Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been a pretty good week for Lenovo all things told, but the Chinese firms isn’t stopping to congratulate itself too much. Today, it’s business as usual, marked by the official arrival of the new K860 “Music Phone” aka LePhone. The quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos 4412 chip, Mali-400MP GPU, 5-inch (1,280 x 720) display, 1GB of RAM and slight 9.6mm-thick form should come together to sing a sweet song though. The 8-megapixel snapper is no slouch either, with support for 100 frames continuous shooting and 1080p video recording (plus there’s a 2-megapixel camera around the front, too). If all this sounds like a recipe for battery-drain, there’s a 2,250 mAh cell to help keep you going. This will all be running on Android 4.0.4, but currently no word on price or availability — but it’s not like there aren’t any other large phones to think about in the meantime.

Update: We got a little excited in the translation for a moment there. The “Music” (or Happiness — both the same symbol) Phone is of course the LePhone we link to in the article.

Filed under: Cellphones

Lenovo reveals K860 LePhone, quad-core Exynos and a 5-inch screen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xiaomi may not be the first company that springs to mind when considering a new smartphone, with the company based in China and predominantly serving local customers, but its latest smartphone will certainly turn more than just a few heads. Engadget reports that the Xiaomi Phone 2 was announced at an event in Beijing today, featuring some impressive specs, such as a 4.3-inch 720p IPS display and quad-core Qualcomm processor.

The handset is powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest chip, the APQ8064, a quad-core 28nm-based SoC clocked at 1.5Ghz. The company was keen to show off benchmarks using various apps such as AnTuTu and Quadrant, with the phone clocking 14085 and 7787 respectively. The handset is also powered by 2GB of RAM and comes with 16GB of memory, with the 4.3-inch IPS display manufactured by Sharp. The pixel density works out at 342 PPI, beating out the iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy S III, and HTC One X. The touchscreen also makes use of in-cell technology which decreases thickness, something that Apple is rumored to be using for the next iPhone.

A 27mm eight megapixel camera with backside illuminated sensor is found on the rear of the phone, and a 28mm two megapixel camera has been placed on the front. The main camera is capable of recording 1080p video at 30fps, or 720p at 90fps. The standard phone comes with a 2,000mAh battery, but those who want to get through a full day and then some can pick up a 3,000mAh option that will increase the thickness of the phone by 2mm.

The Xiaomi Phone 2 will be running a custom MIUI interface, but it will be on top of the latest version of Android, Jelly Bean. The company will be offering the handset for an unsubsidized price of ¥1,999 (~$314), but Chinese carriers such as China Telecom and China Unicom will be offering the HSPA+ phone for lower prices as part of a contract. The only question left to ask is when can we get our hands on one?

Xiaomi Phone 2: quad-core Krait, 4.3″ 720p IPS, and Jelly Bean is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Consider it the fallout from a decade-plus of reality TV, but our made-by-the-masses approach has expanded into new territory: technology R&D. Or so Samsung’s very public handling of the Galaxy Note 10.1 would have us believe. Thrust into an American Idol-like spotlight at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, the still-unfinished slate, a follow-up to the pen-enabled Galaxy Note phone, was forced to perform for hordes of skeptical insiders. Sure, there was raw talent on display and we could see the promise of this 10-inch contender (we said as much in our exhaustive preview), but it was also clear the company was testing consumer waters, fishing for a vote of confidence before continuing down the development track.

Does this make Samsung’s latest flagship the Kelly Clarkson of the tablet category? It’s an apt analogy, if you think about it: Kelly wants to be country, the Note 10.1 wants to be a pro-designer tool, but neither are allowed. Why? Well, simply put, products sell better when they’re made more palatable for a wider range of tastes. Which is why the company used MWC to gauge popular opinion before molding its untested product into something wth a broader appeal. Ultimately, that meant a drastic makeover: since MWC, the Note 10.1 has received a slot for that S-Pen, streamlined software, a quad-core Exynos 4 chip and two storage configurations: 16GB / 32GB, priced at $499 and $549, respectively.

So it now has more horsepower under the hood, that much is assured, but is that chip enough to boost the Note 10.1’s mass appeal? Will savvy shoppers be able to forgive that relatively low-res 1,280 x 800 display? Will its Wacom digitizer elevate this slate past its more generic Android and iOS rivals? Or will that feature hamper its widespread appeal, attracting mainly creative professionals? Meet us after the break to see if the Note 10.1 can succeed as the multitasking everyman’s go-to tablet.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Eurocom has carved out a strange but soft spot in our hearts for its desktop replacement-level laptops — the insistence on overkill hardware leaves even the vaguely ultraportable Monster packing the kind of power reserved for larger-screened (if also much thinner) counterparts. Nowhere is that too-much-is-never-enough attitude truer than in the just-launched, 17.3-inch Scorpius. While supporting up to 32GB of RAM isn’t unique anymore, the Scorpius can optionally carry two of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 680M graphics chips with the full 4GB of video RAM per piece. That’s more graphics memory than the total system memory of some entire PCs, folks. Eurocom can optionally slot in two of AMD’s Radeon HD 7970M or step down to a single graphics core, and the usual bevy of processor and storage choices culminates in as much as a quad 2.9GHz Core i7 and four drives. The lowest price that will net a fully functioning Scorpius is $1,793, although we’ll admit that it’s very tempting to pick that dual 680M option and come out with a $2,857 bill — not to mention some serious bragging rights with the gamer crowd.

Continue reading Eurocom intros powerhouse Scorpius laptop, touts more video memory than most desktops

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

Eurocom intros powerhouse Scorpius laptop, touts more video memory than most desktops originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Having seen the next-gen Xiaomi Phone’s more colorful yet rejected designs, we’re rather baffled by these dull-looking certification images of the real deal. According to a filing from the good old TENAA, this new device from Xiaomi goes by the codename “2012051” and packs WCDMA radio, but that’s pretty much it in terms of specs. Eagle-eyed readers may have already spotted the striking resemblance to the original Xiaomi Phone (aka MI-One Plus), but it appears to be getting an extra front-facing camera and, for some reason, a smaller speaker grill on the back. But wait, there’s more! We dug up two additional models in the China Compulsory Certificate database: there’s the “2012052” also with WCDMA radio, plus the “2012053” with CDMA2000/WCDMA dual radio.

Bearing in mind that the current Xiaomi Phone has three variants, our guess is that its successor will follow a similar pattern: the WCDMA flavor may again have a 1.5GHz version followed by a slower and cheaper version (much like what the Youth Edition aka MI-One is to the MI-One Plus); and depending on Xiaomi’s arrangements with China Unicom and China Telecom, the CDMA flavor for the latter may or may not be launched alongside its WCDMA cousin. Let’s hope for the best when this alleged quad-core phone gets announced next Thursday.

Update: Another possibility is that the design pictured above only applies to the lower-end model, which may just pack a dual-core chip (hopefully a Snapdragon S4). We shall see.

Filed under: Cellphones

Next-gen Xiaomi Phone outed by certifications ahead of launch, will again come in three variants (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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