Hasta La Gadget!

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When we reviewed the Huawei Honor last year, we were quite surprised how responsive and well-thought its user interface was. More importantly, we also realized how fast Chinese consumer electronics companies like Huawei are growing and thriving in today’s tough market. Today, Huawei is announcing the Huawei Honor 2, an Android smartphone that’s powered by its very own K3V2 quad-core chip that has been clocked at 1.4GHz.

The Huawei Honor 2 sports a 4.5-inch IPS display with a 1280 x 720 resolution – not to mention its Retina display-breaking 326 pixels per inch – and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera as well as a 1.3-megapixel front camera. Other features include 1GB of RAM, 8GB of onboard storage, microSD support, a 2,230mAh battery, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Expect this device to hit the Chinese market next month for for 1,888 yuan, around roughly $300.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Mysterious Windows Phone device spotted in the wild, speculated to be another Huawei device, Huawei offers unrestricted access to software code,

Microsoft may be doing its best to push Windows 8, but a new poll from The Associated Press and GfK suggests that Microsoft’s massive marketing campaign may not be working that well. According to the results of the poll, which surveyed 1,200 adults by phone, a significant 52% of respondents haven’t even heard of Windows 8. Not good, especially considering the amount of attention the new OS has been given by the press.

To make matters worse, 62% of the respondents who have heard of Windows 8 say that they had “little or no” interest in buying a new computer running the operating system. That’s an interesting way of phrasing the question, as it doesn’t seem to cover simple upgrades – something to consider as the results of this poll paint a seemingly grim picture for Windows 8. The results also claim that 35% of the people who know about Windows 8 think that it will offer improvements over past Windows versions.

It’s true that Windows 8 signals a pretty radical departure from previous Windows installments, but we’re not entirely sure this poll is asking all of the questions it should. The fact that 52% of respondents hadn’t even heard of Windows 8 is definitely surprising, but where’s the question about the intent to upgrade? We know that a significant percentage of those polled have no interest in buying a new computer running Windows 8, but is that disinterest still present when far cheaper upgrades are brought into the equation?

In any case, it’s safe to say that Windows 8 did not fare well in this poll. We liked it quite a bit, but we can understand that many are hesitant to upgrade, given the amount of big changes made in this Windows release. At this point, Windows 8 is only a few days old, so it’ll be a while yet before we get any solid sales numbers. When we get those numbers, we’ll be able to better gauge how Windows 8 is getting along with consumers, so keep it tuned here to SlashGear for more information.

New Windows 8 poll suggests lagging consumer interest is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While the device may be old news for those living in the states, Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Simple Touch is now available for those who live across the pond in the UK. The regular model, as well as the Glowlight model, are now available to purchase. Plus, the UK can now also pre-order the NOOK HD and the NOOK HD+, which is set to arrive late next month.

Retailers such as John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, and if course Barnes & Noble‘s own Nook.co.uk site are now officially stocked up on NOOK Simple Touch ereaders. The regular model is priced at £79, while the Glowlight model (which has a front-lit display) will cost you £109. Those who purchase the device will have access to Barnes & Noble’s 2.5 million ebooks.

The company is also bringing their NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ over to the UK starting in late-November, but they’re available to pre-order online right now. The NOOK HD is a 7-inch tablet, while the NOOK HD+ comes with two more inches of screen real estate for those who want a bigger display. The NOOK HD will cost £159, and £229 will get you the NOOK HD+.

If you’re looking for a cheap, simple ereader, the NOOK Simple Touch is about as basic as it gets. We really like the Glowlight model, but the regular $99 model is a steal. It can store around 1,000 ebooks, but the microSD card slot makes it easy to upgrade storage space. Plus, the battery can last for up to two months.

NOOK Simple Touch released in UK, NOOK HD and HD+ available for pre-order is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Raspberry Pi mini computer that’s become popular with the maker community but was originally conceived as a device to help kids learn how to code has had the lightweight TinyBASIC programming language ported to it.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation noted the development in a blog post – explaining how it’s received lots of emails from parents who haven’t done any programming since their school days but still have books on BASIC, and want to be able to share the programming language with their kids

The good news for those people, and for anyone else who wants to learn BASIC from scratch or revisit an old friend, is that TinyBASIC is now available for the Raspberry Pi. Andrew Lack has ported this very lightweight editor, interpreter and graphics package to the Pi, and we think it’s great.

The Foundation says it’s considering bundling TinyBASIC “as part of the standard Raspbian image” — but it wants to test the waters first to see how popular the language turns out to be.

The blog post also notes that while the GOTO function is included in the most basic version of the TinyBASIC port (called vanilla) — to allow for beginners to take their programming baby steps — the function can be disabled in another version (called raspberry) to ensure budding programmers are given the chance to learn structured programming.

The TinyBASIC port consists of an editor, called TinyBASIC One, which allows programs to be inputed, edited and run; the BASIC interpreter — including support for language features such as PRINT, REM, LET, STOP and GOTO — and in the raspberry flavour additional features include WHILE/WEND and REPEAT/UNTIL loops (but not GOTO).

The port also includes support for drawing basic shapes, via the DRAW function.