Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome to Friday evening everyone – the weekend is here at last, but before we dive in, it’s time to recap the news. Today we heard that Microsoft might be testing out a smartphone of its own, which doesn’t really surprise us considering that it just recently entered the tablet market. Apple’s freshly rephrased “apology” to Samsung went live in UK newspapers today, and one analyst is expecting the iPad mini to top 1.5 million sales this weekend. Speaking of the iPad mini, we saw a drop test featuring the tiny slate today, and the tablet launched to shorter-than-normal lines for an Apple product.

The HTC DROID DNA suffered another leak today, this one saying that it’ll be available at Verizon starting in early December, and we learned that Jelly Bean installs are on the rise, but at a pretty slow rate. A new iPad fourth-gen teardown gives us a look at more of the same, and Apple says that it’s willing to pay Motorola just one dollar per iPhone in patent fees. Smartphone market share in the US has remained more or less the same, and we got a closer look at the iPad fourth-gen’s GPU today.

A new Android vulnerability has been discovered, opening up users to SMS phishing, while one clever do-it-yourselfer has already managed to fit the iPad mini into the dashboard of his car. Apple has lost the right to sell the iPhone in Mexico, and Moshi showed off its new line of iPad mini accessories today. We learned today that we’ve had humans living on the International Space Station for 12 consecutive years, and one unfortunate BitTorrent sharer has been hit with a hefty $1.5 million fine. Verizon told us that its cell sites are improving in areas that have been hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, Overhaul Games actually bumped the release date of Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition up by a couple of days, and the Mars Curiosity rover took a very cool picture of itself.

Finally today, we have a brand new column and two pretty big reviews for you to check out. Chris Burns tells us why we’re in the age of the smartphone ecosystem rather than the age of smartphone specs, while Vincent Nguyen gives us his reviews of the highly-anticipated Samsung Nexus 10 and LG Nexus 4. That does it for tonight ladies and gentlemen, we hope you have a great weekend!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 2, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today marks the 12th anniversary of “continuous presence in space” aboard NASA‘s International Space Station. The first component of the ISS was launched into space in 1998, but it wasn’t until two years later when the first humans officially set foot into the Space Station — cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev, and NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd.

Since then, the International Space Station has been habited with astronauts and cosmonauts for 12 years now. People from 16 different countries have set foot into the ISS, and have continually been building on and improving the ISS since its launch. The International Space Stations travels around the Earth at approximately 17,500 mph, and has seen over 70,000 sunrises and sunsets.

The previous record for the longest time a spacecraft has been continuously habited with humans was the Mir space station, which occupied astronauts and cosmonauts for almost 10 years and orbited the Earth from 1986 to 2001, when the International Space Station eventually started to take over in 2000. The ISS orbits approximately 225 miles above the Earth, and completes almost 16 orbits around the Earth per day.

The most recent mission to the ISS was the privately-funded SpaceX Dragon capsule, which delivered around 1,000 pounds of various goods to the Space Station. More SpaceX missions are planned for the ISS in the future, and the ISS itself is expected to remain in orbit as late as 2028.

[via Michael Interbartolo]

International Space Station sees 12 consecutive years of habitation is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve officially entered November, which means that 2013 is right around the corner – an alarming thought indeed. Today the folks at iFixit gave us an up close look at the internals of the iPad Mini, while Apple was told by a UK judge that it needs to change the Samsung “apology” on its website. Verizon is helping out with the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort, as is Apple by accepting donations through iTunes. We heard a whopper of a rumor that claims Google will soon introduce physical Google Wallet credit cards which, if true, could be a major game-changer.

Today we found out when the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini will be launching in the UK, and Kim Dotcom’s new website was overloaded shortly after “launch,” though at the moment the only thing you see when visiting Mega is a splash page. Apple has released iOS 6.0.1, and it was confirmed today that the iPad mini uses a 5-watt power adapter. Disney said that it will likely focus on Star Wars mobile and social games moving forward, while Sony’s Q2 2012 financial results are better than Q1′s despite the fact that the company still lost money in the quarter.

The Motorola Electrify M was announced for US Cellular earlier today, and Sony is apparently shipping out new PS4 developer kits that are based on AMD’s A10 Accelerated Processing Units. Time has named Google Glass the best invention of the year, while Amazon launched its Cloud Drive photos app for Android earlier today. Google Drive has gained support for direct sharing to Google Plus profiles, and Google Play carrier billing has popped up at Verizon Wireless. Our old friend OUYA made a new appearance today sporting Jelly Bean, scientists are currently trying to figure out a mystery surrounding Voyager 1, and leaked Grand Theft Auto V pre-order bonuses give away some of the game’s new locations.

Finally tonight, we have a couple original articles for you to have a look at. Chris Burns compares the photo quality of the Samsung Galaxy S III to that of the Nokia Lumia 920, while I go hands-on with the new Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 and give my first impressions of the intriguing new convertible notebook. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 1, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA’s Martian rover, Curiosity, has beamed back early results from its first mouthful of red soil, with signs that the Mars dust is similar in composition to Hawaiian volcanic basalt. X-ray diffraction testing of an accuracy previously unseen on Mars was used on a sample gathered earlier this month, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced, with the soil believed to be much younger than that which suggested evidence of historic water on the planet’s surface several weeks ago.

Then, Curiosity was believed to have been in an area of Mars that would previously have been a riverbed, with conglomerate rocks estimated at several billion years old. Those were consistent with the presence of flowing water; however, the newer samples are more in line with soil that has had “limited interaction with water” the JPL says.

“Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy,” David Bish, CheMin co-investigator with the Indiana University in Bloomington said of the new results. “We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected.”

“Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass” Bish concluded. “So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment.”

As Bish says, the results aren’t exactly coming as a huge surprise to the Mars researchers. The X-ray diffraction basically confirmed much of the previous inference and assumption about the surface of the planet, while the CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy Instrument) also identified some previously unexpected minerals in the sample.

Still, it’s early days yet. Curiosity is expected to take two years to implement its ten instruments and help scientists figure out whether microbial life would ever have been feasible on Mars.

Curiosity finds Mars soil a distant cousin of Hawaii is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sure, traipsing about the lunar surface is all fun and games when you’ve got a gold club and a flag for planting but if you’re there to work, those puffy, sausage-fingered space suits are more hindrance than help. More »