Hasta La Gadget!

Unfortunately, the crazy rumors that Google’s Nexus S would ship with a dual-core Orion processor didn’t pan out, which means we’re still waiting for a smartphone to ship with honest-to-goodness multicore silicon of any sort; it’s still unclear just how soon we’re going to see that wild dream come to fruition, but RIM’s Mike Lazaridis is talking like he wants to take the lead in making it happen. At D:Dive Into Mobile this evening, Waterloo’s outspoken co-CEO went on record that they’ll be taking the PlayBook’s QNX platform to smartphones just “as soon as [he has] dual core baseband CPUs,” though power consumption remains a limiting factor. At any rate, RIM seems to be fully acknowledging now both that QNX is a little too beefy for today’s smartphones and that BlackBerry OS isn’t quite beefy enough, which leaves these guys in a bit of a pinch until the dual-core revolution takes hold.

RIM’s Mike Lazaridis: QNX coming to BlackBerry phones when dual-core processors are ready originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By the time Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz QSD8672 Snapdragon finally makes it to market, it might be obsolete — the company just announced that the new 28nm dual-core MSM8960 system-on-a-chip will have five times the performance and consume 75 percent less power than the original Snapdragon when it arrives in 2011. It’s got the usual WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and FM radio modules but also a multi-mode LTE / 3G modem too, and reportedly four times the graphical muscle on board. Speaking of graphics, Qualcomm seperately took the time to detail a new GPU: the Qualcomm Adreno 300 series, which will allegedly offer the gaming performance of an Xbox 360 or PS3. We’d say “We’ll believe it when we see it,” but that would imply doubt — the reality is that we just want to feast our eyes on mobile gaming bliss as soon as humanly possible.

[Thanks, PhineasJW]

Qualcomm teases 28nm dual-core Snapdragons, pixel-punching Adreno 300 GPU originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want some specificity about LG’s super-duper tablet roadmap? Last we heard from the Korean tech giant, it was canning plans for a Froyo slate and looking forward to a more suitable iteration of Android, which a senior official at the company has today clarified to mean Honeycomb, describing it as the “tablet PC-version” of the OS. He’s even gone beyond the call of PR duty in placing a release schedule for the 8.9-inch LG Pad in the first quarter of 2011, boasting that it’ll come with a dual-core Tegra 2 chip inside. That sounds terribly delicious to us, as does the note that LG has worked hard to accommodate the needs and wants of European and North American consumers — the release window is explicitly said to be for both domestic and overseas markets.

Update: We’ve just heard back from LG on the matter and the company says it has nothing official to tell us. It’d seem whoever the cited official in this piece is, he was dishing details that LG doesn’t want the world to know yet. LG’s PR team has also pulled a tweet about this story, ostensibly to cover its tracks.

LG Pad coming in Q1 2011, with Android Honeycomb, dual-core Tegra 2, and 8.9-inch screen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 06:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hoo boy, our tipster was spot on with this one, Apple’s adding an 11.6-inch sibling to its newly redesigned 13.3-inch MacBook Air. It’ll have a dual-core 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (upgradeable to 1.6GHz on the more expensive model), 1366 x 768 resolution, and a $999 starting price for the 64GB SSD model, with the 128GB version setting you back $1,199. It carries over the aluminum unibody construction from the 13-incher, along with the same 2GB or 4GB DDR3 RAM options and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, but has to settle for a briefer 5-hour battery life. Full PR and Apple’s first ad for this new hotness both await after the break.

Update: We’ve got our very first hands-on pictures with the new machine. Enjoy!

Continue reading Apple introduces 11.6-inch MacBook Air, available today for $999

Apple introduces 11.6-inch MacBook Air, available today for $999 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d say Intel is delivering its new chips like clockwork, but then our favorite timepieces don’t usually leak anywhere near as often as Chipzilla’s roadmaps. The now well known 2.66GHz Core i5-580M has finally been made official, costing $266, alongside an identically clocked family mate in the Core i5-560M, which will set bulk buyers back $225 a piece. From what we know of those two, the major difference is that the 580M can Turbo Boost its way to 3.33GHz whereas the 560M maxes out at a humbler 3.2GHz. Both are overshadowed, however, by the new i7-640M colossus, which runs at 2.8GHz by default and will reach 3.4GHz when called upon — yours for only $346. Of course, should the 35W TDPs of those chips seem too gaudy for you, Intel’s wisely dropping a pair of 18W parts as well: the Core i5-560UM slinks along at 1.33GHz and asks for $250, while the Core i7-680UM raises those numbers to 1.46GHz and $317, respectively. Finally, for the perfect balance of power and efficiency, the i7-660LM couples 2.26GHz (or 3.06GHz in Turbo mode) to a 25W thermal envelope. It matches the 640M with a $346 unit price. All these CPUs sport a pair of 32nm cores alongside a 45nm integrated graphics unit and there are absolutely no Performance Upgrade Card anywhere in sight!

Intel prices fresh Core i5 and i7 mobile parts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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