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.

Old Nokia Phones

Ah, those were the days! When your phone weighed as much as your arm and cost as much as a body part. A time when if something went wrong, you’d probably have to sell your house to pay the mobile phone bill. A time when there weren’t many phones to choose from but most of them came from one manufacturer. One manufacturer that dominated the mobile phone scene like no other. That manufacturer was Nokia.

Nokia put up a post on their Conversations blog recently where they posted pictures of some of their older models, which had me reminiscing. I remembered my first phone, which too was a Nokia. It was a Nokia 3315 (also known as 3410) and I loved it to bits. Nokia phones back then were a different breed altogether. They were by far the simplest phones on the market, with an easy to understand interface and simple navigation system. They were also known for their rock solid build quality and reliability. It’s not hard to come across tales of Nokia phones that have survived a trip through a washing machine and lived to make a call. They were also known to come up with some of the wackiest designs in the industry.

Sadly, the Nokia of today is a completely different company. They are no longer the innovators. They no longer make phones that are the easiest to use and their designs, although pleasant, have lost their edge and charm. I hope that the Nokia of yesteryear comes back. The one that made our first phones. Till then, you can click on the source link and look at some of the phones that made Nokia the mobile phone giant it is today.

T-Mobile G2x overclocked to 1.5GHz

I guess overclocking dual-core CPUs in mobile phones to 1.5GHz is normal now – a brave soul pushed the Tegra 2 chipset inside their T-Mobile G2x (a.k.a. LG Optimus 2X) to the breakneck speed, 50% up from the stock frequency.

A week ago we saw a Galaxy S II reach 1.5GHz though the G2x manages to beat its score at some benchmarks.

The T-Mobile G2x was running CyanogenMod 7 with a custom kernel – the Trinity CM7 EXT4 1.5GHz kernel. It posted a whopping 4570 score on Quadrant, while on stock frequencies (1GHz) it only does around 2400. The switch to EXT4 probably contributes a good portion of that sizable increase though, it’s not just the CPU.

Others using the same kernel have reported Linpack scores of 54 – up from the 36.85 we got from our Optimus 2X at stock speed. That’s major improvement in pure CPU performance.

The Galaxy S II results from last week – the ones that had the phone running at 1.5GHz – pushed the Quadrant score to 4062 up from 3467 at default 1.2GHz speed (Note: the S II is using EXT4, it’s the default for Gingerbread). Going to the CPU-only Linpack benchmark, the Galaxy S II was ahead with a score of 59.

You can read up on how the T-Mobile G2x was pushed to 1.5GHz over here. Also check out the Trinity kernel thread.

Motorola DROID X2

Today Motorola finally unveiled the DROID X2 for Verizon – a dual-core droid running on Android 2.2 Froyo that leaked more than enough times in the past few months.

The DROID X2 goes on sale online tomorrow, while it will hit the retails stores on 26 May.

Verizon offers the DROID X2 for $200 on two-year contract. You must choose both talk and data plans starting at $40 and $30 respectively. There is also a contract-free option, but you’ll have to pay $600.

Motorola DROID X2 is based on the Tegra2 chipset with a 1GHz dual-core processor and 512 MB RAM. The rest of the specs include a 4.3-inch qHD display with Gorilla Glass, 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and 720p@30fps video recording, all the connectivity you may need, 8GB internal storage plus 8GB pre-installed microSD card.

Motorola DROID X2 runs on Android v2.2 Froyo, but Motorola promises 2.3 Gingerbread later

HTC Puccini 10-inch Android- 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, LTE

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The rumor of a 10” Android tablet has re-emerged, this time with more details and a couple of screenshots too. The tablet, named as the HTC Puccini, sports a WXGA (1280 x 800) screen and runs Honeycomb according to some specs from a leaked ROM.

Aside from the bigger screen, the Puccini tablet should also pack more processing power thanks to the confirmed dual-core Snapdragon inside. The MSM8660 chipset has two 1.2GHz cores and an Adreno 220 graphics chip.

The HTC Puccini should also one up the Flyer in terms of mobile broadband with LTE support (the product model is listed as “HTC PucciniLte”). The listed carrier is Cingular US, but I’m sure other carriers will have it too.

Check out this pair of screenshots – yep, Sense UI is here alright, which has led some to speculate that the Puccini runs Android Gingerbread instead of the tablet-oriented Honeycomb. Still, the ro.build.version.release value of 3.0.1 points to Honeycomb (sorry, no Ice cream sandwich yet).

Also, the $80 stylus for the Flyer should be supported by the HTC Puccini too.

Chrome OS R12

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Chrome OS R12, which should be the version the first “Chromebooks” ship with, has just entered the beta status of its development. The beta release brings security fixes, new features (including the improvements from Chrome browser v12) and bug fixes, including an Angry Birds related improvement which deserves a category of its own.

Here’s what improvements made their way into Chrome OS v12 beta:

The OS sports a new look and a file browser, new Flash player too, along with various optimizations (power, Gtalk), improved GSM/3G support and Verizon activation, Wi-Fi connectivity and an auto-update engine.

There are several bug fixes as well (you can look them over here) and a handful of security fixes.

From the Chrome 12 (the browser) update, Chrome OS 12 also gets hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, Safe Browsing protection against malicious files, launching apps from the Omnibox and a few others.

Taking into account the few weeks needed for beta testing, Chrome OS 12 should be ready just in time for the mid-June launch of the chromebooks. Okay, okay, Google doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to pushing its products beyond the beta stage, but lately they’ve been much more serious about it.

Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II--8 hours and 5 minutes of video playback

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We’ve just completed the first of our dedicated Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II battery tests. We decided to start with the dedicated video playback test and we have to admit, we are pretty pleased with the results.

The new Samsung flagship went through the pretty good 8 hours and 5 minutes of video playback before its battery level dropped to 10%, at which point the video player automatically switched off.

To put this in perspective the original Galaxy S endured 7 hours and 25 minutes, when we put it to a similar test a year ago, so obviously there’s quite a notable improvement.

The 4.3” Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II even nears the Samsung S8500 Wave achievement of 8 hours and 40 minutes, but still neither of those is able to match the category champion – the iPhone 4 – with its whopping result of 9 hours and 40 minutes.

Here’s how we tested in case you want to try this at home – we loop a standard definition Xvid video with a bitrate of 384kbit/s. The screen brightness is set to 50% and the speakerphone volume at 10%. The movie we picked had a moderate amount of dark scenes, so the result will probably vary if you pick a particularly dark or bright one, due to the specifics of the Super AMOLED Plus display.

We’ll be bringing several more Samsung Galaxy S II battery tests over the next few days so if you happen to take any interest in the topic – stay tuned!

MEDIAS WP N-06C water-proof, super slim Android

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Japan’s largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo, just unveiled its new smartphone lineup and as expectedthe MEDIAS WP N-06C made its first public appearance. The watertight super slim Android device measures an unbelievable 7.9mm all over its body, but for the 5 megapixel camera lens, which protrudes to 9.7mm.

The MEDIAS WP N-06C packs a 4” FWVGA touchscreen and offers support for 14Mbps network transfers. Unfortunately, it only works on FOMA networks so taking one back to your home-country is not an option.

Anyway here are the rest of the specs you’ll be missing, unless you consider re-location. There’s the latest flavor of Android meant for smartphone use – Gingerbread, as well as the usual great connectivity package – Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, microSD card slot and mobile TV. The Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon, featuring a 1GHz Scorpion CPU does the math for the MEDIAS WP N-06C.

The smartphone will be available in Champagne Gold, Premium Rose and Amadana Brown color versions.

John’s Phone reminds the past

No, this is not a joke! I humbly present to you the phone with the shortest spec sheet in well over a decade. In a time, when smartphones boast dual-core processors and HD cameras, John’s Phone has ONLY one function – it can make phone calls.

Now on with those specs. The phone has quad-band GSM support so it will work just about anywhere in the world, except for Korea and Japan. It has only one ringtone complete with a vibration function. A small screen on top of the device displays the inbound and outbound numbers in a call. It also shows a rather unique battery indicator. The manufacturers claim talk time of up to 6 hours and a three week standby for the device which is powered by a 1200 mAh battery.

Now, this one is my favorite – the phone has a REAL phone book made from paper and comes with a small pen which you can use to jot down contacts. The specs sheet finishes with a speed dial for 10 numbers and hands-free capability (through a headset).

All this basic functionality is housed in a nice looking 95 gram package. Prices start at €79.95 and you have a choice of 5 colors. The top of the range version is the limited edition gold phone bar which will set you back €99.95.

Interested? You can make a purchase using the source link below. Also, tell us what do you think about this unique phone and its back-to-basics approach in the comments section below.

New Intel's 3D transistors

Processor manufacturers are in this never ending race to produce faster and less power consuming chips for various devices and platforms. Whether it’s RAM or CPUs, we all like things to go quicker and be easier on our pockets.

And don’t worry, this trend will continue going for now. Intel has introduced a new 3D transistor design which will be implemented in the upcoming family of Ivy Bridge processors. As a result of this new 3D design named “Tri-Gate”, Intel will be able to produce smaller and faster chips which are going to be widely implemented from servers and desktop computers to laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

You see, going forward in the semiconductor chip scene has been widely known as Moore’s Law. What this means is that basically every 18 to 24 months the transistors placed on an integrated circuit must inexpensively double. Up until now with the traditional transistors, which make up your ordinary chip, 22nm chips weren’t possible without a major transistor redesign. With the introduction of the new “Tri-Gate” design from Intel, though, as soon as the first quarter of 2012 we are going to witness the 22nm chips kick into action in the first batch of modern devices.

Conventional transistor design

The traditional transistor design consists of just one conducting channel placed on the top of a narrow silicon fin. The Tri-Gate technology allows for additional conducting channels to be formed on all three sides of that fin – one is the traditional top, and two on sides. This allows electrons not just to flow on the one, vertical side of the fin, but on all three.

The new Tri-Gate transistor design

The effects of this are easier to grasp than the technology itself. Performance and power usage are maximized thanks to the extra current that flows when the transistor is on and almost completely no current when it’s off. Also, switching between the the two states is faster, thus power usage is improved.

Compared to the old transistors in the 32nm chips, the new Tri-Gate transistors in the 22nm chips will provide up to 37% boost in performance. Besides the performance increase, the new chips will also consume 50 percent less power.

The new technology is going to give birth to a new line of Atom-based processors and ultimately smartphones and tablets. The result – thinner and lighter form factors without performance compromises.

The only bad thing about the new technology is that it will take some time to get to the market. In order to produce the new 22nm chips, Intel is going to make upgrades to its factories before starting the mass production in the beginning of 2012.

Intel has prepared a short video explaining the nuts and bolts of the new 3D Tri-Gate technology. It’s worth checking out.