SlashGear Week In Review - Week 36 2010
Welcome to the latest edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. Monday we found out that the Samsung Galaxy Tab would cost in the area of $200 to $400 depending on subsidies from wireless carriers. We can assume that the Galaxy Tab will cost on the higher end of that range. Later in the day on Monday the pricing for the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Germany surfaced via Amazon. The price of the Tab sans contract was listed at €799 or about $1,030 here in the States.
A cool case for the iPhone surfaced from a company called Nuu. The case adds a wireless keyboard to the iPhone. Apple has announced that it's ready to up producing of the iPad in an effort to meet the demand for the tablet. Apple is looking to build 3 million of the tablets per month, an increase of 1 million units monthly.
Samsung is one of the largest producers of LCDs in the electronics world for smartphones. The company is set to increase the production of screens dramatically next year with 30 million screens per month, up from 3 million per month now. Early in the week we reviewed the Droid 2 smartphone. We figures there are phones with better screens and keyboards out there, but the Droid 2 will make some folks happy.
LG announced that it was set to launch smartphones onto the market with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor inside. That dual core processor will make LG first with two cores in the segment and the devices will land in Q4. The current Nintendo Wii is seeing sales plummet and that is usually an indication that it's time for a replacement. Nintendo's Yoshio Sakamoto has stated that the Wii replacement will "leave you all with your mouth open." There is no word on when this replacement should be expected.
Samsung announced it's new 1GHz Orion Cortex A9 CPU and more early in the week. That new processor promises five times the 3D performance of the current ARM processors. We like watches around here, even if some of us don't wear them. A cool watch painted in gunship gray called the Gunship collection designed to scratch surfaced this week that was very cool.
Mophie showed off the new juice pack for the iPhone 4 promising twice the battery life for the smartphone. The new juice pack sells for $80. Gaming PC maker Origin unveiled a new gaming computer called The Big O this week. The beast has a price as high as some new cars and has server hardware along with an Xbox 360 inside.
Tutorials for the Blackberry Style 9670 smartphone surfaced this week. The 9670 surfaced in three different videos going over how to use the device. Fans of Doctor Who were excited early in the week when a version of the Sonic Screwdriver surfaced that is a controller for the Wii. The controller is being released alongside the Doctor Who: Return to Earth video game.
Nikon unveiled several new digital cameras this week and among the new offerings was the Coolpix P7000. The point-and-shoot is a camera promising DSLR flexibility in a more compact body. We reviewed the new iPod touch, nano, and shuffle music players this week. These are the best iPod ever offered from Apple, which is saying a lot.
Apple offered iOS 4.1 up for download this week. The new iOS promises to fix a lot of the bugs and issues many had with iOS 4. UK wireless carrier Three confirmed the pricing for the Samsung Galaxy Tab data plans this week. Plans will cost £15 monthly with 300 network minutes and up to 3000 texts. Data only packages will cost £15 for 5GB of data.
The 250GB Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle is set to hit on November 4 at a price of $399.99. The bundle will ship with Kinect Adventures. Details of the ARM Cortex A15 Eagle processor surfaced later in the week. The chip will run at 2.5GHz and have four cores with five times the performance of current smartphone chipsets.
Pentax unveiled a new digital camera this week called the Optio RS1000 that has a skin with Lego-like building blocks on it. The blocks used on the skin are not compatible with Lego bricks. September is an odd month for something like the Egg-Bot to surface, around Easter would have made more sense. The Egg-Bot makes painting Easter eggs an automated process if you like Sharpie colored eggs with straight lines.
If you are the proud owner of a new iPod nano and you want to show it off a watchband has surfaced that will let you wear the thing on your wrist. The band is simple and the nano clips to the band for wear. The band will cost you $19.95. Griffin has unveiled a cool new plush case for the iPhone or iPod touch called the Woogie that is part stuffed animal and part speaker dock. The plush case should protect your iPhone from the trials of being used by a child.
A cool watch concept landed at Tokyoflash that uses words rather than weird lights or numbers to tell the time. The watch has a rectangular face and numbers spelled as words that light up in blue to show the time. Apple is getting iChat Face Time apps ready for both Mac and PC users according to a rumor. That would not be a surprising thing to see happen and would be pretty cool.
Microsoft held a funeral to celebrate the RTM for Windows Phone 7. The funeral was for the iPhone and Blackberry, which a lot of wishful thinking considering the huge portions of fail Microsoft has been feasting on in the smartphone world. Thanks for reading this week's edition!