iMac 2011: Full Teardown

As you might have heard, Apple have just announced their latest batch of shiny new iMacs and Apple adopters everywhere are no doubt, itching to get their hands on one. Being the sleek, self contained unit that it is, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how much tech they’ve managed to fit behind that monolithic glossy black display.

The clever chaps over at iFixit have taken the liberty of ripping one of these new generation iMacs apart for all to see, the cheapest (which by no means makes it push over) 21.5″ variety if you were wondering.

Some of the newest additions to the 2011 iMacs are the Thunderbolt port (that’s 10 Gbps in and out), also seen on the new MacBooks and an AMD Radeon HD GDDR5 graphics processor. For a full fat version of the teardown head on over to the source.

iMac-Intel Sandy Bridge chips

Apple has just updated their Apple Store with the refreshed line-up of iMacs to feature the new Intel Sandy Bridge quad-core processors. The update comes 10 months after the first-gen Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 family of processors were introduced to Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer.

On the outside its business as usual. The 2011 iMac comes in 21.5-inch and 27-inch flavors with the same IPS-LCD screens as its predessor. But there’s more than meets the eye here. With the Intel Sandy Bridge processors come new AMD graphics cards, ThunderBolt I/O port and a Facetime camera.

Pricing of the new iMac starts at $1199 for the base 21-5″ iMac rocking a 2.5GHz quad-core i5 CPU, 500 GB HDD and the AMD Radeon HD 6750M. But we reckon you’d be more interested in the pumped out 27″ iMac with the 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 2GB of GDDR 5 memory and 8GB of RAM for $2199.

If you are not familiar with the new ThunderBolt I/O technology yet, you are more than welcome to take a glance at our ThunderBolt I/O article, detailing the interface specifics.

LG Blade – thin bezels, slim displays

LG has just announced their new Blade series laptops, which both feature extremely thin bezels, displays and bodies and a cool, brushed metallic casing.

The P430 and P530 both offer Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 Sandy Bridge processor options, Windows 7 inside, metal casings and 1366×768 resolution displays. The bezel around both screens is just 10 mm thin, while the displays use LG’s Super Slim LED LCD technology and are just 4.5 mm thick.

The smaller of the pack – the P430 has a 14”screen with LED backlighting a full-sized 6-cell battery inside and it’s only 27.8 mm thick. All this goodness is encased in a metallic case with a brushed finish. Despite this the weight is pretty reasonable at 1.94kg.

The P430 and P530 specs

The P530 adds 1.6 inches to the display (that’s 15.6”) and a slight increase in the profile is now 28.1 mm. What’s most impressive about it though is the weight – 2.20kg is among the lightest offerings in the class.

Both blade laptops have 1.3 MP front-facing cameras and Wi-Fi DLNA technology.

The P430 will be available at the end of May, while the P530 roll-out will start in June. There’s no information about the pricing of either laptop, though.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1

Some good news comes from India today, where Ranjit Yadav, local head of Samsung Mobile there, shared to the press that the new Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 tablets will launch next month. Sure, he meant India, but for all we know, the world-wide Western launch date shouldn’t be much different than the Indian one. So far all we had in terms of schedule from Samsung was simply Q2.

What’s more, we get to see the price of the two tablets too.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 tablets will be priced at 28.000 INR (425 euro) and 32.000 INR (532 euro) respectively. We’re guessing those are the base Wi-Fi only configurations.

Yadav also added that Samsung sells around 25.000 tablets a quarter in India and expects this number to grow exponentially (sure they would, they’ve had only one tablet model so far). Launching these tablets in India is a logical step, since it is the second largest mobile market in the world, right behind China.

Both tablets feature the latest Android build – 3.0 Honeycomb, the latest TouchWiz UX, dual-core processors, full connectivity suit and the slimmest tablet profile in the world at 8.9 mm

Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 and 5.0

Samsung have just released their Galaxy S WiFi duo – the 4.0 and 5.0 models to the European market. After their tour around South Korea the large-screened media player/tablets with a touch of Android are now on sale in Russia and Switzerland with more countries expected to follow in the weeks to come.

The 4” and 5” Galaxy S WiFi versions run on Android 2.2 Froyo, but will get an update to 2.3 Gingerbread eventually. The lack of cellular radio aside, their internals are almost identical to the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S former flagship – a Hummingbird chipset, featuring a 1GHz CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS , 8 or 16GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot.

The only other differences are the main camera, which has been downgraded to 3.2 megapixel resolution and the screens, which despite keeping the WVGA resolution use the Super Clear LCD technology, rather than Super AMOLED.