Samsung Galaxy S III review: first look

Friday, May 4th, 2012

Only one smartphone is capable of generating the sort of publicity the iPhone can right now, and that’s Samsung’s Galaxy S III. That phone was unveiled at a glitzy launch event at London’s Earls Court Exhibition Centre.

Anyone hoping for a groundbreaking step forward in terms of its hardware, however, might be disappointed. There are no great surprises.

(more…)

Chrome OS Aura UI review: first look

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

There was a lot of fuss this time last year over Google’s Chrome OS, but after that initial flurry things have gone rather quiet. Google continues to push out updates, however, introducing offline capabilities for Docs and Gmail at the end of last year, and now the entire Chrome OS interface has been overhauled – available as an update for those signed up to the Chrome OS Dev channel.

Dubbed Aura, the UI enhancements add windowing capabilities to an OS previously limited to maximised web pages, and we’ve loaded it up on a Samsung Chromebook Series 5 to see how much difference it makes to the OS.

(more…)

The new iPad review: first look

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

The tablet we’ve all been expecting was finally unveiled by Apple CEO Tim Cook today, ending a week of feverish speculation in the press. And “the new iPad” as it’s entirely uninspiringly named, is very much as expected.

The headline upgrade is the move to a higher resolution, ‘Retina’-style display at an astonishing 2,048 x 1,536. That’s higher even than the Asus Transformer Prime’s 1,920 x 1,200 screen, which we looked at last week in Barcelona, and leads to a total pixel count of 3.1 million.

(more…)

Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko smartphone OS review: first look

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Mozilla announced last year that it was developing its very own mobile OS, but Mobile World Congress gave us our first chance to see it running on real phone hardware.

Dubbed Boot to Gecko, Mozilla’s attempt at taking on the giants of the mobile world is open source, with a kernel based on Linux and a front-end mainly written in HTML5 and JavaScript.

(more…)

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: our first impressions

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Steven Sinofsky kicked off today’s unveiling of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, announcing that 100,000 code changes had been made since the Developer Preview was released on the world at the back end of last year.

“We knew when we did this – the Developer Preview – that the user interface was not done yet,” Sinofsky admitted. “Lots of the product wasn’t done.” The Consumer Preview, however, is an entirely different matter: “It’s much more polished, much more refined, we think of it as complete, all the way through from the low levels to the user experience,” said Sinofsky.

(more…)

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and 10.1 review: first look

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Samsung’s roster of tablets is reaching unprecedented levels of confusion as the firm attempts to cover all possible bases. It already had 7.7in, 8.9in and 10.1in tablets in its range before Mobile World Congress kicked off. It added the Galaxy Note 10.1 to that list this week, along with another pair – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. We’ve just been down to the Samsung stand to get hands on.

(more…)

HD haptics: the tech that turns your smartphone into… a maraca

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

The themes of Mobile World Congress 2012 are pretty easy to pick out: better cameras in phones, HD resolution screens and quad-core processors all feature strongly. On the Immersion stand, tucked away in a comparatively quiet corner of Hall 7, however, they’re talking about haptic feedback.

This is no ordinary haptic feedback, though – it’s ‘HD’ haptic feedback.

(more…)

Asus Transformer Pad 300 Series review: first look

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

The number of new tablets that have been launched at this year’s MWC is mind boggling, but the one that could just be the most significant is Asus’ humble Transformer Pad 300 Series.

Introduced alonside the Padfone and Transformer Pad Infinity 700 series, the 300 Series could be seen as the ugly duckling of the Transformer family. It doesn’t have a better than Full HD screen like the Infinity, it isn’t a three-in-one do-it-all device like the Padfone, and it doesn’t look as sleek and lovely as the Transformer Pad Prime.

(more…)

Samsung Galaxy Beam review: first look

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Samsung declined to announce its flagship phone at MWC this year, but it hasn’t abandoned the show altogether, bringing a total of four new products to Barcelona. We’ve already brought you a first look at the Galaxy Note 10.1; now it’s the turn of the Galaxy Beam.

The Beam is notable not for its design, nor its screen or camera – at first glance it’s a fairly ordinary 4in smartphone. It’s unusual because it has an integrated pico projector.

(more…)

Why Nokia’s 41mp smartphone camera isn’t as mad as it sounds

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

The 808 PureView kicked up quite a storm when Nokia announced it early yesterday morning. It was a great way to kick off proceedings at MWC here in Barcelona. A smartphone with a 41-megapixel sensor? It was the announcement of the day and certainly got tongues wagging.

But how does it work, and why exactly has Nokia gone down this road? In the following paragraphs, we’ll explain in more depth and also deliver our first impressions on the phone itself.

(more…)