Some might have heard of Ainol, but for others this is quite a foreign name. It’s a China branded phone, and as usual you won’t see very uber phones from China no matter how they advertise it with tonnes of silly functions. But now Ainol wants to join the ranks of Meizu and their M9 Android phone. Ainol has expressed that the company is now working hard on a new Honeycomb tablet that might be able to stand out among all those Android tablets that has mushroomed in the market. But what gives?
Well, they’re throwing in an ARM Cortex A9 processor (not sure if it’s dual-core or not), a 1280 x 800 IPS display (though they didn’t mention size), WiFi and 3G connectivity, a microSD card slot, HDMI out, and quite a number of additional buttons that looks to be from the designs of 2008. Why no touch sensitive? Anyway, there’s still no indication of a price, but the tablet is apparently due out sometime next month.
When it comes to the brand Acer, I have a mix feeling, but I still stand in my resolve not to recommend this brand to others. Years of experiences in the computer and electronics retail sector taught me that Acer’s brand has never been reliable, despite the dirt cheap price that they manage to offer. However, the board of Acer isn’t happy with this, and urges the company to take some lessons from Apple and HTC. This leads to the by-then CEO of Acer Gianfranco Lanci resign due to disagreement with the board members.
Gianfranco Lanci’s strategy to fight against the other ‘classy’ boys is to aggressively increase volumes and using its scale to negotiate cheaper prices from suppliers in a race to steal market share from Dell and HP. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Acer’s profit margin in the last fiscal year was just 2.3 percent compared to Apple’s 21.5 percent, scarce to say the least.
Acer’s main business comes from selling dirt cheap desktops and notebooks, and now with Lanci gone, JT Wang, Acer’s chairman and temporary CEO, plans to put more effort into expanding its smartphone and tablet business while broadening efforts around enterprise sales. For Wang, Lanci’s departure marks a break with the past, saying “Recently the iPad [tablet computer] and other new form factors have had a very big impact on the PC market. We have to change our business strategy.” While PCs will still be core to the business, Wang said “we won’t be in a hurry to change to become the world number one.”
Things started rolling slowly when Google slapped a tiny NFC chip into its Nexus S, and now they’re in the mood to steamroll things. NFC mobile payment is the in things now, and Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s secretly partnered with MasterCard and Citigroup to test out just such a system. According to the publication, the early demo pairs “one current model and many coming models of Android phones” with existing Citigroup-sponsored credit and debit cards.
Things are quite complicated here actually. Google will be handling all their payment-taking needs, and in return companies get to have a sneak peek at what you guys are buying. Wait, you can actually trust Google with your money?
NFC payment is getting quite the buzz these days, and apparently Microsoft has catch up with the trend. Good news for corporates. Bloomberg has two anonymous sources saying that Microsoft will outfit the next version of Windows Phone 7 with software support for near-field communications, and bake NFC tech into WP7 smartphones as early as this year.
Google is also reportedly working on a similar plan, complete with partnerships in the credit card space, RIM may or may not be arguing with carriers over its Bank of America trial, and the general consensus around the water cooler is that Apple won’t be pursuing contactless payments this year.
Over here at 2dayblog, we support green power and clean and renewable energy, and at these time where people are starting to feel cautious about nuclear power, it’s good news that Denmark is going the clean energy way. Vestas in Denmark will be getting a new new V164-7.0 MW turbine.
The turbine not only promise to provide seven megawatts of power but also each of the blades is longer than nine double-decker buses, which means that each of these spinning flowers will be bigger than your ‘Eye on Malaysia’.
Of course, the company also hopes that there will eventually be not just a few of these, but massive farms of the turbines at sea (the North Sea, specifically), although that won’t exactly happen overnight — Vestas only expects to have the first prototypes ready by the end of 2012, with full production expected to begin in the first quarter of 2015.
Way to go Denmark, now we hope to see more countries develop clean and renewable energies instead of deforestation for dams.
The successor to X58 chipset, the X79 chipset, is in the works in Intel’s lab, and its specifications have surfaced. We already know it’ll be using 2011-pin LGA, but what else?
According to the leaked slide above, X79 motherboards will feature 2011-pin LGA sockets for E-series CPUs, where ‘E’ stands for “Enthusiast” not “Elephant.” 14 SATA connections are available, 10 of which will manage 6Gb/s, and another 14 USB 2.0 ports means you can have just about every USB-powered crap devices that you can find simultaneously.
That said, there’s no mention of a single USB 3.0 port, something of a bummer for those hoping that standard would be, well, standard by 2012. Surprisingly there’s no integrated support for Thunderbolt being mentioned, either. A hoax?
Surprise, five PlayStation One titles to the Android Market: Syphon Filter, MediEvil, Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, and Jumping Flash, and each will be priced at £3.99 in the UK, with the first two games on the list also being available in five languages. But wait, don’t go and get them just yet, because you’ll need to have an Xperia Play in order to play them. Yes, these games are specially ported for the Xperia Play, and Sony Ericsson has just confirmed that over 60 games will be available at launch for the Xperia Play.
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