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Alcatel Onetouch 990 coming to O2 this August, wants to be held (even just once)
When you previously met the Alcatel Onetouch 990 at MWC, it frankly wasn't behaving very well. Still, we were mildly pleased to see a phone aimed squarely at the prepaid market that featured a 3.5-inch screen and a 5 megapixel camera with flash. Apparently O2 agreed, because it's bringing the 600MHz handset to market in August for £99. This value menu option is expected to ship with vanilla Froyo, but the carrier promises to serve up helpings of plain Gingerbread during Q4. Meanwhile, Electric Pig got its hands on a pre-production unit, and their early impression seems positive. Apparently the poor load times and unresponsive interface that we experienced are resolved -- it's said the phone is now quite zippy. So, how's this OT-990 striking you as a worthy adversary to the £129 Samsung Galaxy Mini? Yea? Nay? Meh?
Alcatel Onetouch lineup hands-on
Alcatel's on hand at MWC this year with a good pile of sets so we took a few minutes to checkout the Android offerings and a lower-end feature phone. The Onetouch 908 (dark gray set in gallery below) brings Android 2.2 to the world in a very inexpensive package with quad-band GSM, 3G in the Euro range, a 2 megapixel camera and we were told could move to Android 2.3. Also on hand was the Onetouch 890 loaded with Android 2.1, a 2 megapixel camera, and lowly quad-band EDGE -- positioned for a very entry level market, of course. Alcatel also demoed the flagship Onetouch 990 (pictured above) device, featuring Android 2.2, a 5 megapixel shooter with autofocus, WiFi, 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, and everything else you'd expect in a vanilla Android set. Unfortunately, the device we used had some severe issues with load times, starting apps, and generally moving about through the UI. It felt a bit like something was hanging on to everything we tried to do and slowing the whole device down. Last set we peeked at was the Onetouch (beginning to notice the theme here?) 903, a small dual-band QWERTY feature phone with a 2 megapixel cam, Alcatel's own UI, and -- while likely targeted at the pay as you go market -- had a really great look and feel and a top notch keyboard. These sets should be shipping between March and May of this year. %Gallery-116564%
Dell expands business lineup with new Latitudes, OptiPlex desktops, and Precision workstations (update: eyes-on)
Lest we forget, Dell is a major enterprise player, and today's truckload of new hardware announcements should further solidify that notion in your brain matter. There are 24 new "business computing solutions" in all, but to paint a broader picture... lots of laptops and desktops. On the mobile front, the Latitude E5000 series (E5420 and E5520 for the budget-conscious professional, start at $859) and "business rugged" E6000 series (E6220, E6320, E6420, and E6520 ATG) boast the Intel's 2nd generation Core ships, backlit keyboard, and "Latitude commonality" across 26 models. There's also talk of the 12.1-inch Latitude XT3 convertible tablet, but details are sparse beyond that. Mobility not a concern? New OptiPlex desktops (990, 790, and 390; starts at $650) have the Intel vPro processor and small footprints. The Precision T1600 workstation, which has 2nd-generation Intel Core / Xeon processors and AMD / NVIDIA graphics, starts at $840. Interests piqued? We know we're glossing over a lot of the more business-y details, so if you're inclined to find out more, press release after the break. Update: We got our eyes on those mean business machines at a San Francisco event, and found that the Precision workstation replacement laptops pull a neat trick -- they've got dual-digitizer multitouch screens for both pen and finger input. That should help to make up for the fact that they look (and weigh) like bricks. See all the exposed ports in our gallery below! %Gallery-115992% %Gallery-115960%
