Month: January 2013

Samsung’s new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC promises not to hog battery

Not to be outdone by Nvidia’s Tegra 4 announcement and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800-series announcement, Samsung took to the stage today to announce the next processor in its Exynos 5 lineup: the Exynos 5 Octa is an eight-core SoC destined for tablets and high-end smartphones. Not all of these CPU cores are created equal: four of them are high-performance Cortex-A15 cores, the very same found in the Exynos 5 Dual that powers the Nexus 10 and Samsung’s ARM Chromebook . The other four are Cortex-A7 CPU cores—these have the same feature set and capabilities as the A15 cores, but are optimized for power efficiency rather than performance. This makes the Exynos 5 Octa one of the first (if not  the first) products to actually use ARM’s big.LITTLE processor switching technology, something we outlined back in October of 2011 . The SoC is designed to dynamically split the workload between the high-performance and the high-efficiency CPU cores based on the task at hand—less strenuous activities like browsing an app store or checking e-mail might be done on the A7 cores, for instance, while gaming and number crunching could be handed off to the A15 cores. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Samsung’s new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC promises not to hog battery

Walmart to sell iPhones with a $45 per month unlimited prepaid plan

Starting this Friday, Walmart will be selling the iPhone for use with wireless provider Straight Talk, which is offering a $45-per-month contract with unlimited voice, data, and texting. This sale will make it one of the cheapest ways —as measured over a two-year period—to get a prepaid iPhone. Walmart says it will offer $25-per-month financing for the phone itself if customers use a Walmart credit card. Straight Talk, which uses AT&T’s towers as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), is becoming an increasingly popular option for prepaid customers who want to use an iPhone without paying high prices. (Full disclosure: I am a Straight Talk customer, and have been since April 2012.) “We believe customers shouldn’t have to choose between saving money and having the latest technology,” said Seong Ohm, senior vice president of Entertainment for Walmart US, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Now customers can have the coveted iPhone with unlimited talk, text, and data without a contract for $70 a month thanks to our exclusive Straight Talk plan and industry first financing offer.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Walmart to sell iPhones with a $45 per month unlimited prepaid plan

Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

It seemed like an intriguing deal. An old version of Adobe Creative Suite—the 2005 vintage CS2, to be precise—became freely downloadable from Adobe, with nothing more than a free-to-create Adobe ID required from users. Although basically useless for Mac users, as CS2 is only available for PowerPC, for Windows users this is a powerful, if not quite cutting edge, suite of graphics apps. This looked like a clever move from Adobe. Photoshop is widely held to be one of the most routinely pirated applications there is. In making an old but still servicable version of the software it appeared that Adobe was offering a good alternative to piracy: instead of using a knock-off copy of CS6, just use CS2. A free CS2 would also go some way toward starving alternative applications of oxygen. Given the choice between a free copy of CS2 and downloading, say, the GIMP, one imagines that many users would plump for the commercial application. It’s more of a known quantity, with a more polished user interface. And Photoshop is, frankly, the gold standard of bitmap image editing. Even an older version has a prestige that GIMP doesn’t. This is not to say that CS2 is necessarily superior to the GIMP; it may or may not be. It doesn’t really matter; Photoshop has a reputation and respect that the GIMP doesn’t have, and even if some might argue that it was undeserved, it influences the decisions users make. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

Microsoft retiring Messenger on March 15th, wants you to use Skype instead

While we knew Microsoft Messenger was due to retire sometime in the first quarter of this year, we now have a confirmed date. According to The Next Web , Redmond has informed users via email that they have until March 15th to use the IM platform, after which they will need to hop on to Skype to chat with their Messenger pals. Your buddy list will automatically be migrated to the VoIP -focused offering. Desktop users of the outgoing service (globally except mainland China, where it will live on) should receive a banner notification to install Skype and, as it turns out, clicking on said banner will also uninstall Messenger. Road warriors are also taken care of, with Microsoft account support already baked into iOS , Android and Windows Phone 8 versions of the Skype app. Nostalgia notwithstanding, fans of the long-standing MSN descendent can at least take solace in the broader set of features Skype offers. Filed under: Internet , Microsoft Comments Via: The Next Web

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Microsoft retiring Messenger on March 15th, wants you to use Skype instead

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. Gallery: Mpowerd’s Luci solar lantern hands-on Filed under: Peripherals Comments

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Mpowerd’s Luci solar lantern hands-on

E Ink demos CST-01, the ‘world’s thinnest watch’ (hands-on video)

We just got a glimpse of the CST-01 E Ink watch, the result of a partnership between Central Standard Timing and E Ink itself. The product has been in the prototype phase for a year, but it just went live on Kickstarter, with a funding goal of $200,000 and pre-orders available for $129 each. The real standout feature here is the 0.8mm design, which is apparently thinner than a credit card. In any case, the stainless steel design is super svelte. The whole package consists of several flexible components that are laminated into a 0.5mm unit, which is then photochemically etched into a piece of flexible stainless steel. This is a digital watch, of course, but its form factor is more along the lines of a bangle than a Casio-style timepiece. An embedded Thinergy micro-energy cell charges the device in 10 minutes via an external dock. The external dock is also used for setting the time (military or 12-hour), as there are no controls on the watch itself. Battery life is rated for a month. When we tried it out here at CES , the watch felt extremely light, though the edges were a bit jagged. This, of course, is because it’s not yet a final product — you can expect a much smoother finish on the final product. You can check out the CST-01 prototype in our hands-on gallery below, along with the video embedded after the break. Gallery: E Ink Watch eyes-on Continue reading E Ink demos CST-01, the ‘world’s thinnest watch’ (hands-on video) Filed under: Wearables Comments Source: CST-01: The world’s thinnest watch (Kickstarter)

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E Ink demos CST-01, the ‘world’s thinnest watch’ (hands-on video)

Microsoft moves another 20 million Windows 8 licenses over holiday season, 100 million total app downloads

Ready for your quarterly dose of Windows 8 sales figures? After hearing that some 40 million licenses had been sold through last November , the company’s CFO and CMO for Windows Tammi Reller announced here at CES that Microsoft has sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date. According to her, that number includes “sell in to OEMs for new PCs,” but she didn’t clarify whether or not it includes blockbuster deals like the $617 million one it recently landed with the US Army, Air Force and DISA. Reller also noted that the numbers are “roughly in line with where we would have been with Windows 7.” Moving 20 million of anything over a single holiday season is pretty impressive, and we’ll be keeping an ear out for more details should they emerge. Update : Microsoft also announced that “since the opening of the Windows Store the number of apps has quadrupled and it passed the 100 million app download mark – just two months after general availability.” Filed under: Software , Microsoft Comments Source: ZDNet , Windows Blog

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Microsoft moves another 20 million Windows 8 licenses over holiday season, 100 million total app downloads

Mushkin launches ‘next generation’ USB 3.0 drive, promises 300MBs read/write speeds

While Mushkin tipped its hand early regarding details of its “world’s first” 480GB mSATA SSD , it did keep one thing back for CES . It’s launching what it promises is a SandForce-packing, “next generation” USB 3.0 drive that will have read and write speeds of over 300 MB per second. The company is keeping the specifics about its performance, its pricing, availability and even its casing a secret for now, but we’ve gotten in touch and will update this when we learn more. Continue reading Mushkin launches ‘next generation’ USB 3.0 drive, promises 300MBs read/write speeds Filed under: Storage Comments

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Mushkin launches ‘next generation’ USB 3.0 drive, promises 300MBs read/write speeds