Hasta La Gadget!

Details on this one are pretty light at the moment, but DigiTimes is reporting that Intel will be launching its Atom N500 series of dual-core processors this June. That word comes from the site’s “sources from notebook players,” who also say that Intel will be revealing more details on its third generation netbook platform at the same time. Unfortunately, that’s about as specific as they’re getting right now, but there are naturally some netbooks rumored to be launching alongside the new processors as well, with ASUS apparently already planning at least one N500-based netbook for the third quarter of this year that will sell for around $575. Of course, Intel itself isn’t saying any more on the matter than it did during its recent earnings call, but the timing of the rumor does line up suspiciously well with this year’s Computex (June 1-5), which would be as good a place as any for a big netbook-related launch

Rumor: Intel to launch Atom N500 series in June, ASUS netbooks to follow originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Things must be getting a little weird at Palm right now, as every day seems to add a new piece to an already confusing puzzle. In just two weeks’ time the company has gone from a potential free agent, to a lone wolf, and then back to prospective purchase. Adding more noise to the proceedings, TechCrunch is now reporting that another senior staffer has hit the road, and this time it’s Caitlin Spaan, Palm’s VP of carrier marketing. Her name gets added to what looks like a growing list of recent Palm departures (not to mention that entire marketing department we hear has been canned). More troubling than that news, however, is a rumor which also appears on TC suggesting that CEO (and putative savior of the company) Jon Rubinstein may be on his way out as well. This report is pure hearsay at this point, but if true would be a major admission on Palm’s part that its plans to kickstart the ailing company nearly two years ago are failing (or have just plain failed). Of course, we need to stress that this is just rumor at this stage — the company offered no comment to Business Insider — and until we get more solid word, it should be treated as such. As for us, we’re hoping the company can pull something salvageable together from this mess and figure out a way to compete at a level of increasingly more difficult stakes.

Update: Apparently Jon showed up in a room of developers at the company’s currently-ongoing dev camp and said “I’m still here,” to big laughs. Hang in there, man!

Another Palm exec is out… and CEO Jon Rubinstein is next? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone 4G? iPhone 4? iPhone HD? Simply “iPhone”? There’s plenty we still don’t know about Apple’s upcoming handset, like the name for instance, but thanks to an unprecedented leak and a whole bunch of peripheral rumors, we’ve got just about the most info you could hope for going into a major Apple launch. Follow along after the break as we parse through what we know, what we’ve heard, and what we hope for in the next iPhone.

Continue reading Apple’s next iPhone: what we know (and what we don’t)

Apple’s next iPhone: what we know (and what we don’t) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mama always said that downpours followed Spring showers, and sure enough, the Apple news has been flowing hot and heavy overnight. For starters, an IEEE Spectrum report has people talking once more about Intrinsity; if you’ll recall, rumors flared up earlier in the month about Apple nabbing said company, similar to the way it acquired P.A. Semi way back in the naughties. Now, it seems that round two of those whispers are gaining steam, with some analysts suggesting that without Intrinsity’s expertise, there was simply no way the silicon within the iPad could’ve been pushed to 1GHz in time for launch. In related news, we’re also hearing that Cupertino is interested in acquiring ARM Holdings, and considering just how much business Apple pushes ARM’s way, it’s not illogical to imagine Apple wanting to just bring ARM in-house. If the deal went down, Apple would obviously hold a huge amount of control over whether or not ARM chips ended up in rival products, and if it yanked those Cortex slabs out from the market place, you can bet there would be a mad scramble to create a competitive portfolio to serve those suddenly chip-less product makers. Finally, a new iPhone OS 4 (beta 2) video has surfaced, giving the world a solid look at a new circular side-swapped animation that occurs when switching apps — head on past the break to check it out, and give those links below a visit for more of that succulent nitty-gritty.

Continue reading Apple rumor roundup: Intrinsity behind the A4, ARM being eyed

Apple rumor roundup: Intrinsity behind the A4, ARM being eyed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hot damn, people. The mother of all Dell leaks just dropped into our laps, and the absolute highlight has to be the Lightning, a Windows Phone 7 portrait slider. That’s right — a portrait slider. The renders on these slides look slick as hell, but they’re no match for the spec sheet, which looks even better: 1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processor, WVGA 4.1-inch OLED display, AT&T and T-Mobile 3G, five megapixel autofocus camera, 1GB of flash with 512MB RAM plus 8GB of storage on a MicroSD card (non-user-replaceable, we’re assuming), GPS, accelerometer, compass, FM radio, and full Flash support including video playback. We’ll see what happens with that — the ship date is pegged at Q4, indicating this is a WP7 launch device, and Microsoft’s told us Flash won’t make it into the OS initially. Here’s the real kicker, though — other slides in the deck indicate this thing is getting an upgrade to LTE in Q4 of 2011. Are we stoked? Yes, you might say that. Check out all the slides in the gallery below, and check out the rest of this storm of leaks right here.

Dell Lightning: the ultimate Windows Phone 7 device leaks out originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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