The year last year, or more specifically the second half of the 2009, was gratefully decorated with major smartphone announcements. Just to name a few let's bring up in mind iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre coming one after another and followed by the mobile hero of the year - the HTC Hero. Then the long awaited Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 and Motorola Droid made their appearance. By now we have Nexus One added to that lot. iPhone 3GS, despite being a revamped one and a half year old second-gen iPhone is holding very strong to its positions and better still beats the newcomers by an immense rate when it comes to loading a web page, as our colleagues were lucky to discover. If take a look in the future however we might see there an eye-pleasing glow of iPhone 4G coming out in May, 2010. At least this is what rumor mill has erected. It is hard to be precise knowing that the point about Apple iPhone 4G is based on unofficial information, speculation about it and generalized wishlist which Apple definitely follows through evolution branches of all of its products. But we have the approximate release date - May, 2010. We also have the announcement date - that should be January 27th - the day when Apple introduces their not any less rumored tablet to the public.
There is some good news - Google Voice is finally available on the iPhone. However, the bad news is that it runs on your iPhone’s browser and not as a native application. Google has been trying hard to convince Apple to allow Google Voice on iPhone but, no dice. Google then simply decided to take the matter into its own hands and developed a web version which can be accessed by any HTML browser running on the iPhone. It is recommended to add shortcuts to your home screen for the most important features such as Dialer, Compose SMS, Inbox and Contacts. Something is better than nothing and Google Voice running on the browser is certainly better than no Google Voice on your iPhone.
A lot of activity around e-book readers at CES keeps going on after the end of the show. Announced readers, most of those at least, are coming out this winter. The new Amazon Kindle DX will be released tomorrow and Spring Design's Alex no sooner then February. In the meantime ASUS has spiced the dish a bit with an info leak about a mysterious DR-570. Well, maybe not so mysterious - it is also an e-book reader but unlike all the others we have, RD-570 has an OLED screen which is a thing you'd want in a reader, gives an unparalleled contrast ratio and improves hugely on battery life. The biggest part of ASUS DR-570 specs remains unannounced. However, some of the features and release date have been stated by ASUS. They say, DR-570 will feature 6" OLED display and ability to playback Flash content over Wi-Fi or 3G network for 122 hours on a single charge. Probably ASUS will add up all the rest of what modern e-reader needs - text-to-speech software, PDF reader, etc. A lot is going to be down to operating system.
This looks, at first glance, like an incredibly useful charging accessory: it plugs into a USB port and has adjustable teeth to charge any of those blocky, unfriendly, proprietary custom camera batteries. Any maybe it still is an incredibly useful charging accessory… But when we wrote about it last July, we were hoping that it would come along with some of Energizer’s universal power packs. Why? Because the 5 volts that comes out of your USB port isn’t enough juice to charge DSLR batteries, which generally need something like 7.4 volts. It doesn’t look like that’s how it’s going to go down, since Brando is selling this, not Energizer. Oh well. If you have one of those wimpy cameras that takes 3.7 volts or whatever (not that you should be ashamed of that), this accessory could certainly come in handy, since in addition to being able to charge many different kinds of batteries from a USB port, it’ll also work with all of those portable USB charger gadgets out there. At only $12, it’s a pretty good deal, just not as good of a deal as it could have been.
Epson’s recently announced BrightLink 450Wi ultra-short throw projector is able to produce an image from 55 to 102-inches in size depending on how far it’s mounted from a wall, and whether it’s running WXGA or XGA resolutions. For example, at a distance of just 18 inches it’s able to project a respectable 60-inch diagonal image, but for compact spaces it can be mounted as close as 2.8 inches, though that will result in a considerably smaller image. But that’s not the only trick it has up its sleeve. The BrightLink 450Wi is also an interactive projector, and includes a set of digital infrared pens allowing the presenter to doodle or annotate directly on the image being projected. The best feature though is that when the projector becomes available sometime in Spring 2010 it’s expected to sell for under $2,000. [ PR - Epson Changes Interactive Whiteboard Game with Innovative, Cost-Effective Interactive Projection Solution ]
I can hardly remember exactly when first serious testing of USB 3.0 technology has started, roughly more that year ago, but it is a real pleasure to compare CES 2009 to what we can currently see in Las Vegas. Among tons of others, USB 3.0 technology is one of the most important for both desktops and notebooks. It didn't take long for leading brands then to come up with SuperSpeed gadgets of all kinds. CES 2010 USB 3.0 find of the day goes to VIA. So far their VL700 USB 3.0 to SATA controller and VL810 SuperSpeed USB hub controller appear to have what it takes to come out on the market and get sold out like hot cakes. So, names speaks for themselves, don't they? VIA VL700 USB 3.0 to SATA controller is fully capable of transmitting data from any SATA carrier like HDDs, SSDs or even DVD and/or Blu-ray optical drives equipped with SATA interface. The VL700 supports NCQ and, well, all the rest is simple, it takes the data and throttles it at speeds from 1.5Gbps up to 5Gbps. This figure is one of the best in the class as far as I can see. VIA VL810 is a bit more humble than VL700, but then it will come in handy more often and plausibly will cost less.
Small wonder why USB 2.0 technology doesn't score as a proper video carrier. Attempts to push 3D video game graphics or a movie in HD result in glitches from low frame rates (60fps and 27fps respectively). DisplayLink, USB 2.0 video streaming pioneer, has sold a million of their specialized chips last year. But you have probably guessed already that the latest USB 3.0 standard brings a lot of potential into the concept. So did they, and with ten times more the bandwidth DisplayLink puts a lot of effort in designing a new USB 3.0 compatible chip. They will show it as soon as CES 2010 starts. DisplayLink officials say that 4.8Gbps are more than enough to transmit any sort of video to display of any size and resolution. While this is apparent, the peculiar thing is that they are into a bit of a split with what the first video carrying chip was designed for. That was designed to replace VGA and DVI ports with a standard USB hub. This is what USB itself is for - combining all the different types of ports at the back of your computer into one easy to use, small and fast port.
If you’re a pixel pusher who has to have the latest version of Photoshop the second Adobe releases it, then you’ll probably want to make sure the Photoshop magnets on your fridge or filing cabinet are updated too. So head on over to Meninos who now have an updated version of their Photoshop, err, I mean Ps Magnet Kit which includes 13 different toolbars, menus and palettes for $25.
Intriguing news from NVIDIA have appeared on their blog today. The brief announcement says NVIDIA is putting final touches on a mysterious Optimus technology. The manufacturers themselves say NVIDIA Optimus is notebook-orientated and works with platforms that carry an onboard NVIDIA graphic processor. NVIDIA Optimus technology will debut at CES 2010 and will be released in a short while afterwards in Q1. Optimus is designed to improve graphic experience on notebook platforms whilst keeping power management efficient. That is very pleasant to hear, but what was not yet pronounced by NVIDIA is the actual architecture of Optimus. The first thing that comes to my mind is making use of the latest Intel Atom Pineview processor, probably implementing it on top of the Ion platform. I'm really afraid to make suggestions here as Optimus could really be something completely new.
This TV from Haier (I guess they’re an electronics company or something) doesn’t just feature wireless HD… It’s totally, completely wireless. Wireless power, folks. What does it take to transmit 3 gigs per second of 60hz 1080p plus 100 watts of electricity? A gigantic antenna is what, as you can see right in front of the distracting jerk with the ponytail who got in the background of my shot: We talked to the Haier reps about just what exactly would happen if you got in between the antenna and the TV, and while they said that it was perfectly safe, I’m going to assume that that’s just PR-speak for, “it’ll definitely turn you into a super hero while giving you some form of cancer.” We have no information on when you’d find something like this in your house, but the wireless HD probably won’t be available before 2011, about the same time as non-chafing lead underpants.
