Symphony W90 Specification

W90

Description           Specification

Key Features	Description
Display Size	5" Capacitive Full Touch
Camera	5MP Primary + 0.3MP Secondary
Multimedia	MP3, MP4, FM
Data Services	3G,EDGE,GPRS
Phonebook Entries	Unlimited
Multi Touch	Yes(5 Finger)
OS	Ice Cream Sandwich
Technical Features	Description
3.5 mm jack	Yes
Display Resolution	WVGA(480*800)
GPS	Yes
GPU	GPU vender: Imagination Technologies GPU renderer: PowerVR SGX 531 GPU version (OpenGL): OpenGL ES 2.0
Video Player	mp4,3gp, H.264
Video Recorder	Yes, Mpeg4
Internal Memory	RAM 512 MB
Storage	ROM 4GB. Memory card extended upto
Battery	2100 mAH Lithium Ion Battery
Stand by time*	up to 220 hrs(Depend on network and phone setting)
Talk time	up to 5.2 hrs (Depend on network and phone setting)
CPU	1 GHz (Dual Core)
Other Features	Description
Messaging	Thread View
Recorder	Audio, video & call recorder
Bluetooth	Yes
USB Mass storage	yes
USB Modem	Yes
Built in Applications	Android Market, Temple Run, Angry Birds, Skype, Nimbuzz,Contacts Backup
Special Features	G sensor, Proximity Sensor,Compass, Office Suite, Document Reader,E-mail
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 802.11, Wi-Fi Hotspot
MMS	Yes
Email	yes
Dimension	142*78.5*10 mm

Price:                    Tk. 14,490.00 

Red: The Camera That Changed Hollywood

Movie magic: A scene from The Hobbit being filmed in 3D using digital cameras made by Red.

In Hollywood history, 2011 will go down as the year during which the last three companies still making traditional 35-millimeter film cameras—the gently whirring behemoths that directors sit next to on movie sets—all said, in effect, that they were getting out of the business. Film cameras would remain in inventory, but Panavision, ARRI, and Aaton announced that from here on out, all their new models will be digital.
The analog-to-digital transition that is occurring in industries around the world is largely responsible. But special mention should go to a small Southern California company whose technology has stirred the imagination of a roster of legendary directors. The innovation: a line of digital movie cameras that, almost miraculously, are smaller, lighter, and cheaper than film cameras, yet have comparable image quality.

Red Digital Cinema Camera Company, located in Irvine, California, was founded in 1999 by Jim Jannard, who had no experience in the movie business. He was, instead, an entrepreneur who had made a fortune with his line of Oakley sunglasses—must-haves among the California fun-and-sun crowd.
While Jannard is an active participant on Red’s user forums, he rarely gives interviews to reporters. Ted Schilowitz, who was Red’s first employee and serves as a spokesman for the 400-person company, says Jannard originally became intrigued by the idea of a digital camera that would be a no-compromise alternative for feature-movie makers.
That interest in cameras, says Schilowitz, was a logical extension of Jannard’s Oakley business, which also sold prescription glasses and protective goggles for athletes. “Jim is obsessed with the way the world sees things,” Schilowitz says.
In the “standard model” of technological disruption, a relatively inexpensive, low-end product, which at first might appeal only to entry-level users, slowly improves in performance until it meets the demands of even the most discriminating power customers. The PC is the prototypical example; current models have the horsepower that until recently was the exclusive province of supercomputers.
The path Red took was slightly different. Digital movie cameras were already on the market when the Red team began their work. But the image quality of early digital cameras was nowhere near what was required for a feature movie. Quality was improving—but Jannard wanted his first model to leapfrog past all current digital cameras and exceed the strictest performance specs, even for film.
That required several years of engineering, mostly related to the semiconductor chip that is the heart of any digital camera and converts photons into electrons. The Red team came up with a chip that was the same physical size as a frame of 35-mm film, the Hollywood standard, and produced an image that was virtually indistinguishable, albeit digital.
“When we looked around, we saw digital cameras slowly moving up the food chain,” recalls Schilowitz. “But none of them were even close to living up to what we saw as the magic of film. We didn’t really know what we were doing, so we started from zero, but that turned out to be a huge advantage.”
The first Red model was introduced in 2007, and immediately attracted the attention of filmmakers like Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh. Since then, directors have used Red cameras to shoot some of Hollywood’s biggest movies, including The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and installments of such blockbuster Hollywood franchises as The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Spiderman.
The camera also has ardent fans outside the Hollywood mainstream. The last two winners of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film—The Secret In Their Eyes, from Argentina, and last year’s In A Better World, from Denmark—were both shot on Reds.
Price comparisons between Red and traditional film cameras aren’t especially informative, since most film cameras are rented rather than purchased. Schilowitz says that a fully-loaded version of the latest Red model costs between $45,000 and $60,000, perhaps a quarter as much as a new film camera—if anyone were still making them.

Lights, bytes, action!: The Epic digital camera starts at around $31,000. The camera has become popular among Hollywood directors, but now faces competition from electronics firms like Canon.

The body of the Red camera isn’t much bigger than a professional-sized still camera. All the same, it isn’t as though the cinematographer walks around the movie set with the camera strapped around his neck, snapping pictures like a tourist. A fully configured Red system, with lenses, dollies, and the rest, can be as imposing as a traditional film camera.
But filmmakers say they like to take advantage of Red’s greater portability when they need it. The lower price also means that some crews use multiple cameras. The crew filming The Hobbit in New Zealand is using 48 Red cameras, including models configured for 3-D effects.

Digital cameras can also capture more images per second than standard film, enhancing the image quality. Jackson, who is directing The Hobbit, has said the effect is “like the back of the cinema has had a hole cut out of it where the screen is, and you are actually looking into the real world.”
Digital movie cameras are one of the last steps towards a “film” industry in which actual celluloid film plays no role. Currently, even movies shot on film are usually digitized afterwards, so that editing and effects can be done on computer. The movies are then printed back onto film, and shipped to theaters, most of which still use traditional threaded film projectors.
But theaters are also in the midst of an epic transition to digital projectors, which could allow studios to simply transmit copies of movies to theaters using high-speed Internet connections. Not an ounce of celluloid will be required once big-screen movies are both filmed and projected digitally.
Exact figures on the film vs. digital split in Hollywood moviemaking are hard to come by, but there is little doubt that film’s market is shrinking. Both Kodak and Fuji still sell movie-film stock, but many of Los Angeles’s developing and transfer facilities for film are closing down or consolidating. Executives from film camera companies have been quoted in the trade press as saying they expect 85 percent of moviemaking to be digital a few years from now, but they aren’t making predictions much beyond that.
As a private company, Red won’t reveal information about sales or profits. Clearly, it will need more than an innovator’s head start to remain a leader in what is becoming a very crowded market. Incumbents like Panavision, with deep roots in Hollywood, are busily promoting their digital models, and Sony is active in the market as well. Canon just checked in with a feature-caliber digital system of its own, recruiting no less a figure than Martin Scorsese to sing its praises.
Red will press on, of course. Schilowitz wants to make clear his company is not on any anti-film vendetta, even though its camera had been called the “Panavision killer.” Schilowitz says, “It was never our goal to kill film. Instead, we wanted to evolve it.”

• By Lee Gomes

Source 

Micromax A116 Canvas HD Specification

General 
2G Network   GSM 900 / 1800 - SIM 1 & SIM 2
3G Network   HSDPA 2100
SIM                 Dual SIM (Mini-SIM)
Announced     2013, January
Status              Coming soon. Exp. release 2013, February

Display 
Type               IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size                720 x 1280 pixels, 5.0 inches (~294 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch     Yes
Protection      Yes

Sound 
Alert types     Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes
3.5mm jack   Yes

Memory 
Card slot       microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal          4 GB storage, 1 GB

Data 
GPRS           Yes
EDGE          Yes
Speed           HSDPA, 42 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
WLAN         Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth     Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
USB             Yes, microUSB v2.0

Camera 
Primary       8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
Features        Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection
Video            Yes
Secondary     Yes, VGA

Features 
OS                Android OS, v4.1 (Jelly Bean)
Chipset         MediaTek MT6589
CPU             Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7
GPU             PowerVR Series5XT
Sensors        Accelerometer, proximity
Messaging   SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser       HTML5
Radio           FM radio
GPS             Yes, with A-GPS support
Java             Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
Colors          Black, White
                        - SNS integration
                        - MP3/AAC/WMA/WAV player
                        - MP4/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
                        - Organizer
                        - Document viewer
                        - Google Search, Maps, Gmail, Youtube, Calendar, Google Talk
                        - Voice memo/dial
                        - Predictive text input

Battery     Li-Ion 2100 mAh battery

Micromax A116 Canvas HD goes official with 5" screen, quad CPU

The Micromax A110 (a.k.a. Canvas 2) is the most popular phone in our database and it just got a successor. Meet the Micromax A116 Canvas HD – a dual-SIM Android phone with a 5” 720p IPS screen, quad-core processor and affordable price.
The 5" screen is a marked improvement over the A110 – the new model has 294ppi pixel density, up from 196ppi. The chipset is a big step forward too, the MediaTek MT6589 packs a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM and the PowerVR Series 5XT GPU.
The Micromax A116 Canvas HD runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (with a 4.2 update to come), packs an 8MP main camera and VGA front-facing camera and has 4GB of built-in storage (plus a microSD card slot). Connectivity is handled by 3G GSM, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth and GPS. The battery capacity is 2,100mAh.
The Micromax A116 will launch in India next month for 15,000 rupees ($280) in brick and mortar stores and online.
Source

Titanium Gray Samsung Galaxy Premier launched in Taiwan

You may remember the Samsung Galaxy Premier that was announced back in October last month. The phone has a 4.65-inch, HD Super AMOLED display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8 megapixel camera and Android Jelly Bean, and is essentially a variation of Google's Galaxy Nexus, also manufactured by Samsung.

The phone has now gone on sale in Taiwan, where it is being sold in a new color called Titanium Gray, as seen above. The phone is now available for purchase for 15,900 Taiwanese Dollars, which is approximately US$549. The phone is expected to go on sale shortly in other Asian markets.
You can get some details hands-on pictures and videos and some benchmark scores in the link below.
Source

Model plane hobbyists know the risks of lithium-ion batteries

Image Source

A scale model of a Reaper drone rumbled down the runway and lifted into the gray Canadian sky, powered by a plastic propeller and a lithium-ion battery. When the tiny plane crashed back to earth a few seconds later, white smoke began rising from the wreckage.

“Why is it on fire?” one of the hobbyists asked the other, moments before bright orange flames began shooting from the crash site.

The weary reply, captured on video, was: “Battery.”
Small, potent lithium-ion power packs have transformed the world of radio-controlled model aircraft, much as they have allowed smartphones to get thinner, power tools to work longer and electric cars to go farther. But a pair of serious incidents this month involving rechargeable batteries in Boeing 787 Dreamliners have highlighted what model-airplane hobbyists long have known — lithium-ion technology comes with inherent dangers.
Considering the sheer numbers of lithium-ion batteries — more than 4 billion rechargeable cells were made last year, according to industry figures — fires are not common. After a battery-powered Chevy Volt ignited after a test crash in 2011, federal investigators said electric cars were no more vulnerable than gas-powered vehicles, more than 20 of which catch fire each hour in the United States.
Yet some risk persists, and the results can be startling. When a cellphone battery overheats — a rare event — it can eject itself with a loud “pop,” leaving singe marks behind. Lithium-ion battery packs can have prolonged fires as each cell, typically the size of a man’s finger, gradually ignites.
“It could be a smoke bomb. It could be a flamethrower,” said Gerard Back, a senior engineer with Hughes Associates, a fire-protection company in Baltimore that investigated the Volt incident. “I’ve seen them look like every type of firework you can imagine.”
Boeing and other manufacturers are keenly aware of this peril and have built in safety features designed to keep voltages within safe limits, prevent short circuits and confine damage when problems do occur. Lithium-ion batteries in laptop computers and other consumer devices are supposed to shut down rather than allow overheating that might cause a fire. In such ways danger is minimized, though not eliminated.
The technological trade-offs play out in especially stark relief within the sprawling world of radio-controlled airplane enthusiasts, who regard lithium-ion batteries with a mixture of fear and devotion even as they subject them to unusual stresses. The result is widespread acceptance that the same portable power source that allows for fast, long, graceful flights also occasionally causes these fragile toys to burst into flames — often, but not always, after crashes.
“They make life a lot better, a lot easier, but you have to manage the risk,” said Dave Brewster, 43, a professional pilot from Toronto who flies radio-controlled model airplanes as a hobby. “Everything in flight is mitigating risk.”
It was Brewster’s Reaper drone that crashed and caught fire on its maiden flight in August 2011, destroying a model that cost him several hundred dollars and hours of work. Like many who have suffered such mishaps, he uploaded video of it to YouTube for what amounts to an emerging genre of lithium-battery-related disaster films starring radio-controlled models — not just planes but cars and boats, too. (The flaming wreckage of a twin-engine model plane, posted in October 2009 and viewed more than 479,000 times, is accompanied by a soundtrack of bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace.”)

 

There is a strain of gallows humor in such videos, with audible cheering and laughter at the fiery destruction. Yet the underlying danger is treated seriously. Tales abound of burned hands and severe property damage, including battery-related fires that destroyed cars, garages and homes. Hobbyist Web sites carry stern warnings and feature long chat threads discussing the risks. At radio-controlled airplane shows, charging batteries indoors typically is prohibited unless they are kept in flame-resistant bags. “I’ve had buddies blow the ends of their fingers off with them,” said hobbyist Craig Pitcock, 41, who posted to YouTube a video of the fiery crash of his F-4 Phantom model in an Arizona field. “It’s incredible, the voltage.”

Before the arrival of lithium-ion technology, hobbyists relied on a messy liquid fuel, or occasionally on an older generation of batteries that could barely get models off the ground. “Twenty years ago, somebody would laugh at you if you said ‘electric plane,’ ” Pitcock said.
Lithium-ion battery packs may revolutionize aviation as well, allowing for planes that are lighter and use less fuel.
The cause of the incidents with the Dreamliner battery packs remains under investigation by safety officials. The jets were ordered grounded in the United States and several other nations this week.
The batteries carried in the holds of cargo planes are suspected as possible factors in two fatal crashes in recent years, according to the Air Line Pilots Association International, which is lobbying to have cells classified as dangerous goods requiring special handling, adequate fire suppression and notification to pilots who carry them. Cargo planes sometimes carry tens of thousands of cells stacked together on pallets, increasing the danger, said Mark Rogers, director of the dangerous goods program for the pilots association.
“There’s no way to engineer your way out of the problem,” he said. “No matter what you do, you’re going to have incidents.”
Lithium-ion battery packs typically are made of a collection of individual cells. Coiled within each are three layers — one positively charged, one negatively charged and the third a “separator” film that keeps the charged layers apart. There also is an organic fluid that, at high temperatures, is flammable.
Fires start when electricity moves in an uncontrolled way between the positively and negatively charged layers. The cause can be manufacturing defects or damage — anything that allows the positive and negative layers to touch, causing a short-circuit and what experts call “thermal runaway.”
Manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries say their technology is safe when international standards are followed. Problems occur mainly with lower-quality, counterfeit batteries, or when cells are shipped improperly or mishandled by consumers, said George Kerchner, executive director of the Rechargeable Battery Association.
“When you damage these cells and you abuse them, you certainly are inviting problems,” he said.
For those who fly radio-controlled model airplanes, fires typically happen when batteries are overcharged, or when wiring mistakes cause short-circuits. And, then, of course, there are the crashes: The resulting damage can causes wires to touch, separator film to tear, or the positive and negative layers to come into direct contact with each other.
Damage can be subtle enough that an apparently undamaged battery can burst into flames long after an accident. Hobbyists say they sense danger when their battery packs get “puffy,” typically the result of gases that can be the first sign of thermal runaway.
The Rechargeable Battery Association’s Kerchner said he and his sons have long flown radio-controlled helicopters powered by lithium-ion batteries without encountering problems. “We love them,” he said, “but we don’t crash them into the ground to see if they explode.”

 

 Source

Symphony W20 Specification

Symphony W20

Description          Specification 

Key Features	Description
Display Size	3.5inch " TFT Capacitive Full Touch
Camera	2MP (Flash)
Multimedia	MP3, MP4, FM
Data Services	EDGE,GPRS
Phonebook Entries	Unlimited
Multi Touch	Yes (2 Fingers)
OS	Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Technical Features	Description
Display Resolution	HVGA(320*480)
EDGE	Yes
GPRS	Yes
GPS	No
GPU	GPU vender: Imagination Technologies GPU renderer: PowerVR SGX 531 GPU version (OpenGL): OpenGL ES 2.0
Video Player	mp4,3gp, H.264，30 fps @ D1
Storage	Memory Card Extended up to 16GB
Battery	1400mAh
Stand by time*	up to 210hours(Depend on network and phone setting)
Talk time	up to12hours (Depend on network and phone setting)
CPU	1 GHZ
Other Features	Description
Color	Black
Messaging	Threadview
Recorder	Audio Video & Call Recorder
Bluetooth	Yes
USB Mass storage	Yes
USB Modem	Yes
Special Features	Proximity-Sensor, Accelerometer sensor, SNS Application
Wi-Fi	Yes
MMS	Yes
Dimension	116×60.8×12.85mm

Symphony W70 Specification

Symphony W70

Description              Specification 

Key Features	Description
Display Size	4" Capacitive Full Touch
Camera	5MP Primary, 0.3MP Secondary
Multimedia	MP3, MP4, FM
Data Services	3G,EDGE,GPRS
OS	4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
Technical Features	Description
Display Resolution	WVGA(480*800)
GPS	Yes
Internal Memory	User available RAM 512 MB
Storage	User available ROM 4GB (Memory Card Extended up to 32GB)
Battery	2500 mAH Lithium Ion Battery
CPU	1 GHz
Other Features	Description
Bluetooth	Bluetooth , microUSB v2.0
Special Features	Proximity-Sensor, SNS Application
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 802.11, Wi-Fi Hotspot
SMS	SMS(Threaded view), MMS, Email

Symphony W30 Specification

 

Symphony W30

Description             Specification 

Key Features	Description
Display Size	3.5" TFT Capacitive Full Touch
Camera	2MP + VGA
Multimedia	MP3, MP4, FM
Data Services	EDGE,GPRS, Wi-fi
OS	Ice Cream Sandwich
Technical Features	Description
Display Resolution	HVGA(320*480)
GPS	Yes
Internal Memory	User available RAM 256MB
Storage	User available ROM 512 MB, Memory Card Extended up to 32GB,
Battery	1400 mAH Lithium Ion Battery
CPU	1 GHz
Other Features	Description
Special Features	Proximity-Sensor, SNS Application
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 802.11, Wi-Fi Hotspot
SMS	SMS(Threaded view), MMS, Email

Foremay claims to have the first 2TB, 2.5-inch SSDs

It's been relatively easy for awhile to get a solid-state drive with 2TB or more of storage -- if you've been willing to buy a large PCI Express card, that is. Foremay is bringing that kind of capacity to a more portable form. It claims that both its TC166 (for end users) and SC199 (industrial) drives are the first to stuff 2TB of flash memory into a 2.5-inch SATA enclosure. The 9.5mm thickness should let them fit into many laptop hard drive bays and space-sensitive machinery without having to give up all those valuable extra bytes. Before reaching for a credit card, however, we'd warn that there aren't many details so far -- we don't know the performance, or how much it costs to buy either model. We've reached out and will get back if there's firmer details, but at least corporate customers who want speed and ample storage in one drive will be glad to hear that Foremay's new SSDs are already in mass production.

Source 

Samsung showcases flexible OLED displays

We have been hearing rumors of these for a while now but Samsung has finally come clean with their YOUM flexible OLED displays at CES this year.

Although no actual product using these displays have been announced so far, Samsung did showcase three applications of it. One of them had the design of a regular smartphone, with just the right edge being bent downwards. This bent strip displayed content in landscape mode, so that even if you have the phone in a case, you can see notifications and such from the side at a glance.
The other two designs included a device that couple be folded up in the middle and another one where the display could be rolled up and retracted.
Thanks to the flexibility of the display, we might finally start seeing some disruption in the design of smartphones, which have turned into boring slabs over the past years. The flexibility also means that these displays are a lot more shock resistant. It remains to be seen what product Samsung would choose to put it in first.
Source

Symphony W80 Specification

Key Features	Description
Display Size	4.3" IPS Capacitive Full Touch
Camera	5MP Primary, 0.3MP Secondary
Multimedia	MP3, MP4, FM
Data Services	3G(No Video Call),EDGE,GPRS
Multi Touch	Yes ( 5 Finger)
OS	Ice Cream Sandwich
Technical Features	Description
Display Resolution	WVGA(480*800)
GPU	GPU vender: Qualcomm GPU renderer: Adreno (TM) 203 GPU version (OpenGL): OpenGL ES 2.0
Internal Memory	User available RAM 512 MB
Storage	User available ROM 4GB (Memory Card Extended up to 32GB)
Battery	1800 mAH Lithium Ion Battery
CPU	1 .2 GHz (Dual Core)
Other Features	Description
Special Features	Proximity-Sensor, Accelerometer sensor, SNS Application
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 802.11, Wi-Fi Hotspot

Panasonic showcases Windows 8 Toughpad FZ-G1 and Android JT-B1 rugged tablets

Tablets are once again making headlines at CES with Panasonic being the latest to show off new offerings.

The company unveiled the Windows 8 Pro-running Toughpad FZ-G1 with the Android 4.0 ICS JT-B1. Both are extra durable and coming later this year.
The Toughpad FZ-G1 has a 10.1″ 1920 x 800 display, Intel Core i5 chip, 4 to 8 GB of RAM and SSD storage ranging from 128 GB to 256 GB.
There’s USB, HDMI, Ethernet and a microSD card along with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. GPS and a data connection are optional.
The Toughpad FZ-G1 is both MIL-STD-810G and IP65 certified, meaning its made from very durable materials and is dust proof and water resistant.
The FZ-G1 can be yours starting at the whopping $2899 from March.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1
The second tablet is weirdly named exactly like its predecessor – Toughpad JT-B1. It’s not the same product though – the new JT-B1 is running on Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, has a TI OMAP4460 dual-core processor with each core clocked at 1.5 GHz, a gig of RAM and 16 GB of storage.
It features an over-the-top 13 MP camera on the back and a 1.3 MP front-facing one.
GPS, Wi-Fi, NFC and Bluetooth are all there with the option for LTE data connection.

Panasonic Toughpad JT-B1
The JT-B1 can be yours starting February starting at $1199.
Source

Symphony P10 Full Phone Specification

Key Features	Description
OS	4.2.1 Jelly bean
Display Size	5.7” TN HD Capacitive Full Touch
Camera	13MP Primary + 5MP Secondary
Multimedia	MP3, MP4, FM
Data Services	3G,EDGE
Multitouch	Yes
Technical Features	Description
Display Resolution	HD (720*1280)
CPU	1.5 GHz Quad Core
GPU	PowerVR SGX 544MP
Internal Memory	User available RAM 971MB (Total 1GB)
Storage	User available ROM 1.5GB (Total 16GB) internal SD card 12.67GB
Battery	3200 mAh Lithium Ion Battery
Stand by time*	420 Hours(*depend on phone setting,Network)
Talk time	5 Hours (*depend on phone setting,Network)
Other Features	Description
Recorder	Audio, Video & call recorder
Built in Applications	Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Facebook, Youtube, Android Market(Play Store), Nimbuzz, Gmail, Skype, Office suite, Dictionary
Special Features	GPS, G- sensor, Light, Proximity & Accelerometer sensor, Full HD 1080P Video support, HD Games support

Mpowerd's Luci solar lantern hands-on

Luci is Mpowerd's "little solar lantern with a big impact" and for the price and light produced -- 1200 lumens -- it does seem to fit the bill. But what really makes this lantern so fantastic, is that Luci is aimed to provide "solar justice" for those off the grid or perhaps suffering through some type of natural disaster and it is done on the cheap. Luci is a solar-powered LED lantern that will juice up in the sun in six hours and then produce six to 12 hours of light from that charge. The light runs in three different modes, low, high, or a distress mode where it flashes, costs only $15.99, is collapsible, lightweight and has a one-year lifespan. Well done Mpowerd, Luci seems a great tech and design innovation in that it solves a problem in a very elegant and simple way.

Source 

Huawei unveils 6.1-inch Ascend Mate and 5-inch Ascend D2

Huawei's press conference at CES is over and, just as we expected it brought two new Android devices to officialdom Ascend Mate and Ascend D2.

Huawei Ascend D2
The Ascend D2 packs a 5-inch 1080p display (that's 443ppi) with very thin bezel, water and dust resistance. The smartphone is powered by a home-baked quad-core 1.5GHz processor with yet to-be-announced GPU and offers 2GB RAM. It has a 13MP on its back that can do 1080p video recording.


The rest of the specs include a 1.3MP front snapper, 32GB internal storage, all-round connectivity sans LTE, and a 3000 mAh battery. There is no microSD card slot.

The Ascend D2 runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which has been heavily customized by Huawei. The D2 will be released this month with China being the first country to get it. The pricing is yet to be confirmed.
Interestingly enough, Huawei will also be offering a 4.7" version of the Ascend D2, but the company didn't give any more specifics about it.
Huawei Ascend Mate
The Ascend Mate is utilizes a 6.1-inch 720p display, which works with gloves and has Gorilla Glass protection on top. The phablet is said to have the slimmest bezel in business, its screen covering 73% of its front panel. It is powered by the same quad-core 1.5GHz processor as the Ascend D2 and has 2GB of RAM.


The Ascend Mate has an 8MP rear camera with 1080p video recording and a 1.3MP front-facing one. There is no LTE on the Ascend Mate either, but this time there is a microSD card slot for expanding the built in storage. The battery is even bigger of course, up to 4050 mAh.
The Ascend Mate also runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with Huawei's Emotion UI. It has no app drawer (like the Meizu MX and iPhone) and offers pop-up apps for improved multi-tasking, and a one-hand UI, which improves the handling of the dialer and keayboard in those cases when one of your hands isn't available.
Huawei Ascend Mate will hit the shelves in February, with China being the first country to get it. The pricing is still unknown, though previous rumors suggested that it will be about $480.

The Sony Xperia Z hits the UK in March, sells for £528

Shortly after Sony Xperia Z's official unveiling at CES, UK retailer Phones4U has announced that it'll start offering the 5" phablet starting this March. Retailer Clove has also announced it'll be offering the device.
Traditionally, the Z will also be available through the country's major carriers and Vodafone has went ahead and announced planned availability too. However, unlike Phones 4U, Vodafone hasn't specified the timeframe of the smartphone's arrival.
Sony hasn't announced the official pricing of the Z just yet, although Thai sources have indicated that the phone will be retailing there at around $655, meaning we might see the SIM-free device sell around the £450-500 mark in the UK.


Update: Clove has posted a £528 price tag for the unlocked, SIM-free version of the Xperia Z, which is a bit pricier than we initially expected.
The Sony Xperia Z runs on the latest Snapdragon S4 Pro with a quad-core 1.5GHz Krait processor, Adreno 320 graphics and 2GB of RAM. The smartphone is built around a 5" LED-backlit 1080p display with Mobile Bravia 2 Engine and has a 13MP Exmor RS camera sensor capable of 1080p video recording with HDR option at its disposal.
Source | Via

Huawei Ascend W1 now official, company's first WP8 device

Huawei looks keen on keeping CES 2013 interesting and is making another announcement in the first day of the show. The company has just unveiled ts first Windows Phone 8 smartphone called Ascend W1.

The Ascend W1 brings a reasonable array of features and should come with a pretty attractive price tag. It's build around a 4" WVGA (480 x 800) IPS LCD and has a profile 10.5 mm thick. A dual-core 1.2 GHz Krait processor and the Adreno 305 GPU power the whole thing while a 5 MP camera with 720p video recording takes care of photography needs.
The 4" screen uses full lamination technology that should help enhance outdoor visibility.

Huawei Ascend W1
The Huawei Ascend W1 will hit China and Russia this month while Western Europe, Middle East and USA should be expecting it next. The price isn't clear as of now but it should be along the lines of the HTC Windows Phone 8S or lower.
Huawei bragged about the W1 extra long battery life, claiming a 470 hour stand-by. The Ascend W1 utilizes a power saving technology that saves 30% power consumption, letting the 1950 mAh battery last longer than it normally should.
The Huawei Ascend W1 will be available in blue, red, black and white. We cannot overlook the resemblance between the Ascend W1 and recent offerings by HTC but colorful and fresh seems to be the Windows Phone 8 thing these days.
Here's the official product page.

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Ubuntu phone pictures and hands-on

By Dan Sung
The Ubuntu phone operating system is set to join the ever-increasing ranks of smartphone platforms in 2013 and looks to be offering something worth grabbing hold of. Pocket-lint was at the global launch of the software to get hands-on with the beta version.
Straight off the bat, what strikes you is that this is a good-looking system. Appearing and operating almost exactly the same as the Ubuntu OS on both PC and TV, one of the big selling points of the platform, according to company CEO Mark Shuttleworth, is that - unlike Google with its multi-OS approach to its ecosystem - what you get with Ubuntu is the same full version of the software as on all your devices.
So there's the same Lenses approach on Ubuntu phone that desktop users will be used to. There are the same apps and the same look and feel. What's different, by necessity, is how you interact with it. On your smartphone, Ubuntu is all about touch.

The lockscreen is designed as more than a barrier to the rest of your phone. You can set it to unlock direct to any app or feature of the system that you like. Slide your thumb in from the left edge and you get a dock of around 10 apps to navigate to. The thinking was that people only really use about 10 apps on a regular basis, so that's why there's only space for 10 at once. You can scroll the list up and down if you want to add more.
Another aim of the software is to provide as much desktop space as possible and the way that Canonical is looking to accomplish that is with up and down scrolling for each screen. So it's rather like Windows Phone in that aspect, except that the virtual space is vertical instead of horizontal.
As for other edge activity, a slide from the bottom brings up a contextual menu, a slide from the right takes you back to the last app you were looking at and, if you slide from the top, you also get direct access to your phone settings.

There are the clear Music, Videos, Apps, People and Events sections you would expect and a universal search accessed by a swipe from the top edge of the frame at all times. Apps-wise, there's already excellent coverage thanks to the thriving Ubuntu developer community and the phone OS will also support native ones and web apps. An example of the latter can be seen with Facebook which, to all intents and purposes, looks the same as the Android offering. What's more, gaming industry standards such as OpenGL have been promised, in order to bring top end games to Ubuntu phone mobiles.
There was no voice control support in the beta version of Ubuntu that we saw but it's been promised for when the OS becomes available at the end of the year. There are currently no interesting keyboard input methods at present, but the likes of Swiftkey and Swype-types are expected to arrive.
There are two main groups that Ubuntu phone is aimed at. The first is those on low-end smartphones looking for a lighter and slicker experience. The minimum spec required is a dual-core Cortex A9-type CPU with 1GB of RAM and an 800x480px screen. At the other end of the scale are those after an Ubuntu superphone that can act as a desktop computer when docked with a keyboard, mouse and monitor - as shown off by Canonical at MWC 2012 with Ubuntu for Android. The spec there needs to be a quad-core A9-type processor, 1GB of RAM and either a 720p or Full HD screen.

Ubuntu will be coming to mobile phones this year. You'll be able to buy them first as Ubuntu for Android phones which have an Android face while out and about, but serve up Ubuntu when docked for desktop use. By the end of the year, there will also be the straight Ubuntu phone experience from as yet undisclosed OEMs. The better news is that users will also be able to put Ubuntu on their own mobile phones themselves, with an image available for Nexus phones in the coming weeks.
The OS wasn't quite as smooth to the touch as we were expecting 100 per cent of the time but, given it's currently in beta form, that's not such a big surprise. If Ubuntu phone can deliver what Canonical is promising - which, just maybe, it looks like it might - then these could be very interesting times for the whole platform from PC to TV too. One to watch.

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