SlashGear Week in Review - Week 7 2010
MWC was in full swing this week in Spain and SlashGear was at the show in force. There were a staggering number of new mobile phones and other gear that was spied at the show for the first time. Early in the week we got some preview action with the Samsung Wave S8500 (SlashGear hands-on at MWC 2010) The Wave is the first Samsung smartphone to run the Bada OS.
One of the biggest announcements to come out of MWC this year was the Windows Phone 7 unveiling. Chris and Vince went hands on with Windows Phone 7 at the show and the OS is pretty darn impressive. We spent lots of time at the show fondling various new phones and among them was the HTC HD mini. The HD mini is a smaller, cheaper version of the HD2 and runs WinMo 6.5.3.
The HTC Desire was the object of our desire at the show and a hands-on was offered up for your perusal. The Desire gets one up on the near twin Nexus one with a different case design and the Sense UI. HTC pulled the wraps off the Legend at MWC sporting a AMOLED screen and "Hidden Power" design. The handset has a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen with capacitive tech and multitouch support and runs Android 2.1.
Bug Labs was showing off its new Bug 2.0 platform at MWC. The modular platform lets you design your own gadgets and other gear using snap in modules for various functions. It's sort of like a grown geeks Lego set. The cool Connect One Wi-Reach Classic 3G/4G router debuted this week. The router has a USB port for connecting a plain old USB modems and has an internal battery for under $100.
OpenPeak revealed its entrant into the tablet wars called the OpenTablet 7. The device is very slick looking and sports a 7-inch touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth and lots more. HP revealed a new accelerometer early in the week that is said to be 1000 times more sensitive than those used in other mass produced devices. I wish my iPhone had one that didn't leave me shaking the phone trying to get the screen to rotate with frustrating frequency.
Toshiba shipped a new HDD this week for enterprise use with a 2.5-inch form factor supporting SAS connectivity and 600GB of storage. The drive is the highest capacity SFF drive around. The PUMA Phone was officially revealed this week at MWC. The most interesting aspect of the device for me is the solar panel built into the back for charging on the go.
Sonim was letting geeks at MWC beat up a new handset called the XP2 Spirit. After their unbreakable handset was broken at CES, the company called this one "nearly" unbreakable. The Acer Aspire One 532G netbook with the Ion 2 GPU was spied at the Acer booth at MWC. The device is the firm's first full HD complaint netbook and the first to feature the Ion 2 GPU.
LG whipped out some cool new plasma HDTVs this week with thin screens only 25mm thick. It's good to see new tech in the plasma market. Samsung's Beam I8520 mobile with a pico projector inside was spied at MWC. The handset has a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED screen with an 8.1MP camera.
AT&T has announced that on March 7 it will get the Motorola Backflip Android smartphone. The device will sell for $100 making it one of the cheaper smartphones available on the network. A rumor turned up that claims the AMD Radeon HD 5830 might be shipping this coming week. The video card has nice specs and if priced well it should be popular with gamers.
Another new tablet debuted this week called the iiView Vpad. This tablet is a netbook without the keyboard and seems to be overpriced for what you get. A new DSLR camera rumor from Canon has a new 1Ds Mark IV coming next week with a 32MP sensor.
Friday we heard that a school was allegedly spying on student by activating the webcam of school provided notebooks while the machine was in the student's home. An investigation is underway and the school is denying any spying. We spent more time later in the week hands on with Synaptics Fuse concept. I really like the warped screen look of the handset.
Monster has teamed up with designer Vivienne Tam called the Butterfly in-ear speakers. The things are expensive at a bit under $200. TiVo was granted a patent last week that doesn't bode well for DVR fans. The patent is for the software that allows scheduled recordings to be prioritized for recording when they overlap. That's all for this week's edition, thanks for reading!