Hasta La Gadget!

Who’s in charge of Sony Ericsson today and what did they do with the old crew? Reversing a previous statement saying there’ll be no Android updates for its Xperia X10 family beyond Eclair, SE has just announced that it’ll bring Gingerbread to the X10 at the end of Q2 / start of Q3 this year. That’s right around this summer, when we should expect a user experience roughly equivalent to that on the new Xperia Arc, Neo and Play devices, whose Gingerbread implementation looks to have served as the basis for the elder X10’s upcoming update. Seriously, Gingerbread on the X10, we still can’t believe it.

P.S. – If you’re wondering about the X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro or X8, those are all stuck on Android 2.1.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Xperia X10 to get Android 2.3 this summer, makes us rub our eyes in disbelief originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sony Ericsson Product Blog  | Email this | Comments

Whether it changed everything, made you think different, or was just a sideshow to the Windows centerpiece of your life, there’s no denying version X of Mac OS has been the most successful and enduring piece of software Apple has ever produced. It is turning 10 years old today, so we thought we’d spare a moment to say congratulations and to dust off an image of our favorite logo of the bunch. And who knows, with the next iteration being dubbed Lion and the lack of any more senior big cats available, maybe this will be the last big anniversary before Apple takes the leap into version 11.

[Thanks, Robert]

Mac OS X turns X years old today originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Oh, remember when Jolicloud told us yesterday that it was going to release its Joli OS 1.2 sometime in the future? Well, the future is now! That’s right, you can download the OS or test out the web app in Chrome right this second. Naturally, we had to try out the new version for ourselves and we put it to the test on an Acer Aspire One 522. For those that have never downloaded the OS before, Jolicloud makes it incredibly easy — you can simply grab the .exe file from its site and the installation process takes care of the rest. Those that wish to download the ISO can do that as well. There’s also that new Chrome web app, but we’ll get to that soon.

Sure, the OS has dropped the “cloud” part of its name, but ironically, it’s more cloud based than ever. The entire OS has always been centered around web apps, and now the focus is on making those easier to share, discover, and create. The latter is probably one of the biggest changes — as you can see above, we made an app that launches the Jolicloud Engadget tag page. All we had to do was type in the URL and add a picture to the shortcut. You can also star an app easily from the main menu, which will flag it for your followers. (For those that aren’t familiar with the social aspect of the OS, you can follow others and see their apps, etc.) Other than that, the UI has been polished a bit and Dropbox has been integrated so you can easily access files from any of your Joli OS devices. And that’s where the new HTML 5 Chrome app comes in — you don’t have to install Joli OS on all your computers, you can now simply log in on any system that has a Chrome browser, although local apps, like OpenOffice won’t work. All in all, we’d say Jolicloud continues to make its cloud OS better and better — but don’t let us tell you how it is, hit the source link and try it out for yourself.

Joli OS 1.2 available now, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Jolicloud  | Email this | Comments

The iPhone's multitasking drawer contains a playback widget for controlling audio apps. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The next operating system upgrade for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is landing sometime this week, and customers can look forward to major improvements in Safari performance and AirPlay media streaming.

Wired.com reported on most of the changes in iOS 4.3 when the beta released January. The newest additions that Apple announced last week included a significant speed boost to the Safari web browser, using the new Nitro JavaScript engine, which should make JavaScript run twice as fast.

Additionally, the AirPlay streaming feature has been expanded so that you can stream video played inside Safari or a third-party app to an Apple TV. Previously, AirPlay video streaming was limited to the Videos app on the iPad.

Wired.com got an early look at the iOS 4.3 gold master (usually the official version that ships), and it’s pretty slick.

Benchmark tests Wired.com ran using SunSpider showed a significant speed boost in Safari’s JavaScript performance between iOS 4.2 and iOS 4.3.

An iPhone 4 running iOS 4.3 completed the test in 4,340 milliseconds, and an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2 completed the same test in 10,626.4 milliseconds (fewer milliseconds is better). That makes iOS 4.3 about 59 percent faster than iOS 4.2 with JavaScript rendering. (See below the jump for the full benchmark results.)

So when iOS 4.3 ships this week, iPad 2 owners won’t be the only people getting a big speed boost. A significant increase in JavaScript performance means web browsing on JavaScript-heavy sites such as Google’s mobile apps (Voice, Docs and Reader), Facebook and others should be zippier.

As for AirPlay, I used an iPhone 4 to play a YouTube video and was able to hit the AirPlay button to send it to straight to the Apple TV 2. Being able to AirPlay YouTube is pretty nifty, because using the Apple TV’s remote control to browse YouTube is a huge pain in the rear; it’s much easier to search for YouTube clips using the iPhone. iOS 4.3’s expanded AirPlay support will be a nice addition for anyone with the new Apple TV.

The iOS 4.3 is due out sometime this week, possibly as soon as Wednesday, according to well-sourced Apple blogger Jim Dalrymple.

SunSpider results on iOS 4.2
============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
——————————————–
Total: 10626.4ms +/- 6.8%
——————————————–

3d: 1437.6ms +/- 6.8%
cube: 443.0ms +/- 14.8%
morph: 534.6ms +/- 5.3%
raytrace: 460.0ms +/- 2.0%

access: 1635.8ms +/- 33.6%
binary-trees: 146.2ms +/- 5.8%
fannkuch: 671.2ms +/- 0.6%
nbody: 429.6ms +/- 32.4%
nsieve: 388.8ms +/- 106.4%

bitops: 877.0ms +/- 0.5%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 180.8ms +/- 0.8%
bits-in-byte: 185.2ms +/- 2.7%
bitwise-and: 163.2ms +/- 0.6%
nsieve-bits: 347.8ms +/- 0.5%

controlflow: 143.0ms +/- 1.1%
recursive: 143.0ms +/- 1.1%

crypto: 643.6ms +/- 2.9%
aes: 295.0ms +/- 2.8%
md5: 163.6ms +/- 1.2%
sha1: 185.0ms +/- 11.1%

date: 744.8ms +/- 3.3%
format-tofte: 377.2ms +/- 3.5%
format-xparb: 367.6ms +/- 3.1%

math: 1134.6ms +/- 0.9%
cordic: 425.6ms +/- 1.7%
partial-sums: 372.0ms +/- 0.6%
spectral-norm: 337.0ms +/- 2.6%

regexp: 1444.8ms +/- 1.1%
dna: 1444.8ms +/- 1.1%

string: 2565.2ms +/- 21.6%
base64: 355.8ms +/- 4.3%
fasta: 422.0ms +/- 15.0%
tagcloud: 458.6ms +/- 18.8%
unpack-code: 744.8ms +/- 5.6%
validate-input: 584.0ms +/- 70.2%

====

SunSpider results on iOS 4.3

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
——————————————–
Total: 4340.1ms +/- 0.7%
——————————————–

3d: 557.6ms +/- 1.6%
cube: 213.5ms +/- 3.4%
morph: 136.0ms +/- 0.9%
raytrace: 208.1ms +/- 0.7%

access: 497.2ms +/- 2.4%
binary-trees: 122.2ms +/- 3.3%
fannkuch: 138.7ms +/- 3.0%
nbody: 164.2ms +/- 4.7%
nsieve: 72.1ms +/- 2.1%

bitops: 219.2ms +/- 2.2%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 28.9ms +/- 10.4%
bits-in-byte: 53.6ms +/- 2.3%
bitwise-and: 64.5ms +/- 3.3%
nsieve-bits: 72.2ms +/- 2.3%

controlflow: 25.7ms +/- 4.4%
recursive: 25.7ms +/- 4.4%

crypto: 246.7ms +/- 0.5%
aes: 147.1ms +/- 0.4%
md5: 58.5ms +/- 1.7%
sha1: 41.1ms +/- 2.2%

date: 588.8ms +/- 4.2%
format-tofte: 277.3ms +/- 0.9%
format-xparb: 311.5ms +/- 7.2%

math: 462.2ms +/- 1.1%
cordic: 167.2ms +/- 0.8%
partial-sums: 206.6ms +/- 2.8%
spectral-norm: 88.4ms +/- 1.2%

regexp: 115.4ms +/- 3.5%
dna: 115.4ms +/- 3.5%

string: 1627.3ms +/- 0.9%
base64: 226.3ms +/- 3.2%
fasta: 227.8ms +/- 0.8%
tagcloud: 310.8ms +/- 0.8%
unpack-code: 554.2ms +/- 0.3%
validate-input: 308.2ms +/- 1.9%

We’ve caught wind of many whispers about a Windows designed specifically for tablets, but the latest scuttlebutt states we won’t get to add them to our mobile arsenal anytime soon — Bloomberg‘s anonymous sources report that Microsoft won’t release a tablet operating system until the 2012 back-to-school season, and will only begin to publically test the OS at the end of this year. That suggests not only a timeframe, but also a likely plan — it’s not hard to imagine Microsoft would enjoy a slice of the educational market before iPads replace textbooks entirely at schools with cash to burn. Of course, Dell seems to think there’ll be a Windows 8 slate in January of next year.

Microsoft tablet OS not coming until fall 2012? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Bloomberg  | Email this | Comments