Hasta La Gadget!

We’re attending a Qualcomm event in which we had the opportunity to get our hands on the quad-core SnapDragon S4 Pro (APQ8064) development platform. If you’re not familiar with the new chip, the stated goal of Qualcomm is to come up with a high-performance “all-day” mobile computing platform. To increase the speed, Qualcomm is using a quad-core architecture and a new Adreno 320 graphics processor – all in the same chip die.

The tablet itself has pretty much everything that the platform can support: stereo surround sound, multiple microphones, all the sensors that we may expect, including pressure, temperature and fingerprint reader. There is 1GB of RAM and 16GB of local storage (+ microSD slot). The development tablet has just launched and is available from BSquare, the company that usually manufacture the development kits for Qualcomm ($1299). Although this is a quality product, it is not meant as a “sexy” consumer device – it’s really a hardware that is meant to mostly sit on a developer desk, so don’t assume that actual products will look like this.

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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: 28nm Qualcomm Snapdragon chip will roll out from Samsung plants, Windows Phone 8: Qualcomm Takes It All,

Konami just released the official Metal Gear Solid Rising gameplay footage that explains how the controls work and what the player can do. If you’ve been following E3 for the past couple of years, you probably know that Metal Gear Solid Rising (MGS Rising) features a 3D-engine that allows the player to cut any target objects in a realistic way. This is typically very difficult as most polygonal objects in games are normally solid and hollow. Konami did a great job with this.

On the surface, the game itself is a fancy beat-them-up not unlike God of War, Heavenly Sword and other titles of that sort, except that MGS Rising features its own fancy combo hits and finish. Raiden, the main character from Metal Gear Solid 2, was a little boo-booed when he popped into the series (well, it’s just hard to replace Solid Snake…) but this may be the title that will make him enter the video game Hall of Fame. What do you think? Is Konami’s Raiden character ready for a main role?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection arriving on the PlayStation Vita, Konami’s Fox Engine uses global illumination to achieve uber-real rendering,

Steve Mann, an engineering professor at the University of Toronto and inventor of the EyeTap computer vision system, was allegedly physically assaulted at a McDonald’s branch in Paris after employees spotted him wearing the device. According to Mann, during a month-long summer vacation with his family in Paris, France, they happen to drop by at a McDonald’s chain in 140, Avenue Champs Elysees. While waiting in line to order food, an employee reportedly approached him, inquiring about his digital glass. (more…)

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Intel has just announced that it is introducing a new 240GB version of its Series 330 solid state drive (SDD). At the same time, the company is lowering the maximum suggested price (MRSP) on previous models in the 330 Series, but also the 520 Series and 320 Series.

The new Series 330 240GB will come at $194 MRSP, but we’ll have to see if online prices get lower than this. With this offering, Intel breaks the $1/GB barrier, just like the industry predicted last year, and we expect pretty much every SSD manufacturer to get there by year’s end.

The good news is that this is not over. Moore’s law dictates that prices will continue to plunge, while capacity rises. In the meantime, expect more and more computers to use SSD drives to accelerate file access and as it stands, this is still one of the best upgrade that a computer can get. Don’t miss our Intel SSD 320 Series review.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Intel SSD 330 Series Announced, Intel SSD 910 is PCI-based and impressive,

Amazon just launched GameCircle, a new service for game developers that gives some social abilities to games via leaderboards which keep tabs with everyone’s scores and makes things a little more competitive. On an individual basis, GameCircle will also track players accomplishments to keep them engaged with the game so they come back and play… one more time.

Finally, it introduces a sync mechanism so that games can synchronize the current state of the game onto the Amazon cloud to allow players to continue playing from exactly where they were at but on another device. For example, you could imagine playing a game comfortably from a tablet at home and continue on the go on a smartphone.

With this offering, pretty much any player who has an Amazon account can get started in seconds, but it will be interesting to see if Amazon can outperform the competition like Apple, Zynga and others who offer competing services. None of them are quite truly alike, but developers still have a choice to make. So far, Amazon has convinced a few partners to join, but it will take a few months to see if more jump on board. Developers can sign up here.

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