Hasta La Gadget!

Much like many Chinese smartphone brands these days, ZTE sub-brand Nubia had prematurely given away the main selling points of its Z5 ahead of its Beijing launch today, but there were still some surprises. As you probably already know, here’s yet another five-inch 1080p Android phone featuring Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz quad-core APQ8064, 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, along with a 13-megapixel F2.2 main camera (with five-element optics by Konica Minolta, plus separate touch focus and touch exposure in the app) and a two-megapixel front-facing camera. For multimedia consumption, the Z5 supports WiFi Display and MHL output should you wish to beam content to a larger screen; whereas on the audio side you are spoiled with either Yamaha or Dolby Digital Plus. But wait, there’s more!

Continue reading Nubia Z5 unveiled in China with quad-core chip, 5-inch 1080p display and 7.6mm thickness

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Nubia

It’s time to jump in on one of the most impressive mech-based first person shooters to have come along for quite a while – Hawken – released for Beta gameplay for the masses this week. This game is developed by Adhesive Games and published by Meteor Entertainment, designed by Khang Le, Christopher Lalli, and John Park, and based in the Unreal Engine 3 universe. In a nutshell it’s a battle game where you’re in a giant one-person machine that blows up other machines for fun – simple concept, fabulous execution.

The set of multiplayer modes you’re working with here in [free beta mode] is currently set at 4 – two basic modes, a Missle Assult mode and a Siege mode. The first two modes are Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch with experience given based on accomplishments through your battle against either your opponent’s team or every single other player in the game. Missle Assult mode has you capturing a set of three missle silos and defending them until they destroy the enemy team’s base.

But it’s really all about the Siege mode when it comes down to it. This undeniably fantastic bit of gameplay is still in Alpha Mode – that being an alpha mode in a beta game, certainly not guaranteed to have a perfect gameplay experience by any means – but, spoiler, it really is rather top-notch even here in its early public stages. In Seige mode your goal is to collect enemy energy units that will launch a battleship for you that’ll move ever-so-gradually toward your enemy’s base.

When your ship is launched, you control the anti-air to attack your enemy’s ships and protect your own ship until your ship has reached its goal – and the enemy is massacred. This and the rest of the modes all exist in a fantastic set of environments the likes of which we’ve only otherwise seen in the highest quality first-person-shooters for high-powered PCs in the past. That and Total Recall or Blade Runner – and the detail is surprisingly deep.

NOTE: It should be made clear here that we’re using an Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M packing Alienware M17x R4 gaming notebook to play this game – we’ve not yet tested the game with much lesser machines than that.

Gameplay controls are rather standard and extremely responsive – WASD and Shift-hold to dart one way or the other, holding down the space bar makes you take off and fly, and holding down the letter C sits your mech down so your back-up helper bot can fly around and repair your broken bits. Communication between players online seems to be up to par as far as both microphone chat and on-screen type, and we’ve experienced no noticeable (or otherwise bothersome) lag in any respect and load-times have been, again, surprisingly quick.

If this game as excellent or better than we’ve seen here in Beta, we’re more than pumped up for the final release. Have a peek at the last time we spoke about the producers of this game and see why we’re pumped up about their hard-hitting future as well. Get ready to be smashed!

Presenting Hawken: free multiplayer mech combat in beta mode is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II is ready for action on Verizon’s 4G LTE network now, and what better way to usher in a new version of the device that’s also out on several other networks than to do some speed tests and processor benchmarks? The big differences between the Samsung Galaxy Note II on Verizon and the competition’s carrier networks is the speed at which it accesses data, the cost of the data therein, and of course the Verizon-specific apps (mostly for tracking your data and your data costs.) Other than that it’s the same cool Galaxy Note II experience you’ve gotten used to on T-Mobile, AT&T, and internationally.

Before you go any further, be sure to check out our two big reviews of this device already up in the archive: Samsung Galaxy Note II Review [International], Samsung Galaxy Note II Review [T-Mobile]. You’ll also want to see our several hands-on posts in the timeline at the end of this post. To start the Verizon party you’ll be interested to know that yes, indeed, it does go very, very fast in the data department:

Have a peek at the app selection here as well – you’ll find that in addition to Google’s collection, you’ve got Samsung’s offerings as well as Verizon’s add-ons as well. On the whole, this is a pretty average amount of apps you’ll be finding on a new smartphone from Verizon.

Benchmarks ring true with the rest of the Galaxy Note II family – extremely hefty and easily amongst the top smartphone devices on the market today, even with its massive display. The biggest competitor in the near future for this device in the benchmark department is the LG Nexus 4 – very possibly surpassing the Galaxy Note II with its Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor due to its unlocked and hackable nature as well as its smaller display – keep watch!

Have a peek at an average battery lifespan here as well to get an idea what a regular day of 4G LTE and a massive bright and high definition display looks like as well. Note that this is regular usage, not the usage of an ultra power-user.

As for the rest of the hardware you’re looking at today, you’ll find the same lovely specifications as the rest of the family – Samsung Exynos quad-core processor at 1.6GHz, a massive 5.5-inch 1280 x 720 pixel HD Super AMOLED display, and 2GB of RAM. Inside you’ve got 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot that’s able to work with microSD cards up to 64GB in size. On the back of the device you’ve got an 8 megapixel camera, on the front you’ve got a 1.9 megapixel camera, and this device works with the same fabulous Samsung S-Pen stylus that makes this Samsung competitor extremely unique.

The competition for this device is without a doubt the HTC DROID DNA, the other gigantic smartphone device on Verizon. The Samsung Galaxy S III is right around $300 with a 2-year contract attached while the DNA is right around $100 less – and with one whole heck of a lot of significant differences aboard. You’ll want to check out our full HTC DROID DNA Review to make sure you’re making the right choice in the end!

Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II hands-on with speed tests and benchmarks is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nintendo’s Wii Mini has been a bit more elusive than we thought, but we’ve at last snagged the entry-level console ahead of its official release and given it a quick shakedown. While it does what it says on the tin — welcome newcomers and second-system shoppers to the Wii universe — we’ve found that there’s a few important details to consider beyond just the absences of internet access and GameCube support. Read on past the break for our quick look.

Continue reading Nintendo Wii Mini hands-on

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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It’s time to get your SwiftKey Flow on with the official Beta release right this minute, complete with a lovely colorful tail for your typing finger! SwiftKey Flow is a new edition of the next-generation predictive keyboard for Android, here bringing on not just one of the most advanced learning engines in the keyboard universe, but a way to type that’ll have the competition rather nervous. This release is part of the SwiftKey team’s super powerful VIP community, a group of intrepid citizens of the web working as lab rats for the greater good of the app!

For those of you looking to get this app in its beta form for testing purposes, you’ve only to head over to the VIP Community forums or to the official SwiftKey Flow landing page where you can add your email to the list for beta access. Have a peek here at a demo of the keyboard in action as well:

This version of SwiftKey takes what’s also known as “gesture typing” and makes with the word predictions from the moment you place your finger on the board. The user – you – has input analyzed from the start to the end of a “flow” as you’ll see in the video above. Note how even if we go super-fast or ultra-slow we don’t mess up a single word – or SwiftKey Flow knows how messy we are, that is.

Have a peek below at one of our two talks with SwiftKey from earlier this year when they let us know how undeniably important the VIP Community is to the creation and maintaining of SwiftKey as a whole. You’ll be listening to Evan Tapper, SwiftKey’s community manager as he spoke at CTIA 2012 on the forums they hold so dear.

Take a look at the timeline below as well to check out a list of SwiftKey updates and milestones from the past year – it’s been a great one for this fabulous Android beast of a keyboard, that’s for sure!

SwiftKey Flow Beta available for download and hands-on action is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.