Archive for June, 2008
The cell phone market is a busy one and today nearly everyone has a cell phone, from your children to the oldest person in your family. Technology is really moving ahead and the biggest brands are launching high-end handsets full of the best gadgets, this means you got to be extra good to attract consumers. It’s been reported that Sprint has lost many customers for different reasons but now we see two new phones hoping to get users back.
The Sprint Samsung Instinct and Treo 800w could help bring people back to Sprint; will you keep being a customer or become a new customer thanks to these two phones on Sprint?
Today we are hearing that the Sprint Treo 800w will be released a week before many previous rumors, the date is said to be July 13th. The Treo 800w features Live Search for Windows Mobile, Built-in GPS functionality that will allow points of interests searching and mapping, WIFI, EVDO Rev A data speeds and Windows Mobile 6.1. The unsubsidized price is well over $500, making this phone far from cheap unless you get a good deal.
The Samsung Instinct seems to be the popular of the two phones and has even been matched up to the 3G iPhone, the phone features a 3.5mm headset jack that means you can connect headphones without the need for any adapters, the Web browser is excellent and has some cool browsing features.
The call quality and navigation is very good but on the downside you get no tethered modem support, onboard memory is lacking and the Samsung Instinct has no IM client, which is a great feature in this day and age of keeping in touch with Wi-Fi.
The Instinct was released this month for $230; you can see the full features on both these phones on Phones Review.
When looking at all the latest thin laptops you will be forgiven for thinking that they look almost the same, the main three are the HP Voodoo Envy, Apple MacBook Air and the ThinkPad X300. Yes they are all thin, but it is not just in looks where they are the same, when you look inside there are many more common features. When it comes to the processing power, the Hewlett-Packard Voodoo silicon shares the same one used in the MacBook Air, this is the low-power Intel SP7700 and SP7500.
Don’t try looking for these processors on any price list from Intel; these CPU’s were designed especially for the MacBook Air. The processors have a thermal envelope of just 20 watts at 1.8GHz and 1.6GHz, CPU’s which run at those speeds usually have a power rating of 35 watts. The ThinkPad X300 uses a different processor, an Intel SL7100. This CPU still comes in a small package, but has a lower clock speed of just 1.2GHz and only uses 12 watts of power.
One thing that we notice about these CPU’s is the fact that they are the older 65-nanometer “Merom” processors, we would have thought that they would have used the newer 45-nanometer Penryn generation. There are rumours of an upgrade of these processors coming, which will be able to fit into these slim notebooks.
There are also a number of other similarities with these laptops; all three use the Intel X3100 integrated graphics as well as offering a choice of 80GB hard disk drive (4200RPM) or a 64GB solid state drive. One thing is certain about the HP Voodoo silicon, MacBook Air & ThinkPad X300; they are the future in laptops.
T-Mobile have been committed at launching cell phones that support their innovative wireless service HotSpot@Home, and a year on they now launch a new cheap handset called the Samsung T339. This phone will cost $49 with a 2-year agreement and although its features are nothing special, you can get a lot of free calling.
The Samsung T339 features up to 11 days standby time and up to 6 hours talk time, it weighs 3.3 ounces, measures 1.8 x 3.6 x 0.8 inches, the phone book stores names and numbers for easy retrieval and dialing, speakerphone gives you convenient talking with no hands and the music player lets you play your favorite music wherever you are. You can use Caller ID pictures to see who is calling, Bluetooth for computer connections and stereo headsets and a 1.3 Megapixel camera.
The Wi-Fi and Mobile Calling is where this cell phone really shines, with this feature from T-Mobile you can use a T-Mobile HotSpot@Home wireless router for making unlimited nationwide calls over Wi-Fi. The wireless network calling is not just for home; you can also use any U.S. T-Mobile HotSpot.
T-Mobile has build a large portfolio of handsets to support the HotSpot@Home wireless service, the Samsung T339 is one of the more basic handsets in this range. The benefit of these phones is mainly taking advantage of unlimited nationwide calling.
When the first Apple iPhone was released it was the hottest handset on the market, and no one could stop talking about it. Well now there is the new 3G version which will be coming on the market very soon, and once again this is the hottest handset, one that everybody wants to know about. As yet we do not know much about the new updated Apple iPhone, we do know that it will be a 3G version, but the rest are just rumors or speculation.
Here we have yet another few rumors just to wet your appetite, the first is that it will be lighter, also the ultimate handset will come in a choice of other colors, however it is not sure if the other colors will be released as soon as the new 3G handset comes out. As always the phone will be centred on the multimedia aspect, the handset will come with better video recording as well as video conferencing.
Pricing rumors say that the 16GB version will cost $499 and the 32GB should cost about $699, ok the price is a little steep, but maybe that might come down a bit. As we know the new 3G Apple iPhone will use the same screen and resolution, the recessed headphone jack will now be a standard one. The 3G is able to be switched of and use the standard 2G.
AMD only partner Sapphire release another stand-out graphics card with the Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate Edition, the cooler is top notch quality and the performance is still nothing to sneeze at, but with all good products…getting your hands on one will be the problem.
If you’re looking for a HD 3870 with something unique, then Sapphire’s passively cooled Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate Edition could be what you want. Tweak Town have given this card a full hands-on review and covered the results over 17 pages, in their final thoughts they had this to say “I really am quite a fan of the Sapphire HD 3870 Ultimate; the design of the cooling is excellent and hopefully they do something similar come launch of the 4K series of cards from AMD.
The HD 3870 is still a very capable card, and with the popularity of the Intel chipset Crossfire is a more likely dual GPU setup then SLI. You do have to feel a bit sorry for Sapphire; with AMD being so slow in the market at the moment, a company like Sapphire who makes some excellent products hasn’t really been able to shine. Fingers crossed that this all changes when the 4K series of cards start appearing later this month.
The only real problem with the Sapphire HD 3870 Ultimate; its kind of funny because it doesn’t really seem to show up much in the retail channel. The chances are that Sapphire got a bit bored waiting for new models to come out so they decided to do something different with the current line-up.
The HD 3870 continues to be a great card, but it’s probably something worth picking up second hand these days instead of being a brand new purchase. If you could hunt down the Ultimate version from Sapphire, we would say go for it. Silent performance is always a great feature.”
Read the 17 page review.