SlashGear Week in Review - Week 42 2010

Welcome to another edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! This was a huge week with an Apple event and several new smartphones turning up. Early in the week Mercedes-Benz announced that it was offering a new Media Interface Plus that would allow the user to stream content from a Bluetooth phone to the cars audio system among other things.

The HTC Gratia Android smartphone saw the full specs unveiled this week. The phone has a 3.2-inch screen, 600MHz processor, and a 5MP camera and the OS is Android 2.2. Shinobii Technology pulled the wraps off an awesome controller for the Wii that is perfect for gamers who like to play table tennis games. The controller has all the hardware for the Wii Remote put inside a paddle.

Out sister site Android Community got hands on the sweet HTC Desire HD smartphone running Android and was kind enough to share with us the unboxing photos and more. The device runs Froyo and has a big 4.3-inch screen. This week Nintendo kicked off the 25th anniversary celebration for the original Nintendo game system. It hardly seems like 25 years since that console hit stores. I had the original console system with the robot that moved things around in the real world to open doors in a game.

Netflix streaming landed on the Nintendo Wii this week with no disc needed. The streaming service has been on the console for a while now but you had to use a disc to view streaming content. According to reports the version of the iPhone dubbed 3,2 that is expected to be for the Verizon network has reached the final testing stages. The new device reportedly contains a SIM card slot meaning it could possibly be able to work on more than one network.

Millennial Media reported this week that its numbers for September showed for the first time ever Android devices beat the iPhone on its network. Android ad requests have grown 26% since January. Microsoft has announced Office 365, which is a cloud-based version of Office productivity apps. The service is in beta right now and will be offered globally early next year.

Razer announced this week that its cool line of Starcraft II gaming gear that was unveiled back during the summer at E3 was now up for pre-order. The gear is set for shipment in November. A picture of what is supposed to be the iPhone 3,2 prototype believed to be heading to the Verizon network surfaced mid-week. The device looks visually just like the normal iPhone on the market already.

If you are a fan of Asus Eee Top AIO computer the new 3D ET2400XVT machine went up for pre-order this week. The machine certainly has some nice specs with a 23.6-inch screen, 8GB of RAM, and GeForce GTX 460 graphics, but the price of $1899 makes it less appealing for most. A company called Verykool unveiled a new rugged phone this week called the R80 that launched in Asia. The phone is very nice looking and can survive drops, cold, water, and dust.

The big news this week was the Apple press conference held mid-week. At the conference a lot of new stuff was unveiled with iLife 11 announced. The new version will be pre-loaded on all Macs and will be a $49 upgrade for older Macs. We spent some hands-on time with the new MacBook Air for 2010 in both the 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch forms. We liked the machine and the svelte profiles of both were very impressive.

We spent hands on time for a bit with the 11.6-inch MacBook Air Apple unveiled. The machine has a full-size keyboard, webcam, and the screen is LED backlit with a resolution of 1366 x 768. It gets 2GB of RAM, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo and will sell for $999 with 64GB of storage. The larger 13.3-inch MacBook Air also went official with a battery promising 7 hours of run time. The screen has a resolution of 1440 x 900 and it runs a Core 2 Duo CPU at 1.86GHz with prices starting at $1299.

The Apple press event was also the unveiling of Apple Lion OS with some new features and Apple announced that a Mac App Store was coming as well. The apps will run full screen on the notebooks and the service looks really cool.

We reviewed the Toshiba AC100 notebook later in the week. The ultraportable is very thin and packed with a Tegra 250 mobile processor at 1GHz for power. We had some issues with the notebook and hope that a port of Ubuntu might make the machine better than it is from the start with Android as the OS. The day after the MacBook Air went official, iFixit got hands on one and took the thing apart. The company notes that even the screws the machine uses are hard to open showing that Apple doesn't want folks inside the machine poking around.

Sources are pointing to a new Android-powered eReader coming from Barnes & Noble called the nook Color. The device is set to launch on October 26 so we don't have long until we know all the details. We spent a little hands-on time with the HP Slate 500 tablet that was announced this week. The machine is being aimed at the enterprise market and will have a $799 price tag.

We learned Friday that Netflix streaming consumes 20% of the peak bandwidth online in the US. That means a lot of people are streaming video content. Sony announced Friday that it was stopping production of the cassette Walkman that was so iconic for anyone growing up in the 80's. I didn't even know they were still making the things.

Analysts are predicting big sales for the new MacBook Air notebook unveiled by Apple. One analyst reckons Apple will ship 700,000 of the things in Q4 2010 alone. We got our hands on the 11.6-inch MacBook Air and did a complete review of the notebook on Friday. We reckon the machine is not for every user, but it has great battery life and will work well for many people wanting a thin and light notebook to take on the road. Thanks for reading this week's edition, see you next week!