Make no mistake about it, the Toshiba Satellite S955 might look like an Ultrabook at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it is nowhere near Ultrabook standards. Still, despite that, this faux Ultrabook will be 30% thinner compared to the current batch of 15″ Toshiba S series notebooks. Underneath the hood, you have a choice of either an Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU or an AMD A8 APU, and if your budget permits, you are able to cram in up to 8GB of RAM on-board. In terms of storage, there is a maximum of 750GB of hard drive space. No idea on pricing details as at press time, btu it will surely be more affordable compared to the high end P Series.
Since this is meant for the budget-conscious, you can forget about the bells and whistles which accompany the Toshiba P Series, including Harman Karmon audio (now that’s a treat for your ears!) and Sleep-and-Music ports. Here is a little bit of consolation though – you will receive a Sleep-and-Charge port out of the trio of USB ports, where two of them will be the new generation USB 3.0 ports, while the remaining one caters for legacy USB 2.0 compatible devices. Other specifications that remain are HDMI output, an Ethernet jack, a DVD optical drive and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.
The folks at Toshiba came to play here at IFA 2012 and have just outed another 3 Satellite Ultrabooks to add to their ever growing lineup. Yesterday they unveiled their convertible hybrid in the U925t but today we have three new laptops with a more standardized look. Say hello to the U945 and P845t Ultrabooks as well as their new S955 — but don’t call it an Ultrabook.
First off their U945 will be a low end and more budget conscious Ultrabook but we’ll get into specifics shortly. Then the P845t is a full out Ultrabook class machine along with a full touchscreen for tablet like capabilities. Overall these are pretty standard designs and nothing out of the ordinary but lets take a look.
Starting with the U945 you’ll have a 14-inch low end Ultrabook that will be even cheaper than previous models thanks to a durable hard plastic shell instead of aluminum. It won’t feel as premium but then it will be lower priced too. The device comes with a Core i3 or i5 option, 500GB HD and a 32GB SSD for quick wake and boot times. Then we get the standard 3 USB ports, HDMI, and Ethernet. Not bad Toshiba, not bad.
Next is their “thin and light” S955 that isn’t considered an Ultrabook although it will be 30% thinner and lighter than previous generations from Toshiba. We’ll get a Core i5 here, 8GB of RAM, 750GB HD, a cheaper AMD option and even Harmen Kardon speakers on board.
Last is their P845t which has a 14-inch display as well, only this one rocks touchscreen capabilities. This will be a growing trend with Windows 8 but this device packs a decent punch. We get again the Core i3 or i5 possibilities, 750GB HD, 32GB for bootup, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, then again 3 USB ports, HDMI, and Ethernet. This will be priced a little higher but should be a solid performance. Pricing for all three laptops listed has not yet been unveiled but they will all be available starting October 26th, the day Windows 8 launches. Stay tuned for more details and hands-on pictures live from IFA 2012.
In addition to unveiling that U925t laptop / tablet hybrid yesterday, Toshiba is announcing some more conventional-looking PCs this week at IFA. These new models include the Satellite U945, a low-end Ultrabook; the Satellite P845t, an Ultrabook with a touchscreen; and the Satellite S955, a 15-inch thin-and-light. Across the board, these will be available October 26th, the day Windows 8 formally launches. For now, too, Toshiba isn’t revealing prices, though we already know plenty about the specs. Join us after the break where we’ll spell out those nitty-gritty details.
A year after they were officially released to consumers, Sifteo’s game cubes are finally no longer tethered to your computer. Now you can enjoy this unique take on portable gaming, which has players re-arranging multiple tiny displays to solve puzzles and complete missions, wherever you’re willig to tote its base station. More »
This week at IFA 2012 the folks at ZTE have introduced a brand new fabulous-looking Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone with an Intel Medfield processor inside. This device has an Atom X2460 under the hood for next-level processing power and works with a casing that’s quite unique to the world of smartphone in its hatched-back battery cover physical patterning. The rest of the device looks rather like a Galaxy Nexus, and certainly hasn’t changed a whole lot since we saw an earlier iteration just a few months back.
This smartphone has a 4.3-inch 960 x 540 pixel resolution display and it sports a powerful 8 megapixel camera on the back with single LED flash. Inside you’ll find ZTE’s custom user interface over Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, this affording you all the great features of the next-to-newest operating system from Google with ZTE’s bubble flair. You’ll see rounded corners around square icons and your very own high definition widgets with weather, time, and date as well.
This device will work with 4G HSPA+ up to 21Mpbs and has Intel Hyper-Threading Technology embedded within. With this technology and the Intel XMM 6260 Platform you’ll be working with ultra-fast web browsing and an all-around super speedy user experience throughout the device.
Under the hood you’ve also got a 1650mAh battery for all-day up time as well as 1GB of RAM with either 4 or 16GB of ROM. You’ll also have the ability to expand your memory by 32GB with this device’s microSD card slot. You’ve got a front-facing 0.3 megapixel camera for video chat, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 + A2DP, Dolby sound, RM Radio, Accelerator, Gyroscope, Compass, Proximity senros, and Light sensor as well.
Have a peek at the timeline below to see more on the history of this model as it appeared earlier this year with slightly different specifications – and note that what we’re seeing above appears to be the final version, coming out in Europe at the start of next month!
Is 20-inches too much for you? Sony thinks every home doesn’t just need a coffee table tablet, but a tablet scaled more like a coffee table: the Tap 20 takes Windows 8 and touch to all-in-one PC levels. In fact, the 20-inch device sits somewhere in-between AIO and tablet, offering 10-finger multitouch control of Microsoft’s new OS for something targeted at browsing, casual gaming and multimedia.
Up front is a 1600 x 900 display, short of Full HD but still good enough to do duty for video playback in your kitchen or den. You needn’t settle on just one location, either; Sony has equipped the Tap 20 with a rudimentary battery, enough to keep it powered up while you move from room to room.
Ports are arrayed along the edge, including audio in/out and USB, and there’s a front-facing webcam for video calls. Support is from a single metal stand that allows for tilt adjustment, though as you’d expect Sony has had to make it on the stiff side so as to support the chunky upper section.
Sony Tap 20 10-finger Fruit Ninja multitouch demo:
We scoffed at first, but after a while stabbing, slashing, and swiping with all fingers on Fruit Ninja on a huge display, the Tap 20 begins to shine. As it’s a full Windows PC, of course, you can plug in a keyboard and mouse and do “proper” work with it, should you need to.
Sony hasn’t finalized the design yet, so pricing isn’t settled, but that’s likely to be the deciding factor for most homes. If Sony can undercut the smaller all-in-one PCs – think along the lines of ASUS’ Eee Tops from a few years back – then it may not be quite as ridiculous as it first seems.
Of Sony’s trio of Xperia phones announced yesterday at IFA 2012, we’ve now seen the smallest and most budget-friendly model — the Xperia J — make it through the mounds of red tape and federal approval. Fortunately for us, Sony didn’t bother requesting confidentiality on the various teardown photos that typically are kept away from prying public eyes. As always, it’s important to withhold any assumptions that this particular device will make it to any US carrier; FCC approvals never offer any guarantee, and the J’s lack of LTE isn’t going to help matters. Still, this seems like an ideal device for a prepaid operator to pick up, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed. In the meantime, gaze upon the full teardown in the gallery below.
So far, Sony and Samsung have dominated IFA with a torrent of magical TVs and new phones. But quietly, LG is showing off one of the coolest monitors we’ve ever seen. More »
Sony likes to do things differently, and the VAIO Duo 11 is its unusual entrant to the Windows 8 tablet market. Billed as a “hybrid sliding PC” the Duo 11 looks, at first glance, like a chunky tablet, but pull up just above the front-facing webcam and the touchscreen slides back and up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It’s an approach we’ve seen before, from the ASUS Eee Pad Slider, but here running Microsoft’s full Windows platform and with a digital stylus for handwriting and sketching.
VAIO notebooks generally look the part, especially the more expensive ones, and the Duo 11 follows in those footsteps with an angular black casing that’s a nice diversion from the usual round-cornered fare. The glossy plastic is a fingerprint magnet, of course, and Sony’s non-final hardware showed some flex when you pull the screen open, but once upright and in place – in a single, non-adjustable angle – it stuck fast no matter how roughly we jabbed at it.
Sony has chased connectivity not headline grabbing dimensions, and so while the Duo 11 isn’t the fattest tablet we’ve ever seen, nor does it rival recent Samsung and Apple slates for waifish form-factors. Instead, you get HDMI and USB connections, along with – in what seems to be a bizarre accommodation of legacy business users – a full-sized VGA connection. Things get even thicker if you bolt on the extended battery slice, doubling runtimes at the cost of significantly increasing width.
Sony VAIO Duo 11 hands-on video:
Unfortunately, adding that extended battery is seemingly the only way to accommodate the pen when you’re not using it – it slots into a cutaway underneath – which is a shame since stylus input works well in general. OneNote, Microsoft’s unfairly overlooked notetaking app (which will sync its notes with its cut-down counterpart on Windows Phones), receives digital ink with aplomb, the pressure sensitivity of what we’re guessing to be a Wacom-sourced digitizer paying dividends for quick sketches and handwritten notes.
As for the keyboard, it’s more compact than a regular notebook, but still very usable for typing. There’s a trackpoint-style navigation nub in the middle of the ‘board, though rather than physically moving it uses an optical sensor to map the movement of your fingertip. Still, we found ourselves using the touchscreen more often than not, as reaching forward felt more natural.
Unlike some Windows 8 tablets, Sony hasn’t compromised on raw grunt. There’s Intel’s Core i7-3517U paired with 4Gb or 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of SSD storage; the 1080p 11.6-inch display is incredibly crisp and bright. The underlying message is yes, you can use this as your main PC, but you’re probably going to have to pay handsomely for it. Sony will announce numbers closer to the VAIO Duo 11′s official release in late October.
Huawei didn’t have any new hardware to show during its packed press conference, but it did have an early version of its Emotion UI skin for Android devices. Aiming to make its smartphone experience a little gentler for first-timers, while offering up a slightly different flavor of Google’s OS, Huawei’s been polling its customers, running user experience salons and meeting regular groups of between 40 – 70 consumers to understand what was working — and what was definitely not. To this end, the company’s “driven [itself] crazy” by keeping to a tight schedule and releasing iterative updates every two weeks (at least for beta) and monthly for stable builds.
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Make no mistake about it, the Toshiba Satellite S955 might look like an Ultrabook at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it is nowhere near Ultrabook standards. Still, despite that, this faux Ultrabook will be 30% thinner compared to the current batch of 15″ Toshiba S series notebooks. Underneath the hood, you have a choice of either an Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU or an AMD A8 APU, and if your budget permits, you are able to cram in up to 8GB of RAM on-board. In terms of storage, there is a maximum of 750GB of hard drive space. No idea on pricing details as at press time, btu it will surely be more affordable compared to the high end P Series.
