The Next iPhone: Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu

The iPhone is still hands-down one of the best 5 tech purchases I’ve made over the past decade — actually, it’s probably the best. I use it every day to do a variety of things that I still find incredible that I’m able to do in something so portable. That said, over the past few months, I’ve been getting frustrated at the speed of the device. Some of the applications built for it, notably the games, are simply resource hogs. And that’s made applications like FreeMemory (which, yes, frees your phone’s memory), a necessity. But a much greater pain reliever is on the way if Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is correct (and he usually is on such things). A new, much faster iPhone.

The new iPhone will feature a processor that will be more than 1.5 times faster than the current iPhone, according Gruber citing information from informed sources. While at first glance, that may not seem like a huge jump up, Gruber compares the speed bump to what it was like to upgrade an old 486 PC to a Pentium variety. In today’s world of computer upgrades, you’re usually upgrading from a processor that is already fast enough for most tasks, to one that is slightly faster — it’s the RAM, video cards and Bus speeds that seem to matter just as much. But back in the day those jumps processor specs alone were huge. And as someone who vividly remembers upgrading a 486 SX 33 to a Pentium, this potential iPhone jump greatly excites me.

TechCrunch

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What We Know About The Apple Tablet So Far

More evidence of the Apple Tablet surfaced today. We first wrote about the device at the end of last year when OEMs in China started hearing about the device. Details are still thin, although probably not because of a lack of leaks. Rather, Apple may still be locking down important specs like screen size.

We’d heard 7 - 9 inch screen size late last year, but today’s reports range up to 10 inches, which we’ve also heard from our sources as a possible size.

We don’t know what the final price point will be, but somewhere between $500 and $1,000 makes sense. We’ve also heard that the launch date was pushed from this Fall to early next year, and we’ve confirmed that significant human assets from the iPod and iPhone team have been dedicated to the project.

In other words, the project is very real.

TechCrunch

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Sony Ericsson drops clues on Android 2.0-based smartphone

Sony Ericsson's finance team may figure that it needs a wheelbarrow full of cold, hard cash in order to steamroll through the next decade, but we know better than that. What it needs, friends, is Android, and in the worst possible way. At a launch event over in Taiwan this week, SE Asia-Pacific's vice president of marketing Peter Ang was quoted as saying that the outfit's first Android-based smartphone would actually be humming along on Android 2.0. So, there are two ways to take this: one is that Android 2.0 is just around the bend, which would totally rule, but is absolutely unrealistic to believe. The other, more feasible possibility is that SE's first Android-based phone won't hit the market until your next grandchild is born, which definitely doesn't bode well for a handset maker that can't possibly reinvent itself soon enough.

Via Engadget

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MSI's Wind U123 now shipping in US, U123H and U123T still on hold

We already knew MSI's Atom N280-powered Wind U123 netbook was grabbing placeholders at e-tailers across the web, but now we're assured that they're actually shipping to eager Americans. Unfortunately, the altogether more exciting U123T (which packs a TV tuner) and U123H (which includes a 3.5G HSDPA WWAN module) are still nowhere to be found, but we don't expect 'em to be too far behind. Hop on past the break for links to all of MSI's recommended partners, and be prepared to shell out at $350 to bring one home.

Via Engadget

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Apple's Two New Bites

After selling more than 100 million iPods, Apple could slack off a little. The digital media players would probably still fly off the shelves if the company just altered their shape or color once a year.

That's how most companies go about their business in the consumer-electronics industry.

Instead, Apple keeps tearing up the iPod blueprint, replacing popular models with designs that owe little to their predecessors. This strategy has paid off so far, leaving competitors farther behind and customers more tempted to upgrade.

For iPod buyers, it also creates a challenge: Picking up a new iPod soon enough in its lifecycle so that it doesn't get replaced right away but late enough for early production glitches to be fixed.

Apple is sticking to its playbook with its new iPod Nano and iPod Touch. The Nano puts the video capability of the full-sized iPod -- now called the iPod classic -- in a device that can disappear in a shirt pocket. The Touch bridges the iPod and the iPhone, eliminating phone functions but keeping the iPhone's WiFi wireless networking and clever touch-screen interface.

The one likelier to succeed? The iPod Nano, a trim tablet, barely over 2 ounces, small enough to hide under a credit card and barely thicker than its headphone jack. It offers twice as much memory at the same prices as its ancestor: $149 for a 4-gigabyte model, $199 for an 8-gigabyte version.

But extra room for music isn't the new Nano's real appeal. It plays video and games as well as audio and photos. In other words, things once available only in a heavier, pricier full-sized iPod with hard-drive storage instead of the Nano's more durable flash memory.

The Nano's 2-inch screen, with the same resolution as its bigger sibling's display, makes pictures look as sharp as any print. Movies are surprisingly easy to watch. You may not want to take in a three-hour epic on this, but the stuff you might otherwise watch on a cellphone will look vastly better on the Nano. You can also plug a Nano into a TV with a $49 adapter cable.

For all its added utility, the Nano remains as easy to use as before, with all controls available through a simple click-wheel dial. Its battery lasts as long as ever, running through more than 26 hours of music playback and six hours of movie viewing.

Its flaws exist at the margins. Its shiny metal backside picks up scratches and fingerprints as easily as the first Nano's did, and some of its interface graphics look pointlessly flashy.

The iPod Touch represents a bigger gamble than the iPod Nano, and it doesn't quite pan out -- in part because of the expectations it raised. It appears to be a thin iPhone with more storage ($299 for an 8-gigabyte model, $399 for a 16-gigabyte unit), but it lacks more than just voice calling.

While the Touch includes music, photo and video playback (but not game support), it leaves out most of the extras that make an iPhone so useful. It has no camera, notepad or e-mail software.

The best offers iPod Nano

Via Washingtonpost

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