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Techradar |
- MySpace sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake
- New PEN, PEN Lite and PEN Mini announced by Olympus
- Olympus PEN P3: First impressions
- Olympus: New 'Super' EVF to come next year
- Review: AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU
- AMD's A-Series Fusion chips launch on the desktop
- Review: HP TouchPad
- HP admits webOS licensing talks
- Review: Dell XPS 15z
- EA 'blown away' by Wii U controller
- Google+: everything you need to know
- Samsung moves to block iPad, iPhone imports
- FA trials digital football ad hoardings replacements
- Exclusive: Creative Commons: Music industry should follow our lead
- Leaked Nokia 700 Zeta photos hit the web
- Hands on: Sony VAIO Y Series review
- LG Optimus 3D gets earlier UK release date
- Windows Phone Tango update to follow Mango?
- Nokia releases updates for older Symbian handsets
- Nokia releases updates older Symbian handsets
- Review: Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo
- MySpace to be sold for just £18 million?
- Exclusive: Nokia: there's still hope for MeeGo yet
- First Picture: Virgin Media's TiVo iPad app
- 3D gaming: what the future holds
| MySpace sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake Posted: 30 Jun 2011 12:42 AM PDT News Corp has finally managed to offload MySpace, a website it bought back in 2005 for $580 million, selling the site for just $35 million (£22 million). Specific Media, one of the rumoured buyers, is the company that signed on the dotted line for MySpace and it has been revealed that popstar turned actor Justin Timberlake will take an ownership stake in the flagging social network and push the music side of the business. "There's a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favourite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. Myspace has the potential to be that place," says Timberlake about the acquisition. "Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there's a natural social component to entertainment. I'm excited to help revitalise Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community." Bringing MySpace back Timberlake, who played web entrepreneur Sean Parker in the Social Network, will play a major role in the re-invention of the website and will be part of the day to day activities of the site. Having Timberlake on board is a bizarre twist to what has been a torrid few years for MySpace. News Corp will have a minor 5 per cent stake in the company, but it will be glad to see the back of a social network which has shed $545 million of its value in a mere six years. Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, is confident that his company and Timberlake can turn the fortunes of MySpace around. "We're thrilled about the opportunity to rebuild and reinvigorate Myspace," said Vanderhook. "We look forward to partnering with someone as talented as Justin Timberlake, who will lead the business strategy with his creative ideas and vision for transforming Myspace. This is the next chapter of digital media, and we are excited to have a hand in writing the script." Script? Timberlake? They do know this is real life, right? 
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| New PEN, PEN Lite and PEN Mini announced by Olympus Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:00 PM PDT Introducing the Olympus PEN E-P3, Olympus PEN E-PL3 (also known as the PEN Lite) and Olympus PEN E-PM1 (also known as the PEN Mini), the new range will see the discontinuation of other PEN models, with the exception of the E-PL1 which will continue to be available at a low price-point to appeal to newcomers to the PEN brand. The PEN E-P3 will be known simply as the PEN. All three cameras has 12 million effective pixels.
While sharing the same basic specs, the 3 new models are designed to appeal to different areas of the market. At the top of the range, the PEN E-P3 caters to advanced users, the E-PL3 (Lite) in the middle for those perhaps looking to upgrade from a high-end compact, and finally the E-PM1 (Mini) for photographers who want DSLR quality images in a compact body. Also announced today, are 2 new M.ZUIKO prime lenses to slot into the existing PEN world lens line-up. First, a 12mm (effective 24mm) f/2.0 high-grade lens with an all-metal barrel and featuring a snap focus ring mechanism to switch between manual and auto focus. The lens is aimed primarily at E-P3 users and will have a street price of around £500.
Above: Olympus PEN P3 with new M. Zuiko Digital 12mm f/2.0 lens Secondly, a 45mm (effective) f/1.8 portrait lens is aimed at the more budget end of the market with a sub £300 street price upon release.
Above: Olympus PEN P3 with new M. Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 lens New kit lenses introduced with the new cameras have had cosmetic tweaks, including snap-on silver bayonet rings to match silver lenses. New Olympus PEN models price and availability: The E-P3 will be available in August for an RRP of £799 including kit lens, but will also be available body-only. The E-PL3 (Lite) will be available in late summer, while the E-PM1 is expected in early autumn, prices for both cameras have yet to be announced. FlashgunA new wireless compatible flashgun is also introduced. The FL-300R fits onto any PEN camera and has a tilt mechanism for bouncing flash and macro shooting. A built-in wide panel covers angles as wide as 9mm (18mm equivalent) while it covers a range of up to 8metres.
Read on to find more detailed information and specs for each new Olympus camera and lens.
Sharing technology with Panasonic, all 3 new cameras claim to have the world's fastest autofocus among all interchangeable lens cameras, with a new LiveMOS sensor, driven with double the speed (120fps) of previous models. The cameras also boast 35 autofocus points, up from 11 in previous models and an increased coverage from 33% to 59%. Additionally, a newly developed group AF selection feature is designed for shooting moving subjects. Improved tracking AF performance allows for face recognition, as well as skin tone recognition for locking onto moving faces while shooting. Eye-detection can also now be given left or right eye priority. For help when shooting in low-light, an AF Illuminator has been added, and can also be found across the entire range. The new Image VI image engine promises to deliver improvements in colour reproduction and gradation along with tone control under backlit conditions. Capable of shooting in both Motion JPEG and AVCHD, the latter being better for playing back files on TV and keeping file sizes small. The camera also has a new movie blur correction, for shooting videos while moving or walking around. Shutter speed priority has also been introduced for movie, allowing individual frames to be shot at quicker than 1/30th of a second when required. A 3-inch OLED touchscreen can be found on the EP3 only, which has been designed to display photos brightly no matter what the lighting conditions. Users can also scroll through pictures, enlarge images on screen and control the focus and shutter release.
Two dials on the P3 back allow for adjustments to be made for aperture and exposure, along with 3 programmable buttons for frequently used functions. The E-P3 is also equipped with a built-in flash.
The all-metal E-P3 is available in silver, black or white, and comes with a detachable grip which can either be removed or swapped with an optional large grip, depending on preference.
Smaller and lighter than the E-P3, the E-PL3, or Olympus PEN Lite, sits in the middle of the new range. A newly designed shutter unit has been designed to fit into the smaller body and also allows for high-speed shooting at 4.1 frames per second with image stabilisation or 5.5 frames per second without. The E-PL3 shares the same TruePic VI image processor and world's fastest autofocus system as on both the new E-P3 and E-PM1 (Mini) cameras. As with all PEN cameras, the PEN Lite has image stabilisation built into the body.
Six art filters can be found on the Lite, including Pop Art, Soft Focus and Diorama along with several other effects including the new Starlight and White Edge settings. Unique to the Lite in the new range, and for the first time on any PEN branded camera, is the tilting 460,000 dot Hypercrystal LCD rear screen.
Above: The PEN Lite's 3in 460,000 dot Hypercrystal LCD screen dominates the rear of the camera Capable of tilting up to 80 degrees upward and 45 degrees downward, it is designed for shooting in awkward positions, but is not touch-screen as on the E-P3. The screen can also be configured to a 3:4 aspect ratio to support shooting at a portrait angle, as it cannot be rotated.
Above: The PEN Lite's LCD screen can be tilted up or down Due to its condensed size, the Lite loses its scroll-wheel from the back of the camera, but keeps the same wheel on top as the E-P3 which allows for P,A,S,M modes to be selected along with scene, movie and art filters. Although the PEN Lite doesn't have a built-in flash, it is supplied with a small flash that can be slipped into the hotshoe. The Olympus PEN E-PL3 (Lite) will be available from late summer in 4 colours – red, silver, white or black. The recommended retail price is yet to be confirmed.
At the bottom end of the range, catering for compact upgraders looking for higher quality images, is the new Olympus PEN E-PM1, or PEN Mini. One of the smallest interchangeable lens cameras currently on the market, it still retains many of the key specs as its bigger brothers in the range. Aimed squarely at beginners, menu navigation is accompanied by pop-up windows to explain various functions, along with the PEN Live Guide to allow for functions like aperture to be used by sliding a bar up and down. Live Guide can be activated from within any mode and also includes adjustments for colour vividness, image brightness and moving subjects.
As on the E-PL3, the Mini comes with 6 inbuilt art features, including Soft Focus and Diorama, but doesn't come with other effects such as Starlight. Like the PEN Lite, a removable flash comes in the box, which fits directly into the hotshoe. An optional extra viewfinder is also available to fit into the hotshoe. Like both the E-P3 and E-PL3, the Mini also boasts the world's fastest autofocus system for any interchangeable lens camera, along with the newly developed True VI image processor and 35 autofocus points.
Above: The PEN Mini is almost identical in size to Olympus's high-end compact, the X-Z1 The Olympus PEN E-PM1 (Mini) will be available from early autumn in a choice of 6 colours, including chocolate, black, silver and purple, along with interchangeable lens rings for complete customisation. Recommended retail price has yet to be confirmed.
Also announced are 2 new fixed-length lenses to add to the existing line-up of M.ZUIKO digital lenses for the PEN range. First up, the 12mm f/2.0 (equivalent to 24mm) wide-angle lens is billed a 'street photography' lens and comes with an all-metal casing. Built-in depth-of-field and distance indicators show the distance of which objects are in focus, allowing photographers to focus instantly without having to look at the display while in manual mode, which is activated by pulling back the snap focus ring. In bright light, enhanced multi-layer lens coating promises to halve the effect of ghosting and flaring compared with conventional coatings. The second new lens, a 45mm f/1.8 (equivalent 90mm) portrait lens is designed to match the look of the 3 new PEN cameras announced. A more affordable lens, the 45mm is made from plastic with a metal-like finish.
Both lenses benefit from advanced image stabilisation built into the PEN bodies, while the wide apertures of both are ideally suited for low-light shooting. AvailabilityThe Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12mm f/2.0 wide-angle lens will be available in early July for an RRP of £700. The Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 45mm f/1.8 portrait lens will be available from September, priced at under £300. Meanwhile, the standard kit lenses in the range have been refreshed and seen some cosmetic tweaks. The standard 14-42mm (28-84mm equivalent) zoom lens and 40-150mm (80-300mm equivalent) telephoto lens are now available with snap-on silver bayonet rings to match silver-lenses. The lenses provide the same image quality as the existing standard kit lenses, so those already owning them won't need to upgrade.
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| Olympus PEN P3: First impressions Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:00 PM PDT The design of the new PEN P3 is very similar to that of the P2 and P1 with a few notable distinctions - including a pop-up flash. Firstly, the mode dial, which is rotated by the thumb of your left hand on the E-P2, has been moved to the right-hand side of the E-P3's top plate - as on the PEN E-PL2. This sits to one side of the shutter release button and on the other is the customisable Fn2 button.
Above: The Olympus PEN P2
Above: Olympus's new PEN P3 Like the P2, the Olympus P3 has a long control dial built into the thumbrest on its back. On the Olympus PL2 this position is taken by the video button, but on the P3, the video button is on the camera's back to the left of the thumbrest and small speaker.
Above: Olympus's new PEN P3
Above: The Olympus PEN P2 There has been a little further rejigging of the buttons on the back of the P3 since the P2. The auto exposure and auto focus lock (AEL/AFL) button has gone and the Menu, Info and Function buttons have been switched around. It shouldn't take users too long to get used to it, but it will make a slight difference. It will be interesting to see how much difference the alternative grips make to the feel of the P3. TouchscreenThe new PEN P3 is the first PEN from Olympus to feature a touchscreen. The P3 features touch AF, which instructs the camera to focus on the point in the scene chosen by a touch of a finger, and, like the Panasonic G3 and GF3, it also has a touch shutter. Hopefully, the Anti-Fingerprint Coating will help keep the LCD smudge free so that provides a clear view in all lighting conditions. AutofocusOlympus shares technology with Panasonic, including the sensor in the new PEN P3, PEN Lite and PEN Mini. The Live MOS device has a fast read-out speed of 120fps, which helps to speed-up the contrast detection autofocus (AF) system. Olympus claims that the TruePic VI processing engine inside its new PEN cameras is faster than Panasonic's Venus Engine VI FHD and it can therefore push the AF system further. As a result, Olympus claims that its new PEN cameras have the world's fastest AF when used with it's MSC (Movie Stills Compatible) optics. We will be putting this and the improve AF tracking ability to the test. Olympus's TruePic VI processing engine is also claimed to decrease the length of time that the screen blacks-out between exposures, which should make shooting sport much easier. 
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| Olympus: New 'Super' EVF to come next year Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:00 PM PDT A new improved electronic viewfinder (EVF) will be coming sometime next year according to Mark Thackara, Consumer Products Marketing Manager for Olympus UK. Speaking exclusively to PhotoRadar, Thackara was unable to give details, but said that we can expect to be impressed by the improvements that will be made to the viewfinders next year and EVFs will be 'taken to the next level'. Olympus obtains its EVFs from Epson and we understand from an earlier interview with Panasonic (which also uses the same viewfinders), that Epson is working to improve EVF refresh rate and resolution. This should make the viewfinder image smoother and more detailed, as well as enabling photographers to track moving subjects more easily. Provided that the interface remains the same, Olympus's decision to use external viewfinders could give its PEN users an advantage as they are able to upgrade the EVF without having the expense of a new camera. Other users will have to wait until the news EVFs are included in new cameras. 
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| Review: AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:02 PM PDT The AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU is the current top-end desktop Llano chip, and is a bit of a doozy. Last month saw the launch of the first Llano Fusion chips from AMD on the notebook side, the AMD A8-3500M, and if that isn't enough alliteration for you we've now got the release of the desktop Llano APU code-named Lynx. Before we go any further we ought to get into what the hell we're talking about when we're going on about an APU. It's an Accelerated Processing Unit, essentially that means it's a combo chip combining both traditional CPU and GPU parts in one die. That's right, we're back to the old days of the one chip to rule them all, though this time we've actually got graphical prowess to shout about. AMD has released Fusion APUs before now, with its lower-end Brazos chips (Zacate and Ontario) paving the way for this far more serious, performance part. Both Brazos chips though were designed specifically for the ultrathin notebook market, coming in at 9W for the Ontario chips and 18W for the Zacate APUs. They did make appearances in the mini-mobo segment of the desktop market but didn't really take off. Intel stole the march on AMD in terms of performance parts though with its Sandy Bridge lineup, integrating its HD 3000 and HD 2000 GPUs in with its 2nd Generation Core CPUs. Intel's focus though was on powerful CPU parts with an improved GPU component integrated into the chip. AMD's focus however is far more based upon jamming discrete class graphics into the same component as a decent quad-core processing part. The Llano laptop we checked out last issue has us astounded by just how much graphical grunt AMD has managed to pack into its latest mobile APU, offering legitimate gaming performance out of a laptop that's capable of going for eight hours and costs around £600. On the desktop though it's looking even more impressive. The CPU component of the mobile part looked pretty weak at 1.5GHz, but on the desktop it's a far more serious setup, and for a far more reasonable price. Around £400 for a proper DirectX 11 gaming machine, with the top-end A8-3850 Fusion APU, capable of playable framerates on a 22-inch panel? Sign us up Mr. AMD.
The first thing to talk about is what has actually been crammed onto this 228 sq. mm slab of silicon. Sitting inside that unassuming package is a fully-featured quad-core CPU, based on the Stars architecture that made up the Phenom processors, a discrete-class DirectX 11 GPU and a full Northbridge too. The normal Phenom II CPUs are around 200 sq. mm alone, with the GPUs usually around half that, so fitting all three into such a small form factor is impressive alone. When you add in the fact that it's running at around 100W for the top-end APUs, around the same as a decent quad-core CPU, it makes for one serious engineering feat. Sadly though we're not really talking about a full Phenom II CPU, the optimised Stars architecture in the AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU actually has more in common with the Athlon II processors. The missing ingredient is that L3 cache; the Llano Lynx APUs only come with 1MB of L2 cache per core, making a total of 4MB for the numerically challenged out there. Both the Phenom II and Athlon II carry only 512KB per core of L2 cache, but the Phenom II supplements that with a full 6MB of L3 cache shared across the CPU cores. This AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU comes with a stock speed of 2.9GHz, making it roughly analogous with the Athlon II X4 635 processor. It's a full-fat quad-core, though lacks the Turbo Core functionality of the lower-end Llano Lynx Fusion APUs. Still, at 2.9GHz across all cores it's plenty fast enough for general computational tasks. It's also capable of utilising much faster memory than its Athlon II and Phenom II brethren. It maxes out with dual channel DDR3 running at 1,866MHz, and with the new integrated GPU in this APU that faster memory makes a significant difference, but we'll come to that later. There will be lower-end SKUs of these Llano Fusion APUs, in both A8 and A6 nomenclatures. The A8 APUs come with the top HD 6550D AMD Radeon GPU and the A6 has the weaker HD 6530D. There will be two lower-powered (65W) variations in both A8 and A6 trim with lower cock speeds but with Turbo Core enabled to take up a bit of the slack.
On the GPU side the AMD Radeon HD 6550D is a proper DirectX, discrete-class graphics chip. This top graphics part of the A8 series APUs comes with 400 unified shaders (now called Radeon Cores in response to NVIDIA's CUDA Cores), twenty texture units and eight ROPs, running at 600MHz good measure. In terms of relative discrete cards you're looking at the AMD Radeon HD 5570 levels of performance from an integrated graphics solution. The lower-end AMD Radeon HD 6530D will then be fairly closely specced to the Radeon HD 5550, with 320 shaders, sixteen texture units and eight ROPs. If you want to compare with the Sandy Bridge top-end graphics part, the HD 3000 (which is only available in the unlocked K-series chips) it's night and day. The Intel part is only DirectX 10.1 compatible and is only capable of delivering around 125 GFLOPS of graphical processing power at most. The Radeon HD 6550D in this A8-3850 Fusion APU by contrast tops out at 480 GFLOPS.
To go along with the brand new APU AMD has also created a brand new desktop motherboard, with a whole new socket too. The socket is the new 905 pin FM1 and the chipset is the A-series. The top-end chipset is the A75 with the lower-end A55 coming behind it. The only real difference is in the interfaces on offer with the more expensive part. On the A75 you have both native 6Gb/s SATA interfaces and USB 3.0 connectivity. The USB 3.0 controller offers four sockets on the A75 boards and a full spread of six SATA 6Gb/s ports. The A55 on the other hand is settling in the I/O dark ages with plain ol' SATA 3Gb/s and USB 2.0. But for a budget offering you're unlikely to be missing out on those pricier interfaces too much. Though the A55 boards are unlikely to have the overclocking chops of their more expensive A75 brethren, but will offer incredibly competitive pricing. In pure CPU performance terms you can see just how much better the AMD A8-3850's four real cores are compared with the Intel Core i3 2100's twin, Hyperthreaded cores. With the gaming benchmarks it quickly becomes obvious just how much of a benefit the AMD Dual Graphics functionality is compared to the still rather impressive stock speeds. For the onboard GPU part of the APU to hit 25fps in DiRT 3 at High settings, with 4x Anti Aliasing turned on, is no mean feat. The Shogun 2 CPU benchmark though shows what hit you are could be taking on the CPU side when you're taking the both the computational and graphics parts of the APU. At the bottom though the RAM benchmark demonstrates just how much of tangible performance difference there is between different speeds of memory. Previously games wouldn't have benefited from faster RAM. CPU rendering performanceCinebench R11.5 – Index: higher is better AMD A8-3850 @2.9GHz – 3.42 CPU video encoding performanceX264 – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 @2.9GHz – 19.96 Memory bandwidthSiSoft Sandra – GB/s: higher is better AMD A8-3850 @2.9GHz – 15.36 DirectX 11 tessellation performanceHeaven 2.5 – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 on board graphics – 4.8 DirectX 11 gaming performanceDiRT 3 (Ultra, 4xAA) – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 on board graphics – 13 DiRT 3 (High, 4x AA) – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 on board graphics – 25 Shogun 2 (Medium, no AA) – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 on board graphics – 32 CPU gaming performanceShogun 2 (CPU test) – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 on board graphics – 19 RAM gaming performanceShogun 2 (Medium, no AA) – Frames per second: higher is better AMD A8-3850 4GB @ 1,333MHz – 29
Technical specifications and impressive engineering feats are all well and good, AMD has always been pretty good at creating decent technical achievements, but not so hot at delivering performance product. Thankfully this AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU walks the walk as well. The only real disappointment with the mobile version of Llano, Sabine, was the weakness of the actual CPU component. In this desktop Lynx variant though you've got full, quad-core performance. In terms of price-point it's the Intel Core i3 2100 that's squaring up against this top-end Llano at the £100 mark, and it's a comprehensive win for the AMD chip across the board. The only place the Sandy Bridge chip can take a win is in memory bandwidth, an only then by a relatively small amount. In the CPU intensive tests, the x264 HD video encoding and Cinebench 3D rendering tests, the full four cores of the AMD APU put the dual-core, Hyperthreaded Core i3 to shame. And you can forget about overclocking the Intel chip too, well you can up the clocks of the integrated GPU, but really, what's the point? The locked down Sandy Bridge chips wont budge an inch, but this AMD A8-3850 has got some serious overclocking chops to it. It starts off at 2.9GHz and we managed to push it to 3.7GHz without breaking a sweat. That puts it well ahead of the Core i5 2500T, a proper quad-core Sandy Bridge CPU, albeit a low-power 45W version. That's a more impressive overclocking performance than we've seen from an AMD processor in a long time. The multipliers are locked down on these APUs (though the motherboard's BIOS and benching applications mistakenly reported otherwise) but the base clock of the chips will move. What's more they'll push up the performance of the GPU component of the chip at the same time as the CPU and RAM parts. That means all-round performance goes up with the overclock. The key component of the Llano Lynx Fusion APUs though is their graphical prowess and in that the integrated graphics do not disappoint either. The AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU alone, paired up with an A75 board, will happily play the latest 3D games at quite playable frame rates, even if that is on more modest settings at 1680x1050 resolutions. Surprisingly you can get pretty close to playable at HD 1080P resolutions on a few titles too. One of the really interesting things, both for us and the DRAM manufacturers struggling with margins too, is just how much difference good memory paired up with your AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU makes. In some cases going from 1,333MHz DDR3 up to the same 4GB sticks running at 1,866MHz made for a 5FPS increase in games. We almost managed to get Just Cause 2 into double-figures through a combination of overclock and memory tweaking. And that was at 1920x1080 on the highest settings with 4x anti-aliasing enabled, and that's no mean feat. The difference was even more pronounced with AMD Dual Graphics enabled. That's the new name for the AMD Fusion APU's hybrid CrossFire capabilities. Essentially you can now pair up an AMD discrete card with the onboard graphics of the APU for a serious graphical boost. The extra memory speed too can add on even more than the 5FPS we saw in the onboard graphics. There's little point pairing the A8-3850 up with a serious graphics card, like the AMD Radeon HD 6950 though, but a modest GPU like the £75 Radeon HD 6670 is well worth a look. On its own it's not a bad card but with the Dual Graphics function enabled its performance was boosted by anything from 33% to 46%.
We have to admit to being mildly stunned by the performance of the AMD A8-3850. It's no high-performance hero, but in terms of bang for buck there's little else that can come close to it. The fact that both chip and motherboard can be picked up for around £200 all in is impressive, factor in a cheapo discrete AMD GPU, some decent RAM and a low-power PSU (you'll only really need 300-400W) and you've got a decent DirectX 11 gaming machine for less than £400. It's not all good news though. As ever the early adopters are going to face a possibly frustrating time until the drivers properly mature. Over the course of the review process new BIOS versions have appeared for a number of boards, though the Asus F1A75-V Pro has remained pretty stable all along, offering the best overclock of the two boards we've used so far.
But there have been visual artefacting both in-game and occasionally in Windows too. We've also had a few problems trying to use discrete cards on their own without the hybrid CrossFire functionality enabled. On one occasion the USB ports completely froze stopping me from using a mouse at all, even after a reboot or seven. On the whole performance though has been solid. In raw graphical grunt terms Heaven 2.5 is a great indicator of power, and in that pairing of Radeon HD 6670 and AMD A8-3850 you've got something that's getting on par with a GTX 460. Unfortunately though that doesn't necessarily translate into real-world gaming performance. Because the GPU is so interlinked with the CPU when it comes to graphically taxing tasks it seems to lessen the power of the processor component. This is evidenced in Shogun 2's CPU benchmark which drops significantly when you put in a discrete card for Dual Graphics. In normal mode you're looking at 19FPS, but that drops down to 14FPS when a second GPU is dropped into the mix. This is probably why, despite impressive raw graphical processing power giving decent Heaven scores, that doesn't translate into the same level of performance in games benches that require both GPU and CPU power at the same time. We're also a little concerned about the lifespan of the platform itself. At Computex this year we were shown the Trinity APU, next year's Fusion offering that will incorporate discrete-class DX11 graphics with a Bulldozer CPU in the mix too. And speaking with the likes of MSI and Gigabyte they seem pretty sure that's going to need a whole new socket again. So you're not future-proofing yourself with this Fusion APU as the FM1 socket is unlikely to last anywhere near as long as AM3 has. Still, for what it is it's a darned impressive offering. The chance to have such a powerful little PC for such a small outlay is rather enticing. The AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU goes straight up against the Core i3 2100 and soundly whips it in all tests. This is a segment where AMD really has got a tangible edge over Intel for a change. The CPU performance, and overclocking capabilities especially, show up just how good it is in both raw computational terms as well as on the graphical side. Our issue with the mobile Llano was the CPU component and with that being a real non-issue on the desktop Lynx it's an excellent new platform for AMD. We liked For the cost, in both monetary and wattage terms, the AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU is one impressive little beast. Cramming in decent graphical performance with excellent overclockable computational chops, in a single package, is quite a technical feat. The Dual Graphics function makes it a bargainous base for a gaming rig too, allowing you to pair up a fairly lowly, sub-£100 AMD GPU with the Fusion APU for well over a 33% gain in gaming performance. The memory performance too is interesting, suddenly making performance DDR3 an enticing prospect once more. We disliked It's still not a completely rock-solid offering yet. The drivers may take a little while to mature to a point where everything's locked dow. Still, the gripes we have are relatively minor and shouldn't be a problem to iron out. As good as the Dual Graphics function is there is still a worry that it detracts from the CPU performance side of the APU. And the working life of the FM1 socket already seems to be the subject of some speculation too with the announcement of the Trinity APUs for next year. Final word We're impressed with the AMD A8-3850 Fusion APU, giving the equivalent Intel offering a kicking in both computational and especially graphical performance. 
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| AMD's A-Series Fusion chips launch on the desktop Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:01 PM PDT Fresh from launching the laptop variants of the AMD A-Series chips, the AMD Fusion-based platform has officially been announced for the desktop. Primarily these will be quad-core chips, though dual-core variants are expected both for the desktop and laptops in due course. The company also announced the A55 and A75 chipsets that will be available in motherboards from partners including Asus, Foxconn, ECS, Gigabyte, MSI and Sapphire. AMD says it is targeting low to mid-range desktops with the new chips which feature processing and DirectX 11 graphics on a single die – the latter branded as Radeon HD 6530D and HD 6550D depending on which of the four available processor variants used. This means mainstream and casual PC gamers are the key target audience for the new chips since high-end desktop gamers will still go for extra power with discrete graphics cards.
The parts have a TDP or 65 (A6-3600 and A8-3800) or 100W (A6-3650 and A8-3850) and boast 320 or 400 Radeon cores. If you have discrete graphics card also installed, you can use AMD's dual-graphics tech and take advantage of both graphics chips. 
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| Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:30 PM PDT When HP bought Palm, it was widely considered to have been mostly fuelled by the desire to acquire the webOS operating system. The Pre and Pixi and phones all ran the software, but after the iPad was introduced, many people had hopes that it would soon make its way to tablets. In particular, the powerful and flexible multitasking that the Pre and Pixi were capable of was what got everyone so excited. We'll go into more detail later, but where multitasking has been something of an add-on to the iOS operating system used in the iPhone and iPad, it's always been at the core of webOS. Well, the wishes have finally been realised in the HP TouchPad, a 9.7-inch tablet running webOS 3.0. It's powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, with 16GB or 32GB of storage. It comes in at £399 for the 16GB version and £479 for the 32GB model – a pound-for-pound match with the equivalent iPad models.
However, the TouchPad has a few tricks up its sleeve that separate it from the iPad. It's got support for Adobe Flash built in, a standard USB connector for charging or connecting to your computer, Beats Audio-powered stereo speakers and wireless charging using HP's Touchstone technology. The latter of these also allows you to simply touch the soon-to-be-released Pre 3 against the TouchPad to transfer websites back and forth between them. Physically, the TouchPad doesn't stray far from the mould set by the iPad and adopted by the rest of the tablet world. An all-black glass front houses the 9.7-inch multi-touch screen, which has a resolution of 1024 x 768. Above it (in portrait) is a 1.3MP front-facing camera. There's no rear camera on the TouchPad.
Below the screen is a small, oblong Home button, which has a strip of light in it. This light flashes when you have a notification waiting, or stays on when you're using the device.
On the right-hand side of the TouchPad is a volume rocker, while the top houses the 3.5mm headphone jack and the Lock key which doubles as the on/off button.
The left-hand side has no buttons, but has the stereo Beats Audio speakers, the idea being that you'll generally hold the TouchPad in landscape when these are in use. On the bottom is the micro USB port. Although it takes many design cues from the iPad, the main difference is that the TouchPad has a plastic rear cover. Inevitably, this features a little more give in the build quality than the aluminium of the iPad, but it's still excellent, and well up there with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
We do have some small gripes with the construction, though. The volume rocker rattles when touched, and the speaker grille holes are quite sharp, but the main one is that the glossy plastic picks up fingerprints and grease at a ridiculous rate. It can quickly become slippery and harder to hold comfortably as a result. The same is true of the touchscreen front, and as soon as you get it into any kind of direct light, the smudges really impair your ability to see the screen. HP includes a cleaning cloth in the box that works really well, but who wants to carry that around with them all the time? At 740g, the TouchPad is noticeably heavier than the iPad 2, but not so much as to be a make-or-break point. Obviously it is far heavier than most seven-inch tablets, such as the HTC Flyer. It's also a good 50 per cent thicker than the iPad 2, at 13.7mm, but the rounded edges mean that it's generally quite nice to hold – save for the problems we mentioned above. HP webOS is all about the multitasking. Well, there are lots of other bits too, but the cards system employed means that it's this that stands out. The way it works is that any app you run is represented as a 'card', and more cards are added as you open more applications. You can then scroll through the cards to look through the apps you have open.
To help you keep track of things, cards can be grouped together in 'stacks'. You can do this manually by dragging the cards around, or the operating system will do it automatically when you, say, open a web link from an email. Instead of being kicked out to the browser, a new card simply sits on top of what's already open, so you can switch between them easily.
In this way, stacks tend to group things by task, rather than by app. They're a great way to work, and have always been one of webOS' biggest strengths. When you're actually using an app it becomes fullscreen, and you minimise it down into a card again by pressing the Home button. There's no gesture area on the TouchPad as there is on the Pre 2, but you can also minimise apps by swiping up onto the screen from just below it. When you minimise an app into a card, it actually keeps running visibly in its smaller form – videos and other dynamic elements embedded into web pages will keep playing, for example. You close an app by simply swiping its card up and off the screen.
Our main complaint about the card system is that HP hasn't done anything to make use of the large area of a tablet screen. The cards themselves are larger, so you can see more of what's going on in them, but there's still only one on at a time (with a small peek of what's to the left and right of it). This means there are large areas of the screen with nothing happening in them, as you can see in the screen grabs above. This strikes us as just being totally wasted space, and it seems as though HP could have done a lot more here. If you have a lot of cards open, you still have to scroll through one by one. We said in our Pre 2 review that we wished HP would implement something just like HTC's Leap View, which first appeared on the HTC Desire and Legend and an approximation of which has been used on many other Android phones since, including the LG Optimus 2X. In it, you pinch a Home screen to zoom out on all your screens. Being able to do this with the cards and choose between them quickly would be great. Alas, we can only dream. The rest of the webOS Home screen hasn't changed much for this tablet-ised version of webOS 3.0, with notifications being the exception. Instead of icons appearing at the bottom, they now sit in the status bar at the top, each separated into its own little drop-down message.
Tap one and you can see a little more information about the email or whatever else needs your attention. Tap the message to be taken to the app in question. You can swipe to the right to dismiss and notification without actioning it. If you have more than one message from an app, they stack up on top of one another, so if you dismiss the most recent one, you'll be shown the one that came before, until they've all been dismissed.
It's an elegant way to do things, but means that you can't see something like a list of new emails just from the notifications service, which is a shame. Also in the status bar is a mini quick-settings menu, which you access by tapping the right-hand corner. It offers most information about the date/time and your connections, as well as quick controls for adjusting the brightness, turning on the rotation lock and muting the sound.
Below the status bar on the Home screen is the Just Type bar. This was a clever feature on the Pre and Pixi phones because you just typed (yes) on the Home screen using their physical keyboards and were able to do lots with what you'd written, such as search for it online, turn it into an email or Facebook message, select a contact, look through content on your device or launch an app. The TouchPad only has a software keyboard, so you have to select 'Just Type' before you can actually type, which seems to miss the point somewhat. It can still be a useful quick feature, offering what the Spotlight function on the iPhone does, and much more besides, but it's not quite as handy a feature as on the phones.
At the bottom of the Home screen is a kind of dock. You can choose what goes here, with the exception of the arrow icon, which stays no matter what. You use this arrow to open the Launcher, which is where you'll find the rest of your apps listed, along with the settings options.
All of this operates in both landscape and portrait, flipping automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer. However, this is slow. Really really slow compared to what we expect from the iPad and Android 3.0 tablets such as the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The reason seems to be that the OS changes the cards from portrait to landscape along with everything else. This means that all of the apps (which are running live in the cards, remember) also need to be flipped to landscape. As a result, you simply get several seconds of nothing after rotating, then everything changes together.
As you might expect, this goes slightly faster when you've got an app open in fullscreen, but is still far too slow, particularly since the sensitivity to turning is quite high compared to other tablets. Tip it slightly while in portrait and you can find yourself waiting between five and ten seconds to get back to portrait from landscape. The TouchPad's keyboard is one of its strongest points, generally. There are two things that really recommend it: the numbers bar across the top, and the ability to change its size to suit you. Having been used to the generous proportions of the iPad's keyboard, we preferred the largest size on offer, but it's up to you.
You can change the size by holding the keyboard minimise button (which isn't very intuitive, but is fine once you know it's there) and choosing a new size. It's quick to do, and you may even find you prefer different sizes for different tasks.
Having the separate number keys even when typing in QWERTY is great for entering passwords and things. It takes up a little more room, yes, but it's a small feature that goes a long way. Typing is comfortable, and the autocorrect does a good job of amending typos. However, it's not so smart with updating missing apostrophes. We understand that "lets" is a real word – although we think the default should probably be to add one in there – but why wouldn't it add one to "youre"? While the keyboard does change slightly in different fields (adding '.com' and '@' buttons when in an email address field, for example), it doesn't quite change enough. Why doesn't the forward-slash key become prominent when typing in a URL? It's not a huge problem, but it seems odd to put the focus on convenience with the dedicated number keys, then not bother with stuff like that. As you might expect from a modern tablet, the HP TouchPad comes loaded with several apps, with the AppCatalog available for expanding your arsenal. Probably the single most significant app these days is the browser, which features all the mod-cons we're after. Mostly. It's all multi-touched up, with pinch-to-zoom and general scrolling responding as fast as you'd hope. Even on pages with Flash elements playing, the general browsing experience wasn't really affected. This is an issue that still plagues Android, so HP has the edge here.
Or it would, if Flash was consistently good. Most simple Flash navigation elements run fine, but video is hit and miss. Sometimes it's great, playing smoothly whether it's embedded in a webpage or opened into fullscreen. It tends to get a bit choppy when minimised into a card, but can still be followed. At other times, however, it starts choppy and stays choppy, or navigation elements don't scale up to fullscreen properly and you end up with black bars across the video which are actually how you control it. On the whole, Flash is a positive addition, don't get us wrong. But it's an irritatingly imperfect addition still. The browser itself is fairly typical in terms of layout. At the top you have your address/search bar with back and forward buttons and a Share button for adding bookmarks, adding to the Launcher or sharing a link (although this only does it over email for some odd reason, totally foregoing the HP Synergy social networking integration). You also have a bookmarks/history pane that slides in when you press the button, and there's an option to add a new window. This actually comes in as a new card in the stack, rather than a tab or anything like that. While we have no problem with HP making the most of its OS, we do think the option to open in a tab in the current window or open a new window as a card would be nice, particularly since both Android and iOS will offer tabbed browsing by the end of the year. The Email app works in a split-pane mode, much like Android 3.0's or the iPad's, but it's a little more fiddly. You can drag panes back and forth, sort of like the Twitter for iPad app, but only by using the little lines symbol at the bottom. If you try to drag a pane over by touching one of the messages, you'll inadvertently delete that email: you clear each message by swiping it left or right.
While it's a setup you can get used to, it's not what we'd call immediately intuitive. Its responsiveness is a little inconsistent, too. Sometimes it's fine, but sometimes it's quite sluggish.
There's also a Calendar app for keeping yourself organised. It's well laid out and will automatically bring through online calendars for your account, although it didn't automatically bring through our Google calendars for some reason. We had to add the account manually. It did everything for us after that, but it was a bit odd.
Again, it can be quite sluggish, particularly when switching from one view mode to another (say, going from month to week). There's a Messaging app, which can be used with some chat services on the TouchPad alone, or can be used with a connected Pre 3 to answer your texts. The Phone & Video Calls app serves a similar purpose, allowing you to connect to Skype on the TouchPad, or make and answer calls from a Pre 3. There are a few apps for looking at documents and the like. Quickoffice can link to online storage accounts, including Dropbox, to enable you to view your files. Alas, it's viewing only: no editing here. Adobe Reader offers similar functionality for viewing PDFs. The Memos app simply enables you to write sticky note-style messages to yourself, which can be emailed. Contacts is also standard, bringing through information from Facebook and Google accounts, among others, if you allow it. It doesn't give any live updates from social networks, though, and you can't even click through to someone's profile from it. You might think that tapping on the Linked Profile entry for someone's Facebook would take you to their profile, but it just gives you the option to unlink that information. Again, it's a bit disappointing for an OS plastered with 'Synergy'. Maps is powered by Bing, and proved to be very responsive and smooth. Bing's local searching is usually excellent, and switching from a search to directions was instant and accurate, although it did cause the app to freeze for a few seconds afterwards.
Music has its own app, and you add music most easily by just dragging and dropping it when the TouchPad is plugged into your computer. Again, we're going invoke our two most-used words in this review: inconsistent and sluggish. Album art that's recognised in one view will disappear from other views, and the whole app can be quite slow to respond.
Once you minimise the Music app and switch back to, say, browsing the web, there's supposed to be a small control that appears in the notifications bar. However, we found that this didn't appear on occasions, for no discernible reason.
Incredibly, you can actually dismiss this control like any other notification, but music will keep playing, so you'll have removed your shortcut. Annoyingly, it also doesn't act as a shortcut to the Music app, so if you want to change album, you'll have to minimise your app and scroll through manually. Videos and photos are handled by the aptly named Photos & Videos app. Again, it can link to your online profiles, including Facebook. Sadly, it only brings through your uploaded photos, and not other ones you're tagged in. The videos we loaded onto the device weren't handled that well. No name is presented, and no thumbnails were pulled from the footage, so you're just guessing which is which. However, we couldn't fault it for playback. 1080p video was as smooth as you like, as was 720p. The TouchPad didn't seem to do quite as good a job upscaling our standard-definition film as some other tablets, but it was still perfectly watchable.
The Facebook app isn't actually loaded on the device, despite appearances, but tapping it the first time will take you to the AppCatalog (eventually – it just kept taking us to the Email app for a while, until we quit all running cards).
Once downloaded, you open it and see your news feed in a really nice, clear scrolling list. It stutters a little here and there, but is an easy way to absorb your friends' witterings. Quite annoyingly, tapping anything in the menu on the left will close the other pane over it, even though this just leaves a bunch of empty space on the right of the screen, so you have to drag the pane back to the right every time. AppCatalog The place to get your apps on the TouchPad is the AppCatalog, but it's had one major change in coming to the larger screen. The traditional Featured page, like you might see on the iPad's App Store, has been replaced with Pivot, a digital magazine/app promoter.
Instead of just giving you a list of cool new apps, Pivot creates small articles around them, with great use of layout and photography. There are features where someone involved in an app talks about it, and a section where famous people (and we use that term loosely for the first issue, at least) give their recommendations for the Kindle app. A calendar shows what events are on this month and what apps might complement them. It's a fairly impressive digital magazine in its own right – not too fancy, not too traditional – but the fact that you can buy or bookmark an app from right inside it makes it a genuinely brilliant addition to the AppCatalog. Adding some context to these hot new apps really makes it more interesting to explore them.
The only disappointing thing about it is that it's monthly, so you won't get as many updates on things to look at as you would in other app stores. One advantage of Pivot is that it only features TouchPad apps, whereas the rest of the store features both tablet and phone apps. However, you can still tell which is which, thanks to the little "For TouchPad" wording above the price. The app selection is adequate, with the usual suspects such as TuneIn Radio available, but it simply lacks the stand-out apps the iPad has. The top apps in the Productivity category here are for unit conversion or torrent monitoring. On iOS, the top Productivity apps are the Likes Pages, Numbers, Keynote and Penultimate. No matter what anyone says, tablets can be (and are) used for proper busywork, but not without the apps to do it. We just hope that the TouchPad can gain enough support to bring great equivalents of these apps, because the AppCatalog itself is impressively easy to use, and apps download quickly and painlessly.
However, the AppCatalog is quite slow to load and stutters hugely when you're scrolling through its lists.
With its 1.2GHz dual-core processor, the HP TouchPad is one of the most powerful tablets around. In theory, this should translate into some superfast operation, especially with the 1GB of RAM onboard. As you may have already worked out from this review, though, this isn't really the case. At least, not consistently. There are many times when the TouchPad will run just as fast as you'd hope. As we said, the browser is quite smooth, and the card interface is usually flawless, as long as you haven't been rotating the device. But other apps don't really bear this out. The AppCatalog's scrolling is appallingly juddery, the Email and Music apps can be quite unresponsive and many third-party apps can have major lag issues when performing just about any task.
We'll forgive the third-party software to a certain degree, since it's a new platform, and some still consider themselves to be in beta. Those that are slow could improve drastically, and it has to be said that there are many that are already very good. We were playing the free game Robotek HD and it couldn't have run any better. But it just seems that the TouchPad is trying to do too much a lot of the time. The huge delays when changing rotation are an indication of this, but launching just about any app is also a much slower process than on other tablets. The AppCatalog in particular regularly took as long as 15 seconds to load.
If you think this doesn't sound like a long time, just try sitting and staring at a screen, doing nothing, and count it out. It's a shockingly long time considering how generally fast the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 do things. As we said, though, there are areas where the power does seem to be used properly. 1080p video played back perfectly smoothly, but our pleasure at that fact is reduced somewhat by the lack of a video-out port. It's something we've become used to in tablets, and the iPad 2 will even be able to do it wirelessly in the future, so it stands as a glaring omission from the TouchPad's spec sheet. The TouchPad's screen is responsive when it comes to multi-touch, but we have two small problems with it. When you press hard on the screen, the image warps. Yes, it's unlikely you'll need to press this hard, but it's something that other high-end tablets don't have a problem with, and we worry what this would mean if you were to drop the TouchPad. The main issue, though, is that the screen isn't bright enough. It's visibly less bright than the iPad 2, for example, and although you might not notice it if you only had the TouchPad, the iPad is easier to use in any bright light situation. The low brightness also means that colours, while natural and appealing, don't look as good as they do on some other tablets. The Beats Audio speakers are a bit of a non-entity, to be honest. In a head-to-head, they proved slightly better than the iPad's for music, giving it a little more punch, but were inferior when it came to dialogue. The two stereo speakers didn't offer any more volume than the iPad's single speaker, either. As far as battery life goes, the TouchPad isn't at the head of the pack. We played a video from BBC iPlayer on the iPad 2 and the TouchPad at the same time for two and a half hours. After that, the iPad 2 was at 70 per cent, while the TouchPad was at 60 per cent.
We'd quit all apps on the TouchPad, so if you add in multitasking, you can probably expect battery life to come down a bit. However, we'd had the brightness and volume at full on both machines, so if you reduce those and perform less intensive activities than streaming video constantly, we think the battery life on the TouchPad will be adequate for most people, but not pack-leading. The TouchPad also has the advantage of the optional Touchstone wireless charger, which works really well and is hugely convenient.
The HP TouchPad has been eagerly awaited, so the question is whether it was worth it. The iPad's already on its second iteration, while Samsung has been fine-tuning the template it laid down late last year with the original Galaxy Tab and turning it into the Galaxy Tab 10.1. And Asus' Eee Pad Transformer just about blew us away, doing something really different. Where does the TouchPad sit among these? It's got an appealing design, a revered operating system and enviable specs, but the challenge for many early attempts has been to create something that's more than the sum of its parts. We liked HP webOS is a genuinely impressive operating system. Although some tout is as being intuitive, we're not sure that's really its strength. With its multitasking and the way its cards and stacking features work, it can be a great working tool, grouping apps together by task. The design of the TouchPad on the whole is nice, even if it's got some downsides. It's all nicely featureful, with plenty of social network integration being supplemented by the likes of 1080p video playback and Adobe Flash support. Other usability tweaks, such as the resizable keyboard, are very handy too. The integration with other HP/Palm products is also a thoughtful touch. We didn't have a Pre 3 to test the touch-sharing technology or messaging/call sharing, but these are great little technological touches that should appeal to the webOS purists. HP Pivot is also a really strong feature. Turning app discovery into an editorial experience is a great way to differentiate the AppCatalog from its equivalents on iOS or Android. We disliked The reason the HP TouchPad hasn't got a higher score overall isn't due to some major flaw or missing feature. It's more of a 'death by 1,000 paper cuts' situation (although 'death' is a major exaggeration). Performance is sluggish. It's not as bad as the worst budget tablets around, certainly, and not all of the time, but it's often enough that it doesn't come across that well for its price point. The AppCatalog just isn't as fully stocked as its rivals. The most impressive apps are multi-platform, so the TouchPad struggles to stand out from this perspective. There's 1080p movie playback, but no HDMI out to enjoy it. Similarly, the screen has fairly good viewing angles and is nice enough when viewed in isolation, but doesn't go as bright as its rivals, and just isn't as good under lights because of it. The notification system is impressively unobtrusive, but isn't a lot of good for getting information at a glance. The video player didn't pull through thumbnails or names. The music player couldn't decide if it should show album art or not. None of these is a deal breaker on its own, but they – and myriad other small niggles – add up to create an experience that feels more unpolished the more you use it. Verdict Imagine the current crop of tablets side by side in a shop. Someone walks along and the question is "Why would I buy this one over the others?" The HP TouchPad is less polished than the iPad, with a smaller range of impressive third-party apps. Yes, it's got features that the iPad lacks, but so do the Android tablets, and they have a bigger app selection, too. The interface appears more polished than many Android tablets, but in operation that doesn't really stand up. It's also lagging behind in many hardware features, such as HDMI output. HP webOS is a very well thought-out operating system, and there's a lot to like about the TouchPad. But why would you buy it over the others? We're not sure many people will find an answer to that question. 
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| HP admits webOS licensing talks Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:25 AM PDT HP CEO Leo Apotheker has admitted that the company is in talks with external manufacturers who may license the webOS mobile operating system. The admission comes after Apotheker hinted that the company would be open to sharing the Palm-made OS with other companies earlier this month. "We are talking to a number of companies," Apotheker told Bloomberg. "I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations." Chit chat Which companies these may be remains a mystery, although some loose-lipped sources have tipped Samsung as one of them. We wouldn't hold our breath for a Samsung (or HTC or Nokia or LG) webOS phone though, with Apotheker leisurely adding, "There is no time pressure to do this." There's no denying that webOS has some hardcore fans out there, but can porting it to alternative hardware really make HP back the $1.2 billion it spent on Palm? 
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| Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:10 AM PDT Here at TechRadar, we had some serious geek chills when we reviewed the Dell XPS 15. Combining powerful Intel Core performance with a slick customisable body, beautiful screen and excellent usability, we defy anyone not to enjoy the impressive computing experience it offers. So when Dell came to our office with the shiny new XPS 15z, we immediately had to don the waterproof pants. The stakes have been upped with a surprisingly slender chassis, but Dell hasn't made any sacrifices in terms of performance, thanks to a second generation Sandy Bridge Core i7 CPU ably backed up by 8GB of RAM. Just a quick glance at the gorgeous design and it's obvious that the Dell XPS 15z is a special laptop. A sleek brushed metal design has been used throughout the £899 PC, with a darker tint to the interior. Gone is the jutting lip at the rear. The big booty of the XPS 15 has slimmed right down, while the thickest part of the body measures just 27mm. Fans of the XPS 15 will know that its one downside is its chunky build, so this slender finish makes the Dell XPS 15z a great deal more portable. This is further bolstered by the 2.6kg weight, compared to the XPS 15's 2.8kg frame.
The aluminium lid is incredibly thin yet solid, unlike the lids of the Samsung 9 Series laptops. The 15-inch display does shimmer if the lid is pushed hard in places, but we're confident that it could absorb a decent punch without suffering any damage. Of course, punching this beauty is the last thing we'd do. Inside the Dell XPS 15z, the PC's keyboard sits in the middle of the chassis and looks great, with curved metallic keys. They don't travel far when hit, but they're firmly set and well separated from each other, which makes typing comfortable. Even better, they glow when used in low light so you aren't squinting to see. Other interior features are limited to the power button, which sits centrally above the keyboard, the wide touchpad and two speakers, which sit either side of the keyboard. It's a minimalist laptop design that works too well for words.
Once you finish drooling over the gorgeous body, you'll probably want to turn the Dell XPS 15z on. As soon as Windows boots up, you'll notice how incredible the screen is. This launch laptop is a 15-incher, but Dell told us it's planning both smaller and larger models for release soon. With a full HD 1080p resolution, everything looks sharp as a tack. Even the tiniest fonts are readable, while viewing angles also impress. But flick through your photos and you'll be truly wowed. Images are rendered beautifully, with rich colours and perfect contrast bringing everything from landscape shots through to family scenes to vivid life. You can carry around a lifetime's worth of photos on the 750GB hard drive, as well as thousands and thousands of songs and plenty of films. There's also a slot-loading DVD drive.
Entertainment is definitely a key selling point of the Dell XPS 15z, between the brilliant display and the powerful built-in speakers. We don't usually big up a laptop's speaker system as, frankly, they're often rubbish, but the other half actually told us to shut up when we blasted some music on them. Thankfully we could barely hear her complaints over our playlist. As expected, 802.11n Wi-Fi support allows speedy wireless browsing, with dual-band support. You also get an SD Card reader, two USB 3.0 ports and a SATA port that doubles up as a sleep-and-charge USB. If you want to hook up an external display or projector, DisplayPort and HDMI connections are available. You also get a built-in HD webcam on the Dell XPS 15z that can shoot photos and video up to 1280 x 1024 resolution. We appeared sharp during web chats, although there is slight motion blur.
As previously mentioned, the Dell XPS 15z packs in an Intel Sandy Bridge processor, specifically a Core i7-2620M running at 2.7GHz. With a mighty 8GB of DDR3 RAM on board also, we had high hopes for our benchmarking tests. Running Cinebench, we realised the full extent of this laptop's power. It's one of the most capable machines we've tested, able to multitask with any number of resource-hungry applications. Even the most demanding editing software runs perfectly. Dedicated Nvidia GeForce 525M graphics make for great multimedia performance on the Dell XPS 15z also. HD movies stream smoothly, you can edit all of your media and even the latest games run well. But more intensive titles may need their detail levels tweaked to get an acceptable frame rate. Basically, this laptop can do it all and won't become out of date any time soon.
With all that power we expected the Dell XPS 15z to heat up quickly. However, the chassis remained cool at all times even after hours of use, with all of the settings turned right up. We also expected the battery life to suffer, despite the XPS 15 lasting a long time between charges. However, our tough Battery Eater benchmark, which runs the battery down by playing HD video on a loop with the settings turned up to maximum, still came out at a very impressive 214 minutes. If you simply use the Dell XPS 15z for browsing the web or belting out that novel you've been meaning to write, it'll last for five hours easily. Benchmarks 3DMark: 19561
As big fans of the Dell XPS 15, we were looking forward to checking out the XPS 15z. The powerful specs and slender new body on this 15-inch laptop are immediate draws, forming a combination that could be a real winner if executed right. We liked The slimmed-down chassis is solidly built and desirable, with a gorgeous minimalist design. The Dell XPS 15z is slender and light enough to carry around when needed, while the battery lasts for over three and a half hours even when playing HD video on the highest power settings. Usability is another highlight, thanks to the firm isolation-style backlit keyboard and wide touchpad. A whopping 750GB of storage means you can carry around everything you need, and there are plenty of ports to keep you connected.
If you need a PC laptop to consume your media, the full HD screen and powerful integrated speakers are a perfect means of enjoying films and photos. You're not just limited to watching, however. With a powerful Sandy Bridge processor and dedicated Nvidia graphics on board, you can edit your home movies and indulge in some frantic gaming sessions any time you like. We disliked After racking our brains for ages, the best we can come up with is the power cord, which is a little too short. If we wanted to get really picky we'd complain that the screen doesn't tilt back far either, but the excellent viewing angles make it a moot point. Verdict Quite simply, the Dell XPS 15z is one of the best portable laptops we've had the pleasure of reviewing. Masses of power tucked into a slim and portable chassis, with an excellent keyboard and a sharp and vibrant screen. If you're looking for a capable laptop and can afford the £900 price tag, look no further. 
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| EA 'blown away' by Wii U controller Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:05 AM PDT Although the Nintendo Wii U was unveiled to mixed reactions, EA isn't shy about having taken quite a fancy to the upcoming console. Frank Gibeau, manager of EA Games, told Gamesindustry.biz that the company was 'blown away' by Nintendo's innovation on the Wii U's controller, which incorporates a tablet-style touchscreen, and confirmed that EA will have games available for the console at launch. "We were really blown away by the unique innovation that Nintendo brings with the Wii U controller on a high performance machine," he gushed. "The ability to do HD graphics and access game experiences in a completely novel way and a way that's never been seen before, it really struck our fancy." BFFs Explaining why the company was so eager to get up on stage with Nintendo when it announced the Wii U at E3 2011, Gibeau went on: "We were excited by what Nintendo presented to us, we thought about it and it fits well with what we're trying to do with our franchises like FIFA and Madden and Battlefield. "There's great horsepower there, great innovation and Nintendo's got fantastic branding. We're platform agnostic as a company so if we find something we believe will have success commercially and critically, and has a business model that works for us, we're in. "With the Wii U it's important for us to get there on day one so we can get in and build as big an audience as possible." 
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| Google+: everything you need to know Posted: 29 Jun 2011 09:40 AM PDT Google has announced a new project, Google+. And it's a big one. If you're confused about what it is and how it might fit into you life, read on to find out more, plus we've got full details on the services, when you can sign up and what it means for Facebook, Twitter and more. What is Google+? At a basic level, Google+ (or Google Plus) is an attempt by Google to reinvent the social network on mobile and one the web. Google+ is based completely around the concept of sharing – not just links and photos, but also to get interesting info sent to you as well as participating in video chats. "Google+ is a project that aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world: you share different things with different people," says Google's Vic Gundotra. "We started the Google+ project to see what a Google approach to sharing would look like, and to see if we could come up with a better way of connecting with the different people in all of our lives." A social network, then.
UPLOADS: You can choose to upload all the photos from your phone to a private folder on Google+ to make them easier to share What are the Google + services? Google+ is actually comprised of a whole batch of different services, each with their own logo which you'll see in the Android and iOS apps for the service. In Google's words, these are what the various elements of Google + do Circles: "Share the right things with the right people." Circles enables you to put your online friends into a number of 'circles' and then you simply choose what circles you want to share information with. Sparks: "Get videos and articles about stuff you're into sent directly to you, so when you're free, there's always something to be watched, read, or shared." Sparks is a place where you can share content quickly and easily. The way Google explains this part of Google+ is that it's "kind of like nerding out and exploring a subject together". Hangouts: "Pop in and out of video hangouts anytime, from anywhere. Chat with up to ten people in HD." This is where you can link one to one or as a group with friends from your Circles collective, and speak to them via video. As you can do group video conferencing, this has Skype and Windows Live Messenger as competition. Mobile: "Access all of the features of Google+ from anywhere, plus some fun new ways to share." Instant Upload: If you allow Google+ to, then every picture you take on your mobile will be uploaded to a cloud server, so your images are instantly available to your Circle clique. Huddle, which is a group messaging service that links into Google+. Huddle: Making group plans? Turn multiple conversations into one simple group chat. Are there Google + mobile apps? Yes. Google+ is available on Android Market and the mobile web, and it's coming soon to the App Store. Is Google+ needed? "Online sharing needs a serious re-think, so it's time we got started," says Gundotra. But is he right? We're not too sure - after all, how hard is it to send something to Facebook or Twitter? Google obviously doesn't agree. "Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools."
SPARK AN INTEREST: Stuff that's of interest to you will appear in Sparks What is Google + actually about? Facebook and Twitter are increasingly powerful forces on the web. And Google doesn't get a look in - though Orkut has had success in some countries, it's true. Google wants a bigger slice of the pie - it's already indispensable in search, why not in the sharing of online content? The inclusion of messaging and IM is also interesting - it needs to give Google Talk a boost in the face of increasing competition from Microsoft. After all, the Redmond boys are not only buying Skype but have a formidable presence in IM through Windows Live Messenger and its partnerships with Facebook and Yahoo. Will Google+ be another Google service that gets dumped after a year? Who knows. Maybe. Certainly Google will be hoping that Google+ captures people's attention more so than Buzz. Or Wave. Or Friend Connect. Or anything else that it's tried over the last decade... It's refreshing to know that even Google isn't always successful even if, at times, it seems like its launch plan is essentially to throw as much stuff at the wall as possible until something sticks.
MAKING CIRCLES: Creating groups of your friends Google+ data concerns: can you trust Google with your data? This is the biggie. And Google knows that people have latent anger with Facebook over it. It's aiming to be squeaky clean here. "You and over a billion others trust Google, and we don't take this lightly," says the Google+ blog post, somewhat cheesily. "In fact we've focused on the user for over a decade:liberating data, working for an open Internet, and respecting people's freedom to be who they want to be. We realize, however, that Google+ is a different kind of project, requiring a different kind of focus - on you. "That's why we're giving you more ways to stay private or go public; more meaningful choices around your friends and your data; and more ways to let us know how we're doing. All across Google." Is this all that Google+ will offer? According to Google, the answer to that is a resounding "no". Google+ launch date: when is it? Google+ is available on a limited, invite-only beta for the moment, so you'll have to sign up and wait your turn. Quite how long it will stay like this is anybody's guess - it's currently being tested internally. No, we can't get you an invite. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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| Samsung moves to block iPad, iPhone imports Posted: 29 Jun 2011 09:10 AM PDT Samsung has filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission in an attempt to halt the import of iPhone and iPad devices in to the US. It's a major move in the ongoing Apple/Samsung legal spat, which sees each accuse the other of infringing patents relating to their products. Samsung has been ordered to pony up some of its unreleased handsets for Apple's examination, while its reciprocal request to see the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 early was turned down by Judge Lucy Koh. My dad's bigger than your dad Since then, Apple has filed another complaint in Samsung's native South Korea and has also reportedly begun looking to alternative components suppliers, particularly for its mobile device processors. But our American friends should not start panic buying Apple goods just yet; although the ITC is likely to investigate the complaint, we probably won't see a final decision made for 16 to 18 months, according to legal experts FOSS Patents. In the meantime, we'll be watching the lawsuit develop with interest, and the vague hope that it will descend into a juvenile name-calling mess. 
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| FA trials digital football ad hoardings replacements Posted: 29 Jun 2011 09:05 AM PDT The FA is looking into using digital technology to manipulate pitch side ad hoardings at high profile football matches. The new technology allows adverts to be digitally inserted into a live broadcast of a football match, so that the static advertising can be changed depending on what country you are viewing the match from. Digital inserts The technology being used has the rather Ronseal-esque name of Digital Replacement Advertising and has been created by Supponer, a Finnish company. If the trials are a success then it could mean more revenue for TV companies and a kick in the teeth for those who use the billboards to advertise their wares – given that another advert could be digitally inserted over their existing one in certain countries. The idea of inserting adverts digitally into programmes is not new but it hasn't yet been used for football. Sky did use digital inserts in its TV show A Different Breed. Advertising for a well-known dog food brand was inserted into the programme digitally in the post-production process. 
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| Exclusive: Creative Commons: Music industry should follow our lead Posted: 29 Jun 2011 09:00 AM PDT The Creative Commons organisation has told TechRadar that the music industry should look to its modern model of managing digital content, rather than struggling to cling on to traditional pay models. Creative Commons is the now familiar organisation that – in its own words – develops, supports and stewards legal infrastructure that maximises digital creativity, sharing and innovation. CC Chief of staff Lisa Green told TechRadar that she was aiming to help give people a new way to profit from their work, rather than relying on outmoded and difficult to enforce model. Although Creative Commons is most commonly associated with pictures, it is active across a wide range of areas including educational materials – and Green believes that a similarly forward thinking approach to ownership could benefit the music industry as it struggles to contain piracy.
"It's better for individuals and it's better for society because that extends the access that we have," said Green. "The more that you put in the commons and the more you make it available the more it benefits the individual person who is making more money or gaining more exposure. "You need creative commons for this new kind of model." Time is ripe Green believes that, after years of working its way into the internet consciousness, the time is ripe for Creative Commons to become a more mainstream offering. "We think right now we need to be talking to people about creative commons because it does provide the infrastructure for people to use this new model," she added. "As they see this new model and get nervous about how they can move to the new model they need to see that it's not anarchy out there. "[Creative Commons] is a rigid legal code. When someone uses a non-commercial licence and they use it in a commercial setting you can still take them to court. "So here is a well thought out legally solid infra you can use in transitioning from the comfortable old model to this potentially new scary model." Worth a look One person who has benefited from switching from a traditional licensing model to creative commons is acclaimed photographer Jonathan Worth, who went from fearing the internet would steal his livelihood and devalue his work to embracing a more open system. A meeting with internet guru Cory Dotorow helped convince Worth to experiment with Creative Commons, and he has never looked back, and now teaches other young photographers how to benefit from the internet. "The old models are not relevant any more," Worth told TechRadar. "There are loads of opportunities but the old models meant you were really fettered." 
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| Leaked Nokia 700 Zeta photos hit the web Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:33 AM PDT An upcoming Nokia Symbian handset codenamed 'Zeta' has had its first photoshoot. Although yet to be officially unveiled, the sneaky spy shots show a red handset running an as-yet unannounced version of Symbian (known as Belle, the successor to the Anna update we're expecting to land any day now). Other spec-related clues include a 5MP rear-mounted camera complete with flash. Sherlock Phones As well as handset photos, a spec sheet has also surfaced, claiming the Zeta to be 'the thinnest smartphone ever', which from the look of the photos we doubt will ever be true. It also lists a 1GHz processor, NFC and a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen – while these could feasibly be accurate, the photo of a word-processed list of features doesn't exactly fill us with certainty.
The leaked 'spec sheet' also lists a couple of other forthcoming phones; the Nokia 701 Helen, claimed as the Nokia C7 successor, the Nokia 600 Cindy, a youth-focused handset with pre-installed apps like Skype, Shazam and YouTube, and the Nokia 500 Fate, a budget 1GHz handset sans NFC.
As usual, we wouldn't put too much money on these leaked specs being legit; but the Zeta photos do look fairly promising. 
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| Hands on: Sony VAIO Y Series review Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:10 AM PDT Decked out here in a rather lurid pink, here's our hands on: Sony VAIO Y Series review. The new model replaces last year's Y Series with a major change, moving on from the low voltage Intel Pentium processor and replacing it with one of AMD's newish E-Series Fusion chips. That brings both graphics and processing on the same chip - something AMD calls an APU. It also means HD video playback won't be a problem through the HDMI port.
The model we looked at here packed the E-350 clocked at 2.6GHz, alongside a decent 4GB blob of memory. That should mean that the performance and graphics concerns of the last generation are eradicated. AMD's confused branding is out in force on the Y Series - Fusion is still being marketed under the AMD Vision brand, but because decent graphics are on board yet another sticker is required.
The AMD platform is designed to be low cost and Sony told TechRadar it would be pitching this model at those who want both portability and reasonable power but who don't want to pay for a high-end power portable. This type of machine is going to be increasingly where previous netbook purchasers are going to be looking. As Ruth Storey, the category marketing manager for Vaio in the UK said in the presenation of the new models, "the netbook market is declining at an alarming rate".
Quite how much the Y Series will cost remains to be seen though we'd expect it to slot in where the old model left off at around £600. Portability is the Y Series' middle name and it clocks in at just 1.5Kg - a fine achievement for something that seems so capable. As you'd expect from Sony, build quality is excellent, while the keyboard and trackpad are also to be praised - indeed, we preferred it to the keyboard on the VAIO Z Series we looked at yesterday.
Sony also cites a six-hour battery life for the Y Series, broadly in line with other estimates for the AMD E-Series platform.
The Sony VAIO Y Series UK release date is July 2011 and it'll be available from Sony direct as well as Currys and PC World. 
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| LG Optimus 3D gets earlier UK release date Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:58 AM PDT LG and The Carphone Warehouse have announced that the LG Optimus 3D will be coming to the UK a week earlier than expected. The new phone, which rivals the HTC Evo 3D in the forthcoming 3D phone war, was scheduled to go on sale from 8 July, but 20 Carphone Warehouse and four Best Buy stores will get stock a week earlier - with the rest of the nation now getting the phone from 6 July. Pricey dimensions The LG Optimus 3D will cost the princely sum of £35 a month on a two year contract - which is a long time if you're not heavily into exploiting the third dimension. Or you can buy it off contract and SIM free for £499.95 if you're after something a little less committed - we're all about choice here. We've got our full LG Optimus 3D review in the works to see what the fuss is really all about - or alternatively you can see our hands on preview for some lovely images of the chunky little beast. 
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| Windows Phone Tango update to follow Mango? Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:53 AM PDT Microsoft's next Windows Phone update will be called Tango, according to inside sources. Although Microsoft has yet to announce any details of what will come after its uber-update Mango, which brings such things multi-tasking, improved keyboard and Twitter and Linkedin integration, Digitimes believes that this will be superseded by Tango and this will eventually be ousted by an update called Apollo. Mango, Tango, Quango? Now, we know what you are thinking, why isn't Microsoft continuing with the rhyming update theme? Google has done well in piquing our interest with calling its updates after food (alphabetically arranged food at that), Microsoft could easily have milked the rhyming thing some more, if it hadn't chosen a name that hardly anything else rhymes with. Interestingly, Tango may be a new update but there have been some rumblings that Apollo will be another major update, which would lead us to believe that Tango would be something of an incremental one. 
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| Nokia releases updates for older Symbian handsets Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:41 AM PDT Nokia has launched some software updates for handsets running Symbian 3.2 and Symbian 5.0, including an upgraded browser and Ovi Maps. Although Symbian^3 and its forthcoming Anna update are the most advanced of the Symbian crew, it's only available on newer phones like the Nokia N8; older phones are now getting a bit of update love. The Symbian update brings with it the Nokia browser v7.3 which is the same web browsing software that will be coming to the Anna update. This means faster browsing, international domain name support and compatibility with other scripts like Arabic and Chinese. What fun Also en route to the aging handsets is an updated Ovi Maps app; Symbian 3.2 handsets, like the Nokia E72, Nokia E5 and Nokia C5-00, will get indoor positioning via Wi-Fi and location-based recommendations from Lonely Planet. Symbian 5.0 phones, including the Nokia C6-00, Nokia X6 and Nokia N97 Mini, will enjoy Ovi Maps public transport info and social networking check-ins. Oh, and all devices will be getting a new set of emoticons in case you want to communicate through MMS and text messages like it's 2001. Nokia sure is putting a lot of effort into making Symbian users feel loved, now that it has cast the OS aside in favour of Windows Phone 7. The staggered roll out will begin today, with Nokia C6-00 and 5230 first on the download schedule and the rest following over the coming weeks. 
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| Nokia releases updates older Symbian handsets Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:41 AM PDT Nokia has launched some software updates for handsets running Symbian 3.2 and Symbian 5.0, including an upgraded browser and Ovi Maps. Although Symbian^3 and its forthcoming Anna update are the most advanced of the Symbian crew, it's only available on newer phones like the Nokia N8; older phones are now getting a bit of update love. The Symbian update brings with it the Nokia browser v7.3 which is the same web browsing software that will be coming to the Anna update. This means faster browsing, international domain name support and compatibility with other scripts like Arabic and Chinese. What fun Also en route to the aging handsets is an updated Ovi Maps app; Symbian 3.2 handsets, like the Nokia E72, Nokia E5 and Nokia C5-00, will get indoor positioning via Wi-Fi and location-based recommendations from Lonely Planet. Symbian 5.0 phones, including the Nokia C6-00, Nokia X6 and Nokia N97 Mini, will enjoy Ovi Maps public transport info and social networking check-ins. Oh, and all devices will be getting a new set of emoticons in case you want to communicate through MMS and text messages like it's 2001. Nokia sure is putting a lot of effort into making Symbian users feel loved, now that it has cast the OS aside in favour of Windows Phone 7. The staggered roll out will begin today, with Nokia C6-00 and 5230 first on the download schedule and the rest following over the coming weeks. 
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| Review: Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:25 AM PDT Sitting pretty in the hand, the small Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo smartphone and its 8.1-megapixel camera offer photographic skills far beyond what you'd expect for its 125g weight. The 3.7-inch screen with multi-touch Reality display is nice and sharp, and benefits colour-wise from Mobile Bravia technology. However it fares poorly in direct sunlight, with us having to pull the ol' hand-as-a-sun-blocker move. The phone is small enough to use comfortably with one hand, so it's not a huge problem, but essentially, with smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 carrying AMOLED and the Apple iPhone 4 with its Retina display technology, should we really be having problems with direct sunlight any more?
But, moving on, the (blue for us) semi-anodised finish, curved posterior and well-distributed weighting means it sits nicely in the hand at least.
The lock/power key, volume rocker, and – score! – a soft camera key all live on the silver right side of the 13mm-thick chassis. It's not the thinnest of phones, but the depth gives it a nice solid feel in the palm, and it's short enough (4.7 inches, or 116mm) to slip easily into pockets.
On the front we have the Home, Menu and Back buttons, plus up top the Xperia Neo squeezes in a front-facing camera, and proximity and light sensors.
On the back, of course, we have aforementioned 8.1-megapixel camera and a beast of a flash, with which we may have blinded some unsuspecting band members at gigs. Whoops.
Placed at the top are the mini-USB port, 3.5mm audio jack and – in keeping with the high megapixel camera – a mini-HDMI port.
All in, we're not faced with yet another black slab of a smartphone, which is good, we suppose. It's neat and ergonomic, but it's not the sexiest design ever and doesn't really push our aesthetics buttons.
Coming in SIM-free at around £369, it's a mid-range smartphone that fits a lot into its small frame. Running on Gingerbread 2.3, there's also the 8MP camera, mini-HDMI out should you enjoy seeing your videos on a big screen, and a multi-touch 3.7-inch screen. The Xperia Neo definitely leans on its media offering, but for what it's worth, that's some pretty good stuff, and great if your smartphone is more for play than it is for work. Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo: InterfaceThe Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo runs on Android Gingerbread 2.3, neatly aligning it with the Samsung Galaxy S2 and earmarking it as one of the few handsets to be launched with the updated OS. It offers a smooth navigation experience, with little-to-no juddering – in fact, the only stuttering we found was with internet browsing, but we'll get to that in a little while. For customisation fans, the little Xperia Neo offers a plethora of possibilities, with five Home screens, moveable widgets and shortcuts, and – hello to Apple's iOS – the ability to organise all of them into folders.
Diving into the menu delivers the apps, the ordering of which is easy. Click on the right-hand squares icon and it floats the apps, making it easy to sort into content panels. Or, click on the left-hand arrow icon and sort them alphabetically, by most used or by most recently installed.
The Android pull-down notifications tab is still around, something we like as a handy way of viewing your most recent messages/notifications.
And for your four key, most-used apps, there's a dock across the bottom of each screen to pin them on. By default these sit as media, messaging, contacts and phone dialer, but they too can be customised and changed around.
Plus, holding the Menu button momentarily will bring up a multitasking screen, which allows you to pick from the most recent widgets you've had open.
Altogether, a good operating system overlaid with a Sony Ericsson skin, making for an easy to navigate UI that you can make your own in many ways. Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo: Contacts and callingAccessing the contacts is, as previously stated, easily done through the floating dock, which sits on every Home screen. They're, naturally, presented in the usual list, with a nice dash of social networking integration. Syncing with your Twitter, Facebook and Google accounts will automatically populate your handset with imagery and the latest status update from whichever network your contacts happen to be connected to.
However, it had a couple of problems syncing contacts of ours, even when their names perfectly matched the spelling on their social networks – and we couldn't find a manual way of correcting that, which is a bit poor if you like everything to be neat and properly ordered. Tapping a contact's name will bring up their profile page, displaying all their latest status updates, email addresses, and of course, phone number. From here you can make them a favourite, edit their info or shortcut to various messaging types (SMS, email, social networks etc).
However, if you want to skip all that, simply tap the image to the side of the name in the list view and up pops a handy row of shortcuts, including phone dialler, email, SMS, Facebook and Twitter. You have to be quite precise in your tapping, however, because the list view keeps each contact defined to a thin strip, so there's a lot of room for error and might get irritating if you're larger of fingers. Adding a contact is dead easy. Long-tap an incoming number, or just dive into the contacts list, and tap 'create new contact', or the + icon that sits at the top of the screen. Calling-wise, the connection tends to be good and doesn't often drop, but one bugbear is the lack of smart dialling. Finding a number means either dipping into the contacts or going through the call log. All well and good, but it's nice to have that short cut of being able to tap in representative numbers and be presented with matching names.
The handset sits comfortably against the ear thanks to the curved form, and call quality is loud and clear. Knocking the volume up and down while talking can be a little difficult, since the volume rocker sits too close to the camera button to be able to feel the difference while talking. However, it's a minor fault. Having the call on speaker gives a decently loud sound. Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo: MessagingTapping out messages on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo is adequate. The keypad itself is well spaced and should be easy to pick up speed on, however there are a couple of notable faults. There's a possibility whoever designed it has a problem with contractions, because the apostrophe button is irritatingly located in the symbols page, and typing in predictive text doesn't help either. For example, typing "where's" won't offer the amendment "where's"; instead you have to navigate out of the QWERTY pad and into the symbols, and only upon typing "where'" will you be offered the choice of "where's". Same for "I'm" and "I'd", and while it sounds like such a simple thing, it gets incredibly irritating after a while and drastically slows down responses. That said everything else is set up in a good way. There's a portrait and a landscape QWERTY pad.
And, standard Android, the choice to reply in portrait while seeing the message history and a shortened form of your message.
Or to reply in landscape without the message view but with a full screen message.
Converting the SMS to MMS is handy, with a shortcut sitting next to the text input box that, when pressed, offers the chance to add media or even dive into camera mode and add a new snap.
The message history format is the now-standard bubble view, however, with both sides of the conversation displayed in the same colour of bubble, it can get a little difficult to tell who is who if the conversation goes on for a while. Social networking isn't really integrated at all in the SMS inbox, and the choice has been made to keep email and SMS inboxes separate. Messages in the inbox are displayed in a list view, however, and contacts' pictures as synced with Facebook/Twitter are visible. As for email, the phone comes pre-loaded with two different apps; Gmail, plus a generic email app. The standard app refuses to acknowledge the existence of inbox folders, so that's not particularly useful if you're a super-organised person. But if you're both organised and on Gmail, then you're absolutely set. It does, however, have a combined inbox, which lets you add several accounts at once. Additionally, the screen feels a little crowded when in the email editor, especially in portrait QWERTY mode. However, setting up your account is beautifully simple, as it always is these days: simply enter your details to the prompt screens and away you go. Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo: Internet |
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MySpace to be sold for just £18 million?
Posted: 29 Jun 2011 05:39 AM PDT
MySpace looks set to be sold this week, with the social networking site to be bought for a fraction of the $580 million News Corp paid for it back in 2005.
News Corp had been hoping to get around $100 million for the site, but All Things Digital is reporting that this is way off the number that is likely to be agreed, which will be between $20 to $30 million (£12 to £18 million).
There are two companies vying for MySpace. Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital – the former being an advertising network and the latter a private equity firm.
Deal soon
News Corp is hoping that the sale will be completed by Thursday and it is thought that MySpace Music will be what the eventual buyers will focus their sights on.
According to All Things Digital, there is also an outside chance that the co-founders of MySpace may be interested in giving the site a much-needed kiss of life.
Both Tom Anderson (remember him? He wanted to be your friend so badly) and Chris DeWolfe could well come in with a last-minute bid.
Whatever the outcome, it is likely that MySpace will shed more jobs (rumours are that 150 will go) and become a much more streamlined affair.
Looks like the My [___] logo introduced earlier this year was a sign of the cost-cutting to come.
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Exclusive: Nokia: there's still hope for MeeGo yet
Posted: 29 Jun 2011 05:37 AM PDT
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's comments about the Nokia N9 being the last MeeGo phone may have been misinterpreted, according to a statement sent to TechRadar.
The Nokia N9 was recently announced with mostly positive first impressions, but according to Finnish site MTV3, Elop 'confirmed' that it would be the last MeeGo phone as the company looks to a new Windows Phone/Symbian era - although he was never directly quoted by the site.
Game over, or game on?
We spoke to Nokia to clarify the situation, and received the following response:
"Our primary smartphone platform will be Windows Phone – we have been very clear on this point – this is where we will be focusing our energies and resources as we go forward.
"Having said that, many of the innovations seen in the new N9 will be utilised in future Nokia products and we're excited about that and about what the N9 has brought us so far."
We realise that the statement is hugely open to interpretation - 'many of the innovations seen in the new N9' could range from the new MeeGo OS in its entirety to its triple homescreen layout or clever NFC Bluetooth pairing,
Whatever the plans are now, it's likely that Nokia won't give up on a strong consumer product if the N9 gets the traction the early signs are suggesting it might - so perhaps we haven't seen the last of MeeGo after all.
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First Picture: Virgin Media's TiVo iPad app
Posted: 29 Jun 2011 05:23 AM PDT
Virgin Media has sent us a sneak peek at its upcoming TiVo iPad app.
Sadly, the spoilsports won't tell us when the app will be released, exactly what it will do or any other handy hints about it at the moment.
We already know that the app will act as a massive remote control as well as a lap-based EPG.
Wild stabs in the dark
But looking at the first screen shot, it looks as though we can also look forward to multiroom DVR management, on-demand content on your iPad and some social features via the 'share' option.
We wouldn't be surprised to see some Facebook or Twitter integration here, and it'd be nice if it went a little bit deeper than simply tweeting what you're watching.
TiVo already has an iPad app out in the US, which, based on the picture Virgin Media sent us, doesn't look massively different to the upcoming UK one; but with Virgin on board, we're hoping for some nice little extras to sweeten the deal.
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3D gaming: what the future holds
Posted: 29 Jun 2011 05:09 AM PDT
Where next for stereoscopic 3D gaming? And, by extension, what is that first properly 3D game - that title that will be the benchmark for all the subsequent 3D games to follow - going to be like?
These are vital, timely questions for hardcore gamers and games developers alike, as a familiar haze of cynical disinterestedness settles over the first batch of 3D games on PC and PlayStation 3.
Indeed, a recent report claims that, despite the concerted push from the TV and display industry to leverage 3D as an added-value feature on your new telly or PC monitor, many users will still rarely watch or play with 3D content in future.
Informa Telecoms & Media claims that, despite 3D soon set to become a default feature on our TVs and PC monitors, 3D TV will not be a mainstream success, with less than half of the 11 million 3DTV-ready UK homes in 2016 set to be active, regular users of 3D TV.
"We do not share the view that 3D represents the obvious next evolutionary step for TV, in the same way that colour followed black and white, or HD is following SD," reads Informa's damning report on the future of 3D.
"Colour and HD offer noticeable enhancements to the technologies that preceded them. But 3D TV is less of an enhancement and rather more a new type of viewing experience - one that many people will enjoy, but some way from becoming ubiquitous."
3D gaming: our only hope
Yet while those types of findings may well trouble the likes of Sky or Virgin Media, many gamers and games creators argue that it is the latest developments in 3D PC and console gaming that are really set to drive uptake of 3D tech in the home. However, some detractors of 3D in the games industry are beginning to argue that the heavy PR focus on 3D gaming tech and content from the likes of Nvidia and Sony in recent years may well have been misplaced.
"I think for a large number of consumers, stereoscopic 3D (in its current technological implementation) will remain incidental to gaming," says games analyst Nick Gibson, from Games Investor Consulting, "a fun option to have but just that, an option not a gaming necessity. This may change gradually as 3D becomes more ubiquitous but I think it will take a different technological implementation of stereoscopic 3D to make it a widespread must-have for gaming."
Unphased by such criticism, Sony recently unveiled its own competitively-priced PlayStation-branded 3D monitor at E3 2011, following major 3D marketing campaigns surrounding recent PS3 titles such as MotorStorm: Apocalypse, Killzone 3 and Gran Turismo 5.
3D SCREEN: Sony introduced the latest hardware at E3 2011
Additionally, one leading British developer that begs to disagree with Informa's rather negative take on 3D content development is Andrew Oliver, CTO of Leamington-based Blitz Games Studios.
"Up to now there's been a real chicken-and-egg situation with the uptake of 3D in the home," argues the 3D gaming evangelist. "The TV manufacturers have been pushing the technology further and the price is starting to lower but the installed base won't increase until there's a good spread of 3D content available.
3D gaming starting to gain momentum
Oliver points out that the catch-22 for 3D gaming is the fact that entertainment companies won't bother investing in pushing out new 3D content until there's a big enough installed base of equipment to make it worth their while.
"I personally feel that this process is starting to gain some momentum now, though - more and more animated features are becoming available on 3D Blu-Ray, because they're being produced for the cinema anyway, and broadcasters are starting to commit to some 3D content too.
INVINCIBLE TIGER: Blitz Games' groundbreaking stereoscopic 3D console game
Out of all the major gaming console manufacturers, it is clearly Sony that has the most to gain from convincing gamers and TV-buyers that 3D is a viable tech for them to invest in right now.
"Sony is best placed to progress both sides of this scenario, " says Oliver, "as they have a stake in TVs, projectors, Blu-Rays, games consoles and content creation - so if anyone can get this moving it's them! And as soon as glasses-free TVs become affordable too then we'll really start to see 3D hitting the domestic mass market in a big way."
Microsoft's 3D reticence
However, over in Redmond, Microsoft appears to still be "surprisingly reticent about actively embracing 3D," argues the Blitz CTO. "They've recently updated the Xbox 360 to include stereoscopic 3D as standard so that's a great leap forward but I'd personally like to see more of a commitment in the coming year or so."
NINTENDO 3DS: The latest auto-stereoscopic 3D gaming
Nintendo is currently leading the handheld 3D charge with the recently launched auto-stereoscopic 3DS, which Oliver thinks is "a great introduction to 3D for a lot of people, but the limited screen space and the nature of the glasses-free experience on the device has sadly put some people off.
"I think it's a great piece of kit, though, and when the content embraces 3D properly, the effects do look really cool on it - I hope that it ultimately helps people to see the potential of what 3D can bring to a gaming experience."
3D iPad gaming
The market for hardcore gaming is no longer all about the traditional three big console manufacturers, of course, with development of quality mobile and handheld gaming expanding and fragmenting at a phenomenal rate right now.
So what of the new movers and shakers in the handheld and mobile 3D gaming market? Specifically, will Apple soon embrace 3D on the iPad and iPhone?
3D IPAD 3? Apple could be the next gaming brand to push new 3D content
"Apple has been surprisingly quiet in this space and I'm actually a little surprised," says Oliver, "because they're always at the height of technology. Given there are already technologies that can display 3D with no comprise to 2D, it's surprising that they haven't exploited this yet.
"After all, an iPad that could display 3D movies perfectly, probably without glasses, would not only sell very well at a premium price, but would also sell a lot of premium-priced 3D content on the movie and app store too."
There has already been a number of 3D tablet devices announced for the consumer market, with the likes of the next Asus Eee Pad MeMo set to arrive with glasses-free 3D, which leads the Blitz Games CTO to speculate that "maybe Apple will join the fray with the iPad 3?"
Quality content and innovative design
The bottome line is this. While 3D gaming developers such as Andrew Oliver are impressed with the likes of Samsung's latest active shutter 3D TV tech and LG's latest passive polarisation offerings, he agrees that the real battle is to provide quality content and innovative 3D games design.
"It's very difficult to tell people why 3D will make such a difference to game design, although I really do believe it makes a big difference," he says.
"The problem we'll continue to face is that, until you've experienced 3D gaming done well, or good 3D content of any type, it's very easy to be dismissive of its impact. Just as when movies went into colour for the first time, 'non-believers' dismissed the new technology as unnecessary because they couldn't see what it would add to the overall consumer experience.
CONTENT IS KING: Quality content is still required
"I think people are now starting to see that it really does add something, though. Broadcasters such as Sky have realised that content such as sport can really benefit for the extra detail and clarity that 3D brings, just as they did when HD was first entering the mainstream.
"Likewise, in games, sports titles (including racing) could well be one of the genres that gets people more interested. Ultimately I think game designers will start to consider designing for 3D as just another technique in their toolbox and it will be factored into all types of games."
Oliver is still realistic about the fact that 3D will continue to have a lot of sceptics in the gaming market because of the many associated technical challenges and the costs, "although both of these will become less of an issue as time goes on."
In the Blitz CTO's opinion, the fact is that the hardware is finally coming now ("as people upgrade their TVs over the next few years, everyone will eventually have a 3D set whether they planned to or not") added to the fact that the console manufacturers are doing what they can to allow 3D content to appear on their machines means that, "it's now down to game developers and publishers to take the leap of faith, and the financial commitment, obviously, to make the content happen. However, I believe that it will start to become more prolific, and probably sooner than most people expect."
3D casual and social gaming
Elsewhere, in terms of 3D gaming in the thriving casual and social gaming markets, we spoke with Joe McCormack, CEO at Adotomi, who reminds us how the concept of 3D gaming has been all the rage since Avatar reignited the prospects for 3D in the entertainment marketplace.
"2010, especially, was supposed to be the year of 3D, with television makers rushing their 3D models to stores. 3D gaming was soon to follow, with Sony announcing early plans to support the technology, and Nintendo's 3DS acting as proof of concept, even wowing us along the way for the lack of accompanying glasses."
Neatly summing up the current state of 3D gaming, Adotomi's in-house analyst, Adam Taylor adds: "The question underlying all of this, and all the talk, is whether or not 3D gaming is simply a gimmick mixed with marketing hype, or whether or not it really is the future of gaming. We're of the opinion that while there's certainly gimmicky aspects to the technology, 3D will indeed be central to the future of gaming."
Immersion, immersion
In an increasingly mature and crowded marketplace, the big three console makers are looking for the next innovation to get their consumers excited, notes Adotomi's analyst. "The Wii's motion capabilities shook the marketplace, and Sony and Microsoft hustled to innovate alongside, producing the PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect. Yet, for the core gamer, the heart of the gaming experience lies with one word: immersion.
"Core gamers want a more immersive game experience, and if you look at the industry's history, that's where the real exciting innovations have been - from better physics engines, to increased interaction and destruction of the game world, to increased persistence of online worlds. The future of gaming lies in the continued breaking down of the line between player and the gaming world of their choice. This is where 3D comes in, and why motion technologies will only ever be an adjunct to the industry, as opposed to its beating heart."
IMMERSION: The key to the future of 3D gaming tech and development
Still, Taylor is the first to accept that we're not quite there yet, arguing that there still needs to be a stronger penetration of 3D televisions in the marketplace, improved standards adoption between the various proprietary 3D technologies on offer and, most importantly, the current availability of quality 3D games.
"Some of the ones that we've seen have been fantastic," Taylor enthuses. "But again, they still occupy a niche role in the market. Money and resources in game studios are still flowing to mainstream 'tent-pole' games and with most gamers unequipped with a 3D-enabled TV, or otherwise not willing to wear cumbersome glasses once the novelty wears off, games publishers are going to be hesitant to throw the budgets into developing the 3D aspect."
3D graphics tech from Nvidia and AMD
Back in that place where most new hardcore gaming developments take shape, the PC gaming market, Dell's gaming subsidiary Alienware recently launched its first 3D gaming laptop, the M17X, with the company's manager for EMEA, Eoin Leyden, explaining the company's 3D strategy to TechRadar:
"In terms of the technology, Alienware is pretty much vendor agnostic when it comes to the specific technologies. So, for example, we don't necessarily have any preference for Nvidia over AMD when it comes to graphics. All we are about is trying to deliver the technology that people want.
"At the moment, on the 3D side, Nvidia has somewhat of a head start. AMD's solution right now is a little bit more complicated as it requires some middleware, which doesn't make it an ideal thing for us to offer directly. This is why all the 3D offerings in our portfolio are Nvidia-based, because that's just the way the market is at the moment.
ALIENWARE M17X: A powerful beast of a 3D gaming laptop
"In terms of demand, we have only just recently launched our first 17-inch 3D laptop and the uptake is pretty strong. However, remember that not all 3D monitors are being used by PC gamers for 3D content. Many of them are more interested in the fact that it is a 120Hz monitor, so you can get 120 frames per second - and for serious hardcore gamers and competitive players, it is ALL about frame-rate."
The Alienware exec thinks that most high-end monitors will all soon be 3D enabled, and that "the number of 3D capable PC systems is going to explode, but whether or not people actually use them for 3D content is a different thing altogether.
"The biggest challenge in all of this is that nobody likes to see competing technologies holding back adoption rates, as people are afraid to invest in hardware that might become obsolete very quickly. So that's the biggest negative to what's going on. Right now you have polarisation or you have active shutter, and they pretty much net out to the same thing, in terms of the experience."
CRYSIS 2: But will we look back and laugh in 10 years?
So far, it seems that 3D PC gaming has not had the same amount of media coverage in 2011 compared with the initial wave of hype and excitement back in 2009 and 2010.
"The nub of this whole conversation about 3D gaming is about content," says Leyden. "Games are effectively created in 3D. Yet, historically, the last step developers do is to then go and render that on a flat 2D surface, which is quite a bizarre way of doing things, really!
"However, that said, he problem with the current approach to creating a 3D effect by games developers is that it still tends to render the 3D into the screen. So the 3D effect goes into the screen as opposed to popping out of the screen at you."
3D gaming versus IMAX 3D
The Alienware rep compares this to the experience of going to an IMAX 3D cinema, where you feel like grabbing the virtual objects floating in front of you. "The challenge, of course, from a gaming perspective is that you cannot do that with the current types of 3D tricks that developers use. You almost have to direct the scene to create this 3D effect.
"These scenes in the cinema are very, very carefully orchestrated and directed. Within current gaming, that is something that is almost impossible to do. You can do it in cut scenes, or in a game where you are on the rails - where you lose that degree of control of your character - because otherwise the pop-out from the screen is unpredictable and you can get all sorts of artefacts and things like that.
IMAX 3D: Can home-based gaming ever beat the Hollywood blockbuster?
"So the problem today is that most of the 3D gaming content has basically been created by that first stage easy fix, which creates 3D into the screen as opposed to popping out, which is less compelling. And I think that is why the initial hype around 3D gaming has dampened down a little bit."
That being said, Leyden is also quick to remind us that there are still some titles already out that look fantastic in 3D. "Crysis 2, for example, especially if you can do multi-monitor 3D, looks the business. Yet it is still into the screen, not out of the screen. So at the moment, that is where we are a little bit stuck.
"The first big breakout 3D hit is going to be the first game that is actually going to target 3D as its platform of choice - instead of just creating a game, and offering 3D as an add-on, which is what is currently happening. So elements of the game will be designed specifically from a 3D standpoint, which will set the benchmark for the next wave of 3D games."
Let the 3D creatives run free!
Clearly, right now, we are still in the undecided phase of 3D game development, where the true creatives are not being given the free reign (or, crucially, the financial backing) to create 3D gaming experiences that will truly take the experience to the next level.
"It's the old chicken-and-egg situation," Leyden agrees, arguing that when the installed base gets bigger, because everybody has 3D, "then there will be a more compelling argument for the studios to put more effort into their 3D work - very much like the situation with affordable 'home theatre in a box' around ten years ago, when people started paying more attention to the audio on their DVDs. It's all about that installed base hitting critical mass."
What else might augment and improve our 3D gaming experience in the future? Might we see a move to 4D-style peripherals and add-ons offering wind and ambient-lighting effects in addition to flashy, fully-rendered 3D graphics that pop right out of the screen into your eyes?
"Ha! I think there is still an awful lot of work to be done on the basics, before we get into that stuff," laughs the Alienware exec.
Still scratching the surface of gaming
PC gaming has only been around for around 25 years, and Leyden thinks that "we are still scratching the surface in terms of what we need to be doing, we need to get the realism in the games, because all games still have that kind of cartoony feel to them, in the way that they are rendered. I've still to see a game that can convince me that it is anything other than a game.
"I mean, if you look at a good, pre-rendered 3D animated movie, like the recent Shrek, for example, that stuff is rendered on huge server farms to produce a very realistic-looking thing, modelling hair on characters on a strand-by-strand basis, or whatever. I mean, even to do that kind of thing on a PC, we would need hardware thousands of times faster than we have today.
"And even that, if you think about it, is just a cartoon! So what you really want is photorealistic rendering. You want ray-tracing. You want reflections and refractions of light. You want proper physics, at a particle level. You could go on forever on this…
"But if you look back at games from 10 or 15 years ago, you almost laugh at them and think how primitive they were. So 10 or 15 years from now, we will look back at laugh at Crysis 2 and say, "that was sooooo unsophisticated and naff-looking!
"10 or 15 years down the road, Crysis 2 is going to look like Pong looks to us now."
Kinect-controlled holodecks
Most excitingly, all the indications from the hardware experts and 3D gaming developers TechRadar has spoken with recently suggest that 3D-out-of-the-screen gaming is soon going to be technically possible in mass market game development.
When we eventually reach the point where developers start to marry that technology up with something like Xbox 360 Kinect, then, in theory, gamers will soon be able to realistically manipulate objects in front of them - reaching out and interacting with something in the game that appears in-between themselves and the screen.
"Theoretically, this is all possible," says Leyden. "And that would open up an awful lot of very interactive potential. You know, it's all there. Just that at the moment it is too hard to try and do it.
"But also, it first needs a mind-set change amongst developers. To figure out how to use the technology in a meaningful way that adds something to the experience, to really create something compelling out of it."
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