Verizon has been granted a couple more smartphones from the likes of Motorola and Google here with the massive battery-toting DROID RAZR MAXX HD right alongside its near-identical brother the RAZR HD (without so much MAXX). The difference between these two devices is just about as slight as it could possibly get – the MAXX has twice the internal storage (32GB instead of 16) and a giant 3,300mAh battery instead of the 2,530mAh unit the standard HD has. The weight and thickness are absolutely negligible – even when you’ve got them both in your hands it’s difficult to guess which is which, believe it or not.
The max is 0.37 inches thick and 5.54 oz (157 g) heavy while the smaller of the two is 0.33 inches thick and 5.15 oz (146 g) heavy. Have a peek at these photos to see how small that difference really, truly is. It’s as if Motorola is playing a joke on us – but the differences are there, and that battery is indeed in there with that much extra power. NOTE: We’ll be doing an extended battery test over the next few days on the MAXX HD as well – stay tuned for that!
You’d be well off taking a peek at our DROID RAZR MAXX full review to understand how these two devices are going to work for you, and make note of this fact as well: their software builds are the same. They’ve got the same version of Android, the same Motorola additions and tweaks, and the same apps. There’s no software differences between these two devices.
Remember also that Motorola has made it clear that they’ll be bringing each of these RAZR devices (including the DROID RAZR M as well) up to Jelly Bean very, very soon. That means Android 4.1 and a bit of the new Google Now system as well. The MAXX HD and the HD will be on sale at Verizon immediately if not soon nationwide as well – head out and grab one!
If you’ve not seen the iOS app version of the SlashGear experience, now is a better time than ever as the whole system gets an upgrade to version 2.0 for the iPhone 5. This app is made for both the iPad and the iPhone, able to handle essentially any iOS device running version 4.3 or greater – and that does include iOS 6, as well. With the new iPhone iteration of this app, you’ll have a set of major design changes in your ability to see trending topics, load more articles in a single swing than ever before, and to comment with full Disqus integration top to bottom!
With the iPhone 5 you’ll be able to roll out with a full display of SlashGear greatness especially here in version 2.0. This version of the iPhone side of things will work on the iPad as well as the iPhone and works perfectly well on the iPod touch as well. You’ll be able to see a straight up frontpage news feed near a collection of rotating featured stories and a set of videos as well. The videos section will keep you in the know with hands-on action and in-person event sequences galore.
This newest version also has added gallery support with a simple interface that allows you to cycle through batches of images in reviews, featured pieces, and more. With each new screen comes an optimized view of each new column complete with links to our entire archive of tech and gadget news. Up to the minute updates come in at a tap of the load button and full download/save for later, text size adjustment, and share buttons are running at full steam.
The best part about this update is an update to our comments system. You can now log in with Disqus, the same system we use in the web-based version of the site. This system allows you to log in with any of several well-known systems such as Facebook and Twitter – and of course Disqus’ own user login base too. You can grab this app right this minute by [heading to Apple’s iTunes App Store] for a completely free download.
Today it’s time to get busy packing for the next big Apple event, set for October 23rd and quite likely to reveal no larger an iPad than a mini. With the iPad mini on peoples’ lips and in their dreams now for several months (or years, for some), it comes as no surprise that the device will be revealed just in time for the holiday season. Now we’ve just got to hypothesize on how many other devices – or device refreshes – will be appearing as well.
This event will likely center around an update to the whole Apple range, with the iPad mini coming with a Lightning connector and a refreshed iPad coming with Lightning as well. There have been several other rumors surrounding this event including a new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro that’s essentially the same as the one released earlier this year – but smaller. It’s not that Apple wants to get tiny here in the Autumn of 2012, but they’re certainly not going to let the competition swipe their legs out from under them.
Apple has over the past year concentrated on becoming thinner and sharper, with the iPhone 5 becoming taller yet smaller and the Retina MacBook Pro getting smaller as it gets much higher definition in its display. This event will steal some fire away from Microsoft simply based on its timing as well with the release of Windows 8 set for the 26th of this month.
Have a peek at the timeline below to track what we’ve heard and been tipped on for the iPad mini over the past few weeks, and stay tuned for the final event as well. We’ll be on-site with all the coverage you could possible want from start to finish right here on SlashGear!
Surface is a huge deal for Microsoft, and it’s no over-exaggeration to say that the fate of next-gen Windows rests in no small part on the shoulders of the new own-brand tablet. Up for preorder from today, priced from an iPad-matching $499, the new tablet represents everything Microsoft believes is important about the tablet-focused version of Windows 8, even though it runs the risk of frustrating long-standing OEM partnerships by taking the delivery of that into its own hands. SlashGear caught up with Microsoft at Studio B, the company’s hardware hub in Redmond, Washington, for a tour of what are normally clandestine facilities, to find out the back story to Surface and why Microsoft’s team felt it was best positioned to deliver it.
You don’t just walk into Studio B, not ordinarily. Microsoft managed to keep Surface a secret – even from OEMs – up until it unveiled it back in June, and that’s down to serious levels of secrecy at its hardware development studios. We were given access to Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, and Surface general manager Panos Panay, as well as being taken around the workshops, labs, and other facilities at Studio B. Unsurprisingly, there’s plenty we can’t talk about publicly – at times our phones and cameras were taken off us, just in case – but we came away with a new level of respect for what Microsoft challenged itself to do, and what it has achieved.
The Making of Microsoft Surface
Phones, tablets, and compromises
The tablet segment is an increasingly crowded one, but according to Sinofsky Microsoft’s approach is considerably different from that of its key rivals. The big name in the room – and one liberally cited by both Sinofsky and Panay – is Apple’s iPad, and with its majority share of the tablet market it’s no surprise that Microsoft has been keeping an eye on the iOS pad. Still, Android hasn’t been slow to take on tablets, whether in the flavor Google would prefer or a modified version made to suit OEM ambitions.
The starting points are pretty clear, Sinofsky points out. “Google, starting from either search or from open-source, and building up from a phone. So, they built a great phone and they said “oh, we’ve got to do a tablet” and we’re all familiar with what it’s like to build the experience after you build the experience” the president says. “They went through the whole efforts to redraft the UI, to turn it into a tablet, when they had started really from a phone. And when you buy into a tablet, you buy into… it’s there for the search ecosystem, the Google software, and it’s all good but it’s their perspective”
As for Apple, “they clearly started with the success of the iPhone, did an amazing job on that, and when the iPad came out it was easy for everybody to grasp because many people had been using the iPhone for two years: they picked up the iPad and said look, it’s the iPhone with a bigger screen” Sinofsky explained to us. “And in fact if you go look at your own, and everybody’s first evaluations of this, you focused on the fact that it’s an iPhone and now the screen is bigger, and so many other things are easier and more useful than on the small screen. And over time, [Apple] started to talk about stretching into other dimensions, but we all know it’s rooted in that phone, and even today they’re exactly the same trajectory, the phone and the pad they run the same software. And so that brings with it a huge number of advantages, but it’s very clear in terms of the perspective, and the capabilities of what the device will do.”
Surface – Steven Sinofsky + Panos Panay
Amazon perhaps epitomizes the fragmentation story going on within Android today, heavily customizing the OS to tailor it to its own needs. “Amazon did this incredible job on bringing the Kindle Fire to market, and everybody understands what you get when you buy the Fire,” Sinofsky argues, “you buy the device, you buy into the Amazon ecosystem. They look at themselves as a retailer, they look at tablets as a way to buy stuff, whether it’s digital goods or physical goods, and so they want to have a complete experience.”
In contrast, Microsoft comes to tablets – not new, as versions of Windows have supported touchscreen hardware and digital pens since the days of Windows XP Tablet Edition – with a history in more ubiquitous PCs: desktops and notebooks. “And all of those are perfectly rational, good views of why to build hardware and what to do” Sinofsky concedes. “And we of course looked at this challenge, and said, well, we think of PCs as this generic kind of device that can work across a broad range of scenarios, that have a broad range of form-factors, that have extensible platform, that have peripherals and are part of ecosystems.”
Boiling that premise down to a portable device users would keep with them all day, every day, was what led to Surface. “We want to bring all of that goodness to a kind of device that you carry around with you all the time, that has all-day battery life, with its roots in this ecosystem, and its roots in the notion of productivity. And in many ways, that’s where we start with Surface” the Windows president explained. “It’s about really bringing that extra perspective to market – we started with thinking about all of the things that are in those elements, whether it’s things like a USB port, or the design of the case, or the aspect ratio. And all of these things become important decisions in how we build Surface.”
“It’s not about feeds and speeds”
Trade-offs and compromises aren’t something most execs prefer to discuss when talking about their shiny new product, but the balance of decision making was a theme Sinofsky and Panay – as well as others on the Surface team – keep coming back to. That’s because a trade-off need not be a negative thing, Sinofsky argues. “It’s not about what we call ‘feeds and speeds’, all the aptitudes you can line up in a table and compare [across] all the tablets” he says, “those are interesting but what’s really interesting is the full picture of what it does.”
Surface – ID Studio
“We started with a meeting – those happen a lot at Microsoft – and it was a good meeting, where we sat down and Steven put it out there and said “we really want to bring out the best hardware experience for Windows … we want this hardware to be an extension of Windows” Panay explained. “We knew the aspect ratio, we knew you’d be using it with two hands … we knew the basics, we had to have all-day battery life, we had to have a great screen, we had to have it feel light, it had to do all these things.”
That then triggered experiments with “hundreds and hundreds of models” produced on-site, using 3D printers to create tactile mock-ups from which the different teams could make decisions about design, hardware, ergonomics and more. Being able to so quickly handle the results of a design whim was, Panay says, hugely valuable to Surface’s creation. “You know when you have something great” he told us. “And then there’s those times when you think you have something … when you look at it, you go, ‘okay, I think we have something good here.’”
What a difference an inch makes
Some of Surface’s specifications look pretty standard: the processor is an NVIDIA Tegra 3, paired with 2GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. There’s WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, along with a couple of cameras and of course a touchscreen, in this case with a 16:9 aspect ratio – like we’ve seen on many Android tablets – and running at 1,366 x 768 resolution. However, for every standard tick on the spec sheet, there’s a custom tweak from Microsoft itself.
Surface – Applied Sciences Lab
“When we started, it was 10.1-inches” Panay explains. “We needed a great tablet experience, but we needed it to be light, and your battery is a huge factor here: the bigger your battery is, the heavier your device is. But we also knew that the most dominant screen size in the world out there, or available – as a hardware guy, just a supply-change sense – is a 10.1-inch screen, 16:10. It didn’t necessarily suit our needs, as it turns out. But we looked, and we said okay, let’s just take what we have and build from it. And when you look at something like that, you just stop, and where we ended up was 10.6-inches. You see the different from 10.1 to 10.6. Now, let me explain to what gets you there from a trade-off perspective.”
“Starting at 10.1, we looked at it, there were a couple of problems here. We want to bring the software to life; we’re bringing Windows to life with this device. One of the great things with Windows is multi-tasking. So, if you were to go into multitasking on a 10.1-inch screen, your 4:3 screen becomes your web browsing area. You watch the text render really small. And then you’re trying to use the web and multitask, and then you start to look back and go “wait a minute, what’s the best experience for Windows 8, what’s the best experience to look at a 4:3 screen … how about 16:9?” But one of the things we pushed was, okay, we know 10.1 is too small, but understand the parameters that come with it.”
Opting for a 10.6-inch panel took Microsoft into the realms of custom display manufacturer, but it also opened up challenges with packaging the screen in a way that saw it tick all of the essentials tablet buyers have been told to expect. “As you get larger, you get heavier – that’s just by design, it’s gonna happen, because your battery would get larger. Why make a larger device and not fill it with battery when that all-day battery life was a critical part of it?” Panay asks. “As the screen gets bigger, you’re pulling more power; you actually need to get more battery in the device so you can pull the right amount of power and still keep all-day for the way the software was being designed.”
Surface – Model Shop
Having to lead the development of customized components would probably be too much for many companies, but Microsoft has the scale to take it on. Still, Panay’s team did look at whether a slightly larger, standard panel would do the job. “We considered an 11.1-inch device, but wow it really missed in the great tablet experience. So what we knew we had to solve for was, okay, 10.1 was too small, and 11.1 was too big, there’s no real screen size out there from a supply chain standpoint that exists” he told us. “We had to go invent our own screen, we invented our own touch stack, we designed the thinnest touch stack in the world … we were able to push to 10.6-inches because we were able to pick the right size. We checked every single possible size needed, we looked for the best size that fit, to make sure that in multitasking mode you were still able to get stuff done, if you’re doing stuff. The size became almost a no-brainer.”
“It’s not a gadget, it’s not a gizmo, it’s a solid part of the device”
The decision about screen size had a knock-on effect on the keyboard, something many Windows users would expect to see with a Windows-based device (even if it does have a touchscreen). “At 10.1-inches, with a keyboard, your hands will overlap” Panay points out; Microsoft watched how 150 people used its Touch Case prototypes and developed different test layouts to accommodate trends in where fingers naturally landed, for instance. “An 11.1-inch screen is actually a pretty good solution for a typing surface. But at 10.6-inches – along with a great resolution for 4:3 – you now have the perfect keyboard size. When you set your hands down in the home position, you can have the perfect typing experience.”
The keys themselves – laser etched – are pressure sensitive, so as to tell the difference between when you’re resting your hand on the ‘board or are actually pressing down to activate a key. The watermark moment is around 40g, the Surface team discovered. The result is a keyboard that, although just 3mm thick – Microsoft initially aimed for 4.5mm, so that it wasn’t as chunky as some aftermarket iPad keyboards, but the engineers trimmed it down even further – allows for surprisingly fast typing speeds. It takes 4-5 days to get up to full speed, Panay admits, but once you’re familiar you can get to roughly twice the speed most people can manage on the glass touchscreen of a rival tablet (or, indeed, on Windows RT/8′s native on-screen keyboard).
Surface – Reliability Lab
It only takes roughly three seconds to get familiar with the pressure sensing technology, Panay claims; we only had limited time with the Touch Cover in a lab setting, so will have to withhold judgement until we can spend longer with the system in the real-world. Still, there’s plenty of thought that’s gone into it and, for those who can’t divorce themselves from more traditional ‘boards, Microsoft offers the $129.99 Type Cover which is thicker but includes keys with actual travel to them.
Typing isn’t the only place Microsoft has given serious thought to Surface’s design: the kickstand, for instance, has been an exercise in iterative development. We’ve seen kickstands show up on phones and tablets before – HTC had something of a reputation for them for a while – but the stand on Surface is undoubtedly the winner.
According to Sinofsky, the kickstand not only had to be stable, but it had to feel good and sound good. Owners had to have confidence that it could open and close consistently through the lifetime of the device, something not all moving parts on mobile gadgets can deliver. The end result is a trio of hinges, each built to a custom design, and which can open and close a million times seamlessly. Each time you open them, Sinofsky highlights, they sound the same; when you close the kickstand, the hinges are invisible.
In fact, two of the hinges control the feel of the stand, and the third actually delivers the distinctive “click” sound. It’s modeled on the sort of reassuring clunk that you’d get from a high-end car, Sinofsky says. “It’s not going to break off, it’s not going to snap … it’s not a gadget, it’s not a gizmo, it’s a solid part of the device.” Usually, he points out, when the tension in a piece of metal is released and it connects with another piece, there’s a rattle at they settle; for Surface, hidden magnets along the edge make sure that the kickstand closes crisply. More 3D printing of test components helped the team make sure the closure happened just right.
Surface with Windows RT Breakdown
“People aren’t reacting to resolution, they’re reacting to contrast”
Making sure Surface shines where it really needs to has been as much about making decisions to leave elements out as it has to include them. Microsoft has been knocked for opting for a 1,366 x 768 display when the iPad 3 packs Retina resolution, but according to Sinofsky and the team, that’s a compromise worth making. A higher resolution screen needs more graphics power, for a start, and brighter backlighting to push light through the extra wires in a panel with more pixels. If you actually want to watch higher-resolution content, Microsoft argues, you need to have more bandwidth to deliver it, or more onboard storage (Surface does have a microSDXC slot to add to its 32GB/64GB of internal memory).
In short, Sinofsky told us, Surface was developed with a screen suited for today, rather than what might be needed in five years time. And that jaw-dropping moment when people first see a high-res panel and get instant gadget-lust? That, the company argues, is a reaction to contrast, not resolution, most of the time.
Microsoft Surface Overview
While it may not lead on number of pixels, how they’re presented is still something special. Microsoft not only pushed for the 10.6-inch custom size, but optical lamination too, bonding the top glass – Corning’s toughened Gorilla Glass, naturally – to the rest of the display sandwich. The result is 0.7mm thick, as well as being lighter and tougher than rival panels, though Microsoft also had to stomach the risk of poor yields making the custom screen an expensive proposition.
Optimized for Work
Functionality as a theme came in early in the Surface design journey: the early concepts were based on the flexibility of opening and twisting a Moleskine notebook, for instance, and spawned a demo prototype for Panay’s team to demonstrate to Sinofsky and others made from cardboard boxes and scotch tape. 3D printers soon took that role over, however, spitting out a new prototype in an hour. Roughly 300 were made over the course of the design process, something which took months longer than expected.
That process forced members of the team to go beyond their core disciplines. Designers had to think about engineering, and vice-versa: the positioning of a USB port on the outside had consequences for the slimmed-down components on the inside, for instance, while the twin-antennas for the Marvell radio chipset had to be retuned every time parts near them inside were tweaked along the way. The end result, though, is something which is entirely orientation-agnostic, crafted to leave at least one antenna untouched no matter how you’re holding Surface, and with greater range than other slates on the market.
Microsoft Surface TV Ad 1
Even the power adapter brought its own trade-offs, made slightly larger than it could’ve been in the name of better usability. “It turns out, the trade-off that we wanted to make, was to optimize for work, and getting working as soon as you can. So, by just using a very slightly larger power adapter, you all of a sudden open up this whole world of productivity” Sinofsky told us. “So, you’re sitting at the airport at 0-percent, your flight takes off in an hour, and I would like to charge the device. And so I plug the device in, I’m working/charging/working/charging, and I get to 50-percent, and that’s enough for the whole flight, and then some. And so by just making that one trade-off, it’s not as cool or sexy as this tiny little thing, but all of a sudden the whole device gets to full power in just over two hours.”
Refinement by the minute
Obsessional doesn’t really start to describe the Surface team’s approach to the tablet. The project was an “endless loop of iterations,” with the group taking liberal advantage of the fact that changes which previously would have taken 2-3 months to enact could now be pushed through in two hours. The huge 3D printers at Studio B – actually more complex than those at the Chinese production facilities, which are custom made to pump out the specific components – could be used to trial and tinker, and then decisions could be made at Microsoft HQ and be up and running in China by the next morning.
No detail has proved too small to address. The demo devices for the June launch, though hardly touched by press and analysts in attendance, were deemed to have edges too sharp for comfort, and so the Surface team experimented with chamfering them. A 0.3mm chamfer was eventually decided upon, with huge impact behind-the-scenes for what can only really be felt by your fingers in its absence.
The hinge of the Touch Cover, which clings magnetically to the base of Surface, was another labor of love. Described as “fairly indestructible” it took over a year to figure out a mechanism which would not only snap on cleanly but be so simple to detach that a three-year-old could tug it apart. The final design consists of both alignment magnets and contact pins, and works with clever positioning sensors so as to activate or deactivate its touch-sensitivity depending on whether you’re using Surface in a position likely to involve typing or not.
Microsoft Surface TV Ad 2
“Invention plus impact is really what an innovation is”
Microsoft is betting big on Windows 8 and Windows RT, and Surface is a key salvo as the company takes on not only rival tablets, but the whole concept of “Post-PC.” In the end, Sinofsky’s team has come up with something that is neither a pure tablet nor a laptop.
“Is it a tablet or a laptop?” Sinofsky has been asked, he told us, on multiple occasions. “I’ve been using this now for a long time. I’ve used a lot of tablets; [Surface] isn’t a tablet, but it’s the best tablet I’ve ever used. And I’ve used a lot of notebooks and laptops, and this is not a laptop, but it’s also the best laptop I’ve ever used. It’s a new kind of device.”
We’ll know just how accurate that is when we put Surface through its paces ourselves. The tablet went up for preorder today, and will show up in stores on October 26.
While getting their hands dirty with the ASUS PadFone 2, our guys over at Engadget Chinese also had the chance to compare it with the OG PadFone, and they came back with a generous batch of side-by-side shots. Here you can see how the phone itself is almost just a scaled-up copy of its predecessor, while the new PadFone Station slate loses some body fat by shedding the original docking bay cover, and we’re certain that the battery has become denser and lighter as well to achieve this amazing diet — we’re talking about losing just over 200g here! Also apparent is the new 13-pin dock connector (MHL plus concurrent data, display and power) at the bottom of both the phone and the tablet. For the rest, we shall let your eyes do the work in the gallery below. Enjoy!
It’s time to take a peek at the LG Optimus G as it runs on AT&T’s 4G LTE network and busts out with the majorly powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor on a set of three lovely games. The first game we’re taking a peek at is Wild Blood, a hack-and-slash monster-slaying 3rd-person adventure from Gameloft. Gameloft also presents the second game we’re having a peek at, that being Asphalt 7, a racing game with lots and lots of drifting. Then it’s time for a glu-developed game by the name of Indestructible – one car destroys another with chain guns, missiles, and many, many bombs.
With Wild Blood you’ll see the Snapdragon S4 Pro working to keep you on the run between cut-scenes and actual massacring of monsters in no time at all – you’ve got lovely special moves and bashing on your side as well. This game takes a bit of time to load when you first fire it up, otherwise there’s nothing to complain about in the least here on the LG Optimus G. Expect to be waiting a bit longer on devices with only a single core, and for multi-core devices you’ll still want to make sure you’re not pushing any other tasks at the same time – here with the S4 Pro we’ve got no concerns.
Next have a peek at Asphalt 7, a game that if you’re not used to dragging your tail end whilst racing you’ll have a difficult time not crashing into walls with. When you’re playing this game outside an optimized-for-gaming environment, you’ve got definite lag in graphics. Inside the LG Optimus G, everything is smooth as butter.
Finally there’s the many-independent-minds game that is Indestructible. Here we’ve got a Twisted Metal vibe going on with more little vehicles than you’re going to be able to handle. With so many bots coming at you with minds all their own, it’s only your ultra-powerful processor that’s keeping everything working so smoothly.
Stay tuned for more LG Optimus G action as we complete our review this week – the device goes on pre-order for $199 starting tomorrow with AT&T. Will you be picking one up right out of the gate? If you’ve got one whole heck of a lot of questions, be sure to let us know what you need to know in the comments section below! We’ll do our best to answer all queries!
If you’re thinking about working with Xbox Music in the very near future, the first thing you should be thinking about is how it measures up to the competition. With Microsoft’s first iteration of Xbox Music here right before Windows 8 is released, you’ll need Windows 8, an Xbox 360, or a Windows Phone 8 device to use it. Spotify is a service that works on all of these platforms as well as Apple’s devices and Google’s Android, too. The third warrior in iTunes Match works on Apple products and connects directly with iTunes.
With Xbox Music you’ll be working with a massive library of music with labels that’ve agreed with Microsoft to let their audio be streamed. This service works as both a free model and a pay model, with the free model working in an unlimited manner across all your devices with advertisements to pay your way for 6 months. Once your 6 months are up, you’ll be limited to 10 hours a month. These limits are removed entirely if you choose to pay Microsoft $9.99 a month.
Spotify works similarly with a $9.99 a month cost and a free model besides. The free model also works with advertisements to pay your way, but does not work on your mobile device, only your desktop machine. If you pay the $9.99 a month, you get streaming via mobile and no advertisements anywhere – Spotify also has a separate library of music from Microsoft, and Microsoft and Spotify have separate libraries from iTunes as well – lots of licensing going on here.
Apple’s iTunes Match works with your music and costs $24.99 a year. There is no free service with iTunes Match, and it combines the music you’ve purchased via iTunes with 25,000 songs of your choice uploaded by you from your CD collection. These tracks are added to your library at “256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality” unless Apple does not have their own copy beforehand, at which point you’ll have the song at the highest quality you were able to upload it at. This music can be streamed from any of your web-connected Apple devices.
Of course there’s also Google Music which works on Android devices and through any web browser, this being an absolutely free service that allows you to upload your own music as well as purchase music from Google Play. There’s no limit to streaming on any device and no cost to you – advertisements appear on Google Play, of course, but only for Google Play products.
Which one are you going to go for this upcoming Windows 8-heavy season?
This week we’re having a peek at not one, but two Huawei Android devices with quad-core processors that are set to blast away the competition – or so it would seem. This is the Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD quad-core tablet with a 10.1-inch display that’s high definition to the max – 1920 x 1200 pixels with a 16:10 aspect ratio on a chassis that just 8.8mm thin. The device is ever so slightly heavy at 580g, but the innards here make up for whatever’s lost in heft.
On the back of this device you’ve got an 8 megapixel shooter with dual-LED flash and autofocus while the front works with a 1.3 megapixel camera for video chat. You’ve got double channel speakers with Dolby Surround Sound that Huawei promises will blow your face off – and what do you know, it’s a surprisingly powerful set of speakers. With a display and speakers combo like this, we’ll certainly be working with Google Movies to make it a lovely night in with popcorn to boot.
This tablet works with a quad-core processor made by Huawei itself, here with 1.5Ghz on its CPU clock rather than 1.2GHz as it was on the smartphone. This device works with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box, and measures in at 257.4 × 175.9 width and height. Have a peek at a couple of benchmarks in the gallery below to get an idea of where this tablet stands in the world of Android competitors.
You can get this device in 8, 16, and 32GB internal memory iterations, and you’ve got 2GB of RAM no matter what you choose. We’re working with Bluetooth 3.0 here and have GPS, an Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor, compass, vibration feedback, and a massive 6600mAh batter to keep the device powered all night and day. You’ve got a 3.5mm headphone jack as well and built-in MIC for sound recording.
In some areas of the world you’ll be able to use this device with 4G LTE – we’ll have to wait and see how this adds up as this tablet hits the market soon. Meanwhile we’re going to be giving the Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD a full review right here on SlashGear – let us know if you’ve got any questions as we make this happen, and we’ll do our best to work with everything you need to know!
This week we’re getting our hands on the Huawei Ascend D quad XL, a quad-core smartphone made to bring the brand up to speed with the rest of the hardcore top-tier smart device universe in more ways than one. This device will be spreading across the market in China rather soon with its 4.5-inch IPS+ LCD touchscreen with a massive 720 x 1280 pixel resolution – that’s 326ppi, for those of you keeping track. In this initial look we’ll do a basic flipping back and forth on the displays and a show of the hardware as it stands here right before the big drop.
This device has 8GB of ROM, 1GB of RAM, and connects to your computer or a wall charger with a standard microUSB plug. You’ve got an 8 megapixel camera on the back capable of 1080p video, there’s a secondary camera on the front working at 1.3 megapixels capable of 720p video, and inside you’ve got Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box. The biggest reason this device should raise your radar is the processor, of course, it being a quad-core beast from Huawei itself coming in at 1.2GHz.
This quad-core processor appears very much to be doing quite well for itself in our initial benchmark tests, busting up Quadrant Standard with a CPU score of 11373, this just a bit less than the HTC One X and the Transformer Prime. The I/O, on the other hand, is a massive 6494, well outperforming both devices. Of course these tests don’t count for everything, and we’ll be letting our own hands-on everyday use decide what’s best for the average consumer.
It’s important to note that we’re working with a Sample Unit, this meaning that it’s possible that the final product won’t be exactly the same as we’re seeing here. The specifications will likely be pretty much the same, but processor clock speeds, Android version, and firmware builds may be different – we shall see. Also of note is the fact that this device carries a 2600 mAh battery rather than a 1800 mAh, as the original (non-XL) version of the device did.
This device is also relatively heavy, carrying with it a variety of technologies that Huawei appears to have not concentrated on in the weight department. We’ll also see if this trade-off is worth it in our full review, coming up sooner than later! Let us know if you’ve got any questions in comments below for that post as well!
Apple’s 5th Gen iPod touch has landed, and it marks quite a departure for the touchscreen media player. What once was described as a phoneless-iPhone has evolved into a device with a distinct focus of its own, building on the gaming prowess of its predecessor and adding in a capable digital camera to this latest generation. The first batch of new iPod touch units are winging their way to preorder customers, but one has already landed on the SlashGear test bench, so read on for some first impressions.
While the last iPod touch, though running at Retina resolution, had a less impressive display than its iPhone 4S counterpart, Apple hasn’t made the same mistake this time around. We’ll have to wait for the inevitable teardowns to be sure, but to our eyes the new iPod touch uses the same panel as the iPhone 5, and benefits from it hugely.
It’s dressed in a more distinctive case than before, at a casual glance directly related to the iPhone 5, but unlikely to be mistaken for it. The brushed anodized aluminum is tactile and sturdy, and that – combined with the length of the PMP – emphasizes the thinness: it’s now just 6.1mm thick and, at 88g, 11-percent lighter than the model it replaces. There’s some beveling to the bezel, but only on the front, which should cut down on the scuffs and scratches we saw on the iPhone 5.
Inside there’s Apple’s dualcore A5 chipset, with up to twice the processing power and up to seven times the graphical abilities. It’s certainly enough to keep iOS 6 moving slickly, though will show its particular worth when it comes to gaming and multimedia apps; we’ll be testing those out for our full review. You also get Siri, Apple Maps, the new Facebook integration, and AirPlay Mirroring.
The other big change to this generation is the camera, at 5-megapixels not quite up to the 8-megapixel sensor in the iPhone 5, but certainly the most ambitious of an iPod touch to-date. Already we can see point-and-shoots losing ground to this capable backside-illuminated sensor, benefiting from easy navigation with the touchscreen, the addition of face-detection, panorama mode, and native HDR capture. Apple doesn’t bundle iPhoto, but it’s an affordable $4.99 purchase.
Apple is keeping the 4th-gen iPod touch on sale alongside its new 5th-gen model (the older example will be cheaper, with 16GB and 32GB models, while the 5th-gen will be available in 32GB and 64GB versions) and so we’ll be seeing how they hold up against each other as well as how they compare to the rest of the portable music options out there. That will have to wait for the full SlashGear review, so until then, enjoy our hands-on gallery and video.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
