roadmap
Latest
ASUS' Jerry Shen pledges 3D tablet, MeeGo and Android netbooks, plus a 2012 Windows Phone
ASUS (A-seuss) CEO Jerry Shen is rarely a man without a good quote or two for journalists and this year's CeBIT has been no exception. Sitting down for a chat with some Russian scribes, Shen outlined ASUS' general product roadmap, which includes a 3D tablet (the iPad 2-threatening secret weapon, perhaps?), Atom-based netbooks for both MeeGo and Android platforms, and a Windows Phone device that should be with us next year. An aside from his PR aide Mae Wang also states that ASUS aims to be second in the tablet market by 2012, with a giant five to eight percent market share. We're sure the Apple board are all shaking in their hemp sandals right now. Anyhow, hit up the source for the full story.
Windows Phone 7 coming to Verizon in March, starting with HTC 7 Trophy?
With Sprint starting up its Windows Phone 7 adventure on March 20th with the HTC Arrive, Verizon is now said to be matching its CDMA competitor with its own offering, the HTC 7 Trophy. We already knew this particular handset would be coming to this particular network in "early 2011," but now WinRumors has narrowed that down to a launch at some point in late March. Verizon's announcement is expected as early as February 28th, this coming Monday, and we're hearing the NoDo update -- the one with copy and paste -- should be preloaded on the device from the start. Should this solid-sounding rumor bear out as foretold, Microsoft should finally be on all US carriers by the start of April. [Thanks, Mike]
Windows 8 beta for tablets at September PDC?
You don't need us to tell you what you already know in your gut to be true: Redmond is working hard on its tablet strategy. How embarrassing is it for Microsoft, the company that pioneered tablets and the 7-inch UMPC, to be completely absent from the conversation in 2010 and 2011? That could change in September. Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley recently shared the slide above which she believes to be 99.99 percent genuine. The timeline shows the major milestone dates for a Windows 8 (aka, "Windows Next") release -- an OS that M. JoFo believes to be focused on tablets (aka, "Lap PCs" in Microsoft parlance) with its purpose-built touch-centric design. According to the slide, we're looking at an M2 milestone this month followed by M3 in July or August. Foley says that would put Microsoft on track for a Windows 8 beta release right around Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) event in September followed by a second beta in 2012 before being released to manufacturing around the summer of 2012 -- just like we heard early last year and just in time for Dell's Hancock tablet. There are still many open questions including Microsoft's ARM vs. Intel priorities and how the company plans to scale across the enterprise and the "workhorse PC" and "Family Hub PC" in the home. Hit the ZDNet link below for a deeper read or better yet, head on over to TechRepublic where Mary Jo Foley put together an excellent webcast outlining Microsoft's tablet strategy in much more detail.
Dell's 2011 smartphone and tablet lineup leaked: Android Ice Cream, WP7 sliders, and a slate running Windows 8
Wrigley, Hancock, Millennium, Gallo, Sterling, Rosemount, Silver Oak, Peju and Opus One. What are we rattling off? Oh, just the list of codenames from one of the largest leaks we've ever seen out of Dell. WPCentral and Android Central got their hands on alleged smartphone and tablet roadmaps for the entire year, detailing the company's plans for devices running operating systems that have yet to be formally announced, including Android Ice Cream (yes, Ice Cream!) and Windows 8 as well as the tablet-friendly Honeycomb. Here's the full rundown. Smartphones: Things look pretty boring (and by boring, we mean beautifully curvy) until approximately mid-April of this year, when the Venue Pro gets some "additional features and enhancements" which we're pretty sure we can name. Then, Q3 brings the Wrigley, what looks like a vertical QWERTY slider identifying itself as "Windows Phone 7 Next Gen," and sporting a 1GHz CPU, 4-inch 800 x 480 screen, and a 8 megapixel camera with 720p video recording. Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as we know. By September, things should get very interesting as Android Ice Cream will apparently be out, and Dell's Hancock will scoop it onto a 4-inch qHD screen with dual cameras, dual-core processing and 1080p recording. Starting Q4, would-be Hancock buyers will have a dual-core multimedia slate alternative, as the Millennium drops the keyboard for a larger 4.3-inch screen and DLNA support (though the front-facing camera is limited to VGA resolution.) Tablets: Dell's Streak 10 won't keep us waiting for long: come April, the Gallo will reportedly be chomping away at some tasty Honeycomb. But that's not all -- Dell lists a handwriting update for the Gallo in October or thereabouts. There's also a Streak 7 update scheduled for July -- we imagine that's the point when Dell believes it can shoehorn Android 3.0 onto its older brother. Meanwhile, Dell's 10-inch Windows 7 slate, internally known as Rosemount, is slated for June, with a 1366 x 768 resolution that should allow for native playback of 720p video. We can't tell you what the Sterling is, but it's likely a mid-sized one, as it's slated to take over the Streak 7's duties in or about October with Android Honeycomb on board. Finally, come CES 2012 in January, we now expect Dell to drop three new tablets at once: the Opus One and Silver Oak running Android Honeycomb, and the Peju with Windows 8. (The Streak 10 / Gallo will apparently soldier on.) Numbers on the left of the charge suggest that the Opus will be small, the Silver Oak mid-sized, and the Peju large. As noted at the head of the slide, all details here are subject to change, but we're sure as heck a lot more confident that Dell plans to do something with all those tacky mockups. One more chart after the break!
Avatar Creations lays out plans for Perpetuum's future
While there are some still players steaming about the recent insurance fraud situation in Perpetuum, many others are excited about the plans that Avatar Creations has revealed in its most recent dev blog. After receiving player feedback indicating that the company wasn't doing as good a job of communicating its plans for the game as many players would like, the team decided to lay out its development goals well into the latter half of this year in a new dev blog -- and those goals look pretty awesome! Starting off, players will be glad to hear that the upcoming PvE content that the devs were hinting at isn't just more missions and mob grinding. Instead, players are going to be treated to a new system: artifact scanning and discovery. By scanning down hidden spots, players can net basic goodies like salvage containers all the way up to special alien intel revealing special missions or new Mk2 robots. What's better, the devs intend to add more things into the artifacting system as things develop, offering a plethora of possibilities for everyone from the solo carebears to the largest groups. Among the other plans are a new energy-credit system (which will give players the chance to pick up even more new modules and components), changes to the Assignments currently offered in-game, help for corporations seeking to recruit new players, area-of-effect explosions for your PvP fiends, new lands, terraforming, and much more. So if you've been curious about the plans for this fascinating indie sci-fi sandbox, then head over to the Perpetuum site and check out all the details in this wide-ranging devblog.
NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video)
So it turns out that NVIDIA roadmap we saw last month was as true and pure as driven snow. The barely conceivable quad-core Tegra chip that it listed has now been made official by none other than NVIDIA itself, with the company also informing us that the new silicon is already sampling out to prospective clients. Known as Kal-El internally, this will most likely turn into NVIDIA's Tegra 3 as and when it's ready to enter the consumer market. Tonight NVIDIA whetted our appetite for what's to come with a demo that can most fittingly be described as an exhibition of unadulterated computational muscle. A 2560 x 1440 stream was being decoded on a developmental device, scaled down to that slate's native 1366 x 768 resolution, and additionally displayed on a connected 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 monitor. That entire voluminous workload was being handled in real time by Kal-El and we saw no signs of it struggling. By NVIDIA's own estimation, the quad-core newbie provides roughly double the processing power of Tegra 2 and triple the graphics-crunching prowess. In the second demonstration of the evening, we saw an instance of Great Battles Medieval -- ran at 720p with 650 enemy soldiers on the field -- on both a Tegra 2 and a Kal-El platform, which showed the baby superhero handily dusting its still very new brethren. This was in large part down to the full dozen GPU cores contained within Kal-El, though before you freak out about battery-draining insanity, NVIDIA claims things are much, much more efficient as well -- up to 12 hours of HD video playback are promised under the right circumstances. It's a big fat wedge of awesome boasts we've heard from the GeForce maker today, however the company's given us a schedule to hold it to as well. The "August timeframe" is when the quad-core Kal-El is expected to land in tablets, while smartphones will have to wait until the holiday season to benefit from what's likely to be a slightly downgraded variant. Skip past the break to eye the future Tegra roadmap for the next few years plus video of the wildly impressive demos we were witness to. %Gallery-116789%
Samsung Galaxy S II and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab II confirmed for MWC, 4-inch 3D display, LTE-based cloud gaming coming later
Alright, we've just laid eyes on some internal Samsung documents and can bring you the official names and specs of the successors to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab. Firstly, the Galaxy S II will tout a 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 Super AMOLED Plus display, a 1GHz dual-core Orion / Exynos processor, NFC, Bluetooth 3.0, and 24Mbps HSPA+ connectivity. All those stats were leaked earlier this morning, along with the image above, and we've once again seen the 8.49mm thickness for this device, although we now believe it is the measurement at its thinnest point -- it's likely that the S II will fatten up to 9.9mm, presumably to accommodate the camera module, one of the last remaining parts of smartphone construction that require extra girth (NFC being another). As to the Galaxy Tab II, it is indeed the 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet we've been hearing so much about, with the added bonus of it being a Google Experience Device. That should mean no Samsung-derived skin customizations atop the stock Android 3.0 UI -- exactly what we expect to see from the Motorola Xoom. Also matching the Xoom are the resolution, at 1280 x 800, and CPU speed, at 1GHz, though we couldn't determine whether the Tab II will be a dual- or single-core tablet. Our money's on seeing the Exynos 4210 appear in both new Galaxy devices, but we'll have to wait until Samsung's presser tomorrow to find out for sure. One more note of import on specs: we saw a 16GB / 32GB / 64GB storage listing, but couldn't be sure what product it referred to -- wouldn't it be lovely if the Galaxy S II was the first smartphone to step past the 60GB barrier? Finally, looking toward the future, Samsung is apparently working on a 4-inch WVGA display with 3D capabilities -- presumably autostereoscopic like LG's Optimus 3D -- and an intriguing "Motion UI" control scheme. The latter will allow you to pan inside Google Maps and StreetView just by the movement of your phone, as well as zoom in and out of pages by tilting the handset up and down (a gyroscope will be required for both functions). Samsung also has big plans for LTE, with a focus on pumping out whatever you receive over the 4G connection to a nearby HDTV using dual display technology. The two applications we caught sight of were personal broadcasting, where your Sammy handset would act as an extremely sophisticated internet TV receiver, and cloud-based gaming. Here's hoping we learn more about these future ventures tomorrow.
webOS is coming to PCs later this year
HP's decided to end its fireworks-rich presentation on a gorgeous bombshell: webOS is coming to PCs! The company says it's thinking beyond today and intends to take webOS to "other connected devices, including printers, and some form factors you haven't seen before." Aside from the groundbreaking discovery that our next LaserJet might run the same code as the dashing new TouchPad, there are few specifics to be learned, but HP promises to share further details as the year goes on.
Editorial: Engadget on Nokia's Friday announcement
No matter how you measure it -- be it in terms of smartphone market share, consumer mindshare, review scores, or profits -- Nokia is in trouble. Even its CEO seems to think so. As such, everyone from professional analysts to the humble blogger with a WordPress account has chimed in with advice for Nokia's new chief, Stephen Elop, a Canadian-born ex-Microsoftie who will present his plan to return the proud Finnish company to supreme financial dominance at Friday's annual Capital Market Day shindig. And while Nokia might not have any significant presence in the US market, that doesn't mean that your Engadget editors don't have a few strong opinions to share ahead of Friday's big announcements. Click through the break for the full read and then toss in your own two cents in the comments below. With any luck, we'll make enough money to build, catalyze and/or join a competitive ecosystem all our own.
The Road to Mordor: Creating your roadmap
I wish to preface this week's column by saying that I'm not advocating just one way to play a game. I think it's equally valid to explore at your own pace, team up as a duo, maximize TP revenue, or set whatever goals you like and pursue them. But after leveling one character to the cap and playing several others, I've begun to develop a roadmap, if you will, that helps guide my progress somewhat efficiently. It's this roadmap that I want to share with you today. The thing is, for all I love about Lord of the Rings Online, the game is definitely littered with timesinks of epic proportions. It already takes a long, long time to get your character up to 65 and through the two expansions, and that's only going to increase as the game grows. There are a lot of distractions and unnecessary grinds (such as virtues you will never use) that can bog you down too long and perhaps dishearten you. So when I created a Minstrel in LotRO a little while back, I decided to map out his progress from level 1 through 65 by creating a broad framework -- an outline, really -- that serves to keep me on track so I don't have to backtrack as much later on to get these goals done. I have a very "two birds with one stone" mentality, so if I'm doing one task in a zone, I'd rather be accomplishing two or three at the same time. So for example, if I'm grinding out a deed, I'd rather do it at level at which I'm getting XP than 20 levels later when I'm not (although the latter has its merits for rapid deed completion). Hit the jump and I'll give you the rundown of how to eliminate some of the confusion and speed bumps of leveling.
LG working on an NFC payment system for Europe, planning launch in 2012
All these upcoming NFC-equipped smartphones wouldn't be worth much without places to use them, so it's good to hear LG's announcement this week that it's working on providing the infrastructure for contactless payments. The Korean company has set its sights on Europe, where it's conducting beta testing of point-of-sale technology that will facilitate paying for goods and services by swiping your phone near an NFC sensor. We're not told whether that phone would necessarily have to be built by LG, though we imagine the company would be well served by including as many devices as possible and just taking its slice of the profits. Whatever LG does, it's looking increasingly safe to assume that having NFC on your phone will be a legitimate asset in the coming months (and not just if you live in Japan).
NVIDIA Tegra 3, equipped with 1.5GHz quad-core madness, teased by a familiar slide
How aggressive can NVIDIA get? That's the question puzzling our brainboxes right now as we gaze upon the complete version of the slide that let us know about a potential Tegra 2 3D chip over the weekend. It's not every day you hear of a 1.5GHz quad-core mobile SOC, but our discovery of corroborating evidence for the T25 module sitting alongside it makes us more willing to credit the possibility of a Blu-ray-crunching, 13,800 MIPS-capable, multicore Cortex-A9 Tegra 3. Moreover, the roadmap of production samples in Q4 of 2010 fits perfectly with NVIDIA's claim that Tegra 3 was "almost done" in September of that year. The ULP designation on this listing stands for Ultra Low Power in NVIDIA parlance, which would indicate an aggressively tuned power management system -- the only way we can envision a quad-core anything operating within a tablet. Fall 2011 is when we should know for sure.
HTC profits leaping and bounding up, Peter Chou promises tablet and production expansion
HTC's fourth quarter of 2010 has gone exactly the same way as the first three: the company reports a 160 percent rise in profits (to $500 million) year-on-year and a 31 percent increase relative to Q3 2010. Total revenue for the final three months of last year rounded the $3.5 billion mark, having been a trifling $1.4 billion the year before. Company CEO Peter Chou sees no end to this dramatic growth, forecasting it'll remain in double digits through 2011, and he plans to match up to it by doubling monthly production capacity at HTC's Shanghai plant to two million handsets. If necessary, he says he'll even outsource manufacturing. Even more intriguing, however, is Chou's admission that HTC is strategizing an entry into the tablet realm: "It's a new market with many competitors, and we don't want to rush into it." Hardly a surprise, but good to have it from the horse's mouth.
HTC leaks suggest big, small, buttonless, and Brew MP-based phones are on the way
All things considered, HTC doesn't do the best job of protecting its roadmap; indeed, the slides that leaked a little over a year ago ended up doing a fabulous job of showing us what was in the pipe for 2010, so we wouldn't doubt the massive spread that PocketNow published today. Starting at the top, we've got a device that looks like a trackpad-less evolution of the original Desire (pictured above), another that looks like an Aria-sized Nexus One in black (complete with old-school trackball), and an additional version of a buttonless phone that's got generic HTC branding in place of the Verizon logo in a picture unearthed by Phandroid a few days ago (pictured after the break). That's not all, though: there also seems to be a lower-end Android device with physical Send / End buttons and an optical trackpad underneath a smallish display accompanied by the usual four capacitive buttons. A device with a China Telecom logo on it is also in the mix, looking like a big-screened model that'll probably be ready to do battle with that 1.2GHz Droid X by a different name that just launched over there. Finally, there's a small, entry-level model that might succeed the Smart as HTC's Brew MP-powered flagbearer, though Android is obviously the thrust here. Specs and names are still a mystery across the board at this point, but as PocketNow says, we wouldn't be surprised to get details at MWC next month.
HTC Flyer tablet tipped for US landing in March, to be followed by two more slates in June
Given current trends, it's reasonable to believe that the foremost question regarding an HTC tablet is no longer if the Taiwanese company will produce one, but when. So, who could we possibly turn to for help but those ever-loquacious upstream component manufacturers that DigiTimes knows and loves so well? Their latest info points to an Android tablet dubbed the Flyer arriving in the US in March (just early enough to potentially beat the Xoom and PlayBook to market), which will roll out across the world in the second quarter of 2011 and be joined by two more slate devices (Scribe?) in June. Further details are a little murky, including the dubious suggestion that the Flyer will come with Android 2.3 on board and be upgradeable to Honeycomb (3.0), but we're inclined to consider the overall roadmap credible. In spite of its Thunderbolt launch at CES, HTC was relatively quiet in the big January event, so we suspect it'll bring the big(ger than a smartphone) guns to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.
HP's first webOS tablet may start shipping in March, fulfill longstanding promise
Way back in August of last year, when temperatures were above zero and Honeycomb was still a great unknown, HP promised us the first webOS tablet will come "in early 2011." Just yesterday, however, our noteworthy exposure of the vanguard members of the webOS tablet family led us to believe that at least one of them, the Opal, would take until September to arrive. That may still be the case, but DigiTimes is bringing us back around to HP's original pledge, with word that Inventec has received instructions from HP to start producing and shipping a webOS slate (most probably the Topaz) in March. As usual, this comes from the (in)famous insider sources that tend to miss as often as they hit, but it does make sense for HP to follow up its February event with a relatively rapid product rollout.
Acer building Sandy Bridge tablets for Android, will use them to 'phase out' netbooks
You'd be forgiven for expecting that the dual-core Tegra 2 that swept all before it at CES would be the king of tablet processors for a good while, but Acer is already plotting ways to overthrow it. Admittedly, Acer is kind of cheating by jumping into x86 land and snatching some unspecified Intel Sandy Bridge silicon, but are you really going to complain about getting multi-core grunt under the hood of your well-lubricated Android machine? An official from the company has promised two to three new tablets, sized at either 7 or 10 inches diagonally, for the first half of this year -- a tasty morsel of information, which he garnishes with the forecast that netbooks will eventually be phased out in favor of such touchy-feely slate devices. If you can fit a full second-gen Core CPU inside a tablet, why the heck not? Updated: Acer's US team has clarified for us that the Android tablets it announced in November are still set to hit in April. Obviously, these Sandy Bridge versions would be farther off, but we've also heard from another source that Acer would likely wait for Intel's ULV-based Sandy Bridge processors, which aren't due until the spring / summer timeframe. We'll let you know if we hear more.
HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates
Todd Bradley did promise us there'd be more than just slates on HP's webOS menu and today we can add netbooks to the list of form factors for Palm's famed OS. This heretofore unknown slice of info comes from a carrier training website HP has set up to educate resellers on the strong points of its forthcoming products. The training video on the site speaks of the great synergies that can result from smartphones, slates and netbooks all running the same OS and "speaking" to one another, which echoes Bradley's "connected experience" mantra from a couple of days ago. Smartphones are said to be the beginning of a new family of webOS products, with their larger siblings set to come "soon enough." Is February 9th soon enough? We'd say so.
Exclusive: The future of the iPad 2, iPhone 5, and Apple TV, and why Apple is shifting its mobile line to Qualcomm chipsets
We've been hearing a ton of rumors about what direction Apple's next set of products will take and when they'll be available -- but now we've got some concrete information from reliable sources which should make the path a little clearer. And that includes info on the next iPad, the iPhone 5, the second iteration of the new Apple TV, and a big change coming for all of the company's mobile products. Want to know the scoop? Read along after the break to get the goods.
Toyota working on magnesium batteries for PHEVs of the not so near future
Toyota wants to take your range anxiety out for a walk behind the woodshed and obliterate it from the known world. The means for doing this, the Japanese giant has revealed, might very well be contained in its new magnesium-sulfur batteries, which promise to double the energy density of the current industry-best lithium ion cells. Of course, the catch here is that the new magnesium goodness is nowhere near ready and is projected to come in 2020 at the earliest, but we're gladdened to see a long-term view being taken by car manufacturers with regard to powering vehicles electrically. Alternative methodologies currently under review in Toyota's labs also include aluminum and calcium materials, showing that there is indeed no lack of ambition for making plug-ins respectable road warriors.
