| Tech Today: 3G MacBook hits eBay, BBM teen charged Posted: 14 Aug 2011 03:47 PM PDT Posted by Chris Smith on Sun 14 Aug 2011 With plenty of goss from Apple, Samsung, and RIM, here's a nice dose of tech news to get your Monday started. Apple set for battle of Waterloo with new retail outlet
Apple opened five new retail stores this weekend, the most notable of which is on RIM's home turf of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The Cupertino-giant also opened its doors in Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska as the iPhone five push begins.
Link: GlobeandMail Firefox 6 now available to download
Mozilla had promised more frequent versions of its Firefox browser and version 6 is already available to download, two days before its scheduled release. The latest incremental update features a few small tweaks, such as highlighting the domain name of the website you're surfing, and a faster start-up time when using panorama mode.
Link: Huffington Post
Weird 3G-enabled MacBook Pro shows up on eBay
A device, claiming to the a 3G-enabled MacBook Pro prototype from Apple, has appeared for sale on eBay. The device, which is a 2007 Pro features an antenna poking out of the side, which Apple Insider reckons proves Apple was thinking about adding mobile data compatibility to its notebooks as far back as 4 years ago.
Link: AppleInsider
Samsung to appeal Galaxy Tab ban on August 25th
Following a German court's shock decision to ban the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 device in the EU, at the behest of Apple last week, Samsung will enter the courtroom to appeal the decision later this month. The ruling, which banned the sale and promotion of the device across Europe (except for the Netherlands) will be reconsidered on August 25th.
Link: WSJ Teen girl charged with using BBM to incite riots
An 18-year-old girl has been formally charged by police after she allegedly used the BlackBerry Messenger IM service to encourage her friends to go rioting in the seaside town of Clacton, Essex. The unnamed girl is the first to be charged in connection with the riots that specifically references the use of the BBM service.
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| 2G mobiles better than smartphones in countryside Posted: 14 Aug 2011 04:15 AM PDT Posted by Richard Wordsworth on Sun 14 Aug 2011 Say goodbye to Facebook and Twitter - if it's reliability you're after, go 2G. Constantly getting no bars on your fancy new dual-core smartphone? Ofcom, the UK's communication regulator, reccomends trading it in for basic 2G phone like the Nokia 3310s of yesteryear.
In a report commissioned by Ofcom on how carriers advertise their networks' signal coverage, smartphones obviously came out on top when it came to web browsing (remember WAP?) and multimedia features, but lagged behind their doddery predecessors when it came to the actual business of making and receiving calls outside of cities. Part of the research saw Ofcom staffers driving around in Devon (picked as an example of rural Britain) hunting for signal, and being left wanting by their smarter handsets:
"As would be expected, all 2G operators have widespread coverage of the roads that were surveyed with relatively few [dead]-spots," says the report. "3G coverage is much lower on the roads driven, likely reflecting the stage of network roll out in Devon at the time of the study."
Studying the signal availability in one county and then applying that wisdom to the whole country isn't how we were taught to do experiments at school, but Ofcom back their findings up with some "desk-based research", and found that if what you want is a phone for making calls, 2G is, counter-intuitively, the way forward.
Via: Ofcom
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| Samsung: Leaked roadmap was false, no I9250 Posted: 14 Aug 2011 03:44 AM PDT Posted by Richard Wordsworth on Sun 14 Aug 2011 No Samsung Superphone on the horizon after all. Well, that's disappointing. After all the excitement of the alleged Samsung handset roadmap that leaked earlier this week promising nine new handsets and two new tablets, Samsung have come out and said it's all a load of cobblers.
"Some media have been reporting that Samsung is preparing to launch nine new smartphones and two new tablet devices," said Sammy in a press release. "While Samsung is continuously working on new devices for our customers, the details being cited are not accurate in this case."
Not that this completely rules out everything we heard about the roadmap - it's possible that when Samsung says "details cited" they're referring to insubstantial things like model numbers and release dates. But the Eeyore in us doubts Samsung would come out with a press release just to disavow some dodgy model numbers.
That means saying goodbye to the GT-I9250, the dual-core, 1.4GHz smartphone with its 4.65-inch display and its Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system; and goodbye as well to the GT-I9220, the handset-cum-tablet follow-up to the Galaxy Tab. We hardly knew ye.
Via: Electricpig
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| Huawei mobile phone to launch in UK in September Posted: 14 Aug 2011 03:05 AM PDT Posted by Richard Wordsworth on Sun 14 Aug 2011 New Blaze handset to land as early as next month. Huawei, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer that builds white-label smartphones for for other companies to rebrand, is to launch its first own-brand handset in the UK in September.
Huawei is trying to get its foot in the door by nabbing between four and five percent of the UK market by this time next year. Its debut handset will be the budget-priced Blaze, tipped to go on sale in September for around £100. Also on the horizon for Huawei is its own tablet, the MediaPad, and another handset called the Vision.
Speaking to Bloomberg news, Huawei's UK executive vice president Mark Mitchinson said: "we're trying to establish the brand, almost from scratch." He followed up by saying that Huawei's own-brand handsets would compete with "anyone involved in Android."
The Huawei Blaze (picutred) will reportedly come running Android Gingerbread 2.3, packing a 3.2-inch touchscreen, a 3.2MP camera, 256MB of RAM and 512MB of onboard storage. Huawei is rumoured to be in talks with O2 and Vodafone over contracts.
Via: Bloomberg
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