D Vision graphics support. It would actually be a nice piece of technology at Computex this year.
As for other features, Vision 3D HTPC has 7.1 audio output, HDMI port, a Blu-ray drive, and 4 USB 3.0 ports. Fitted with some of the best features out there including USB 3.0 this player will make your home cinema a much better place. However, you are going to have to buy 3D glasses yourself.

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Logitech Revue Google TV Box Hits the FCC

Google [GOOG] is launching Google TV soon. The new system is designed to work with both new TV's with the technology built in or older HDTV's by using a settop companion box such as the Logitech Revue.

Logitech is the first company to work with Google to bring Google TV to HDTV's and their box has now arrived at the FCC for inspection.

If it passes, which we assume it will, it should land in the fall of this year when Google is expected to launch it's new service.

The Logitech Revue is compatible with Harmony remote controls and also comes with a controller that has been customised to work with the Google TV experience.

If you are unsure what Google TV is, it's a new service from Google that runs on your TV (or with a companion box) and allows you to watch what you want, when you want. The service is internet connected and when searching for something to watch it scans through your PVR, local listings as well as websites such as Youtube to find the content. Due to Google knowing who is logged in to the TV box, it can also provide customised ads to users based on what they want to see rather than the regular ads that we see between shows now.

A good video explanation of the Google TV service can be found over here.

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