Apple Now the Third Largest Computer Vendor in US

According to the latest data from Gartner, worldwide PC shipment reached 71.9 million units in second quarter of 2008, a 16% year-over-year increase. HP continued to maintain it No.1 position with 18.1 percent market share, followed by Dell with 15.6 percent market share. Acer came in third with 9.4 percent share. Lenovo (7.8%) was fourth and Toshiba (4.4%) was fifth. In US, Dell maintained it No.1 position with 31.9% market share and HP came in second with 25.3 percent share. Apple continued its rise and grabbed the third place. Read More

How Bad is iPhone 3G’s Battery Life?

iPhone 3G was launched last Friday and many iPhone reviews have been published since then. Most iPhone 3G reviewers had one common compliant the battery life of the phone is not good. So the question is how bad is iPhone 3G’s battery life? According to most reviewers, iPhone 3G gave them around 4 to 6 hours of battery life on 3G network. PCWorld has published their battery test results and iPhone 3G beats every other 3G phone except BlackBerry models that support EVDO. Read More

Intel launches the new Centrino 2 Platform; Quad-Core Mobile Processors Next Month

Intel launched their updated Centrino 2 platform on Tuesday. Aside from the new processors the platform adds new integrated graphics chipset and a new wireless chipset. There are three P-series processors, two T-series processors and one X-series processor based on 45nm Penryn architecture. The P-series includes P8400 (2.26GHz and 3MB L2), P8600 (2.4GHz and 3MB L2) and P9500 (2.53GHz and 6MB L2) processors with 25W TDP. The T-series has T9400 (2.53GHz and 6MB L2) and T9600 (2.8GHz and 6MB L2) processors with 35W TDP. Read More

iPhone 3G: The Largest First Weekend Consumer Electronics Launch in History

Yankee Group’s Carl Howe said that the one million iPhone 3G sold this weekend was the largest first weekend consumer electronics launch in history, as measured in inflation adjusted dollars. The record previously belonged to 2007 launch of original iPhone that generated $150 million in its first weekend on sale. Read More

Sprint Introduces Palm Treo 800w

While the world is busy talking about the new iPhone 3G, Sprint and Palm launched their new smartphone Treo 800W. The Windows Mobile 6.1 based device comes with Touchscreen, WiFi, GPS, EVDO Rev.A and Bluetooth. The new device is slightly slimmer than Treo 700, but its still a fatty in today’s iPhone and HTC world. Read More

Apple Sells One Million iPhone 3Gs in First Three Days

Apple today announced it sold its one-millionth iPhone 3G on Sunday, within three days of its launch on Friday July 11th. iPhone 3G was launched in 22 countries last Friday and in most places the stock went out quickly.
“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. Read More

iPhone 3G Sold-out in Most AT&T Stores and Most Places Around the World

Last year, when the original iPhone was released, it was the first time that I saw people standing inline for a mobile phone (I was also there). Today, iPhone 3G was released in 22 countries and this was the second time I saw people again standing inline for a mobile phone. Only two times in my lifetime I have seen lines for a mobile phone launch and both the times it was Apple’s iPhone. This time even though I was inline I didn’t get one. Read More

iPhone Firmware 2.0 Up and Running

Apple released the iPhone firmware 2.0 today morning. I downloaded it and installed it as soon as it was available and like most early adaptors my iPhone went dead. It was dead for almost 5 hours today; when I connected iPhone to iTunes for activation I kept getting this error “There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.” After almost five hours the activation server is back online and my iPhone is back with updated firmware 2.0. Read More

Seagate Unveils World’s First 1.5TB Hard Drive

Seagate today unveiled the world’s first hard drive that breaks the 1TB capacity barrier. The new Barracuda 7200.11 a 3.5” hard drive has 1.5TB of storage space. The hard drive has four platters and each platter has 375GB storage capacity. The increase in data density on each platter improves the speed and results in disk transfer data speeds of 120MB per second or more. Read More

AT&T Claims The Fastest 3G Network in US

AT&T today announced that it offers the nation’s fastest 3G network. AT&T bases its claim on variety of tests conducted by leading third-party researchers, who downloaded a variety of applications and files to test throughput and overall performance of various 3G-service providers in US (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint). AT&T was the winner by a significant margin. Read More

Apple’s iPhone App Store is Online

Yesterday, Tech Crunch reported that the iPhone’s App Store would go online at 9 am PST on Thursday. Well the App Store went online slightly before time, as the Store is available for user to download applications for their iPhone now. You can access the App Store by downloading the iTunes 7.7 update and then selecting Applications in the Library. Read More

Apple Releases iTunes 7.7

Apple today released the latest update for iTunes that is required for iPhone 3G, Firmware 2.0, App Store and MobileMe. For Mac OS X the update is available through Software Update, in Windows the update is available though check for updates function in iTunes. The update also confirms that iPhone remote application to control your iTunes. Read More

Nokia Files for Haptikos Tactile Touchscreen Patent

Nokia has previously talked about their haptikos tactile touchscreen that has two small piezo-sensor pads under the screen and creates a 0.1mm movement in the screen. But few details were revealed about the mechanism behind the system. A recent patent filed by Nokia for the technology brings more details about how this touchscreen works. Read More

iPhone App Store to Launch Thursday Morning

Apple has notified developers that the iPhone App Store will launch for users to download and use applications at around 9 am PST on Thursday morning. According to Tech Crunch that is when the prohibition will lift allowing press to write about specific applications. Read More

Matsushita is Developing a Light Emitting Device 50 Percent More Efficient Than Conventional LEDs

Matsushita Electric Works and Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology are developing a prototype light-emitting device that is more efficient and smaller than conventional LEDs. The device uses 5nm or smaller nanosilicon to create a ballistic electron discharge into xenon gas. The device is able to theoretically produce 150 lumens per Watt making it more efficient than conventional white LEDs that can produce 80-100 lumens per Watt. Read More

Fonix Announces iSpeak - a Voice Activated Application for iPhone

The one big complaint I had against the new iPhone 3G was that Apple didn’t add voice activated dialing in the new iPhone. Well that has changed now, as a company called Fonix Speech announced the release of Fonix iSpeak - a voice activated application for the Apple iPhone 3G. The application allows users to initiate several operations simply by speaking the command. Read More

Carriers Around the World Warn Against iPhone 3G Shortage

O2 started taking pre-orders for the iPhone 3G on its website. But went out of stock due to huge demand within minutes. It is not just O2 but all the carriers around the world are expecting iPhone shortage at the launch time. O2 says a rush of as many as 13,000 iPhone per-orders per minute, brought down its online orders for the iPhone 3G. Most carriers around the world have already said that they will have next to nothing in iPhone allocation and the inventory will be snapped up within minutes. Read More

Kodak Announces 50-Megapixel CCD Camera Sens

On Tuesday Kodak announced their 50-megapixel CCD sensor KAF-50100, measuring 49.1mm x 36.8mm, normally the full frame sensor measures 24mm x 36mm. Hasselblad earlier today announced their latest 50-megapixel camera using the sensor. The new sensor becomes the highest resolution non-scientific sensor, superseding Kodak’s 39-megapixel KAF-39000 sensor. Read More

Data Robotics Introduces Second Generation Drobo with FireWire 800

obo by Data Robotics has been one of the best external back-up solutions available in the market. Today, Data Robotics improved their already superior storage solution by adding FireWire 800 port for faster data transfer. The Drobo comes equipped with new processor for faster data transfer and larger, quieter case fan. The company says that the new Drobo will have 2X the transfer speed and it is faster than ReadyNAS or comparable LaCie models. Read More

Hasselblad Announces H3DII-50, The 50-Megapixel Camera

Hasselblad, the high-end camera maker known for their very high pixel count (like the old 39-megapixel H3D) has launched their latest 50-megapixel beast H3DII-50. The camera uses a 36mm x 48mm Kodak sensor that is twice the size of the sensor normally found in other full frame DLSR. At full 50-megappixel resolution the camera generates a 300MB image file at 1 Frame per second rate. Read More