SlashGear Week In Review - Week 46 2010
Hey gang, welcome to this week's edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! This is the last edition before Thanksgiving in the US, so if you celebrate the holiday have a great one! We put up our review of the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Tab this past Sunday. We figure that the Tab has more flexibility in some areas than the iPad but has an overall rougher feel.
A rumor popped up early in the week that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X7 and X7 Mini smartphones would be coming in Q1 2011. The X7 is said to have a 4.3-inch screen and the X7 mini sports a 3.5-inch screen. Intel is getting serious about open-source with the announcement that MeeGo developers will get a free IdeaPad S10-3t. The free tablet for devs will likely spur more to try to work with the OS.
Early in the week the Nokia E7 clears the FCC. The E7 has a QWERTY keyboard, runs Symbian^3 and packs in a 4-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display. We posted up our Holiday Gift Guide Monday and it's packed with all sorts of cool gear. There should be something for everyone on this list and it's really packed.
Facebook added a new messaging system on Monday dubbed the Modern Messaging System. The system is interesting, but caused a few issues after its implementation. A really cool remote control for your TV turned up early in the week that is called the Pillow Universal Remote Control. The remote costs about $30 and has the remote built into a throw pillow. The only downside is if you sleep on the thing you may end up with some weird channel on the TV.
EviGroup unveiled the new Paddle Pro tablet computer that runs Windows Home Premium and an Intel Atom N450 CPU. The tablet has strange head tracking tech that lets you control the mouse cursor with your head movement. Proporta unveiled a new case for the iPhone 4 with a battery inside called the TurboCharger Back Pack. The case promises to recharge your iPhone fully one time.
The Dell Inspiron Duo hybrid notebook was rumored to go on sale on the 23 of the month. The cool tablet is convertible with a screen that flips around rather than twisting. The entire Beatles catalog landed on iTunes after years of fans waiting for the tracks to hit. Among the offers is a $149 box set with music, video, and lots more content.
Microsoft has sold a huge amount of Kinect units in the first ten days. According to MS, it moved a million units over a bit more than a week. A crazy expensive new SSD card that fits into the PCIe slot launched this week called the WarpDrive SSD. The thing sells for $11,500 and has up to 1,400MB/s of throughput.
Panasonic unveiled a gigantic 3D Plasma this week that measures 103-inches. The massive TV has a price as large as the screen at $102,000. A teen selling conversion kits to turn the iPhone 4 into the long anticipated and delayed white iPhone 4 has been hit with a legal threat. The teen sold $130,000 worth of conversion gear after coverage and ended up being accused of selling stolen goods.
ThinkGeek landed a really cool alarm clock this week that looks like a Star Wars Lego minifig. The clock can be had in Storm Trooper or Darth Vader guise for about $30 each. A leaked photo surfaced mid-week that claims to be a shot of a white iPhone 4 for Verizon. The device has the Verizon logo in the left corner and has a different antenna design and no SIM card cover.
An interesting concept phone surfaced this week that used both AMOLED and eInk tech inside. That would give the best of both worlds with color LCD for video and the eInk for reading. It seems a story that made the rounds this week was from a paper known for misquoting folks. The original story had Apple's Woz saying Android would beat the iPhone, Woz quickly clarified that iOS is the best.
The Dell Inspiron Duo was fingered with an official launch date on Thursday. The tablet/netbook will land in early December for $549 and will run Windows 7 and an Atom N550 CPU. An awesome accessory for the iPad surfaced called the Magic Pinball. The accessory turns your iPad into a pinball machine for $79.95.
A really cool stop light concept surfaced late in the week that uses the colors we are used to and an hourglass design to show how long the light has left before it changes. The concept is cool but in the real world, the lack of other lights would cause some issues for the colorblind. Call of Duty: Black Ops is selling like crazy. The game made $650 million in 5 days. That is a crazy amount of money had better than most of the big Hollywood films.
Apparently Google tried to buy Twitter at one point for the tidy sum of $4 billion. That offer was turned down, as was the first offer of $2.5 billion. Sony Ericsson's CEO has admitted that the company is in talks with Microsoft on using Windows Phone 7 in its line. However, the strict spec and software limitations mean adoption is an off chance according to the CEO.
A new iPad rumor has surfaced that has a world version of the iPad with a multi-mode GSM/CDMA modem hitting in 2011. I wonder if this would be the version that gets that carbon fiber case that surfaced in a patent app from Apple. If you are a photography geek that want's to show just how geeky you are we found the perfect bracelets for you. The Lens Bracelets look like the focus ring around a camera lens.
I'm not a fan of video game soundtracks, but there are many hard-core game geeks out there that are. If you really like the Red Dead Redemption sound track and have a record player you can get the games soundtrack. You need that record player because the soundtrack is only on red vinyl. Thanks for reading this week's edition!