Squint, or you’ll miss it. The tiny slab of shininess clutched in the hands of Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, is apparently a Medfield based smartphone that, according to the Maemo forums, was shown off at an Intel sales conference last week.
Details on the handset are almost entirely unknown, bar the chipset, but Intel hasn’t been shy with its Medfield expectations. Back in August 2010 the company promised to match ARM’s chipsets – currently the popular favorite in mobile devies like smartphones – for active power consumption with the new Medfield processors, which are expected to debut in shipping devices later this year.
At least one of those devices, so the rumors would have it, will be from Nokia’s stable and run MeeGo, the two companies’ collaborative open-source OS. Leaks earlier this month suggested the Nokia N9 had been reworked using a 1.2GHz Medfield processor and dropping the hardware keyboard, and would be shown off at MWC 2011 next month.
Nokia is secretly readying an updated UI for MeeGo devices, with the Qt developers responsible for the new UI components for Qt Quick announcing that, for the moment, they will not be pushing out MeeGo changes to the public. The decision comes as the new MeeGo UI starts “to become feature complete”; Nokia won’t confirm any timescale at this stage, but with MWC 2011 approaching and new CEO Stephen Elop making his first real public debut to talk about the company’s strategies moving forward, we wouldn’t be surprised if this was intended to keep a Barcelona reveal under wraps.
According to Qt\QML Product Manager Henrik Hartz, the closed operations are “a one-off for business reasons” and not a sign that Nokia plans to make more future development off-the-radar from third-party coders until it’s ready for public consumption. The exact nature of the UI changes are unknown, though Nokia is believed to have been experimenting with significantly higher-powered hardware for MeeGo devices than the relatively mainstream chips used in its Symbian devices.
MeeGo’s early UI was described as underwhelming in one unofficial preview of the Nokia N9, and the company later suggested it needed to “regain the imagination” with updated UI dynamics. “If you look at touchscreen devices today … they’re immersive, they require our full attention” Nokia SVP of design Marko Ahtisaari claimed at LeWeb 2010 back in December 2010, ”we’re not doing good enough for better one-handed use, for better using our devices without them demanding our attention.” The updated UI will have to suit not only smartphone-scale handsets, but tablets as well.
LG’s G-Slate got a teasingly brief show on-stage with T-Mobile back at CES 2011, then flashed its 3D camera array in a K-Pop music video, and now the tablet has cropped up again online. MysteryGuitarMan has managed to acquire the Honeycomb slate but seems reluctant to do more than just whip it in front of the camera while talking about 3D.
Video after the cut
Still, that glimpse is enough to show the LED flash next to one of the camera lenses, here separated by a metal “with Google” strip as on the back of the LG Optimus 2X. There’s also a brief view of the ports on the bottom of the slate.
So, we can add that the presence of 4G and Google Talk support, but we’re still generally in the dark about everything the LG G-Slate will offer. Perhaps Enya will show up with one next, and tell us about WiFi and Bluetooth.
Fresh iPad 2 speculation this weekend, as a new Chinese analyst report lends weight to some of the more common rumors we’ve been hearing, as well as getting specific about what processor the second-gen slate will run. According to Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities, in a report quoted by AppleInsider, the new iPad will use an ARM Cortex A9 1.2GHz dual-core CPU complete with Imagination’s SGX543 dual-core graphics. However, according to Kuo there won’t be a dual-mode iPad world 3G model.
Instead, he suggests “iPad 2 adds one new CDMA model and it could bring more market share to Apple. Project IDs of Wi-Fi, GSM and CDMA iPad 2 models are different. GSM iPad will use Infineon chip and CDMA iPad will use Qualcomm chip. More suppliers could reduce the risk of component shortage.” As with a previous rumor, the iPad 2′s main camera is believed to be around 1-megapixel in resolution, while the front webcam for FaceTime calls is VGA-resolution.
There’s also more RAM, and faster too, with Kuo claiming “iPad 2 has 512MB RAM, same as iPhone 4 and twice as much as iPad 1, but running at higher clock 1,066 MHz for getting bigger memory bandwidth (iPhone 4 memory clock is 800 MHz).” However there won’t be a super-high-resolution Retina Display, with the second-gen iPad sticking to 1024 x 768 and instead looking to improve the viewing experience and thickness of the panel:
“The improvement of iPad 2 display focuses on thickness and anti-reflection, not resolution. iPad 2 display module is 30~35% thinner than iPad 1 and it’s helpful for better form factor. Thanks to anti-reflection, iPad 2 could have better sunlight readable experience and it’s helpful for Apple to compete with Amazon’s fast growing Kindle business.”
Ambitious news out of AT&T, with a leaked slide suggesting that the carrier plans to release a full 12 new Android devices in 2011. That’s not all, though; the slide – passed to Phandroid – confirms that AT&T expects not just two exclusive 4G devices in Q1 2011, but to have a range of twenty to choose from by the end of the year.
One of the devices sitting in both those categories will be the Motorola ATRIX 4G, the touchscreen smartphone announced at CES 2011 and which has an optional dock for using it as a notebook replacement. There’s also the HTC Inspire 4G; both devices are expected to arrive before the end of the first quarter.
The remainder of the devices are yet to be announced, but we’re hoping there’s at least one Windows Phone 7 device among the line-up, and we wouldn’t argue with an LTE webOS smartphone either. Of course, “devices” can also include tablets, so it’s not just handsets on the cards here either.
In the wake of a slew of not-so-fun changes in the wireless industry, here’s a way to end the month on a bright note: a rumor over on Android Central suggests that Verizon will be killing off its mail-in rebates for some devices in favor of lower sticker prices. Specifically, a leaked screen shot says that if the device runs more than $150, there won’t be any rebate at all; if it’s less and not a closeout, you’ll be dealing with a $50 rebate. Of course, the whole concept of a rebate is a little sneaky to begin with — the idea is that carriers can advertise lower prices, then get you to pay more at the counter and hope that you’ll fail to deal with the mail-in form that you’ve got to fill out; best-case scenario, they get to sit on your money for a few weeks while you wait for a gift card to show up in the mail. So yeah, our hearts wouldn’t be broken if this was accurate — as long as the new upfront prices completely erase those rebates, of course.
Never would we have guessed that third-party wireless retailers would be aiming to launch AT&T’s powerhouse Atrix 4G for just $150 on contract — $200 or $250, sure, but not $150. Alas, just a few hours after AmazonWireless’ peep show, we’re seeing an alleged leaked screen shot of Costco’s inventory system showing the same blockbuster price. Now, bear in mind that AT&T itself will probably sell the phone for at least $50 more — third parties usually have a second ETF on top of the carrier’s that allows them to subsidize a little more heavily — but it’s a good sign regardless.
The BlackBerry Curve has always been our favorite ‘berry because of its solid keyboard and lack of pretension to any functionality beyond great messaging, but it looks like things are about to change fast: you’re looking at a leaked image of what CrackBerry says is the Curve Touch, codenamed “Malibu,” and it’s all touchscreen — unlike the rumored Apollo, there’s no keyboard in sight. We’ve only got specs on the CDMA version, and they’re right in line with what you’d expect for a midrange device due out in late 2011 / early 2012: 800MHz Qualcomm MSM8655 processor, 3.25-inch HVGA screen, 5 megapixel camera with HD video, 1GB storage with microSD expansion and 512MB of RAM, GPS, and NFC. Of course, CrackBerry says those are just “proposed specs,” so anything could change, but man — are we crazy for thinking an all-touch Curve definitely seems to redefine everything about what a BlackBerry is and is not?
Up in Canada, Mobilicity’s CEO made an odd comment recently that Bell, Telus, and Rogers will all be getting the Nexus S around the same time that his carrier does in March. Why is that odd? Well, as it stands, no variant of the Nexus S supports the 850 / 1900MHz WCDMA that would be necessary to run (at high speed, anyway) on those three networks. Circle back around to the Bluetooth SIG, where PocketNow has discovered an entry for a GT-i9020A; you might recall that the European version of the device is the i9020, while T-Mobile’s AWS-compatible build is the i9020T, with “T” ostensibly standing for “T-Mobile.” By extension, it’s definitely conceivable that the “A” here is for “AT&T” — which, again, would line up with the Mobilicity exec’s verbiage. If this is true, it’s theoretically possible that we could see AT&T and its similarly-equipped Canadian cousins get their own Nexus S as soon as five-odd weeks from now. Like the Nexus One before it, we’ve got a hard time picturing AT&T officially subsidizing this thing — but hey, an unlocked full-price version is a solid start, we’d say.
If these first in-the-wild shots of T-Mobile’s upcoming Android-powered Sidekick 4G turn out to be legit — and we’ve no reason to doubt them, especially considering TmoNews‘ track record — then we’d say the carrier has done a reasonably good job porting the classic Sidekick design and pulling it into the modern age off the strength of a big display… and, of course, a modern operating system. Interestingly, word on the street is that the new model is made by Samsung, not Sharp; historically, Sharp has made all of the Sidekicks with the exception of the forgettable Slide, which was a Motorola one-off. Looks like the swivel display has been replaced by a tilt-slide, but most importantly, the device looks the same when open and closed, which should put a warm, fuzzy feeling in the hearts of old-school Sidekick users. Who’s excited?
