Tech Update [Ep 1]

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Tech Update [Ep 1]

Starting from this week will will be changing the phone tech update to tech update. The tech update is a weekly update about everything tech. We will also do some recaps of the week's hottest topics.

This week we started off with Apple and Samsung in court and the state that the court is now, this case does not look like it is going to end anytime soon. This week we saw manufacturers talking about Q2 earnings and comScore results are out as well as a global smartphone market share analysis was done by canalys. Then in the middle of the week a report showed that the adoption rate for ICS has doubled in Q2. Then late this week the GTX 660 Ti leaked with a launch date of August 14.

This week Apple patents a smart cover which has a secondary camera. This patent is essentially described as a smaller display on the smart cover itself. This is something like the accessory the surface tablet has but the only difference is this has a secondary display and the surface tablet cover has a keyboard and a trackpad. there are many potential uses for this extra display, one of them are the function to control music. There could also be a possibility for it to be a virtual keyboard.

Yesterday we reported that Samsung will be announcing the next gen Galaxy Note in their IFA event. Which leaves the Galaxy Note 10.1 out of it. Then shortly after the Galaxy Note 10.1 was up for pre-order at Negri Electronics and will ship the same day. This tablet is not on the cheap side, it is priced a $750 which is more expensive than average android tablets. But with that price you will be getting a 1.4GHz Quad Core processor, 2GB of RAM, HSPA, and a 10.1" display with a WXGA resolution. And the star of the show is the S Pen that comes with the tablet and has a dedicated slot for it. This tablet can do extraordinary things which other tablets can do with its S Pen. For the hefty price this tablet might not catch the eyes of consumers. The front bezel design of this tablet is pretty similar to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

Nvidia is expected to announce the remaining cards in the 600 series in the August-September time frame. They already unveiled the their high end card the GTX 680, GTX 670 and GTX 690 and their basic card the GT640. So whats left is their midrange and entry level cards which are the GTX 660 and GTX 650, these two cards are aimed at people looking for price per dollar. The GTX 550 and GTX 560 series has already been discontinued and will be replaced with 600 series cards in the coming weeks. When a product discontinuation notice for a particular product is issued, distributors are set a last day for placing orders for it, after fulfilling the last orders, the product's status is changed to End of Life (EOL) The GTX 560 Ti replacement which is the GTX 660 Ti will be launching on August 14. This is also a good thing because when the new cards launch Nvidia will have a healthy amount of it.

Intel launched their ivy Bridge core i processors on April and ever since then gamers and enthusiasts have been waiting for an ivy Bridge-E processor and now it seems like we have a time frame for when it will be released. Apparently it will only come in Q3 2013 which is about one year from now. These ivy Bridge-E processors will be compatible with the X79 chipset and the LGA 2011. Furthermore, ivy Bridge-E processors will bring PCI-E 3.0 support to X79 motherboard. It is still not clear whether intel plans to launch a new chipset for the ivy Bridge-E processors or stick to the X79 like what they did on the X58 platform which supports Bloomfield and Westmere Core i7's. That's not all that was leaked in the roadmap, in there it is also pointed that hashwell processors will launch on Q2 2013, alongside with it intel will also introduce the new socket which is the LGA1150.

Metro is pretty much a very normal word we hear. Microsoft has been using the name for their UI metro ever since it was debuted on the Zune HD in 2009. Metro has been a key point for Microsoft in these past years as it is on most of their softwares including Windows Phone, Office and Windows 8. Microsoft has stopped using the metro name for their UI which is effective immediately and they also ask developers to stop using the metro name in their apps. There is no official reason why Microsoft made the decision but it is rumored that the sudden changes is due to legal issues with a german company over the name metro. One thing we are sure is the UI is not going anywhere. According to The Verge, Microsoft has sent an internal memo to its employees informing them about the change and mentioned that it was brought up due to "discussions with an important European partner". So it seems like Microsoft has to find a new name to replace its popular name for their UI. So now they will be referring metro a 'Windows 8 Style UI'