Computex 2010 is starting on the first of June. So far a few companys have had press releases ahead of the opening.

It seems it will be tablet's all around this year. So far MSI and ASUS have divulged info about their upcoming slate devices.

MSI showed an Android 2.1 based 10" slate powered by a Nvidia Tegra 2 named MSI WindPad 110. They also showed a tablet running Windows 7 based on an Intel Atom Z530 processor, and with a 10" screen.

ASUS have shown a few slates, the most promising one seems to be a 12" device named EP121. I's running Windows 7 on an Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processor. Allegedly the battery life is about 10 hours, almost sounds too good to be true doesn't it?

Some excellent Scandinavian humor here, a spoof of the Google speed test vids released a while back. Complete with Herring fight and all!



On a continued pleasant note, the Opera Mini have done very well and has been downloaded 2.6 million times by iPhone users world wide during April. Congratulations and well done Opera.

Froyo vs Eclair

One of the larger improvements in Android 2.2 (Froyo) compared to the previous Android version 2.1 (Eclair) is the improvements of the JIT compiler. Google is stating that the performance would be increased by two to five times compared to the old JIT compiler. But is there any claim to the figures?

The guys over at AndroidCentral did a comparison between a Nexus One running Froyo, a HTC Evo 4G and a Motorola Droid, both the later running Eclair. The results look good for Froyo, and Google's claims seems to hold true.

Check the vid below for the score card of the performance tests.


As well as Sunspider performance - the 3D performance seems to have improved by about 15%-20% as well with the jump from Eclair to Froyo.

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More articles about Froyo on mobilemancer!
More articles about Eclair on mobilemancer!

Dell has announced that the Streak Android device will be available in June. The Streak is sporting a 5" 480*800 screen, so it will be larger than all smartphones available. More than that the spec sheet reads:

• 1GHz Snapdragon Processor
• 16GB Internal memory
• Expandable SD card slot with up to 32GB more memory
• 5MP Camera
• Low res front side camera for video chat
• 3G support
• Wifi support
• Bluetooth 2.1 support

It will be shipping with Android 1.6 (Donut) installed, but will be upgradeable to Froyo (Android 2.2) at a later date.

Personally I am a bit skeptic to the form factor. Since I suspect most people would replace their phone/smartphone with this, isn't the size a bit too large? They have built in a mic and speaker so you can put it too your ear and talk into it like a phone, but it looks kind of silly. Now of course most people use a headset anyways. But I still have my doubts for the size, even though browsing the web and looking at video content probably will be a lot more comfortable for the eyes and hopefully not give pinch-to-zoom syndrome fingers.

See the vid below for a nice demo of the Streak from Delll:

Microsoft has been sending out Windows Phone 7 devices to some developers last weeks. The device in question being the LG phone we saw demoed already at MIX10, but now more refined and with later builds of the OS. The working name of the phone is Panther, but on the box it says GW910.

The responses regarding the phone has so far been pretty good, people are saying it still not feels ready for production but that it's getting there as it's much improved compared to the device demoed at MIX10. Regarding the WP7 OS they are saying everything is smooth and running pretty good. And the production pace for the WP7 team is apparently high as the phone is getting new builds all the time.

For a short tour of the first setup of the phone, see the vid below.

The last update of Spotify for Android was announced today. There are some really neat new features like the local library that was released in the Windows client a few weeks ago, and now it's featured in the Android version as well.
Straight from the Spotify team:

Today we’re releasing an update to our Android app - version 0.4.04 is now available.

This update brings a number of the great social and local file features we’ve recently launched to your mobile phone so that you can take the full Spotify experience with you on the road.

The additions include:

• Support for playing and wirelessly synchronizing local files to your phone
• The Library feature has been added
• The Inbox, Feed and Starred features have been added
• You can now view the Top tracks list
• We’ve added the ability to filter for tracks in playlists
• And finally - Last.fm scrobbling!

We hope you enjoy the new features.

To run it you have to sign up for Spotify Premium, then just search the market for Spotify and install. But make sure you have a fixed price data plan, cause Spotify is addictive!

Yesterday Nokia and Yahoo held a press conference regarding their future cooperation. Yahoo realize they lost the map race long ago and is going to incorporate the Ovi Maps and Ovi Navigation technology to improve their maps. Nokia is going to use the Yahoo mail and messenger technology in their Ovi Mailand Ovi Chat services.

For Yahoo this is a way to spread more to developing countries where Nokia still got a strong foothold. And for Nokia this is a way to get more of a foothold in the US market where Yahoo is still some what strong.
Olli-Pekka mentioned it's strange that Nokia is market leader in cell phones, but not leader in the US, and they hope this will give them a boost there.

But question is if this isn't too little too late. Nokias presence in the smartphone sector is small and diminishing, especially in the US. And Yahoo is still used, mostly for their Yahoo mail. But Yahoo's usage is also diminishing, and it feels like Europe has adopted Google and the rest of the world is going that way as well.

Some say this is meant to try and attack Apple's strong position in the smartphone sector in the US, but from what was divulged yesterday it still looks like Apple got nothing to fear.

Google claimed that the browser in Froyo is the fastest smartphone browser available. This has to be tested of course! In the vid below it's visible that it is indeed fast, maybe faster than the iPhone and the Opera browser running on an HTC HD2. But that the Flash 10.1 beta is not yet to be recommended.

Let's hope the final Flash implementation will be much improved, cause if it ruins the browsing experience like it does in the vid, it's really of no use.



Maybe the Steve wasn't far off claiming Flash would ruin the performance of the browser and hence refuse to support it on iPhone...

Two new HTC Windows Phone 7 devices have been leaked in the image below. The devices are called Hengshan and Huashan.

Now some new information has been leaked by Conflipper on Twitter, detailing the two new handsets from HTC. The XML files are detailing one 480*800 device and one 320*480 device. What identifies the phones as Windows Phone 7 devices is the tag:

<prf:BrowserName>Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile 6</prf:BrowserName>

So far all known and rumored WP7 devices have been of the size factor that Microsoft told us would be the initial one, namely 480*800, so this is the first leaks about a smaller 320*480 device.

For more WP7 device info check out Windows Phone 7 - Devices.

Are you bored with your iPhone? Feel like trying out Android on it?
For those that fit the two above categories, PCWorld published an article on how to get your iPhone running Android. Power management functions are not fixed yet though, so your phone will only be running an hour or so on a full battery.

Check the article at PCWorld for more info.

During the week at Google I/O a lot of news were released about the next version of Android, named Froyo.

Some of the new features are in Froyo are:

• Automatic application updates
• Possibility to install apps to an SD card
• JIT compiler upgrades, promising 2x-5x speed boost
• Java-script engine updates, enhancing performance by 2x-3x times
• Tethering and portable hot spot capability
• Adobe Flash and Air support
• API for Cloud-To-Device push notifications
• App data backup API
• Application crash report details presented to developers on their Android market publisher account

Android 2.2 Official Video

The Vietnameese site Tinh Te continues to get their hands on nifty new hardware. This time it's an iPod touch with an 2MP camera.
Check the video below for a more detailed look.



Check this link for more info: Thin Te translated to english

At MIX10 one of the Windows Phone 7 devices that was shown was an LG phone. It was a qwerty-slider and it has been rumored that the device would be launched as early as September. Now a new version seems to have been spotted, this time Microsoft is preparing for ReMIX and this new device has been sent out to the french office.

On the pictures below are the two versions, the first one being the version shown at MIX10 earlier this year.
This second picture showing the device that have been photographed by a Microsoft employee in France.
We can see that the buttons have changed a bit, other than that doesn't the later one look larger? Or is it perhaps the angle the picture is taken at that makes us believe it has a much bigger screen?

Seems Steve Ballmer got his hands on an iPad, from what it seems he's not too happy about it.

A ROM has leaked from a Windows Phone 7 device apparently. The guys over at xda-developers are tinkering with it and not a lot of information have been revealed yet.

Some information about the ROM though is that the build was made for a device called HTC Mondrian. Is it cleverly named after the Dutch artist Pieter Mondriaan? Below his famous piece "Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow". (Some similarities to Metro UI anyone?)

So it seems HTC indeed has a prototype that it's trying out the latest WP7 builds on. Personally I think it sounds great as the only thing that HTC has said so far is "we will have a device ready by the holidays" and with the holidays referring to 2010. Maybe we'll get lucky and see a HTC device released after the summer, just like LG claimed to be targeting release by September.

HTC has produced some really good handsets this last year (Hero, Legend, the mighty HD2, Nexus One etc.) and it will be very interesting to see what they have planed for their Windows Phone 7 device.

Microsoft demoed the new Office 2010 suite and showed how to broadcast a Power Point slide to several devices, one of the devices being a Windows Phone 7 device(seems like it's the phone from Garmin-Asus).

It shows how you can click a URL received in the mail to hook up to a slide, that slide being controlled by some one on another device at the same time. It also shows the integration with the Share Point document repository, and how all notes and documents will be reachable form your WP7 Unit.

The Windows Phone 7 - Devices page has been updated with some more info, this time about the Samsung device shown at MIX10 as well as the rumored plans for future devices.

...Samsung is developing up to four Windows Phone 7 device, some of them with their new Super AMOLED screen. The rumors states Samsung will have these planned for release as early as during June/July -2010...

UPDATED! The poor guys at Apple must be wondering who left this one and in what bar this time around. It seems that these pictures have been published on a Vietnamese site, but as how they got their hands on it I don't know.

The reference I found was to a site at taoviet.vn, but my Vitenameese is so rusty I couldn't get much info out from a visit there. But as the serial states it's probably a pre-production ex and what kind of OS (if any) it's running is still a question.

Here are some pictures to enjoy.
A video of a guy handling the new iPhone 4G has been released.

It seems a Vietnamese buissiness man bought this ex in the US for $4000, and the site reports that there were more items for sale as well.

Here's a picture showing the disassembly of the unit.

More info to be gotten at Taoviet, Engadget and TGDaily.

For all you single Apple fans that are eagerly awaiting the launch of the all Apple dating site Cupidtino, we got the perfect first date tip!

Made from organic ingredients, this Parisian luxury comes in a Californian flavor. It's the perfect chocolate box for the wooing Apple fan. Shaped as an iPhone, with the pralines shaped and painted like cute small app icons.

For more information see this link and for those of you that might have a mother that just loves her iPhone and is still looking forward to mothers day maybe this is the perfect gift.

The page Windows Phone 7 - Devices has been updated again, this time with the info about from HTC.

Microsoft and HTC has been partners for a long time and produced nice devices such as the mighty HD2, so it's no surprise that HTC CEO Peter Chou confirmed that there is indeed a WP7 device scheduled for release in late 2010...

Go to Windows Phone 7 - Devices for more info.

The page Windows Phone 7 - Devices have been updated, this time with the info available about the phone from Garmin-Asus.

During the presentations at MIX10 we got to see a lot of the Garmin-Asus prototype device for Windows Phone 7. So far there isn't a lot of info available regarding it specs, or anything else for that matter. There is a lot of rumors regarding this prototype though...

Go to Windows Phone 7 - Devices for more info.

Added a page called Windows Phone 7 - Devices, on it I intend to list all known, rumored and upcoming WP7 devices. It's accessible in the short link menu to the top right.

To start off with the info about the Dell Lightning has been added.

So far Dell hasn't confirmed any devices, but a leak in late April made the world aware of a handset referred to by Dell as Lightning.

Lightning's specs are as follows...

For more info check out Windows Phone 7 - Devices.

The smartphone market is growing in leaps and bounds, and Intel wants a bit of the cookie. Today they launched the next generation smartphone and netbook platform. The processor series is an improved Atom named Atom Z6xx, previously going under the work name "Lincroft".

The smartphone processor version is called Atom Z600 and is a single core processor clocked at 1.5GHz. The new smartphone platform boasts the following specs:

• Multi threading by Hyper-Threading Technology
  
• Video playback in full HD(1080p)
• Power usage in rest state diminished 50 times compared to the previous generation
• High performance 3D graphics
  
• Multi-part video conferencing
• Video recording in 720p
• Wi-Fi support
• 3G/HSPA support
• WiMAX support
• Produced in 45nm technology

The platform is currently supporting a few of the Linux based mobile OS'es, namely MeeGo, Android and Moblin.

Three years ago when Intel started the project they were talking about reduced power consumption, which they have indeed managed to get in many aspects. But they were talking about 24h productivity, and that's pretty far from where the platform lands today. This slide was presented during the press conference. (Click picture to enlarge it)

Here we can see that while Intel indeed has improved a lot compared to the previous generation, the competition has improved as well. Leaving the new platform already wanting. It's not hard to imagine that with a slightly deprecated battery we can see that the platform will perform like most platforms available today, or in some cases worse.

Performance wise it looks good though, and the guys over at Pocket-lint managed to get a glimpse of a Quake 3 test run on the platform, it was playing at around 100fps which is indeed impressive. Have a look at the video below.



This is speed that will beat the current master of the throne, the Qualcomm Snapdragon running at 1GHz. But Qualcomm got more coming for us now in 2010 supposedly, so comparison is pretty useless until we can compare against their next generation.

As for those awaiting Windows Phone 7, there is no mention of support of that platform from Intel. Engadget contacted Intel and asked about their plans for WP7, this is what they were told:

Intel's goal is to ensure we offer our customers a choice of software that runs best on our processors. Yesterday's announcement was focused on Linux OSs, however our strategy is to also support a full Windows experience on Atom as we do with Menlow, Intel's first generation atom chip for mobile devices and Pinetrail, Intel's chip family for netbooks. Stay tuned.

This can be interpreted in multiple ways as always, but since they do not mention Windows Phone 7 at all, rather talking about "Windows experience" it is possible that the netbook platform will be aiming to support Windows 7 as the last Atom platform did, and not aim for the Windows Phone 7 market.

But with the seemingly limited energy efficiency I think I would preferably go with another platform for my first WP7 device, as it'd be nice to not have to charge the phone multiple times during a work day.

For some more slides form the press conference you can check out Engadget's gallery here.

Intel's own fact sheet can be gotten here.

The game streaming service Gaikai is aiming to take gaming in to the cloud.

With hosting the game on their servers and letting you just stream them down to your computer. This would allow users to worry less about hardware, upgrades and keeping their games up to date.

Dave Perry writes on his blog about them running WOW on on iPad over Gaikai, and it looks pretty neat.


With Apples strict rules this probably won't be possible as the App surely won't get cleared in the AppStore unless they manage to enable it using html5 in the future.

But as it looks really promising I really hope Gaikai pulls this off.

You can read more about it on DPerry.com and touchArcade.com.

A cool clip made by Leon Wang, shows life isn't easy being a Terminator either. Shows us what we always suspected though, that he indeed got a good heart and that he loves Windows 7 as much as the rest of us.

The new Windows Phone Developer Tools pack that was released a few days ago have been unlocked again by RustyGrom over at xda developers.

Aparently there are some newly implemented call functionality that wasn't in the build the last time. The Office implementation is also partly in place.

If you want to play around with the build yourself, jus thead over to xda developers.

If you just would like to see the new phone hub in action you can check out a video that the guys over at Engadget made.

The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP refresh is finally out. This version is now compatible with the release version of Visual Studio 2010.

To download WPDT go here.

For info about what's new, check out the Windows Phone Developer Blog.