SlashGear Week In Review - Week 39 2010
Welcome to this week's edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. I hope your week was a good one, there was a lot going on in the tech world. We learned early in the week that Nokia had a touchscreen alternative to the iPhone that was axed in 2004. That device could have made for a different landscape in the smartphone realm today had it made it to market.
The Windows Phone 7 smartphones are set to hit on November 8 according to a rumor. That is a month after the launch is expected to happen in Europe. A German publication has leaked what it claims to be the launch date for the Nintendo 3DS. According to the publication the new 3D gaming console will hit on November 11. The catch is that the publication is a tabloid and it is known for printing outright false information apparently.
Motorola, HTC, and Asus have all adopted the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform for their smartphones and tablets. Motorola will put the chipset into a smartphone with the other two makers using in a tablet. Monday marked the official unveil of the Blackberry Playbook tablet. The full specifications and all the pertinent details of the tablet were offered up and the tablet sounds pretty good.
Along with the unveiling of the Playbook, RIM also talked about app plug-ins, ads in apps, and in-app payments that will be coming to Blackberry devices. RIM also stated that there are 35 million App world users today. We also compared the iPad to the Playbook with the catch that we weren't able to get hands on with the Playbook. I suspect the Playbook will not be as popular as the iPad.
Maingear unveiled a new model of the SHIFT computer dubbed Super Stock. The machines are customizable and have some really nice and high-performance features. Sony Ericsson unveiled a cool mini-display for Bluetooth Android phones called the LiveView. It's sort of like a secondary screen for your smartphone.
A geek showed off the coolest R2-D2 robot I have ever seen. He built it DIY style and it is large enough for him to ride inside. The firmware for the Apple TV has offered up hints at a couple new iPhones that might be coming. The firmware shows 3,2 and 3,3 iPhones. The current iPhone is called the 3,1.
One of the most interesting things for the week was that the movie studios are reportedly contemplating a new pay per view service that would let the users watch movies not on DVD yet for $30 per view. It sounds a lot like a home version of the Spectravision offering in hotels. ATM's generally dispense cash, but we learned that some new ATMs that dispense gold are set to come to the US. The new ATMs will hit the states by the end of the year apparently.
Borders unveiled a new wireless version of the Kobo eReader. The device adds WiFi to the mix, has a 6-inch eInk screen, and sells for $139.99. That sweet Motorola Droid R2-D2 version smartphone got its unboxing video this week. That phone has to be one of the coolest Android devices ever.
DARPA has been talking about the sweet transformer project for a while now. The goal of the project is to build a flying Humvee and the contrast to start working on a real version of the vehicle has been awarded. We got out hands on the Nokia N8 smartphone this week for an unboxing. The thing feels nice in the hands and we will be back soon with a full review of the device.
A rumor surfaced claiming that the next iPhone and iPad will move to a Qualcomm baseband. The move would reportedly make it easier for the device to be offered on other networks. GoPro has unveiled a new wearable camcorder that has a cheaper price than its other offerings. The device is called the HD Hero 960 and it sells for $179.99.
A new cheap Android tablet surfaced called the disgo Tablet 6000. The slate has a 7-inch screen, Android 2.1, WiFi, miniHDMI, and a pair of USB ports along with 2GB of storage. NVIDIA has agreed to a settlement on the defective GPUs that plagued Apple, Dell, and Sony notebooks. The settlement particulars are outlines on a special site just for those with affected machines.
Google announced that it has now expanded StreetView to cover all seven continents with the service now available in Antarctica. There are no roads there so you get images of Half Moon Island and a bunch of penguins. Friday news that the speed record for the fastest lawnmower had been broken. The record was 87.833 mph and the new record is now 96.529 mph. Thanks for reading, see you next week!