Apple will hold its much-anticipated event on March 2, where the tech giant seems poised to unveil a new version of its hugely successful iPad, according to multiple sources. Analysts expect the iPad 2 to be thinner than its predecessor and feature an improved display will be powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.
Now, there are two things that question us :
a: will the iPad 2 deliver on expectations?
b: Will Steve jobs be there to launch it? (since, he is on leave for health issues)
Hindustan Times reports that in a government initiative – a R 120-crore project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), will kick off in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and involve state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and tower infrastructure firm GTL and Indus Towers. Under the project the existing towers will be transformed into solar powered towers.
Of the 400 towers, installed at R30 lakh each, 100 will be of BSNL. The ministry will subsidise about 30 % of the tower costs. Usually these towers require large amounts of electricity and are connected to the National Grid
“But, in the uneven areas where the grid connectivity is erratic, ministry has planned to construct Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) plants to generate DC electricity, which in turn will be stored in the battery to get consume for transmitting signals” Said, minister for new and renewable energy Farooq Abdullah.
The ministry claims that in an estimate the country will save up to 260 crore liters of Diesel annually
Multiplied by 40 = 1,040 Crore Rupees saved annually (approximate)
A little more research by iGyaan.in led to Delta Hybrid Renewable Energy Solutions (RenE), which were announced recently on 31st Jan 2011. Delta announced that their RenE solutions feature a modular power supply concept that can use any combination of solar power, wind turbines, mains power, diesel generators and fuel cells, which may reduce payback time as well as electricity bills for over 50%.
“With RenE, telecom customers can go all green using only renewable energy sources whether it’s in the heart of the city or in the remotest areas of the globe. Compared with utilizing the more expensive traditional energy sources, using renewable energy sources alone or in a hybrid solution may bring down payback time from 7 to 2 years, varying with site designs,” says Krzysztof Puczko, Product Manager, RenE-Hybrid Power Systems.
Delta Hybrid solution includes Solar panels, generator, AC/DC power system, and battery. The product is made out of state of the art facility at Rudrapur which has green building credential too. Best Suitable for Rural or Remote Sites as it offers complete integrated power system which is Simple to install and easy to maintain with added advantage of Remote Control and Monitoring including Data Logging. All in all, RenE is an energy-efficient and OPEX-optimized solution for ensuring lower CO2 emissions.
Here is to a greener India, cheaper communication and hopefully, better performance.
In a rare scenario : Tyson Smith, the man whose hearts are shown below, went through a rare surgery that’s called a heterotopic heart transplant. In the surgery, doctors add another heart to the right side of his chest enabling his original heart to share the load with the new heart and get the work done.
In Smith’s case, they couldn’t replace his heart with the new one, he needed both:
“Even though Mr. Smith was facing death, he could not have a standard heart transplant,” explained Dr. Michael Madani, associate professor of surgery and co-director of the UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center, in the release. “Removing the old heart and replacing it with a new heart would have caused the new heart to fail because resistance to flow in his lungs-called pulmonary hypertension-was so high. But together, the two hearts share the work and get the job done.”
Doctors say it’s an incredibly rare procedure but one worth having around.
CNET is reporting that Apple will introduce a new high-speed connection technology with either their upcoming MacBook Pro or another product altogether. Light Peak : a technology by intel: fits the bill, since Apple has been backing it up since the beginning. With a Macbook refresh visible at a short distance, it seems that the rumor may actually be true.
Luxury car maker Rolls Royce has just announced an electric prototype of its flagship the “Phantom”. Possibly the best luxury car available today. The car dubbed 102EX is still a prototype and the company along with the CEO want people to join in a global debate to see whether or not they should go into production. Primarily if Luxury and an electric motor can co-exist in harmony without denting the ego of the Phantom owner!
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Confirms Electric Test Vehicle Project
Goodwood UK
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars today confirmed the development of 102EX, a one-off, fully electric powered Phantom, to debut at the Geneva Motor Show on 1 March 2011. The car will tour during 2011, serving as a test bed to gather a bank of research data which will be crucial in informing future decisions on alternative drive-trains for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
“We have engineered the world’s first battery electric vehicle for the ultra-luxury segment,” said CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös, speaking from the company’s headquarters in Goodwood. “With this vehicle, we begin an exploration into alternative drive-trains, seeking clarity on which alternative technologies may be suitable to drive Rolls-Royce motor cars of the future.”
Rolls-Royce produces cars that represent the pinnacle in luxurious motoring for the world’s most discerning customers. With 102EX, also known as the Phantom Experimental Electric (EE), it is the company’s intention to carefully test the opinions and reactions to alternative drive-train options of a range of stakeholders including owners, enthusiasts, members of the public and the media.
102EX will serve as a working test bed for a global tour that takes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. Through test drives, owners will be given the opportunity to experience an alternative drive-train technology and to feedback their experiences, thoughts and concerns directly to Rolls-Royce.
While there are no plans to develop a production version, as one of the company’s EX models it will serve to begin a dialogue with existing owners and stakeholders, posing as well as answering questions of its audience.
These include the car’s ability to deliver an acceptable range between re-charges and to operate in extreme weather conditions. But also to benchmark reliability and quality against customer expectations of the world’s pinnacle automotive brand.
“I must be convinced that any alternative drive-train we choose for the future delivers an authentic Rolls-Royce experience,” added Müller-Ötvös. “It must be a technology that is right for our customers, our brand and which sets us on a sound footing for a sustainable future.”
In preparation for the Geneva debut, Rolls-Royce will launch the website www.electricluxury.com this week, a portal to fuel a wider global debate seeking views on the question of electric luxury from media, VIPs and stakeholders. The site will also deliver regular updates of the car’s progress while on tour.
Full technical specifications for 102EX, as well as images and b-roll will be published at 00:01 GMT on 1 March 2011.
There is enough controversy and enough chatter, about the new alliance which is all set to change the cellphone giant’s face in front of the world. But, as a shocker : Stephen Elop in a conversation with a Finnish journalist on Friday said he was “convinced” of the fact that a “very low price point could be reached, very quickly”.
In Nokia’s golden years, the company was known for dropping old technology for new, high price for low, and innovation over boredom. If Nokia wants all that back they need to go retro and follow the same philosophy.
The upcoming Blackberry Monaco follows where the Storm 2 left out, But, this one is slated for Verizon. That means the version displayed on video is a CDMA phone, something that is not wanted in India. Needless to say a fully optimized GSM version will be available, but looking at the performance of the device in the leak video below, makes us wonder if we really even want a GSM version. Hopefully, RIM can smoothen the OS before the launch.
So everyone thinks that the new upcoming playbook from Blackberry’s stable is more official, more corporate and more business oriented than anything that matches its name. Well RIM is here with a video hat proves everyone (yeah thats you) wrong. Check it out and see how RIM IS utilizing the recently acquired The Astonishing Tribe, with two major apps now and more to come later.
This year is the year of the gadgets and the Chinese should add another type to their calendar! While in Korea competition is heating up, where in the red corner heavyweight Samsung plans to sell 10 million of the eye hurting, brain killing 3D hdtvs this year, Lightweight LG at the blue corner will only aim to sell 5 Mill.
LG products are often considered cheap and less reliable, in India at-least, they have a shorter lifespan, But, come-on LG a low target may = lower sales. We know you want to be better! So ramp up the quality and set the bar high!
Android, Android and more Android! Are you already sick of it? We sure are not!
The latest flagship Android smartphone from Dell’s stable is less of a shocker. Check out our Review
The Build Quality
For the Dell Venue , we have two independent views when it comes to build. The front of the device is this shiny, rugged and curved gorilla glass. The chrome trim and good tactile buttons make it an added bonus. But, the poorly designed back cover and cheap plastic utilization suddenly turns our view around.
The overall construction of the device is pretty solid and delivers where most leave off squeaking and rattling. The Dell Venue seems really bulky in the hand and not as refined as the Desire HD when you hold it in your hand.
Hardware Specs
The Dell Venue like others in this price range comes with a whole set of Top notch hardware, But in this age of technology, what was top notch yesterday is a poor mans tale today.
8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash(Bah!)
4.1 inches, 480 x 800 pixels, AMOLED, 16M Colors capacitive touchcreen.
(Now this is wow! resolution still a tad low if you ask us)
Android 2.2 (why not 2.3, why, why ?)
Those are the only specs worth talking about the rest comes down to the usual WiFi, BLuetooth, MicroUSB, MicroSd- upto 32Gb.
Overall hardware is good and the performance of the device is also good. But, the Quadrant Score shows a whole new story, averaging from 600-700 on the scorecard. The result is simply pathetic!
Multimedia and Camera
Now this is where the Dell Venue raked up on the Points. The Amoled screen is simply superb! The Blacks are so deep that you don’t see the difference between the screen and the surrounding bezel.
The video performance is extraordinary thanks to the display, and possibly the curved glass front. The display makes video on this almost lifelike –
Now, if only we could stretch the display (rolls eyes)
The Loudspeaker is best in class period, Dell has somehow managed to stuff their Android lineup with superior quality speakers. Surprisingly, no one seems to talk about them, But, how could they not? These Phones have possible the best in device speaker we have heard ever. The bass is so good it makes you want to play he song over and over again. The speaker delivers quality sound with high volume, great bass and mid, trebles can be tweaked.
Camera on the Dell Venue is an 8 Megapixel snapper which has autofocus, touch to focus, macro mode and the works when it comes to effects/ brightness settings and timer etc. Images look not so great on the device but great on a computer screen. This may be due to a mis-calibration between the Amoled screen (which displays colors differently) and the Camera, who knows? This however didnt bother us much, and we were happy as long as the images were the way they should be.
Video on the device is also good and smooth – 720p HD video with a whole flurry of effects and settings makes the video mode a lot of fun to use. The 1Ghz chip allows for fast processing and you can download several apps from the marketplace and do your editing right on the device.
Phone and Messaging
We always stress that a smart phone should at first be a smart – PHONE. The Dell venue was a bit of a let down in performing that, we got frequent signal drops and connection failures. It even failed to get a proper signal at times. The “no service” signal bothered us for quite some time, a couple of reboots and it was gone.
3G Connectivity was (the best word for it ) a “Bi$%h” we couldn’t get the damn thing to connect to 3G.
Messaging on the other hand was a breeze the onboard keyboard comes with swype and a bunch of other input options, The reponsiveness of the touchscreen along with clear letters makes typing fairly simple and quick. This makes emailing and sms on the Dell Venue a fun exercise.
Gaming and Internet
We never talk about gaming in our reviews, But, this time we just had to make an exception. The Screen (have we mentioned before how much we love it) makes gaming so much fun with the deep colors, it almost makes you never want to stop, become game playing zombies tilting the device and driving your car, shooting the other zombies or blowing up those crazy “egg stealin” Pigs.
Uhhhhh. Brains!!!!
Internet browsing is a breeze, kinetic scrolling, accelerometer, pinch to zoom and slide to scroll work brilliantly without showing any form of LAG. Did we mention the greatness of the Amoled display? makes browsing and reading on websites atleast 4x better. The Venue comes preloaded with flash for the browser so seamless internet for all the folks.
Battery Life
The Venue had a phenomenal battery life in our tests.
Phone Calls : 5.5 hours
Web browsing 8 – 9 hours
We couldn’t test web browsing over 3G because well the damn device wouldn’t get a connection. piff!
Video Review
Conclusion
A strong device from Dell, in terms of build and hardware capability, Beautiful screen, great battery life.
But it all boils down to poor connectivity and phone call ability and that has let us down a lot. Unless phone calls is not your main criteria for buying a “Phone”,
Qualcomm has introduced an open source software system that doesn’t actually have with Qualcomm hardware, if implemented in a particular app, it can enable peer-to-peer sharing with others similar devices et apps based on location.
The system works on interlinkage which is based on a webkit browser integration, that allows devices to be seamlessly to be connected via either bluetooth, WiFi, Infrared, Wi-Fi Direct and fast track naming a bunch of connections, which lets connections happen from 20 ft upto several kilometers. So basically we will rock games between communities without paying for cloud integration. Next Level Multiplayer!
The newest vacum cleaner from Samsung termed the “intruder” is super quiet at just 50db of noise level, Priced in Korea for about 750,000 Won (32,,000 Inr). The company plans to launch it worldwide by August 2011.
Huawei seems to have an active year this time around, apart from a flurry of Android devices the company is also planning to release several tablets into the market. Pictured here is the Huawei S7 Pro, (not the S7 Slim)
Specs include
1.2GHz dual-core processor
Android 2.3
HSPA+
WiFi 802.11bgn
Front and Rear cameras.
Its a pity that although Hardware is supported and software available, manufacturers don’t ship devices with the latest OS (read : Honeycomb). Expect this device in India later this year, no official price on the device yet. But, we’re guessing around the 20k price bracket. Check out some more pictures below.
HTC has just announced 3 new phones at the MWC right after the Flyer Tablet.
The first is the Incredible S, With:
1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 b
768MB of RAM
720p HD video
8 megapixel camera
Dual-LED flash and autofocus
1.3 megapixel front-facing camera
1450mAh battery
Resolution is 800 x 480.
Not too far Behind is the Desire S with
3.7-inch
HTC Desire inside a new aluminum unibody shell
5 megapixel Camera
MSM8255 chipset
front-facing camera (1.3MP)
768MB of RAM
1450mAh battery
Gingerbread (2.4)
And Finally the all new Wildfire S which is essentially the original Wildfire but with HVGA resolution and Android 2.3 Gingerbread preloaded.
All three devices to be available in the next quarter
Read the Full Press Release
HTC LAUNCHES THREE NEW SMARTPHONES WITH HTC SENSE™
HTC Desire S, HTC Wildfire S™ and HTC Incredible S™ deliver premium style, power and speed
BARCELONA, SPAIN – Mobile World Congress – February 15, 2011 – HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile innovation and design, today unveiled three new versions of its most popular and advanced smartphones – HTC Desire S, HTC Wildfire S and HTC Incredible S. The new smartphones continue HTC’s commitment to expanding the market for advanced smartphones while providing distinct choices in design, power and value. Each phone also includes HTC Sense, HTC’s unique customer-focused user experience that puts people at the center by making phones work in a more simple and natural way.
“HTC developed the HTC Sense experience to bring cutting-edge innovation to our customers in simple and natural ways that just make sense – this is what HTC Desire S, HTC Wildfire S and HTC Incredible S represent best,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “These new phones offer an exhilarating mix of style, innovation and features that extend people’s mobile experience in ways that feel personal and completely original.”
HTC Desire S
As a successor to the popular and award-winning HTC Desire, the new HTC Desire S blends stunning design with power and speed. Inspired by the HTC Legend™ smartphone’s aluminium design, the HTC Desire S is sculpted out of a single block of aluminum making it feel solid and natural in your hand. With Qualcomm’s new 1GHz Snapdragon™ MSM8255 processor, the HTC Desire S offers snappy performance and power. It offers dual front and back cameras, High-Definition video recording and the 3.7-inch WVGA display presents multimedia content brilliantly.
HTC Wildfire S
Building on the popularity of the HTC Wildfire™ smartphone, the HTC Wildfire S smartphone is an affordable, compact and playful device that packs a powerful smartphone experience. It enables people to maintain and build connections and friendships through popular sites like Facebook®, as well as through voice and text messaging. You can instantly tag your friends in photos before posting them on Facebook, or share your latest discoveries from the Android™ Market at the touch of a button.
HTC Wildfire S is one of HTC’s smallest phones ever – measuring just 10.13cm long and 5.94cm wide – and boasts a distinctive 3.2 inch, HVGA display.
Celebrate your individuality and choose from a wide variety of colors including black, purple and white. The phone’s home screen is fully customizable with your favorite apps, widgets and content, while a 5-megapixel color camera with auto focus, expandable microSD™ memory and support for a variety of audio and video formats make a great all-around multimedia device that slips easily into any pocket.
HTC Incredible S
The alluring HTC Incredible S smartphone combines cutting-edge design with a premium mobile experience for those who dare to be different. Showing what can be achieved when engineers and designers work together to raise the bar for mobile phone design, the HTC Incredible S smartphone features a stunning, contoured body that highlights the internal hardware components of the device. Capturing and viewing video in crystal clear High-Definition has never been so easy and a bright 4-inch WVGA Super LCD display and stereo surround sound bring a vibrant cinematic experience to the palm of your hand.
HTC Incredible S also takes high quality pictures with its 8-megapixel camera with dual flash, and it easily enables videos, photos and music to be shared from the handset direct to a TV using DLNA® technology. Thanks to the HTC Incredible S’s front facing camera and video call functionality, users will constantly be able to chat with their friends face-to-face.
Availability
The HTC Desire S, HTC Wildfire S and HTC Incredible S smartphones, will be broadly available to customers across major European and Asian markets during Q2 2011.
