Chris Davies - SlashGear

Author Archive for Chris Davies

Technics 1200 & 1210 turntables not facing axe; 2009 vinyl sales up 35% on 2008

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 No Comments

Excellent news, old school vinyl lovers. Despite earlier reports from Technics Australia suggesting that parent company Panasonic were planning to axe the Technics 1200 and 1210 decks in February 2010, the company has issued a statement saying they have "no current plans" to discontinue the iconic turntables.

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Optima OP5-E Maemo MID gets reviewed [Video]

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 No Comments

Nokia may only have plans for a single further Maemo device in 2010, but that’s not to say the market will be limited to that unnamed handset and the N900. Optima have launched the first non-Nokia Maemo MID the shape of the Optima OP5-E, a 4.3-inch resistive WVGA touchscreen, 806MHz Marvell PXA310+ ARM processor and integrated 3G (CDMA now; HSDPA coming next month). Over at ARMDevices Charbax has reviewed the OP5-E, and he seems pretty excited about its possibilities.

optima op5 e maemo mid 540x359

Video demo after the cut

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Intel axe Larrabee GPU over developmental delays

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 No Comments

Intel's Larrabee based graphics chip plans have been axed, after the company decided development delays had left the project uncompetitive. Announced back in August 2008, the GPU was to be based on multiple Pentium CPUs with 64-bit instructions and multi-threading, and offer "the full programmability of the CPU with the kinds of parallelism and other special capabilities of graphics processors".

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Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition promises cheap turn-by-turn directions

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 No Comments

Nokia have pushed a new cellphone out of the door, and the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition unsurprisingly sets its focus on getting you from A to B. Billed as the Finn’s “most affordable Nokia Maps loaded, GPS-enabled phone” so far, the €100 ($164) handset is set to arrive in Q2 2010 and has device-based mapping (on a 2GB microSD card) so that it can be used for directions even without a data connection.

Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition Mobile Holder CR 118

Video demo after the cut

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Amazon considering UK retail stores?

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 No Comments

amazon box In our review of the Barnes & Noble nook earlier, we pointed to the US retailer’s network of physical stores as a key advantage over the Kindle; it looks like Amazon aren’t content for that to be the case. According to a Times report this weekend, Amazon are eyeing up various “high-profile sites” around the UK, believed to be intended as local pick-up points for the larger items the retailer sells.

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“Specialized tablets” with multitouch first to use Pixel Qi displays

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 1 Comment

Pixel Qi have announced that their first batch of production displays will be ready shortly, and confirmed that the first recipients for the panels will be “specialized tablet devices with multi-touch”. Project lead Mary Lou Jepsen does not reveal the identity of the manufacturer using the Pixel Qi screens – which work as color LCDs in regular lighting, but can be read as easily as e-ink panels in direct sunlight – but did say that the company’s customers will be at CES with her company.

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Acer preparing NVIDIA Ion 2 netbooks/nettops?

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 No Comments

Details on NVIDIA's Ion 2 graphics chipset are still relatively scarce, but according to a DigiTimes report the company have already got at least one big-name buyer. Acer have apparently placed orders for the Ion 2 to accompany their upcoming Atom N450, N470, D510 or D410 based notebooks and nettops, and though there's no specific release schedule given, Acer is believed to be planning to release Pine Trail netbooks from January 11th 2010.

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HTC 2010 roadmap leaks: HTC Bravo 1GHz Android confirmed [Updated]

By Chris Davies on Monday, Dec 7th 2009 1 Comment

HTC’s device line-up for the first half of 2010 has apparently leaked, courtesy of xda-developers, after a prototype brochure fell into the wrong hands. The range consists of five Android devices and three Windows Mobile handsets, including the so-called hero model of 1H 2010, the Android-based HTC Bravo. The Bravo will pack the same 1GHz Snapdragon processor as the HTC HD2 along with a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen and HD 720p video capture. Full line-up details after the cut.

Updated: We’ve contacted HTC for a comment, and unsurprisingly they’re not confirming anything. ”We cannot comment on speculation or rumour,” HTC tell us, “but we’re excited about our upcoming roadmap and encourage you to watch this space.”

htc 2010 product roadmap 16 htc bravo 540x261

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PsiXpda UMPC video unboxing & first impressions

By Chris Davies on Saturday, Dec 5th 2009 2 Comments

UMPCs are still niche products, and native US or European vendors for them are even rarer, so we’re quietly intrigued by UK startup PsiXpda and their first UMPC. Having broken cover yesterday, SlashGear’s demo unit arrived in this morning’s post and we promptly shot an unboxing video together with a brief hands-on demo. After the cut, two videos with the PsiXpda UMPC and some first impressions.

PsiXpda UMPC SlashGear

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Camangi WebStation pre-orders open at $399

By Chris Davies on Friday, Dec 4th 2009 1 Comment

While Camangi’s WebStation Android slate got off to a patchy start, we’ve been curious as to what sort of price the company can bring the 7-inch touchscreen tablet in for, and now we know. Preorders are being taken for the WebStation – only in the US, Japan and Taiwan, at least at first – for $399 (unless you had an “early bird” coupon which saves you all of ten bucks) with free shipping.

Camangi WebStation preorder