SlashGear Week In Review - Week 32 2010
Welcome to the latest edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! There was a lot going on this week and much of it was in the smartphone world. We learned that the slick Blackberry tablet called the BlackTab is set to land in September. That launch date is a rumor and it comes with a price rumor pegging the BlackTab at $499.
The original Droid went officially out of stock early in the week. The out of stock notice came only a few days before the Droid 2 successor hit stores. A prototype Menlo smartphone from Microsoft surfaced packed inside a weird case. The case attached to the prototype was being used for some sort of location-based services testing.
It appears the loss of the exclusive chokehold on the iPhone is nearing its end with AT&T hinting at the loss of the exclusive in an SEC filing. AT&T figures it won't see a mass exodus of subscribers but I bet a bunch of iPhone fans have been waiting for the day they can leave. AT&T announced that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 will land in stores on August 15 for $130. The phone has a giant 4-inch screen and uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
RED makes some of the sweetest cameras that also happen to be among some of the most expensive you can find. The RED Scarlet camera has surfaced in photos and is expected to cost around $3,000. The Dell Streak MID official pricing and availability was finally unveiled. The Streak will land on August 13 for $300 with a new AT&T contract.
The Droid 2 went up for sale on the Verizon website on Wednesday. The smartphone carried a $199.99 price with a new 2-year agreement. The Droid 2 is the reason the original Droid was retired earlier in the week. The same day the Droid 2 landed the original Droid got its Android 2.2 Froyo update.
The official accessories for the Galaxy S smartphone were unveiled. There will be desk and car docks along with a DLNA HD streamer. A cool camcorder surfaced from a company called Ordro. The camera is the HDV-D350S and it has a pico projector grafted onto it for watching what you record with a bunch of people.
The crap Apple TV device is apparently being replaced with something more along the line of the iPhone 4 in size and performance. The new device will be called iTV says a rumor and will have access to apps and more. Apple launched the iOS 4.0.2 software update mid-week. The update was specifically to fix that PDF flaw used for remote jailbreaking.
If you were hoping the pricing announcement on the Dell Streak MID that included a price with no contract meant the Streak was unlocked, you are out of luck. Dell has stated even Streaks sold with no contract will be SIM locked to AT&T. Rumors are making their rounds that the CDMA iPhone anticipated for so long is in engineering verification testing. All we need is an Apple worker to leave it in a bar for confirmation.
A prototype device from Dell surfaced Thursday called the Thunder. The device has a 4.1-inch screen, 8MP camera and a removable 1400mAh battery. We posted up our review of the Blackberry Torch 9800 Thursday. We still say that a year ago the Torch would have fared better as it is the device is not that great.
We also unboxed our Droid 2 and offered up some hands-on first impression this week. You can check out the pics and impression here ahead of our full review. iFixit did its teardown thing with the shiny new Droid 2 late in the week. The Droid 2 has lots of parts inside it and the teardown might be perfect if you should need to fix your device DIY style.
MSI showed off its new WindPad U100 ahead of IFA. The device has an Atom Z530 CPU, 10.1-inch screen 2GB of RAM, and a 32GB SSD. Genius unveiled a new MousePen M508 and M598W tablet this week selling for $149 and $199 respectively. The tablets will work for drawing and regular old mousing.
The Nikon D3100 DSLR surfaced with some impressive features this week. The features came by way of a German magazine and the camera will supposedly have a 10MP sensor, 1080p HD video, LiveView, and an ISO range of 100 to 12,800. Thanks for reading this week's edition, see you next time!