Hasta La Gadget!

Now we’re talking. After Nintendo slyly told us that the 3DS set a day-one US sales record for its handheld division, it has now been more forthright and actually disclosed some cold hard numbers. 400,000 3DS units were shifted in the month of March, says Nintendo of America chief Reggie Fils-Aime, which amounts to just one working week’s worth of sales when you consider the portable console launched on March 27th. That was still enough time for it to threaten the DS’ overall March tally of 460,000, however, and extrapolated over a full 30 days would total a whopping 2.4 million transactions. Of course, sales rarely sustain such a roaring pace after launch, but Reggie foresees good things for the 3DS with a marquee Legend of Zelda game, the launch of the E-Shop, and Netflix integration all coming over the summer. So the future’s bright, we just wish it didn’t have to be turquoise.

Nintendo 3DS clocks up 400,000 US sales in opening week, nearly matches month-long total for DS originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 04:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Nokia X7, everybody! Like the E7, this is a 4-inch AMOLED handset with an 8 megapixel EDoF camera, though unlike its more buttoned-down business-oriented sibling, this is an entertainment handset through and through. Check it out in pictures below and we’ll bring you more impressions of it and the new Symbian “Anna” UI very shortly. Video forthcoming too!

Update: Video now embedded after the break. We can’t yet speak of the improvements Nokia has made on the browser front, but its long overdue inclusion of a virtual portrait QWERTY keyboard is much appreciated, as is the real-time home screen scrolling. It’s still not as smooth as you’d see on other devices that have been doing it for a while, but it’s preferable to what we had in the older Symbian iteration.

Physically, the X7 is a pleasure to hold and to handle, a hallmark of Nokia construction, but we must once again protest at the so-called nHD resolution of 640 x 360 on this device. It’s justified by the need to keep consistency with the company’s existing ecosystem, but it’s a step behind the cutting edge. At least it’s composed of the delectable AMOLED stuff that Nokia’s been using lately, and colors and images look positively delicious, if a little pixel-light. Stereo speakers at the bottom and a generally svelte profile make it an appealing little pocket rocket for multimedia, but bear in mind it comes with a 680MHz processor, so it can record and play back 720p video, but may be challenged by more intensive tasks.

Continue reading Nokia X7 first hands-on! (updated with video)

Nokia X7 first hands-on! (updated with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 04:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There hasn’t been much good news coming out of Japan lately and this sadly keeps up with the unhappy trend. Sony Ericsson has officially bumped the broad launch (it’s already available in limited quantities) of its Xperia Neo handset to at least July, explaining the delay as the result of “supply chain disruptions.” Additionally, the Xperia Arc and Play devices, two other members of the company’s new Android Gingerbread family, will be available in smaller volume than expected, at least for the near term. We guess that might go some way to explaining why the Xperia Play failed to reach some UK carriers in time for its April 1st launch date. Skip past the break for a statement from Sony Ericsson, who promises to be more explicit about the situation when it delivers its latest quarterly results on April 19th.

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo delayed to Q3, Arc and Play facing limited supply due to Japanese quake

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo delayed to Q3, Arc and Play facing limited supply due to Japanese quake originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So yesterday we learned that Samsung’s planning to speed up the dual-core Exynos processor inside its Galaxy S II to 1.2GHz, but there was also word that the handset may suffer a setback in terms of release date. Today, the company has tweeted out a two-part notice assuring us that that will not be the case and things are proceeding “as planned.” April will see the first retail appearance of the 8.5mm-thick Android phone, though Samsung does advise that “it will be gradually rolled out in each market according to the local launch timetable.” That sounds to us like whatever April availability we get will be in the highest priority markets and / or limited in quantity, but we’ll take whatever we can get.

[Thanks, Erik]

Continue reading Samsung refutes talk of Galaxy S II delays, promises April launch in at least some places

Samsung refutes talk of Galaxy S II delays, promises April launch in at least some places originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Someone deep down in Intel’s development dungeons must be laughing a haughty laugh of disdain at us mere mortals getting excited about dual-cores in smartphones. The old Chipzilla has just turned out its 10-core Xeon E7 processor family, which can work on 20 simultaneous computational threads courtesy of the company’s Hyper-Threading knowhow. Needless to say, there aren’t that many casual workloads that will ever properly harness such extremely parallelized prowess, but then Intel isn’t really gunning for the Facebook crowd here anyhow. The new E7s are for those dealing with truly data-intensive tasks, meaning that Facebook itself would be a good candidate to buy up a few, provided it’s tempted by such things as 40 percent performance improvements over the Xeon 7500 tied to dynamic power adjustment for increased energy efficiency. Pricing for the Xeon E7s starts at $774 and climbs up to $4,616 per 32nm chip, with the usual proviso that Intel won’t sell them in batches of less than 1,000. More details follow in the press release and video after the break.

[Thanks, Khan]

Continue reading Intel rolls out 10-core, 20-threaded Xeon E7s, shows everyone who’s boss

Intel rolls out 10-core, 20-threaded Xeon E7s, shows everyone who’s boss originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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