SlashGear Week In Review - Week 27 2010
Time for another week in review to wrap up the last week in tech. Eric Schmidt said Monday that there would be no Nexus Two or Google-branded Chrome OS netbook coming directly from Google. That direct sales method didn't work out for Google.
Photos of the aftermath of a 1962 detonation of a massive hydrogen bomb in space over the pacific surfaced early in the week. Nothing quite like a nuclear rainbow in the sky to make cold war Americans feel safe. Canon showed off a strange looking camera that is its vision of the future. The camera is designed for all high resolution shooting far away and close up, and it does video.
Some deets on the Samsung Galaxy S2 i9200 smartphone were leaked with a 2GHz processor, 720p Super AMOLED screen and other cool features. The handset is supposedly due early next year. The Logitech Revue Google TV set top box surfaced at the FTC this week. The box has nettop hardware inside with an Atom Z515 CPU and more.
A new classic white PS3 was outted from Sony early in the week. Along with the new color are larger 160GB and 320GB HDDs in Japan. Stuart Hughes showed off a new $20,000 iPhone 4 decked out with lots of diamonds. It would go nicely with the company's $200K iPad for rich geeks.
A very cool display for tech surfaced this week called Slurp that showed an interesting way to send files to and from a computer. The catch was that the whole thing appears to be a fraud with the rickroll song playing at the end. We reviewed the Olympus PEN E-PL1 Micro 4/3 camera this week. The camera took some nice pictures and is priced well for those looking between the DSLR and high-end 4/3 market.
Lots of iPhone 4 users were not happy this week when upload speeds dropped to a fraction of what they had been. AT&T finally blamed the issue on the network in some areas. The Blackberry 9670, 9800, and 9300 turned up on video in some three way action. I still just don't see the appeal of a clamshell Blackberry.
We learned that Hulu Plus will only need PSN+ for the preview period. This is a big deal considering it would have added $50 to the cost of a subscription for the year. The T-Mobile Charm was spied mid-week with MOTOBLUR and a QWERTY keyboard packing into a form factor Sponge Bob would approve of.
That maligned Pandigital Novel eReader received a firmware update this week in an attempt to make it not suck so badly. The update helped the poor touchscreen performance and WiFi but the device still has issues. The new graphite colored Amazon Kindle DX surfaced this week and is now shipping to customers. Other than a new color, the DX also gets a screen with more resolution.
AT&T officially blamed Alcatel-Lucent for the slow uploads for iPhone 4 users. A software fix for the slow uploads is in the works with no time frame offered. We reviewed the Droid X smartphone this week. The X is right at the top of the Android smartphone market.
A tipster reported that only 503 Kin smartphones were sold in total. That has to be some kind of epic fail record. Loreo offered a lens that turns your Canon DSLR into a 3D camera. The downside is the lens is chocked full of ugly.
The coolest thing I saw this week was the guy who made a go-cart out of a couple old toilets and some coolers. This is the perfect dude vehicle for game day. An iPhone 4G caught fire and burned the owners hand as the smartphone was plugged in to charge this week. The fire was blamed on a defective USB port.
The Kindle DX was spied in a video preview this week alongside the older white DX. You can clearly see the improvements in the screen next to the older device in the photos and video. A bike lock concept debuted late in the week that will text you if your bike is stolen. I wonder if the text says, "Hey man, yo bike was stolen. I say we go get the fool."
Google announced Friday that China had renewed its license to operate in the country. Did anyone really think Google was going to go so far as to leave the largest internet market on earth? Thanks for reading this week's edition!