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Techradar |
- Review: Sennheiser RS 180
- Explained: QuickPath Interconnect vs HyperTransport
- Review: Vogel's THIN345
- Apple-1 computer sells at auction for £133,250
- Final version of Opera 10.1 arrives for Symbian phones
- Xbox and Bing play host to Windows Phone 7 push
- Nokia unveils new budget C2 and X2
- Guide: How to install a motherboard
- Acer announces Clear.fi cloud server and alive store
- Acer announces 7 and 10-inch Android tablets
- Acer unveils enormous new smartphone
- Review: Motorola Defy
- Hands on: Acer Iconia review
- In pictures: Acer Iconia tablet
- Acer Iconia dual touchscreen tablet announced
- In Depth: Hands on: iOS 4.2 review
- Buying Guide: PC or Mac: which should you buy next?
- Scorsese: 3D is 'liberating and beautiful'
- New Tim Burton Stainboy story taps into Twitter
- Microsoft 'busily' buying every memory card it can
- In Depth: PSP Phone features: What should it have?
- Explained: Windows Phone 7 microSD card: why you can't change it
- Xbox 360 celebrates its fifth birthday
- Google Nexus S spotted in the wild again
- Review: Iiyama E2710HDS
| Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:00 AM PST  How much are you willing to spend on a set of headphones? Temper that figure with the following facts: the headphones are wireless, and broadcast on a high-resolution RF frequency for maximum quality without wires. This is a perfect form factor for use with a desktop PC – you'll never get the cable mangled by the wheel of your chair. They're also super-comfortable, clad in velvety fabric, and they nestle on your head like a creature designed to secretly consume the brain. They can pump out bass like nobody's business, ripping through your music and giving vocal recordings that extra warm edge. Basically, they're everything you want a pair of headphones to be. But look over there at the price. We're pretty sure that wasn't the sort of figure you had in mind. Besides the wallet-emptying cost, Sennheiser's RS 180 headphones have other bad points. Battery life, provided by a pair of rechargeable AAAs slipped under each ear cup, is around six hours. This is perfectly respectable in use, but still short enough that a night left off charge means a few irritating hours of silence while you fill them up again. They're a little leaky with the sound, so you'll struggle to get away with loud music in a shared environment. We also noticed a minute amount of subtle distortion in the signal, possibly due to wireless interference over the radio link, so you'll want proper wired headphones if you're after the absolute highest quality possible. Perhaps most irritatingly of all, the charging points – located in the centre of the headband – have been designed in such a way that they grab and pull at your neck hair if you deign to rest them on your shoulders when not in use. That's really not a pleasant experience. Weigh it up. The combined mass of the ludicrous price and multiple niggles doesn't quite balance with the truly great points these cans possess. We'd happily use them, but there's no way we'd buy them over a cheaper wired pair that would sweep away all of the bad points and only one of the benefits. Related Links
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| Explained: QuickPath Interconnect vs HyperTransport Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:00 AM PST  Due to your insatiable appetite for ever-faster PCs, the poor old Front Side Bus has had its chips. It just can't cope any more. Since the FSB sits between the processor and the northbridge chip, all the data the processor worked on passed through it. Hanging off the northbridge chip were the memory, hard drive, graphics card and just about everything else. Increased frequencies and clever tech such as double and quad data rates have helped, but what with multi-core processors, insanely powerful graphics cards and everything else, it's just become flooded. Data rates have topped out at 12,800 MB/s at best, which is just not fast enough. So it's out with the old and in with the new. Two high-speed bus standards with more serious capabilities take the place of the old FSB: Intel's QuickPath Interconnect and AMD's HyperTransport. Both involve processors with onboard memory controllers. No longer will the processor have to funnel data from the main memory down the same bus its trying to access the hard drive through and send data through to the graphics card. Moving the memory controller off the FSB means the old limitations on memory speed have been removed too – it's no longer limited to the speed of the FSB, so dual or triple channel starts to make real sense. Dual channel DDR3-2000, for example, can deliver a maximum (on paper) of 32GB/s, considerably more than the FSB would ever be able to handle. The second aspect of these new architectures is the bus itself, which sits between the processor and the northbridge chip (or what was the northbridge chip). Strictly speaking, both QPI and HT are not buses, but point-to-point connections. A bus is a set of wires that can be used to connect a number of devices, while point-to-point, as you might have guessed, is just for connecting two devices. We'll still call them buses though, because it's a set of wires on the motherboard transferring data, which to most of us means it's a bus. Both systems use similar methods and have similar sets of features, although the technical implementations are different. HyperTransport AMD was first of the big two to replace the FSB with its HyperTransport, released in 2003 with its Athlon 64 processors coupled to Nvidia nForce chipsets. Bundled together it's called the Direct Connect Architecture. HyperTransport is an open standard and has its own .org site to prove it. It was first announced to the world in 2001 and was originally called the Lightning Data Transport (super hero names appear to be de rigueur for high-speed connections). HyperTransport has separate data paths for input and output, enabling the processor to read and write at the same time. It also employs double data rate technology to squeeze two transfers per clock, and has a variable bit-width between two and 32 bits. Thus 3.2GHz double data rate by 32 bits gives us 3.2 x 2 x 32 bits per second in each direction, which when divided by 8 to convert into bytes, reaches the headline 51.2GB/s maximum figure, 25.6GB/s in each direction. However, AMD processors use a 16-bit wide HyperTransport, and the best of them are running HyperTransport at 2GHz, which gives us 16GB/s. HyperTransport isn't limited to PCs. It's being developed to be used on much more complex server systems, and as a bus in high-speed routers. There are even HyperTransport expansion cards. The idea of HyperTransport-enabled expansion cards is an interesting one. It might not mean much for desktops, but for servers it opens all sorts of possibilities. Version 3.0 even supports hot plugging. QuickPath Interconnect Five years after AMD released its high-speed bus on the PC, Intel responded with QuickPath Interconnect. It was developed by a team that used to be part of Digital Equipment Corporation, and was originally called the Common Systems Interface. As with HyperTransport, it's a point-to-point connection, and offers similar speeds. Of course, the two systems are completely incompatible with each other. QPI first appeared in 2008 on the X58 motherboard chipset and the Xeon 5500 processor. QPI currently features on the top end of Intel's Nehalem range. Taken together with the integrated memory controller, it forms the QuickPath Architecture. The physical structure consists of two sets of 20 data links, one set going in one direction, and one set going in the other. As with HyperTransport, it employs low-voltage differential signalling, which uses two signals on separate lines to transmit data, reading the difference between the two. It's a method used on PCs and many other electronic devices to combat electromagnetic interference. Add in a pair of clock lines, and the total pin count is 84. QPI transmits data in flits (yes, that's what Intel calls them) of 80 bits, which takes two clock cycles. Each flit has 8 bits of error detection, 8 bits of header, leaving 64 bits of data. The bus is divided into quadrants, each with five data links, and each can be used independently. QPI runs off a multiplier of the base clock (133MHz for Intel), currently either x18 or x24, giving us speeds of 2.4 or 3.2GHz. All this boils down to theoretical maximum transfer rates of 19.2GB/s for the 2.4GHz version, and 25.6GB/s for the 3.2GHz. The industry likes to employ the term, 'Gigatransfer GT/s'. This is double the frequency, as it includes the double data tech (transferring two bits per clock), thus 6.4GT/s equates to 3.2GHz. Since it's bi-directional, you might prefer to halve those figures, though. Only Intel's top dogs get QPI, and even pretty tasty i7s have to struggle on with the FSB and DMI bus instead. (Direct Media Interface is another point-to-point bus that sits between the northbridge and southbridge chips.) You'll find the 2.4GHz version of QPI on Intel i7-920 through to the 970. The faster version graces the i7-975X, 980X and 990X. Can I overclock QPI? You've just read about how fast these systems are, and you want to overclock them already? Typical. Basically, it's not such a good idea, since you're better off trying to squeeze more performance out of your system elsewhere. Since QPI runs off the base clock (like everything else), adjusting the base clock will overclock QPI. It isn't advised though, as it also overclocks the Uncore (so called because it isn't part of the core). The Uncore controls the L3 cache and the memory bus. This must be clocked at twice the memory clock, and doesn't react well to being played around with. Your best bet is sticking to the simple stuff, such as experimenting with the CPU multiplier. The only time you might want to mess with QPI speeds is if your processor has a locked multiplier. This means you'll have to resort to playing with the base clock. Your best bet here is to drop the QPI multiplier to 18 if it isn't there already and then start increasing the base clock and vCore by little steps until it all stops working. HyperTransport then? It's a similar story with HyperTransport, which can be a sensitive beast if you play with the multiplier or hike the base clock up too much. You'll get more tangible gains elsewhere. The gains that were once had by playing with the FSB speed are gone. We know this won't stop you from trying though. As you might have spotted, the replacement of the FSB with something faster gives your graphics card more breathing space, too. For a start it doesn't have to share the processor's attention with the main memory. The current top spec for connection is PCIe 2.0, which is another high-speed point-to-point system, and can theoretically shift 8GB/s. The next step, PCIe 3.0, is due to be finalised in November, and will be able to shift 32GB/s. We won't see cards until next year though. Which system is faster? There are a lot of numbers thrown about, and to be frank they really don't matter. QPI is currently faster, but HyperTransport is ultimately more flexible. Both are extremely capable, and can quite happily handle a single-processor desktop PC with room to spare. It's still fairly early days too, and both will get faster. Where this tech really flies is in multi-processor systems, connecting each processor to each other processor in a little net of connections, enabling high-speed non-uniform shared memory access. These boys are so capable that on the average desktop you're laughing. That said, you can be sure that if there is bandwidth available, somebody will find a way to use it all up, and it all starts again… 
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| Posted: 24 Nov 2010 01:30 AM PST  There's little point in wall-mounting an ultra-thin flatscreen TV if the bracket is so bulky it makes the set stand out from the wall; hence the demand for thin and flat wallmounts. Netherlands-based company, Vogel's, is a big name in furniture and supports for all kinds of LCD and plasma TVs, projectors and AV equipment, so it's no surprise that the company has turned its engineering skills to this application. The THIN345 Articulating Wall Bracket ticks most of the boxes; it's suitable for a screen sized from 32-52ins, of up to 40mm thick and weighing up to 25kg. And the bracket itself is only 35mm deep, so once your TV is mounted you can hardly get your fingers between it and the wall. Plus, for ultimate convenience, the bracket is articulated, so you can swing the TV out from the wall up to 63cm, turn it to 90˚ left or right, and tilt it through +/-20˚. If you have basic DIY skills, fixing is straightforward, and the mounting holes for attaching the TV are arranged in standard configurations from 100 x 100 to 600x400mm. The bracket is virtually invisible once fitted. The Cable Inlay System hides cables, and fits with Vogel's' extended cable cover system. Sturdily engineered, the mount means that positioning the TV becomes something you can do easily and with confidence. Other than a drilling template there are no tools provided, so you'll need a drill, screwdrivers, spirit level and confidence to get the job done. The instructions are very diagrammatic, so it might take a bit of head-scratching to work out what all the arrows and symbols mean. It's not cheap, although it does have a lifetime guarantee. Related Links
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| Apple-1 computer sells at auction for £133,250 Posted: 24 Nov 2010 01:28 AM PST  An Apple-1 computer in its original packaging has finally been auctioned off by Christie's – raising an impressive £133,250. The auction of the computer had already hit the headlines, but the final price was, according to Christie's: "a record for a personal computer sold at auction". The computer, originally priced at $666.66 had a whopping 8k of RAM and an 8-bit 6502 microprocessor – which is still only marginally less powerful that the computers in TechRadar towers. Monitor and keyboard set The lucky auction winner will still have to supply his own monitor and keyboard – neither were included in Apple's offering. Steve Wozniak – a co-founder of Apple – was in attendance at the auction, on a day which also saw a WWII Enigma machine sold for £67,500. Another lot which received plenty of attention was the sale of papers by Alan Turing, which did not meet its reserve. That was despite a $100,000 contribution from Google to try to make sure that the papers remained at famed UK code-breaking centre Bletchley Park. 
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| Final version of Opera 10.1 arrives for Symbian phones Posted: 24 Nov 2010 01:04 AM PST  Opera has released the final version of Opera Mobile 10.1 for Symbian/Series 60 phones. The speedy browser is now out of beta and available and offering better speeds, geolocation support and all the familiar Opera benefits. "Powerful smartphones deserve an equally powerful browser," said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. "Opera Mobile 10.1 today brings the best mobile browsing experience to the world's most popular smartphone platform." Carakan The 10.1 version of Opera uses the Carakan JavaScript engine and is apparently nine times faster than its predecessor on the SunSpider test. "Also making its debut in Opera Mobile 10.1 is support for geolocation, which puts you and your mobile on the map, adds Opera. "Geolocation enables web services such as maps and travel applications to recognize your location to provide you with customized, relevant content." Opera 10.1 is available now for smartphones based on Symbian^3, and Symbian S60 3rd and 5th editions from m.opera.com. 
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| Xbox and Bing play host to Windows Phone 7 push Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:42 AM PST  Microsoft has confirmed that it will be using the Xbox and its Bing search engine as a way to hammer home the message about its Windows Phone 7 product. Windows Phone 7 represents a huge push from Microsoft back into the consumer phone market – and the software giant is prepared to leverage some of its most successful brands to make it a success. That will include hawking Windows Phone 7 apps and phones through the Xbox platform, and using the visual search of Bing to push its wares as well. No accident "It's no accident that Microsoft has been more visible than usual," explained Microsoft's Todd Brix. "The holiday shopping season is a major focus for us, as evidenced by Windows 7 and Bing campaigns as well as the introductions of exciting new products in Kinect for Xbox 360 and of course Windows Phone 7. "We're heading into one of the biggest shopping weeks of the year and we're on pace to offer roughly 3,000 apps and games by the end of this week. "We've also seen a near 80% increase in the number of registered developers since September, with more than 15,000 developers already signalling their intent to bring exciting content to Windows Phone. Clearly we're just getting warmed up." Zune, Bing and Xbox The blog post outlines several ways in which Windows Phone 7 will be pushed, ranging from the obvious (ad campaigns and the windowsphone.com website) through to the Zune PC software. But it will be the visibility on the Xbox user interface and on Bing that will raise eyebrows. "Last week Microsoft announced that it had sold more than 1 million Kinect devices for Xbox 360 in the first 10 days of availability, adding to the 45 million Xbox 360 consoles already sold," added Brix. "Windows Phone devices, apps and games are now prominent features of the Xbox dashboard that people see on their televisions when they start Xbox and view tabs such as the Spotlight category." Bing's visual search will be leveraged to push the apps as well: "We're using our own popular Bing decision engine to further showcase developers' Windows Phone 7 apps through Bing's Visual Search capabilities in the US and UK. "This allows anyone with a browser to easily find, view and access the growing list of apps and games available for Windows Phones." It represents a hefty slice of what marketing bods call "joined-up-thinking" from Redmond – but will it be enough to push Windows Phone 7 to success? 
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| Nokia unveils new budget C2 and X2 Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:56 AM PST  Nokia has announced a couple of new additions to its budget range: the C2-01 and the X2-01, both running Symbian S40. Unless you're desperate for a full QWERTY keyboard, the C2 is clearly the better of the two, with 3G connectivity, an FM radio, Bluetooth and 12 button standard keyboard below a two inch screen. It also comes with a 3.2MP camera on the back, as well as up to 16GB of onboard storage - all for around €70 (£60). X appeal The X2 eschews the 3G and FM radio, and instead goes on the social networking tip, with Nokia's 'Communities' on board, as well as a landscape-centric 2.4-inch display. However, despite only offering up GPRS/EDGE connectivity, the price is still higher than the C2 at roughly £65. And finally, the Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type is finally shipping to the UK, which is essentially a lot like the C2, but with a much higher spec list: HSDPA connectivity, a 5MP camera with single LED flash and up to 32GB of memory. It's also packing S60 for an operating system, so it can access the shiny and exciting work of the Nokia Ovi Store too. However, it's not going to be cheap: a premium full metal chassis has hiked the cost of £160 SIM free. The Nokia X2 is set to debut later this year, with the C2 set for a Q1 2011 UK release date. 
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| Guide: How to install a motherboard Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:46 AM PST  This article is in association with Dabs.com It's one of the geekier things we could say, but we love motherboards. They're the foundation of any system, the starting point from where the rest of the system is built up from. It dictates the socket you use, therefore the processor you can choose. It provides the memory slots and so the amount and type of memory you will use. The same is true for your graphics, audio, storage and all of the I/O ports. We think choosing one is the harder job, which is why we already have a comprehensive guide to buying a motherboard. Once you know what you need then why not peruse our motherboard reviewsand if there's still too many to choose from we've narrowed them down to our top ten. Perhaps it's because motherboards are the scariest looking components that they put people off, but in reality installing a motherboard is more like putting a Lego kit together.It's just about getting the right bricks in the right places and we've put together the below guide to help you. 1. Clear the area
If you're doing a new build then you should already have an empty case. For upgrades you'll first have to remove all the old components, disconnect everything, undo the motherboard screws and remove it. 2. Add the backplate
Before we think about installing the motherboard you need to first push in the I/O backplate that will have come with the motherboard. This clips into place within the case and is going to be your main headache in a minute. 3. Check the mounting points
Double check the screw mounting points on the case match those of your motherboard. If you have a small microATX board you may need to add additional ones to provide support around the middle of the case. 4. Angle it in
It's easiest to angle the motherboard down towards the backplate. Make sure the I/O ports on the backplate, are lined up with the backplate's grounding catches. This can be a little tricky to line up correctly, so it's worth checking. 5. Screw into place
You will probably find the backplate pushes the motherboard away from the back of the case slightly. So you'll need to push it towards the backplate and then start to screw it into place. With a couple of screws done, the rest should be easy. 6. Front-panel connectors
The front panel on a PC's case provides the power and reset buttons, the hard drive and power LEDs and sometimes an internal speaker. You'll find these wires lose, coming from the front of the case and should be labelled: HDD LED, PWR SW, RST SW, PW LED, SPEAKER or something similar. Each will have a coloured wire and a black wire indicating the positive and negative terminals. 7. Front-panel risers
These connect to the front-panel's bank of risers on the motherboard. This may be labelled with corresponding names for each connector, it may not. Consult the motherboard manual to find where it is. The vital connector is the Power Switch with the Reset Switch a close second these can be connected any way around. For the LED connectors to work correctly the black wire needs to go to the negative terminal, otherwise it'll be off when it should be on. 8. Front panel audio and more
Many cases also provide front-panel audio and USB connections, for USB see below. The type can vary from moterhboard to moterhboard. Many use a standard 10-pin connector possibly marked yellow on the motherboard and labelled F_AUDIO. Ideally the case provides a keyed connector that simply plugs in to this. Otherwise consult the motherboard manual to match the case connectors to each pin. 9. Add Firewire and USB ports
Many motherboards come with additional screw-in backplate USB and Firewire ports. These connect to corresponding ports on the motherboard. These will be keyed and should be colour coordinated. Typically F_USB1, F_USB2 and for Firewire F1_1394 and F2_1394. It's just a case of matching one with the other. 10. Additional ports
The motherboard also provides interfaces for many other peripherals that you will need to install along the way. Importantly Serial ATA for your hard drives and new optical drives, possible a PATA interface for optical drives and old hard drives, we're showing an old floppy connector that's no uncommon. There's the large memory slots, the graphics PCI Express slots and older PCI slots. Not forgetting the CPU fan power, plus a number of other risers for less-common interfaces. 11. Plug in the power
Finally you will need to connect the ATX 24-pin main motherboard power and the 4-pin ATX12V processor power connector, which with Intel socket 1366 motherboards is an 8-pin EPS12V variant. 
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| Acer announces Clear.fi cloud server and alive store Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:23 AM PST  Acer has announced Clear.fi, an 'innovative content sharing platform, and 'alive' a next generation store alongside a host of new tablets. The announcement of the dual touchscreen Iconia and a range of more traditional tablets somewhat overshadowed the arrival of Clear.fi and alive, but they are significant to the computer giant. "With Clear.fi, Acer has created an innovative content sharing platform that merges content stored on different devices across the same network around the idea that it is easier and better if this content is simply linked together under one system with a common interface," stated Acer's official release. "At the same time, Acer also developed 'alive' – its next generation store – from the desire to complete the circle of services and solutions offered by all Acer Group brands by adding content, convergency and continuity to the product mix." One place to join them all Acer believes that people's digital content needs one place to live and be easily accessed – although it will be how well it plays with devices from other manufacturers that decides its fate. "There are no limits to the Clear.fi scalability: any Acer branded device will have Clear.fi embedded, and can instantly join the wireless home network and share stored multimedia," added Acer. "Take a photo on your smartphone and when you get home, it will be available straight away on your notebook or TV. Edit a video on your PC and you can watch it back on your TV straight away. "When a friend comes to visit you with his wedding album, Clear.fi immediately detects his notebook and the image library; just select where you want the content appear be played and it's done." It's alive!
The 'alive' store is a 'collaboration with key partners' and "lets users discover and enjoy a rich variety of digital content." "Alive provides them with content related to their personal interests, whether it's music, movies, books or games. "Last but not least, as alive content is managed directly by content providers, it is instantly updated any time there is something new and relevant, allowing users to be constantly up to speed with their interests." Do we need another web store and cloud server? Depends on how it integrates with our digital lives. 
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| Acer announces 7 and 10-inch Android tablets Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:17 AM PST  Acer has unveiled a triumvirate of new tablets this week, showcasing a 7- and 10-inch Android tablet and a 10-inch Windows 7 tablet. The computing company took to the stage in New York to show off its new tablet range, while also delivering news of its dualscreen tablet - the Acer Iconia. The smallest tablet announced is the 7-inch Android device. The screen boasts a resolution of 1280x800, is 16:10 and has full touch capabilities. It has a front-facing camera and has a dual-core processor. This means that Adobe Flash 10.1 is supported. The tablet comes with both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and there is DLNA connectivity on board.
The 10.1-inch Android tablet has a full capacitive screen, boasts Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and is just 13.3mm thick. There is also an HDMI port on board and 1080p playback. For gaming, there is a gyroscope on board and Acer is guaranteeing you will be able to play games on the device which are "an entertainment experience on par with the best game consoles".
Finally, there is the 10.1-inch Windows tablet. This has a full-size keyboard, a docking device, is only 15mm in depth and weighs less than a kilo. The tablet has a next-gen AMD chip inside and is boasting "a superior touch experience". There are also two 1.3MP cameras, one rear and one front-facing, on board. This is topped off with 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. The Acer 7-inch tablet and Acer 10-inch tablet have a UK release date of April 2011. The 10.1-inch Windows tablet has a UK release date of February 2011. Pricing for all of the devices is to be confirmed. 
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| Acer unveils enormous new smartphone Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:17 AM PST  Acer has announced a new smartphone with some high-end tech specs - but decided against giving it a name. The new 'next generation smartphone' has a massive 4.8-inch screen, taking it into Dell Streak territory, where it also runs Android, but with no mention of which version of Google's OS it will come with. It comes with a 1024 x 480 resolution display as well, making it technically the highest-res smartphone out there, although whether this is a big phone or a small tablet has yet to be decided - and the pixels per inch still won't match the iPhone 4. Curiously it's got a 21:9 ratio display, something we've not seen since the iconic LG Chocolate BL40 last year. With dimensions of 141.7 x 64 x 13.3mm and a 170g weight, it might be a little hefty in the pocket, although the width will attract some of the more style-conscious out there. Snapping and all that There's an 8MP camera bolted on the back with single LED flash, and a 2MP front camera for video calling. DLNA technology lets you stream media from your PC, and an HDMI connectivity cable. A 6-axis gyroscope, like that seen on the iPhone 4, will make gaming a lot more fun - although the lack of Android games that support this function are at a premium at the moment, so Acer's claim of 'a perfect games console' is a little optimistic. So is the claim that 'the LED backlit display uses the same technology as TV showing super bright and vivid images' - which feels a little like saying the metal chassis is made the same way as your car. We've decided to call this smartphone the Acer River - we've had the Liquid and the Stream, so it's easy to see the water-themed corollary Acer's going for here. Don't forget - TechRadar named it first. 
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| Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:39 AM PST  If you thought that new twists on Android handsets were getting a bit thin on the ground, take a look at the Motorola Defy. Sporting Moto's love-it-or-hate-it MotoBlur social networking system as seen first on the Dext, the Defy adds an extra we've not seen with Android before: ruggedness. Motorola says the Defy is dustproof, water resistant and scratch resistant. A tough little cookie then. We got our review sample from Vodafone but we also found it online SIM free for £299.63 inc VAT.
The Defy certainly looks a bit on the tough side. The long edges each sport three screws holding the shiny front plate to the matte rubberised back. There's another screw on the bottom edge.
The top mounted 3.5mm headset connector and left side mounted micro-USB port have rubberised covers to help prevent dust and dirt getting in to the Defy's innards. We reckon you'll throw dust protection to the wind and rip the headset jack cover off after a few days because it's a real pain, though the micro-USB cover is less of a nuisance.
The backplate is held down by a lock slider that helps ensure a snug fit. Both SIM and microSD card slots are under the battery. The latter is here, we suppose, so that there doesn't have to be a side mounted slot, but getting to it is a pain.
Meanwhile the Gorilla Glass screen is designed to resist scratching. While we avoided attacking the Defy with a mallet, a few attempts to scratch the screen with a pen and some keys were impressively well-handled. We scraped with some gusto, but the screen remained unscratched.
We even ran the phone under a tap for a few minutes and it seemed to deal with that well, too. While the phone survived this water treatment, the capacitive screen loses responsiveness when wet, so don't expect to take the Defy into the bath and use the touchscreen under water. No, we can't think why you'd want to do that either, to be honest. We also had a go at dropping the Defy deliberately in a few situations. We threw it down some stairs, flung it onto the pavement, and it survived these things unscathed, too. The bottom line is that you certainly could destroy this phone. Drive over it, put the corner of your chair on it when you sit down, drop it into a fire — these things would kill it dead. But it certainly seems to us to be more robust than almost all other handsets, which have screens and chassis that are easy to ding. None of this shock-proofing has had a negative effect on the general design of the Motorola Defy. It isn't the prettiest handset out there, but its black chassis is no real surprise, and the curved edges are nice enough. It fits nicely in the hand and pocket, with dimensions on a par with many other handsets at 118g in weight and 107 x 59 x 13.4mm.
With GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi including 802.11n, and 2GB of built-in storage, the story thus far is good. With Android 2.1 on-board, the Defy is a little bit behind the times. Really, we can't see why a handset that's being pushed like this one is can't carry Android 2.2, and its absence is a big point against the Defy. Motorola has skinned the basic Android experience and, while the skinning isn't overpowering, it certainly makes its presence felt. So, when you're looking at the main apps list, there's a certain familiarity to things but also some customisation.
The seven Android main screens have an oddity about them, too. At the bottom of each of them are three shortcuts: to the dialler, contacts and the apps menu. But immediately after you flick to a new screen, this is replaced by an icon that stays in place for just milliseconds and shows which screen you're on. We think it's over the top.
Motorola has added a lot of its own widgets. These give a real fillip to Android's own offerings, and enables you to do all kinds of things. For example: Sticky Notes let you, well, add a sticky note to a Home screen.
Weather gives you HTC Sense-a-like current weather info and forecasting data from AccuWeather.
And the photo widget gives you quick access to your gallery. None of these blew our socks off, but it is nice to see the Android basics augmented. The screen itself measures a reasonable 3.7 inches. Anything around the 3.7 and 3.8 mark is a good compromise between needing overly large hardware and not being big enough to deliver the detail needed for media-rich activities such as web browsing. A pixel resolution of 480 x 854 puts it just slightly above the 480 x 800 of many of the leading edge smartphones of the day such as the HTC Desire, HTC Desire HD, HTC Desire Z and the new Windows Phone 7 devices such as the HTC 7 Trophy and LG Optimus 7 — though it's still bested by the iPhone 4. Crammed into a small space, the pixels make for a sharp and bright display. The viewing angles are good too, and the capacitive screen was highly responsive to finger sweeps and presses. If we have any complaints about the screen, it's that the Gorilla Glass is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. Under the screen, there are four touch-sensitive buttons for the very familiar Android functions of Home, Menu, Back and Search. These are a bit close to the bottom edge of the chassis for absolute comfort, but they are responsive. A key feature of the Defy is its MotoBlur social networking capabilities. You can set up a whole variety of accounts from a single Social Networking link in the main apps list. You'll notice that, in fact, these links include mobile email and corporate synchronisation for Microsoft Exchange server users.
Sign in to Twitter and Facebook, though, and you can populate the contact book from them. You have to manually link contacts from each of the two and this can be a real pain if you've lots of friends, but once done you can send messages in both apps from the contact list. You can choose either Twitter or Facebook to be the main source of pictures for your contacts. There are a couple of ways to view data from both these sources via widgets. The Messages widget enables you to see info from any services you are signed in to or just a subset of them.
Meanwhile the Social Networking widget brings together updates, photos, new friend requests and more in a widget that takes up the main bulk of a Home screen and offers one message at a time with the facility to scroll to see more. On screen this widget is called 'Happenings'; a sucky name if ever we heard one. We found Happenings a bit slow and jerky to refresh while scrolling through the widget. A quick tap on a message calls up a full screen version of it and you can compose a quick reply from here as well as scroll around in a less jerky way to see more messages.
If you tap a contact's name, you're taken straight to their contact entry and from there you can see info about them, skip between social media services that they are on, and send messages including email, if that's set up. While the integration is good, this pair of widgets feels clunky and look unrefined. We hate that unread messages aren't marked as such. We aren't too pleased with being told we've got 85 unread Twitter and Facebook messages after we've paged through them all. Finally, you've got the Contact Quick Tasks widget. This lets you put a contact onto a Home screen and access a range of services related to them. You can make this widget large or small depending on how many services you want to use and, with the widget set up, a quick tap takes you to the relevant area. This is nice, but to make the most of it you have to dedicate an awful lot of Home screen space to one contact.
With all this social networking going on Motorola hasn't forgotten about good old voice calls. The Motorola Defy includes Moto's Crystal Talk Plus. This is meant to filter out background noise and amplify your voice. Well, maybe, but people we spoke to could still hear our radio in the background indoors and ambient sound outdoors, and they said we sounded a little fuzzy too. Still, we had no trouble maintaining a strong signal when out and about.
Oh, and why, we'd like to know, given all the social networking integration, is there no smart dialling feature on the phone dialler. We don't always want to pop into contacts to find the people we want to call. As well as the social networking messaging features, you can create and send SMS and email messages, of course. Setting up email is often a simple matter of adding address and password. In many cases the Defy can do the rest, though you may have to add incoming and outgoing servers manually. Choose Messaging from the apps menu and your Facebook, Twitter and any other social networking services are accessible as well email and SMS. A universal inbox brings messages to one location.
What's nice about this is that, if you've linked contacts together, you can send replies using a service other than the one a message came from. This might be handy if you want to reach someone quickly by SMS regardless of how the original message was sent. Where SMS is concerned, there's a good threaded view of messages we really like.
We've already noted that the capacitive screen is very responsive to the touch. When it comes to entering text for any kind of messaging you've got the usual QWERTY keyboards in portrait and widescreen modes. The Motorola Defy offer Swype as an alternative to tapping individually at keys. This can be really fast to use, but it's easy to switch back to good old tappity-tap if you prefer.
With a 3.7-inch screen, the Motorola Defy is able to handle web browsing quite well. At fullscreen view, you can't usually read much on a page, but double-tap or pinch to zoom and you are fine on that front.
The responsiveness of the screen means you can drag pages around at will, which is great for reading through longer pages of text.
There's relatively little space taken up by buttons and other control clutter. You hit the Menu button when you want to open a new window or bookmark a page.
If you've got more than one window opened, it's easy to see these listed and switch between them by tapping the Menu button beneath the screen and then choosing Windows.
Android 2.1 is supplemented by Adobe Flash Lite 3. While not giving full Flash compliance, it does mean you can get some Flash content through the web browser. However, it refused to show any video from the BBC news website.
On the brighter side, there's a YouTube client, which ran really smoothly, delivering great video quality.
The camera shoots stills at five megapixels and there's a small LED flash. The autofocus kicks in after you've pressed the on-screen shutter button, so you'll need to hold the camera steady after you think you've actually taken a photo. If you get a bit, you'll get blurred photos. The range of effects is a bit basic, though you do get red, green and blue tinting along with the black and white, negative, sepia and solarise standards. As you flick through these settings, you get a preview with your photo in a small window on-screen, so you can see how they will affect your shot, which is a neat touch. You can set a Quick Upload option, which is basically a default upload location. This then appears as an option when you view photos in the Gallery, so you can send an image off immediately. It isn't that quick, to be honest, because you can't use it from the camera app itself. In the Gallery, you've also got the usual Android share option of course, which you can use to email photos or share them in other ways.
Click here for full-res version There's a lack of detailing in the distance, but the foreground detailing is reasonably good. Note, though, that the camera can't cope with the variance between light sky and dark foreground.
Click here for full-res version Plenty of ambient light and no extremes of light and shade means this is merely a passable photo. The lack of detailing on the foreground leaf shows the camera's limitations.
Click here for full-res version This photo was shot on a fairly dull day, but with nothing in the foreground, the camera really struggled to decide what the photo's subject was meant to be. The result is a lack of quality all round. Video is disappointing. The maximum resolution is 640 x 480 which is paltry in these days of 720p shooters.
The 640 x 480 video is okay for showing on the handset, but you probably won't want to keep it in the family archive. Motorola provides its Connected Music Player for listening to your songs. This brings together several aspects of music listening under one umbrella heading including online and offline services and it is a real star feature.
The music player itself does the usual job of playing tunes. Sound quality is reasonable. The handset speaker produces a fair quality of sound, and the provided headphones are reasonably good, too. The music player automatically shows lyrics alongside the music. It did pick up some odd background images for tracks though.
There's an FM radio on board with 10 presets, though you have to set them individually rather than having a general seek and store happen with a single command.
You've also got access to the Shoutcast online radio, which offers hundreds of stations. This worked really well over Wi-Fi and there's a link into the Amazon MP3 store so you can buy tracks. All very nice. Under the Video heading, you've got a link into YouTube (so you can search for music videos), a couple of online TV channels (which deliver fairly ropey streamed material), and playback of your own on-handset music video library. There's also a Community section, which gives you TuneWiki lyric searches, charts, and tune identification. There are some lovely tweaks. For example, when you're playing a tune hit the Menu button and you can link straight in to YouTube music videos of the track. It's seamless and addictive. There's lots going on here and it's a very expansive approach to music playback that brings a lot more to the party than just what you have on your microSD card. Video playback isn't catered for here unless it's song related, though. To see videos, you need to head over to the Gallery, where videos are listed alongside photos. You can assign tags and even do a bit of light video editing.
The videos we watched displayed nicely with no jerking and good colour rendering. The screen might be a bit small for catch-up TV using myPlayer, but the quality is good. The 1500mAh battery the Motorola Defy is equipped with enough power to keep it going for a fair old time. We managed a day between charges easily, and when we left the phone on standby for a couple of days just picking up the odd SMS, the battery barely seemed to deplete at all.
That matters a lot for a handset as connected and media rich as this one. Make full use of its always-on social media updates, media playback and the GPS, and you might still get through a day between charges. If you want to keep an eye on data usage, there's a Data Manager in the Settings area, where you can get a tally of data used and also optimise how and when a data connection is used.
The obligatory GPS and Google Maps are present with navigation and we didn't have a problem getting or maintaining a fix. Motorola has added a fair few additional applications too. We've already noted a link to the Amazon MP3 store, and there's also a little app called Cardock, which provides a nifty six-icon screen for use when driving – with one of the six icons customisable.
There is also a file manager and, for those who want to do a bit of work on the move, a copy of QuickOffice for working with Microsoft Office documents.
The Motorola Defy surprised us more than we'd expected it to. We'd had a few issues with the Dext, the original MotoBlur handset so that even though we liked it, it didn't sparkle. The Defy is being presented as a tough handset with good social media links, and we agree on both counts. While the hardware design isn't enough to generate gasps of awe it is solid, and the Gorilla Glass screen will come into its own in time rather than on day one, as the handset gets dropped and knocked around. But it is the media capability that shines out, with the connected music player an unsung hero. That all isn't to say we don't have issues, of course. But Motorola is getting back to something like its sparkling past form with the Defy. We liked The screen is superb. It's very responsive to the finger and the resolution nice and high so that video and web browsing in particular are a pleasure. MotoBlur works really well after you've spent the time linking contacts. Though we do think some people might find it a case of overkill. The media player is wonderful. We love the connected features, and adore the idea of bundling online radio and FM radio, music playback, lyric search and video search for tunes currently playing in one place. It's a really clever of piece of joined-up multimedia thinking. The battery life seems better than we'd have expected for such a connected handset, though it's getting very difficult to be definitive about this because different users will use their phones in different ways. For us, though, a day's average usage was not a problem. We disliked Android 2.1 should not have been used. Android 2.2 should have. It's that simple. There's no smart dialler. For such a social networking-aware handset, this seems odd. Yes, it's easy to drop into contacts and find people, but missing out the smart dialler seems like a simple oversight. The camera is really not up to scratch. We've seen much better five-megapixel cameras, and for video shooting to be stuck at 640 x 480 max resolution feels very out of touch. There isn't enough on board memory, and the microSD card sits under the battery where it is not easy to get at. Verdict It is hard not to like the Motorola Defy, but not necessarily for the reasons Motorola wants us to. MotoBlur's good, and we like the Twitter and Facebook integration, and we're happy to be able to bring contacts in from these – and other – sources. But having to manually link lots of contacts is a real pain, and for some users the range of ways they can get into social networking data might just be too overwhelming. We're pleased about the rugged nature of the phone too. The covered headset slot probably won't stay covered for long, because you'll remove the rubber protector in frustration fairly quickly. But the water resistance and tough screen are welcome features and the general build doesn't suffer for them. However, in the end it's the music and video capability that really wowed us. The ease with which various elements link together, the cleverness of joining FM and internet radio via a single screen, easy tune lookup, lyrics provision, and the ability to look for videos of the current track while it's playing are all great stuff. Still, we'd like a better camera, and we really wanted the microSD card slot to be more accessible and for there to be more on-board storage. Related Links
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| Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:20 AM PST  Emerging from the ashes of the Microsoft Courier project in collaboration with Microsoft, the Acer Iconia dual-touchscreen laptop really is a curious piece of kit. Packing two 14-inch capacitive touchscreens, the Iconia is a booklet laptop-tablet hybrid device running Windows 7 Home Premium. It does away with the traditional keyboard and mouse setup in favour of an exclusively touch-based interface. The Courier concept was radically different from all the touchscreen tablets that we've seen so far. It was designed with a journal-type interface, enabling you organise dynamically-updating web clippings, images, notes and other content in a way that was designed to make your life a lot easier to organise.
But while the Microsoft Courier was designed to be a dual-screen, portable touchscreen booklet, the Acer Iconia is an absolute monster in comparison. While it retains the general concept of the Courier project, the Acer Iconia weighs a bulky 2.8kg, and packs some surprisingly high-end system specs. At its heart beats an Intel Core i5-480 chip, 4GB of RAM (par for the course on a Windows 7 machine), 640GB storage and a four-cell battery. And yes you read that correctly, it's a four-cell battery. Which lasts just three hours. Yeah, we know.
Connections include Wireless N and 3G, while you can connect to a TV or third monitor using the HDMI port. There are also two USB 2.0 ports and one USB 3.0 port. How much does it cost? The price is also rather different to most touchcreen tablets out there. The Iconia will initially go on sale on January 15 for a rather hefty £1,499 in John Lewis stores, as well as Micra Anvika stores such as Harrods and Acer Experience Centres. By the end of February, though, the Iconia will be available from all the other major retailers, and that price might come down at that point too – the £1,499 price point is merely a suggested figure.
Physically, the Iconia looks very similar to any other Acer laptop, but in the traditional place of the keyboard sits a second 14-inch touchscreen. The two screens are divorced by about two inches in total, so while the Windows desktop extends across both panels, it's not quite as slick and seamless as you might expect. Acer has attempted to join the two screens together and make the Windows 7 interface more manageable by using its own overlay called the Acer Ring, which appears on the bottom screen.
The Acer Ring is akin to the Start Menu for the Iconia's socially-designed touchscreen features. To call it up, you place all the fingertips on one hand onto the screen. It pops up on the bottom panel, and from here you have access to all the goodies that make this device so interesting. Shortcut gestures The Iconia uses touch gestures to help you navigate to the menus and the content without having to clunk your way through the standard Windows interface. Users of mouse gestures will already be very familiar with this sort of system.
They're all customisable, and you can set a touch gesture for pretty much anything. Using the Acer Ring, you programme your gesture in – it can be anything from placing two fingers on the screen, to drawing a stickman – and you can set that to open any file, menu, URL, programme, application etc.
The gestures do, though, all have to be one continuous drawing, as soon as you lift your finger, the gesture is finished. There are two gestures which you can't change. They're the 'summon keyboard' gesture which is to place both palms flat on the bottom screen, and the 'summon the Acer Ring' gesture which is to place all five fingers of one hand on the screen in a sort of claw shape. Media From within the Acer Ring, you have access to all your music, videos and pictures. This means you can access your media again without having to fiddle your way through the Windows menus with your fingers. Windows 7 has never been be a comfortable OS for touch and it never will be, so the fact that Acer has endeavoured to bypass most of the Windows navigation is a good thing.
However, whenever you do end up having to dip your fingers back into vanilla Windows 7, the user experience is a bit painful – but we'll get to that in a minute. If you're watching a video, you're able to switch off the screen you're not using, or turn the brightness down, using the Acer Ring. So while that three hours of battery life is limited to say the least, you can at least manage that three hours in any way you'd want to.
In general, the media features work well, but we're not sure we'd want to pass up using MPC or VLC in favour of the Acer software. And that's the problem with a lot of the features on offer here. Scrapbook and journal Using the Acer Ring you can capture content in your scrapbook and your journal. You literally select an area of the screen, say a section on TechRadar.com, and then tell the Acer Ring where you want to send that snapshot.
If you send it to your scrapbook, it'll stay as-is as an image, and you can then flip, rotate, zoom and annotate at will. Your scrapbook ends up being pages of layered up bits and bobs and it's useful if you see a cool picture on a site which you want to save. Ideal if you're a student, as it enables you to compile notes and research in one place. That £1,499 is hardly student-friendly, though. Journal The journal behaves slightly differently in that the content you capture to it updates itself dynamically. So if you save a screenshot of a section of TechRadar to your journal, it will always stay up to date. So say you saved the TechRadar carousel at the top of our homepage, you'd be able to go back to your journal at any time and see what that carousel looks like – and it'll always be up to date. It's an interesting way of keeping in touch with your favourite sites without having to load up entire web pages in sequence. This is the sort of functionality at the heart of Microsoft's Courier project and you can see that Acer has collaborated heavily with Microsoft in the creation of this product. Keyboard The keyboard is actually quite comfortable to type on. It's big enough that you'd be able to avoid hitting the wrong keys too often etc, but it's not what we'd call perfect, either.
There are no legs under the laptop, which means the bottom screen is completely flat. This is not ideal for anyone planning to do a lot of typing – in fact it's akin to a one-way ticket to RSI Hell. It would be a lot easier to use with a tilted laptop dock – but again, doesn't that defeat the point? One cool feature is that you can actually customise the on-screen keyboard by using skins, and you can change the size, key layout etc.
If you want to bypass the keyboard completely, you can use the built-in handwriting recognition to get your words on-screen. It worked surprisingly well in our test, although again the lack of a frictionless surface made handwriting on the screen a bit of a pain. Underneath the keyboard is a touch trackpad, so if you want to use the Acer Iconia as a standard laptop you can. Because it's made of glass though, the trackpad isn't particularly smooth and it's a pain to use. Finger prints are a problem generally, especially when some of the core features of the Iconia demand that you put your two hands all over the bottom screen quite regularly. Social networking Another feature available from the Acer Ring is a social networking hub that pulls a feed in from any of the big social sites. So you can have you Facebook, YouTube and Twitter feeds, for example, available to you without you needing to install a client such as TweetDeck.
The version of the Iconia that we saw was distinctly lacking in optimised features for each service, and it absolutely does not rival the likes of Tweetdeck on functionality. But during our test, Acer went to great lengths to stress that we were playing with a prototype and that it's all still being improved back at Acer HQ.
While the Acer Iconia is undoubtedly an exciting piece of kit, we don't think it quite matches up to the promise of Microsoft's Courier concept. For a start, it's one bulky mother of a laptop. At 2.8kg it's hardly portable, and isn't that the point of a touchscreen tablet device? Sure this isn't a tablet like the Apple iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but why remove the keyboard and mouse, add a touchscreen keyboard, and then put it all together in a device exactly the same size and weight of a standard office laptop? It makes no sense to us. Navigating the web using Internet Explorer in Windows 7 cannot get any easier than using a keyboard and mouse. Introducing touch into the equation simply makes things more difficult. We really like the Acer Ring overlay, and the scrapbooks and journals are a really interesting and new way of digesting your daily helping of web info. But is it easier than just putting some shortcuts in your favourites bar in Firefox? We have our significant doubts. We liked: The software that Acer has put together for this product is fantastic. It works well, and barring the odd bit of lag, which we can probably put down to this being an incomplete prototype, it does a good job of living up to the promise of Microsoft Courier. The onscreen keyboard is nice, and the customisations are a nice touch. It's also really cool to have a web page spreading across two top-to-bottom screens. We disliked: The three-hour battery life is a bit of a joke. Running a Core i5 CPU simultaneously with two bright touchscreens is always going to be extremely taxing on any battery. Acer could no doubt have put a bigger battery in, but that would have made the product even heavier. The whole thing reeks of compromise. That leads us to the form factor, which is also an enormous drawback – it's just too big, heavy and cumbersome. To be a truly revolutionary product, the Iconia needed to be smaller, slimmer – portable basically. And portable this ain't. The other major inevitable drawback is the inclusion of Windows 7. It's just not an operating system that's ever going to lend itself to an intuitive touch experience. The Acer Ring overlay is slick, but as soon as you have to go back into the regular Windows interface, the joy ends and the pain begins. The final glaring omission is the ability to swivel the top screen round and fold it back down to create a tablet. This feature is already included in so many touchscreen tablets out there, it's just so disappointing that Acer has left it out. Oh, and did we mention the price? Verdict: The Acer Iconia is going to be big. In fact, it might well be massive. But it's not going to be this version. It might not even be version two that really hits the spot. Acer is going to have to slim things down, improve battery life and ditch Windows 7 before this becomes anything like a usable, mass market product. Maybe when Microsoft has launched its embedded touch OS, there will be a proper platform for products like this to thrive on. But until then, while there are lots of things to like about the Iconia, there are just too many things to hate. 
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| In pictures: Acer Iconia tablet Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:20 AM PST The Acer Iconia was announced in New York this week – a dual-screen tablet concept that is powered by Windows 7 Home Premium and said to be the first of its kind in the market. TechRadar was given an exclusive look at a pre-release model of the device, which has a clamshell chassis which consists of two 14-inch HD screens. The Acer Iconia is certainly a strange beast. As there is a hinge separating the two screens, it doesn't quite sit as a (frankly massive) tablet. But the device can be spread out nearly flush on a table for use in presentations and the like.
The idea of having two separate screens is an interesting one. For example, you can have twitter feeds on the bottom screen, while watching a YouTube video on the top screen. If, say, you were into the stock market, then the two screens would free up space to have live charts on one screen and share prices on the other. When it comes to typing, a virtual keyboard appears when you press your palms on to one of the screens.
The keyboard is responsive, though typing on the thing for long periods would play havoc with your wrists. Specs-wise, the Acer Iconia packs a Calpella i5 processor, Intel HD graphics, 2x DDR3 memory (4GB and above) and it is powered by a 4-cell battery. This means that you will only get around three hours' battery life out of the tablet. This does make sense, given that there are two 14-inch screens to power and Acer has also added its own overlay, but the alloted power time will not be enough for those who are using the thing on the go. At 2.78kg, though, this is more of a desktop replacement than a portable tablet.
The Acer overlay has been called the Acer Ring – this is a place where you can easily access documents, bring up web pages and use the capacitive screens to resize pictures. To summon the Acer Ring, you have to put one palm on the screen.
Both screens can work independently of each other and connectivity on the device comes in the form of three USB ports (one is USB 3.0), HDMI and there is also Wi-Fi and 3G support.
The Acer Iconia TechRadar was shown is currently powered by Windows 7 Home Premium. However, this could well change when the device is released in January. This is because Acer has collaborated closely with Microsoft on the dual-screen tablet. The UK release date for the Acer Iconia is 16 January and it will be priced at £1,500. For a more in-depth look, check out TechRadar's Acer Iconia hands on with the device. 
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| Acer Iconia dual touchscreen tablet announced Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:19 AM PST  Acer has announced the arrival of the Acer Iconia – a dual touchscreen tablet that's been created in close collaboration with Microsoft. The device is a curious one. It looks like a laptop but is very much a tablet hybrid. There's no mouse or traditional keyboard. Instead either screen can act as a virtual keyboard. The tablet/laptop is powered by Windows 7 Home Premium and is packing some not-too shabby specs. These include: an Intel Core i5-480 chip, 4GB of RAM (par for the course on a Windows 7 machine), 640GB storage and a four-cell battery. It's the four-cell battery that is a worry – Acer has told TechRadar that you will get around three hours' play out of it. This means that you will be mostly using the Acer Iconia as a desktop replacement, rather than a carry everywhere tablet device. Iconia conectivity Connectivity on the Acer Iconia comes in the form of three USBs, one of which is USB 3.0, HDMI and there's 3G and Wi-Fi on board. The two screens are both 720p, so great for watching movies on, and can be used completely independently of each other. Acer has added an overlay to Windows 7 that's called Acer Ring. This is where you have access to all your of your media, like movies, pictures and social networking. The Acer Iconia dual touchscreen tablet has a UK release date of 16 January and will cost £1,500. But you don't have to wait that long to read what the tablet is like... 
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| In Depth: Hands on: iOS 4.2 review Posted: 23 Nov 2010 07:33 AM PST  Apple's iOS 4.2.1 update for its mobile devices arrived on 22 November 22 and we've been trying it out. If you've not yet installed the update, ensure you first do a manual back-up of your stored back-up files, in case of problems. Apple provides the locations of said files in a technote. Catch-up for iPad Although iOS 4.2.1 brings updates to all iOS devices, the iPad benefits most, finally catching up with the iPhone and iPod touch in important areas such as multitasking and folders. Multitasking works as per Apple's smaller iOS devices: apps are 'paused' in the background, bar Apple-approved tasks (such as playing audio); a double-click of the Home button brings up a multitasking bar, enabling you to switch apps or tap-hold to access quit buttons; a left-swipe of the multitasking bar provides access to iPod controls and the orientation lock. The main advantage the iPad brings is in providing brightness and volume sliders in addition to the iPod controls; you also get more apps in the multitasking bar (six in portrait, seven in landscape). Annoyingly, the orientation lock is now the only mechanism to stop the iPad's twitchy accelerometer from rotating the screen when you're using it - Apple has turned the easily discoverable hardware control into a pointless mute switch. On the plus side, while multitasking initially made our test iPad feel sluggish, everything was fine after a reboot.
MULTITASKING: Multitasking comes to the iPad, but the orientation lock is now software-only Folders work as per the iPhone - drag an app icon on top of another to make a new folder. The iPad again makes use of its generous screen space, enabling you to store 20 apps within a single folder. Since folders can be placed in the iPad's six-item Dock, this potentially provides rapid access to 120 apps from any Home Screen page. As on the iPhone, folder icons display miniature icons of nine enclosed apps.
NEW FOLDERS: Folders on the iPad can store up to 20 apps Along with Mail's unified mailbox, this update brings Game Center to the iPad. The back-and-forth nature of Game Center navigation is awkward and annoying on the iPhone, but on iPad the spacious two-pane layout makes it simple to compare scores with friends. Additionally, iOS 4 on iPad means your scores are now accessible and saveable for Game Center-compatible universal apps on any device you're using.
GAME ON: Game Center for iPad makes good use of extra screen space Cross-device updates The biggest two updates for all iOS devices are perhaps the most disappointing. AirPrint initially promised printing to compatible and shared printers; but support for the latter recently vanished, leaving AirPrint currently compatible with only a handful of HP printers. This is a pretty pathetic state of affairs, and Mac users for the time being should seriously consider Ecamm's excellent Printopia for sharing printers to iOS devices. Windows owners should instead march on Cupertino. AirPlay is also problematic: while it largely works fine for streaming content from Apple's own media apps to the Apple TV, it's audio-only for (some) third-party apps, and it's unknown when or if this situation will improve. A major update that isn't a disappointment is Find My iPhone. This free universal app works in conjunction with iOS 4.2.1 and a free MobileMe account to provide location and remote-wipe services for your iOS devices - things that previously required a fully paid $99 per year MobileMe account. Apple's wording regarding support isn't entirely clear, suggesting the service only works with its latest devices. However, you instead need - for some reason - to use a 2010 iOS device to create the free MobileMe account, after which point you can add whatever devices you like. For example, we got everything working fine on an iPhone 3GS. (Ironically, the terms and conditions Agree button twice crashed the Settings app on our iPad, but all was fine post-reboot.)
FREE TO FIND: Find My iPhone, working on our iPhone 3GS - for free As with Snow Leopard on the Mac, it's actually many of the smaller tweaks that turn iOS 4.2.1 into a success. For example, if you regularly hand your device over to a devious toddler whose favourite game is 'delete all of daddy's apps', you can now lock down app installation and deletion (along with Game Center requests and, importantly, in-app purchases) in the Restrictions portion of Settings. We're not sure how discoverable this feature is (our guess: not very), but when unearthed it's easy to use and intuitive. Just make sure the Mini You doesn't figure out your four-digit passcode…
SAFE: If your toddlers delete all your apps, you can now disable app deletion in Settings Elsewhere, Notes gets a choice of fonts (the hideous Marker Felt, the hideous Chalkboard and the non-hideous Helvetica), Photos enables multiple-item selection prior to a share (seemingly restricted to five items on our iPhone 3GS, but not on the iPad), you can define specific ringtones and SMS tones per contact, and Safari gets enhanced sharing options and in-page search. The share button replaces the old '+' bookmarks one, and essentially adds access to AirPrint, and so it's unlikely to be of much use to many until Apple 'unbreaks' that feature. In-page search works nicely, despite the bonkers workflow - you use the search box (yes, the one marked 'Google') and if any in-page matches are found, the last option in the list tells you. Tap it and the first instance of your term is highlighted. You can then use the Next button to access more matches, or, on the iPad, start another search by using the toolbar's built-in search field. The workflow and baffling lack of a Previous button suggest this is very much a 1.0 (or, perhaps, 0.1) version of this feature, but it works well enough, despite its quirks.
NEW BUTTON: Safari gets a new share button; on the iPad, the number of open pages is now also displayed Future plans Apple of course remains tight-lipped about future plans for iOS, but numerous features remain notable by their absence: a decent notifications system; wireless sync; multi-user capabilities; no streaming media to your iOS device from a networked Mac or PC. Despite these shortcomings and AirPrint and AirPlay being less than hoped for, iOS 4.2.1 is a must-have upgrade for iPad owners. For iPhone and iPod touch owners, the reasons for upgrading are fewer, but the revisions still make iOS 4.2.1 compelling, since you're getting improvements for no investment aside from a little of your time. 
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| Buying Guide: PC or Mac: which should you buy next? Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:30 AM PST  Ever thought about switching from PC to Mac, or from Mac to PC? If you're considering a new or additional computer there are plenty of things to consider before deciding which platform to pledge allegiance to. Does the Mac's lower cost of ownership make it a better long-term bet? What's the best platform for modding, tinkering and tweaking? Can you really compare a PC or Mac laptop on price alone? Let's find out. PC or Mac: price If PCs were made to the same standard, from the same materials, with the same profit margins as Macs then they'd be just as expensive as Apple kit. Most of them aren't, however, and as a result most of them are much cheaper than similarly specified Macs (it's a completely different story in tablets, phones and MP3 players, but that's another article).
NOT CHEAP: Macs are many things, but they aren't cheap: the most affordable Mac starts at £599 PC vs Mac: reliability and total cost of ownership The standard response to "Macs are expensive" is that Macs offer lower total cost of ownership (TCO). That's true, but that's more relevant to businesses where reliability and security dictate the amount a company spends on IT support. Macs are more secure than PCs - they don't get viruses and malware is almost unheard of - but Microsoft has been closing the gap for years, and a savvy PC owner's Windows 7 box is very secure, too. Security is just part of the equation, however. Windows 7 is pretty solid, but we still find it crashes more frequently than Snow Leopard does. There are two reasons for that. The first is that OS X Snow Leopard is based on BSD, a flavour of Unix that's been around for decades and which is famously reliable. The second is that where OS X only needs to support a very small group of computers - Apple ones - Windows has to support so many possible PC manufacturers, models and configurations that it's a miracle it works at all. In our experience misbehaving drivers, mysterious freezes and other irritants are much less common on the Mac. As a result, for demanding tasks where time is money and hardware gets hammered such as when you're using a PC or Mac for graphic design or a PC or Mac for video editing, we'd choose a Mac over a similarly specified PC.
SAFE: It doesn't take much effort to make Windows perfectly secure. Windows 7 is the safest Windows yet PC or Mac: ease of use Windows 7 is the friendliest Windows yet, but given the choice between otherwise identical machines running Windows 7 or Snow Leopard we'd go for Snow Leopard. The difference in ease of use is particularly apparent when you use additional apps such as Apple's iLife (free with new Macs) and Windows Live Essentials (free from live.com): the Apple apps are more welcoming and considerably more polished. Windows vs Mac OS is like the difference between, say, a Ford Mondeo and a top-end BMW: the Ford does the job perfectly well, but the BMW's nicer to sit in.
EASY: We think Macs are easier to use than PCs, especially when you compare applications such as iLife with Windows Live Essentials PC vs Mac: desktops Mac desktops bear little relation to PC desktops: they're more like laptops, cramming entire computers into impossibly small sizes. PC desktops, on the other hand, are usually based on standard form factors, standard components and standard cases. That keeps their prices down - for the "how much?" £599 Apple wants for a basic Mac Mini you could get a very decent desktop, while the £999 Apple wants for an entry-level iMac would pay for a PC so fast it travels through time - and it means PCs are usually much easier and cheaper to upgrade. Apple does do an easily upgradeable desktop, the Mac Pro, but that starts at £1,999. Once you start getting happy with the options list you can easily crack the ten grand barrier.
BIG BOX: £599 gets you a Mac Mini - or the uglier, faster HP Pavilion P6655 with more storage, more RAM and better graphics PC or Mac: netbooks The closest thing to a netbook Apple does is the MacBook Air, which is approximately £600 more than a typical PC netbook - so if you need a netbook and price is key, then it's a PC for you. However, netbooks are compromise devices, designed to be as cheap as they are portable, and they're not designed for demanding tasks; the Air is a proper Mac, designed for proper work and priced accordingly.
NOT A NETBOOK: The MacBook Air is small enough to be a netbook, but there's a proper computer inside that ultra-slim case PC vs Mac: laptops Should you buy a Windows or Mac OS laptop? MacBooks and MacBook Pros are beautifully engineered devices with impressive battery life, but if sheer horsepower is more important than build quality or battery life Windows laptops often offer better specifications for less cash than Mac OS ones - so for example the Samsung R780 offers a better specification than Apple's fastest, biggest MacBook Pro. Is as pretty, as well screwed together or as solid? Nope, but at the time of writing it's £600 cheaper.
BETTER PRICE: Is this as pretty as a MacBook Pro? Nope. Is it six hundred quid cheaper? Yes PC or Mac: software Big-name software packages - Office, Pro Tools, Lightroom, Ableton, AutoCAD, Photoshop, InDesign - are available for both platforms, but the Mac also benefits from some OS X exclusives: Final Cut Studio, Logic Studio, Aperture, iLife and so on. If you're a creative type, Apple has an edge here. Price wise, Apple and PC software tend to be priced similarly - Office Home & Student is around £70 at the moment, compared to £71 for Apple's rival iWork - while free software such as Google Docs, OpenOffice.org, Picasa and so on are available for both platforms. One of the most interesting software developments is the forthcoming Mac App Store. Its iPhone and iPad equivalents are packed with programs, and if it works on the desktop it could herald a new age of interesting Mac apps. Apps are what differentiate iOS devices from their rivals, and a bustling Mac App Store could make Apple's platform more attractive when you're considering whether to go with Windows or Mac OS.
MULTI-PLATFORM: Most big-name packages are available on both platforms, so for example Pro Tools is available for both Mac and Windows PC vs Mac: games The arrival of Valve's Steam has given Mac gaming a welcome kick into the 21st Century, demonstrating that there's more to Mac gaming than The Bloody Sims, and the Mac App Store may bring a catalogue of new and interesting titles. http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/steam-for-mac-now-open-for-business-688953 For now, though, the PC is still miles ahead. Call of Duty: Black Ops? PC. Fallout: New Vegas? PC. Medal of Honor? PC. Farming Simulator 2011? OK, maybe that one isn't such a big deal. True, you can run these games on a Mac via Boot Camp, but that means buying Windows.
PC FIRST: Blockbuster games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops turn up on PC long before they make it to the Mac PC or Mac: customising and modding PCs are much more customisable than Macs, even at the operating system level: if you're mad enough to want Comic Sans as your system font, Windows will let you have it. OS X lets you change the background picture and that's pretty much your lot; even its Dashboard widgets are hidden away until you ask to see them. It's a similar story with the hardware, although that's for practical rather than aesthetic reasons: the Mac Mini and iMac are unique designs, so customising or modding them is considerably more complicated than it is for PCs with their industry standard motherboards and cases. That doesn't mean it can't be done, of course. It just takes a bit more effort [http://mashable.com/2010/03/23/imac-steampunk-mod/] - and with the laptops you can always go to town with a laser engraving machine [http://cutlasercut.com/engraveyourtech.html/].
MOD-READY: Questions of taste aside, PCs' standard form factors make them easy to modify and upgrade PC vs Mac: upgrades and repairs Unless you buy something unusual, upgrading or replacing a component in a desktop PC couldn't be easier: unscrew the case, pop the old bit out, stick the new bit in. Macs are more fiddly: on a 2010 iMac, for example, the only bit you're encouraged to upgrade yourself is the RAM [http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3918]. Replacing other components, such as hard disks, isn't for the faint-hearted [http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4130605].
NEW PARTS: Upgrading Mac memory: easy. Upgrading Mac anything else: not so easy PC or Mac: and finally There's one other key factor to consider in the PC vs Mac debate, and that's your current set-up: if you've invested in expensive software packages, the cost of replacing them - assuming they can be replaced - and the hassle of converting files could be the decider. It's less of an issue on the Mac than the PC, because you can boot into Windows via Boot Camp or run Windows inside OS X with Parallels Desktop. Both options cost money, though: you'll need a Windows license for either and an additional £65 if you want to buy Parallels.
EXTRA COSTS: Don't forget to factor in the cost of replacing software if you're planning to switch - or seek out free open source alternatives 
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| Scorsese: 3D is 'liberating and beautiful' Posted: 23 Nov 2010 05:12 AM PST  Martin Scorsese has embraced 3D as a filmmaking tool and has called the format liberating. In an interview with the Guardian (and spied by SlashFilm), Scorsese explains how he is using 3D in his latest movie Hugo Cabret and how it is changing the way he makes movies. "Every shot is rethinking cinema, rethinking narrative – how to tell a story with a picture," explains Scorsese. "Now, I'm not saying we have to keep throwing javelins at the camera, I'm not saying we use it as a gimmick, but it's liberating." Sculpting 3D This liberation also adds to complication, with the legendary director saying: "It's literally a Rubik's Cube every time you go out to design a shot, and work out a camera move, or a crane move. "But it has a beauty to it also. People look like… like moving statues. They move like sculpture, as if sculpture is moving in a way. Like dancers…" It's great to see someone like Scorsese using the format and his take on 3D will be a wholly different beast from Avatar. The movie Hugo Cabret is set in the '30s and focuses on an orphaned boy, his late father and, er, a robot. 
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| New Tim Burton Stainboy story taps into Twitter Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:24 AM PST  Tim Burton has used the power of Twitter to come up with a new story for his Stainboy character. Stainboy has been part of the Burton cannon for years and was used in a series of Flash animations back in 2000. A new adventure for the character has started on Twitter, which allows Burton's followers to contribute to the tale. Exquisite storytelling The director started the story with the following tweet: "Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor." This was followed by the hashtag #BurtonStory - anyone who uses this hashtag can contribute to the story. Tim Burton explains on the BurtonStory website that the experiment is called a "Cadavre Exquis or 'Exquisite Corpse' - a technique used to collectively tell a story. He notes that "each contributor adds to the story in sequence, building on the last line revealed." The deadline for the story is 6 December and the whole thing is promote Tim Burton's artwork showing off at Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto. 
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| Microsoft 'busily' buying every memory card it can Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:04 AM PST  Microsoft is aiming to bring microSD expansion to its Windows Phone 7 range as soon as possible, according to the Windows Phone team. Microsoft's decision to lock down the memory cards and not allow users to expand their microSD allowance drew ire from some users who wanted more than the 8GB or 16GB on offer, but that looks set to change. In an interview with TechRadar, Microsoft's Windows Phone team told us that it was "now busily buying every microSD card they can get their hands on and testing it in their phones, and when they have a list of which cards perform well enough to recommend they'll be distributing the information." Suddenly getting sloooowwwwww.... The reason is that some memory cards will cause the phone to slow down, as it need to access the microSD in short, sharp bursts at times to function - some memory cards don't work well under these conditions and the handset will become sluggish, which is why Microsoft is testing so comprehensively. "Yes, it's about read write speeds [which is what the SD class number indicates]," senior product manager Greg Sullivan told us. "The IO rate is part of it but actually what's equally important are the bit error rates. That will impact the speed of the checksum rewrite." This doesn't mean that it's going to be an easy task to upgrade your memory in your new Windows Phone 7 device; you'll need to wipe the card then perform a factory rest on the phone to 'lock' the two together. But if you're desperate to get your new HTC HD7 up to 40GB, then at least you should have an option soon. 
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| In Depth: PSP Phone features: What should it have? Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:59 AM PST  Some of Britain's highest-profile technology and gaming journalists figures have expressed their hope that Sony's PSP Phone can live up to the hype and make a real impression on the gaming world. With the PSP Phone — probably based on the Android OS — looking more and more like it could actually be making an appearance, TechRadar has asked some of the most respected commentators in the UK technology and gaming worlds for their opinions on what the device should bring. With the spectre of the last major gaming/phone hybrid – Nokia's much-maligned N-Gage – looming large, most agreed that Sony needed to keep all of the usability and convenience of the Android and Apple mobile platforms, but bring in the high-quality gaming and visuals that have built the PlayStation brand. Moon on a stick PSM3 magazine editor Daniel Dawkins provided a neat wanted list: "Near PS3-quality visuals, a phone, a touchscreen, two decent analogue sticks, intuitive media management, solid internet browser… y'know, an iPhone with decent controls and great core games, or the moon on a stick. Whatever's easier! "Seriously, though, Sony either needs to match or exceed the iPhone and iPad, and/or make a games machine so powerful yet affordable, I can afford to ignore the Nintendo 3DS." The competition in the mobile market is already hotting up – with games on Apple and Android handsets selling like hot-cakes. The PSP has been around for years, so there's already a huge back catalogue of games built for a small screen, and Nik Taylor – who heads up MSN UK's technology and gaming channels — believes that Sony needs to make sure that existing PlayStation fans are accommodated: "Sony needs to ensure that not only is its hardware capable and desirable, but that the games are competitively priced and have the kind of instant playability you get with iPhone games such as Angry Birds. "I hope we'll see a device with proper handheld console controls (including an analogue stick), serious power and some genuinely inventive games that make the most of the mobile platform they'll be running on.
PSP Go: Will the much-maligned digital library be replaced with something slicker? Hannah Bouckley, reviews editor at T3.com agrees: "Any gaming device lives or dies by its content, so let's see lots of games, across multiple genres — including 3D — at prices everyone can afford." Bouckley also believes that the inclusion of the popular XMB user interface and the display are key: "The screen needs to be bright, with excellent contrast, so ideally AMOLED," she added. "Then there's the interface. Microsoft got the Windows Phone 7 Xbox Live interface spot-on, so hopefully we'll see the XMB developed." Andy Robinson, the deputy editor of gaming website CVG, was just one of the experts that felt that one area that can absolutely not be overlooked is the phone functionality itself. "I think the PlayStation Phone needs to put its focus on the latter; phoning people up," Robinson told TechRadar. "Nobody wants to buy a PSP with a keypad — core gamers especially. "Sony should make a proper, feature-complete mobile and then sprinkle in some PlayStation hallmarks, such as the trademark buttons (even if they're on a touchscreen) and PSOne classics to download. Oh, and a digital store this time, please — no UMD mischief."
N-Gage: Ahead of its time? Robinson's words were backed up by Kieran Alger — the editor of T3.com, who admitted he feared the worst. "When I hear the words PSP and phone put together I have horror visions of the Nokia N-Gage — the big, beastly pocket pummelling N-Gage," said Alger. "If this needs to be one thing, it needs to avoid being a brick. The iPhone gaming revolution has been driven by casual gamers, people who didn't really know they liked chucking avian objects at swine. "For me serious gamers like to do it on bigger screens. The middle ground could be a scary place to be. "Above all I'd like to see this be a good smartphone device and not just a PSP that makes calls." One of the very real issues facing any portable gaming rig — be it a laptop or a mobile phone — is just how much of a drain is put on battery life. Your PSP dying a death on a train is one thing, but when it's also your phone it becomes a much bigger deal. "How is a converged phone/games console supposed to handle a 3G connection, Wi-Fi, a sexy bright screen and leading mobile graphics, for long periods of time, without suffering from catastrophic battery life problems?" asked TechRadar's own reviews editor James Rivington. "It will be interesting to see whether the phone's battery will be able to hold up to more demanding games," added MSN's Taylor. "Having to charge your phone halfway through the day because you've been hammering Gran Turismo on the train would be no fun at all."
PSP Phone: Rumours have stretched back for years What is clear is that there is a genuine enthusiasm for the extension of the PlayStation brand into mobile phones, but Rivington believes that Sony have to aim high if they want to be a success. "It's going to need to be one of the most innovative devices in recent memory if it's to succeed," he concluded. "It's going to have to rival the best Android smartphones on usability and features, while also delivering a seamless, integrated gaming platform unmatched by other smartphones. "It needs to differentiate itself from the iPhone and other Android devices, while also being fun and easy to use. It needs to feel complete instead of half-arsed." 
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| Explained: Windows Phone 7 microSD card: why you can't change it Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:35 AM PST  Microsoft has been saying all along that even if you can get at the microSD slot in a Windows Phone that the point isn't to be able to swap cards. As general manager Charlie Kindel told TechRadar: "It is possible for the manufacturer to put a microSDcard in the phone - but that memory is not user serviceable, you can't pull it out or replace it." The quick start guide tells you that if you do take the card out, the phone will reset itself and you won't be able to use the card in other devices. That's because the OS pairs the card to the phone by locking it with an automatically generated password and checksum - which means it can recognise the card and be sure the content hasn't changed. Why does Windows Phone 7 do that? "We use the built-in flash memory on the phone and the flash on the microSD as a single file system," Kindel told us: "if the user were to pull it out, it would break that file system." Your music, pictures, apps and everything else will be spread across both areas of storage and the phone has no way of knowing what's on the microSD card so it can't just tell you something is missing - it has to reset the phone to make sure you don't try to use something that's no longer available. Setting the password isn't permanent - but the vast majority of devices don't implement passwords for SD cards so they won't even recognise the card to format it (some Nokia phones support this part of the SD card standard). Windows Phone 7 microSD expansion Suppose you want to replace a low capacity microSD with a larger one and you don't mind resetting your phone? After all you can get your apps back from the marketplace and your media from the Zune software. The problem is, according to Charlie Kindel, "these memory cards have very different speed characteristics and if the user is willy-nilly putting in different memory cards that would hurt the phone experience." Having a slow SD card in your camera will mean it takes slightly longer to save a photo but you might never notice; having apps launching from a slow SD card could make your Windows Phone feel very sluggish. Why can't you just buy a fast microSD card of the right class? "Yes, it's about read write speeds [which is what the SD class number indicates]," senior product manager Greg Sullivan told us. "The IO rate is part of it but actually what's equally important are the bit error rates. That will impact the speed of the checksum rewrite." Microsoft was hoping that the issue wouldn't come up for most users (and we agree that the majority of mainstream users will never open up their phone to change the memory card). "Most of the microSD slots are not user accessible for that very reason," Sullivan told us. When they are, as with the Samsung Focus, "there's a big sticker that asks you to read the Quick Start guide before changing the microSD". Larger Windows Phone 7 microSD cards The obvious answer is for Microsoft or the handset manufacturers to test and certify memory cards. But the Windows Phone team told us they didn't have the time or resources to do this before launch, that manufacturers tested only the microSD cards they buy in bulk, which aren't available in retail - and that just going by what the chassis specification for the handset says (or even the class of the microSD card) isn't enough to guarantee good performance and performance varies between vendors and even between different cards from the same manufacturer. The same member of the Windows phone team told us they're now busily buying every microSD card they can get their hands on and testing it in their phones, and when they have a list of which cards perform well enough to recommend they'll be distributing the information. But for now, the official Microsoft line is still not to swap out your microSD card for a new one. 
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| Xbox 360 celebrates its fifth birthday Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:13 AM PST  The Microsoft Xbox 360 is five years old this week, having launched in the US and Canada on 22 November 2005. Microsoft UK may be planning its own celebrations for the UK birthday on 2 December, and if so we'll be sure to bring you further news on that when we get it. Five years young For now, it is remarkable to look back over how far the company has come in console gaming in such a short period of time. The first 'high definition' console arrived on the market on 22 November 2005 in the US and Canada, with a cracking launch line-up of games, including Bizarre Creation's Project Gotham Racing 3 and the Bethesda's mighty Oblivion (and a few less memorable games such as Rare's Kameo: Elements of Power and Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie.) Microsoft certainly got the jump on Sony and Nintendo in the last round of the console race, with the PlayStation 3 and Wii releasing almost a year later. Xbox Live boss Stephen Toulouse noted on his blog: "When the Xbox 360 was announced, I was just as surprised as anyone else. The original Xbox was only four years old and Xbox Live was just starting to hit its stride. "Sure I had a PS2 and a Gamecube as well, but I really thought we'd put out a good gaming machine with the Xbox and was surprised we would 'kill' it so quickly in favour of a new one. But as more and more information came out about it, the more excited I got over it. "We tend to forget that compared to what was launched with the Xbox 360, the gaming experience on other platforms was fairly primitive. Fun to be sure, but the leap to HD gaming interconnected through Live was a pretty watershed moment." Microsoft most recently launched Kinect for Xbox 360, which it hopes will extend the life-cycle of the console for another five years or so through to 2015. Via Stepto.com 
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| Google Nexus S spotted in the wild again Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:02 AM PST  Despite Google CEO Eric Schmidt's claims that the Nexus brand is dead, the Nexus S has been spotted out and about again. The Google employee's Picasa feed in question (which has since been removed) may SEEM innocuous at first, with a bunch of picture of family and friends enjoying some American Football. But take a closer look at one of the photos and you'll see a secret phone in the corner: the Nexus Two. The phone, which is likely made by Samsung, has already been shown off running NFC technology (the same used in Oyster cards on London transport) by Schmidt, but this new photo shows it's being circulated out among employees too now. What is it? It's hard to glean much information from a blurry photo taken from afar (although we're ridiculously impressed that Engadget managed to spot it in among all the photos), but we can see it looks something like an unholy union between a Nexus One and a Galaxy S. So will it be long until we get a UK release date? Given it's going to be running Android 2.3, we can only hope that it will land in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. 
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| Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:40 AM PST  When it comes to sheer visual drama, there's no substitute for square inches – you need a really large display such as the Iiyama E2710HDS. What you do not need, however, is a banker's bonus to afford one. 27 inches of flat panel is now available for under £250. That's a very reasonable premium over a budget 24-inch monitor, so it's no surprise to find the Iiyama E2710HDS gives you little extra apart from those inches. The panel technology is, of course, trusty old TN and the native resolution is 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. Granted, that qualifies as Full HD, but it's no more pixels than you get with many bargain basement 22-inch screens, including Iiyama's own E2271HDS. Still, the E2710HDS has the key connectivity options covered courtesy of HDMI, DVI and VGA sockets. Any way you slice it, this is an awful lot of monitor for your money. Power consumption
The 27-inch Iiyama E2710HDS isn't just big; it's also bloody bright. Thank the powerful backlight for that. It may only be a conventional CCFL unit rather than a fashionable LED lamp, but it endows this monitor with impressive 400cd/m2 chops and extremely clean and powerful whites. The E2710HDS comes through the Lagom test suite rather well, too. Okay, there's a bit of visible banding and pixel fizz in the gradient test, but by the standards of a TN panel, there's relatively little compression in the white saturation and black level tests. Likewise, the viewing angles are good for a TN panel. As you might expect from the 2ms rating, another strong point is pixel response. Indeed, combined with the powerful backlight and 27-inch diagonal, the result is an unquestionably awesome gaming screen. It's no slouch when it comes to movies, either. Admittedly, there is a little backlight bleed at the edges. But black levels and contrast are otherwise quite good. Similarly, this panel does not suffer from as much viewing-angle related colour inversion as some TN screens. Consequently, there's lots of depth, clarity and detail in movies. As for colour saturation and vibrancy, the E2710HDS is also a slight cut above the TN norm. It's not going to scare a good VA panel for vividness, but it doesn't scream TN as soon as you turn it on. That said, it's worth remembering that a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 stretched over the 27-inch diagonal makes for fairly beefy pixels. It would also be nice to have an adjustable stand rather than a tilt-only base. We liked So much panel. So little money. While we often moan about the sheer ubiquity of TN technology in PC monitors, the upside is that you can now buy a large, Full HD monitor for a relatively small sum. Even better, the Iiyama E2710HDS is bright, fairly vibrant and very responsive. Impressive stuff for less than £250. We disliked This panel is so cheap for its size, any complaints seem churlish. Still, with a standard HD resolution, the extra size doesn't buy you any pixels. Strictly speaking, superior visuals can also be had elsewhere, most notably from BenQ's startlingly affordable 24-inch EW2420 and its talented VA panel. Related Links
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