Acer held a presser today in New York City and revealed some new devices coming to consumer shortly. The most interesting of them all is the Aspire R7, which is a convertible all-in-one laptop of sorts, but it’s quite different than what you’re probably used to, as the display can move around in all sorts of ways, thanks to Acer’s new “Ezel” hinge.
LG will make Google’s fifth Nexus smartphone, Korean reports suggest, following the Nexus 4 with a second Google-branded smartphone. Timing for the release of the smartphone, which The Korea Times says is part of LG’s attempt to further develop its relationship with the search giant, is unknown, though given the Nexus 4 was only revealed in November last year, it’s perhaps unlikely that any “Nexus 5″ would be shown off at Google I/O later this month.
This week the founder of both 22cans and Lionhead gaming companies suggested that he’ll be excited to see how far the next-generation Xbox has come since he saw Microsoft’s plans a year ago. Peter Molyneux made it clear that his hopes for the Microsoft-made console centered on gaming and that the company make what he called “the ultimate gaming console.” The alternative, he said, was that the creators of the console would get distracted with living room entertainment abilities and technologies like Glass and touch.
Intel‘s 4th-gen Core processors will also debut a brand new Iris graphics system, with the chip company splitting its new line-up into multiple tiers for ultrabooks, thin-and-lights, and mainstream PCs. Ultrabooks powered by the most frugal of Intel’s 4th-generation Haswell chips, the U-Series, will get Intel HD, HD Graphics 4600, or HD Graphics 5000, but those machines that can stand a little extra power consumption will get either Iris (for thin-and-lights) or Iris Pro (for mainstream) for at least a doubling in 3D processing performance.
Apple‘s comprehensive overhaul of iOS 7 could see some of the new features delayed until 2014, insiders warn, with the challenges in redesigning the iPhone and iPad platform forcing a staggered release. iOS 7, the next significant release, will introduce “sweeping” changes to the appearance of the UI as well as the functionality of email and calendar apps, among others, insiders tattled to Bloomberg, with the possibility that the scale of the task may mean not all elements make the expected release date, roughly believed to be September 2013.
HTC put its faith in the One to restore its position in high-end smartphones; now, leaks suggest, the company may be sticking closely to the same pattern with the HTC M4 for the midrange. Expected to be visually near-identical to the HTC One, according to phoneArena‘s sources, the M4 (a codename, of course; the One was codenamed HTC M7) is expected to have a 4.3-inch 720p display and an UltraPixel camera.
A significant amount of interest has been generated today by a comment made by BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins on how the tablet industry isn’t long for this world. In a follow-up notice from BlackBerry, it’s been made clear that Heins’ words were not meant to initiate a kill notice on any future BlackBerry hardware, that including a possible BlackBerry 10 tablet device.
This week a group of scientists from the University of Missouri have decided it’s time to make public their work on creating and controlling plasma. The system that they’re making public has, they say, the potential to transform the way America – and the rest of the world, for that matter – store and create energy. The team has developed a way to make plasma create its own self-containing self-magnetic field, effectively allowing it to launch into open air.
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has dismissed the long-term potential for tablets, arguing that time is running out on slates and – perhaps still stinging from the PlayBook failure – suggesting they’re a bad business model. Heins, who had been suitably ebullient about the likely success of the recently-released BlackBerry Q10, predicting sales in the tens of millions, was equally critical of tablet options. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore” he predicted.
Nokia is set to further expand its camera expertise portfolio with a strategic investment in Pelican Imaging, a photography software specialist cooking up Lytro-style refocusable photos using array lenses. Pelican’s system, which first broke cover back in 2011, uses an array of 25 densely-packed individual lenses, the data from which is combined – using Pelican’s proprietary software – into a single, higher resolution still which can be post-tweaked for focus and even have 3D effects introduced.
The folks behind Virgin Galactic – cousin of the earth-bound Virgin Airlines – have lit their first rocket motor test on a ship that may one day bring everyday citizens on joy rides to space. The craft being tested this week goes by the name SpaceShipTwo, also known as SS2, it being one of several craft eventually set to offer brief flights to what Virgin Galactic calls “the edge of space” and back.
Microsoft’s IllumiRoom immersive projected gaming system, first shown off at CES, has broken cover again for a more comprehensive demo, complete with more details of how the “TV expanding” augmented reality works. Still described as a proof-of-concept, though thoroughly whetting appetites for what the next-gen Xbox might one day evolve into, IllumiRoom will be presented at CHI 2013 [pdf link] this week, complete with learning the topography and design of your living room and then digitally manipulating it.
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