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Unnecto Quattro hands-on (video)
It's Italian for the number four and also the name of a certain German auto, but Unnecto's latest device bearing that very moniker has little to do with either. In fact, the star feature of this low-end Android 2.3.5 handset, shown off on the CTIA 2012 show floor, is its ability to accommodate dual-SIMs. Yes, much like the touchscreen-only TAP that preceded it, this phone offers users with multiple lines the option to pack two SIMs -- full-sized and micro -- for easy account switching. Spec-wise, the 4-inch handset's not much to get hot and bothered about, loaded up as it is with a middling 800 x 480 TFT display, VGA front-facing / rear 5 megapixel cameras, 4GB of storage (augmented by a pre-loaded 8GB microSD) and a 1,400mAh battery. There's no dual-core running under the hood either, just a lone 650MHz MediaTek 6573 processor and it shows given that our brief hands-on with the preliminary software was riddled with lags and stutters. Keep in mind the phone's still a work in progress and that mostly stock UI will eventually ship sometime this June with a customized overlay. An upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich is also purportedly on deck for Q4, but we're somewhat skeptical the single core handset could even support it. As for the price, well that all important bit is still up in the air, although we've been told it should retail between $150 to $200. If you're interested in buying what Unnecto's selling, check out the gallery below and hop on past the break for a brief video demo. Terrence O'Brien contributed to this report.
Nokia Lumia 900 review
Nokia Lumia 900 official Nokia Lumia 900 to hit AT&T on April 8th with $100 price tag in tow (video) Nokia Lumia 800 review Long-awaited, heralded, longed for, lusted after, overdue, deal breaker, savior, second coming, dead-on arrival, revelation, last gasp, comeback, hail mary pass, flagship... finally! If that string of descriptors hasn't already tipped you off, Nokia's Windows Phone messiah has arrived stateside to either silence critics or give' em fodder for further nay-saying. Ensconced in a polycarbonate frame that's similar to the N9, the Lumia 900 on AT&T's LTE network is widely understood to be Espoo's first true stab at building a presence for a mobile brand that's ubiquitous everywhere but here. To understand the gamble the company's making with the Lumia 900, one need only look to another critically acclaimed, yet interminably stalled overseas import: Kylie Minogue. That foreign pop siren, a music industry veteran, has repeatedly failed to empty mainstream American wallets with her scattered hits, despite enjoying chart domination across the globe. Indeed the formula for US success is a fickle one. No matter the product category, the crossover membrane can sometimes prove too thick to permanently breach, often resulting in a "one and done" mentality marked by an inevitable retreat to more conciliatory European shores. For the time being, though, it appears that Nokia's going all in, ready to see its folie à deux with Microsoft through to the end. Indeed, with an irresistible on-contract price of $99, it would seem both parties are counting on this to be the mass market magic bullet they've sorely needed. So, can the Lumia 900, a single-core 1.4GHz handset hampered by a so-so 800 x 480 display, prove this tech alliance wasn't ill-struck after all? Can an attractive industrial design and simplified UI triumph over seemingly modest specs? Will Nokia end up retreating to its overseas kingdom? Abandon those fanboy caps all ye who tag along, as we put this Finnish smartphone under the hot lights.
HTC T328w to be the Wind beneath Chinese consumer wings?
Invasion of the One S chassis snatchers? That certainly seems to be the case here, as a render and listing for the T328w -- what is supposedly HTC's Wind -- has popped up over on Chinese site, Tenaa. The dual-SIM 4-inch handset, sporting an uncanny resemblance to its mid-tier look-alike, will purportedly occupy a lower rung on the smartphone scale, toting a single-core 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, a rear 5 megapixel shooter and WCDMA bands with support for HSDPA and HSUPA. From that list of internals alone, the unit sounds more like a dressed-up, specced-down One V, albeit without that idiosyncratic lip. On the software side, we're looking at Ice Cream Sandwich smothered in Sense 4a -- presumably, a localized variant of the OEM's newest UX. With a global rollout for the One line slated for this spring, our friends to the East could be seeing this device breeze its way onto retail shelves sooner than later.Update: If you think the T328w looks familiar, your instincts are justified. It's a member of the Dragon series -- a trio of handsets from HTC that we first rubbed up against during Mobile World Congress. If you'd like to dig a bit deeper, be sure to check out the hands-on courtesy of Engadget China.
Nokia N9 review
MeeGo to be folded into Linux-based Tizen OS, slated to arrive in 2012 Want a Nokia N9 in the US? Expansys has some, but it'll cost ya Motorola Droid 2 stars in its first video, touts 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM? It's taken a long time for Nokia's MeeGo-packing N9 to make its way into our top-secret labs (the N9 moniker was first applied to early E7 prototypes), but it's here in our dirty little hands, at last, and it's glorious -- well, as glorious as a stillborn product can be, anyway. The N9 is the latest and greatest in a long line of quirky, interesting, yet ultimately flawed touchscreen experiments from Nokia that includes the Hildon-sporting 7710, a series of Maemo-based "internet tablets" (770, N800, N810, N900) and most recently, the N950 MeeGo handset for developers. What makes the N9 special is that it represents Nokia's last flagship phone as an independent player. MeeGo is already dead, and future high-end devices from the manufacturer will run Windows Phone and use Microsoft's services. So, is this the company's final bittersweet hurrah? Did MeeGo ever stand a chance against Android, iOS and Mango? In its attempt to stay relevant, is Nokia throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Most importantly, how does the N9 fare in today's merciless dual-core world? Find out after the break. %Gallery-137175%
Shocker! Microsoft to produce dual-core, LTE Windows Phones, other modern things
This just in: Microsoft is ready to take the plunge into mobile modernity... at its own pace. During a recent interview with All Things D, Windows Phone President Andy Lees revealed a few details about Redmond's future crop of handsets, which will apparently include both LTE capabilities and dual-core processors. The exec confirmed that LTE-equipped devices are indeed in the pipeline, but declined to specify whether they'd hit the market this year or next. Turns out, Microsoft wants to wait until current LTE networks prove capable of supporting more power-efficient smartphones. "The first LTE phones were big and big [users] of the battery," Lees said. "I think it's possible to do it in a way that is far more efficient, and that's what we will be doing." Lees was similarly opaque about Microsoft's plans to incorporate dual-core CPUs into its mobile lineup, saying only that they're on the way. According to him, however, even single-core Windows Phones can hold their own against the dual-core competition: "They're all single core, but I suspect that they will be faster in usage than any dual-core phone that you put against it, and that's the point." Lees went on to wax Panglossian about Microsoft's strategy, claiming that the absence of LTE and dual-core processing doesn't necessarily mean that his company is behind the times. "I think that what our strategy is is to put things in place that allow us to leapfrog, and I think that's how we've gone from worse [sic] browser to the best browser," he explained, "and I think the same is true with hardware." Check out the full interview for yourself, at the source link below.
BlackBerry Colt to launch before end of 2011?
The BlackBerry Colt -- RIM's presciently named round three handset entry, or last grasp at smartphone dominance? You'll have to wait until the end of the year to decide, as this latest bout of insider hearsay points to a sooner-than-expected launch. Citing several trusted industry sources, Dutch website Tweakers.net reports that the Canadian electronics company is rushing its first QNX-based smartphone out to the mobile market ahead of its previously rumored 2012 Q1 launch. The phone, purported to lack BES, is said to pack a 4.3-inch display and a single-core (yes, you haven't misread that) 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 processor. We can understand if you're already underwhelmed. Releasing a single core device into an impending quad-core wireless world is one sure way for the company to castrate its young mobile buck. Still, with gossip being what it is, we'd advise you to take this news with a heavy lick of salt. You never know, those co-chairs up in Waterloo could still surprise us yet.
HTC Bliss spotted frolicking in the blurry wild?
We haven't heard much about the HTC Bliss since it popped up on a Verizon roadmap earlier this month, but the folks over at PocketNow have obtained photos of what could be the handset's first public appearance. The so-called "women only" smartphone, which recently passed through the FCC, is rumored to run on a 800MHz single-core processor and will reportedly sport a new version of HTC's Sense UI. It's also expected to run Android 2.3 and to rock a GSM 900MHz radio, though, as you can tell, it's a little difficult to glean any of that from the above blurry images. No word yet on whether it'll launch in September, as expected, or whether it'll look a bit more feminine when it does, but we'll keep you posted.
Samsung's ARM roadmap lays coordinates through 2013: Aquila, Venus, and Draco (oh my)
Ah, leaked company presentation slides, they have a clarity only Mr. Blurrycam would despise. EETimes got a batch of them from Samsung dated November 2009 making the rounds, but more important than revealing its equal love for both Roman and Greek mythology, we get a glimpse at its then-planned ARM chip roadmap (yeah, another one) through 2013. In a nutshell, for the Cortex A9 crowd we've got the 800MHz dual core "Orion" due for mass production in Q1 2011, a 1GHz single core "Pegasus" for Q4 2011, a 1GHz dual core "Hercules" for Q1 2012, and for sometime in 2012 / 2013, a 1.2GHz dual core "Draco" and quad core "Aquila." Fear not, Cortex A5 fanatics, you've got gifts as well, in the form of 600MHz single core "Mercury" and dual core "Venus" chips, slated for 2010 / 2011 and 2012 / 2013, respectively. We don't expect the nomenclature to extend beyond internal usage, but frankly, who cares -- it's the devices that count, and unfortunately all we can do is doodle our future gadget hopes and dreams onto scraps of paper while we wait.
Apple's A4 chip: less is more?
Although early erroneous reports placed Apple's custom A4 chip at the leading edge of ARM-based design, things are slowly falling back to earth. First, we learned that the graphics subsystem was almost certainly the same PowerVR SGX component found in the iPhone, and now Ars Technica reports that the actual CPU is the familiar single-core Cortex A8 also found in Apple's handset. That makes the A4 seem an awful lot like an tightened-up, overclocked iPhone 3GS chip, which makes sense, seeing as it was actually in production in September of last year. So why the need for a custom part? The answer may well be efficiency and power savings: by cutting out extraneous Cortex A8 features and I/O that go unused in the iPad, Apple can further reduce the A4's size and energy draw -- which could be why Steve Jobs said the iPad's chips "use hardly any power." That might not make a huge difference when tied to a large LCD in a device like the iPad, but Ars speculates that this strategy combined with some of P.A. Semi's dynamic power optimization tech could result in a hyper-efficient chip for the iPhone somewhere down the line. That would certainly be interesting in the future -- but right now we've got the A4, and we can't wait until the end of the month to properly put this thing through its paces.
Velocity's Micro NoteMagix M57 Ultra gaming notebook reviewed
Although the hardest-of-hardcore gamers will likely scoff at any laptop that isn't SLI-enabled these days, PC Mag's review of Velocity's 17-inch Micro NoteMagix M57 Ultra shows us that even a solo graphics card combined with a zippy single core processor and a generous helping of RAM can deliver excellent 1,920 x 1,200 fragging performance. The M57 is powered by a 2.26GHz Pentium M 780 -- which gives it only decent productivity benchmark scores compared to a dual core machine -- but the fact that Velocity throws in 2GB of RAM along with the high-end mobile nVidia GeForce Go 7800GTX card and a 7,200 RPM hard drive allowed the rig to best PC Mag's previous champ, the Dell XPS M170, in all-important 3-D and framerate testing. Even better, the faults here are few and far between -- a rather-hefty 9.3-pound weight, lack of software for the built-in TV tuner, and separation between mouse buttons are the only knocks in this review -- so non-SLI snobs should feel safe in dropping their $3000 on what is judged to be a "Very Good" laptop.
