RIM Debuts BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365

Owners of BlackBerry smartphones from the Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion can now take advantage of Microsoft Office 365 while on the go, courtesy of a new service from the handset vendor, called BlackBerry Business Cloud Services. 

The new product is aimed at business and government organizations and extends the Microsoft Exchange Online offering to BlackBerry smartphones, providing customers with the ability to manage deployments while on the go. 

The new service was made available for free for current medium-sized or enterprise subscribers of the Office 365 suite. Exchange Online customers can also enjoy it on their BlackBerry smartphones on business or consumer data plans.

“Microsoft’s partnership with RIM exemplifies our commitment to providing customers with the best productivity experience across the PC, browser and phone,” said Julia White, senior director of Microsoft's exchange product management group. 

“The availability of BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is great news for Office 365 and BlackBerry customers who want to get the maximum benefit from these two business collaboration services.”

Through the BlackBerry Business Cloud Services, customers can benefit from advanced administration features, as well as from flexible smartphone self-service capabilities to support the BlackBerry deployment in the cloud.

Customers will benefit from over-the-air synchronization with Microsoft Exchange Online email, calendar and organizer data straight from their BlackBerry smartphone, as well as from the features that RIM’s BlackBerry Balance technology has to offer. 

Moreover, they will enjoy an intuitive web-based console for managing and securing BlackBerry smartphones from anywhere, as well as from online access to employee self-service smartphone security functions. 

“RIM is pleased to launch BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365,” said Alan Panezic, vice president, enterprise product management and marketing at Research In Motion. 

“This new cloud-based option allows customers to cost-effectively support mobility across their organizations and easily manage and secure their BlackBerry deployments.

“We continue to build upon the end-to-end BlackBerry solution for our business and government customers with both on-premise and cloud-based solutions, a range of technical support options to suit any size organization, and a growing ecosystem of apps and services for users.” 

The service can prove a great option for managed service providers, as well as for systems integrators and wireless carriers, for resellers and other partners. They can use it to offer management of BlackBerry deployments on behalf of their customers.

Read more »

Samsung Offers Engraving Service for Galaxy Note Buyers in South Korea

Samsung Galaxy Note is already among the most popular Galaxy family smartphones available in the market. To make things even more worthy for those who purchase the Galaxy Note in South Korea, Samsung is offering an engraving service.

According to the folks over at SammyHub, starting this week and through March 31, customers who purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note can personalize their newly acquired devices with a special message at Samsung’s Digital Plaza stores.

Only the back cover can be engraved, but Samsung offers a wide range of fonts that can meet any user’s demands.

There’s no word whether or not this engraving service requires customers to pay some sort of fee, but this should be done free of any additional charges. Unfortunately, it’s highly unlikely to see this engraving service being offered in other countries as well.

Read more »

Samsung GALAXY S Advance Now Official

Today, South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics announced the release of Samsung GALAXY S Advance, the latest addition to its popular GALAXY lineup of devices. 

The new mobile phone is expected to arrive on shelves in Russia in February, and should hit the market in CIS, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Southeast and Southwest Asia, Latin America and China afterwards. 

Packing a dual-core application processor, the new mobile phone brings along a balance of style and performance capabilities, Samsung announced. 

The handset sports a curved design and a 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display, while being powered by a fast 1GHz application processor. The new mobile phone also includes support for HSPA 14.4 Mbps connectivity. 

"The GALAXY S Advance adds to the successful track record of the GALAXY smartphone range with a phone that combines power and style with all the versatility of Samsung's Hub services," said JK Shin, president of IT & mobile communications division at Samsung Electronics.

The phone’s dual-core application processor can deliver great performance, and easy multitasking. There is also a highly responsive user interface to complement the features list of this device. 

“Application start-ups are faster with virtually no lag time, and the user experience is boosted with smoother screen transitions, faster image processing, and enhanced Web download and browsing performance,” Samsung notes. 

The specs list of the new device also includes a 5-megapixel photo snapper on the back, with support for HD video recording. 

Samsung GALAXY S Advance runs under Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, and offers support for applications and services that have been specifically designed for the platform. There are also the specific applications and services that Samsung designed for its devices. 

“Running on Android Gingerbread and featuring Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, the GALAXY S Advance enables users to stay connected through the Samsung Hubs and ChatON services,” Samsung notes. 

“Music Hub offers a full music store experience with access to over 11 million tracks and the ability to fully personalize users' own music catalogues. 

“Readers Hub offers access to over 2.3 million e-books, 3,500 magazine and 200 newspaper titles; while the hugely popular Game Hub offers access to thousands of catalogued games supplemented by gamer news feeds and news.”

The one thing that Samsung did not unveil on the new mobile phone was its price tag. Its specific release date remains shrouded in mystery as well.

Read more »

Scosche reVOLT c2 Dual-USB In-Car Charger Now Available

How often did you find yourself having to recharge two USB devices from a single charger when driving around in your car?

If the response to this question is something along the lines of “quite often,” then Scosche has just the solution for you.

The rather simple device pictured above is called the reVOLT c2 and is basically a shotgun shell sized car charger, designed to fit flush inside a car power socket. 

When installed, the reVOLT c2 provides each of the two USB ports with 2.1 Amps of current and paired with the special reVIVE app it can also inform users about how much time it will take to recharge their phone’s battery.

If all this sounds good to you, the Scosche reVOLT c2 is available now on the company’s website for $19.99 (15 EUR).

Read more »

Notion Ink Explains Why It Chose OMAP Over NVIDIA's Tegra for Adam II

If anyone was wondering how it is that Notion Ink's Adam Tablet II doesn't use an NVIDIA Tegra platform, the company actually took some time to clarify that.

It wasn't too long ago that the Adam II tablet from Notion Ink was officially introduced to the general public in all its glory.

What immediately followed was a bit of confusion amongst the people who surf the web often, as many had expected NVIDIA's Tegra platform to be chosen.

“We had a lot of similar questions while we wanted to opt for one. If you followed Kernel developments you’d know that OMAP was definitely the next SoC supported by Google, so this decision had to be made on our end and fast,” the company said on this blog.

Adam II will not use Tegra 2 or Tegra 3, despite the positive reputation they have amassed.

Instead, Notion Ink selected the Texas Instruments TI OMAP44xx with PowerVR SGX5xx graphics.

The company blog justified the choice by drawing attention to the matter of company expertise and available programmers.

Long story short, Notion Ink can make most of a Texas Instruments chip but not the other.

While the Tegra has a high theoretical performance, the power wasn't fully utilized in the original Adam, so the goal is to avoid a repeat of such a situation.

“Unless as an OEM you can’t get 100% out of these chips, all benchmarks, specifications and latest developments are useless,” the company said.

“So the answer wasn’t based on which chip can beat the other one, but which one can we leverage to the highest possible extent. And in this regard OMAP definitely beats any SoC out there w.r.t. documentation, number of use-case modeled, white papers, reference documents and much more. Bangalore also hosts a lot of Ex-TI professionals who helped build OMAP, so answers are not tough to find.”

Read more »

Asus G55 and G75 ROG Notebooks with Ivy Bridge CPUs Will Arrive in April

Asus has recently unveiled that the fifth generation of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) G55 and G75 notebooks are scheduled to arrive in April this year, featuring Intel’s upcoming mobile Ivy Bridge processors.

The two notebooks haven’t suffered too many changes compared to their predecessors as far as their outside design is concerned, but on the inside Asus will swap the previous Sandy Bridge processors with CPUs based on the Ivy Bridge architecture.

Asus hasn’t mentioned the specific models that it plans to use for these two ROG-series notebooks, but we do know that they will be paired with discrete GPUs based on the Nvidia Kepler design, the GTX 670M being a highly likely candidate.

As far as storage is concerned, Notebook Italia suggests that the two gaming laptops can be configured to feature both HDDs and solid state drives, to provide its users with up to 1.5TB of data capacity.

Other features will include up to 16GB of DDR3-1600MHz RAM, an optical drive (either a DVD burner or a Blu-ray combo), as well as a 5.1 audio system and an HD webcam.

Multiple display options will also be available. Depending on the notebook model this comes with a Full HD (1920x1080) or HD+ (1600x900) resolution screen that can also feature 3D support.

Just like their predecessors, the notebooks will also feature SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity, an HDMI 1.4a port (as well as various other video outputs), Altec Lansing THX TruStudio speakers and S/PDIF digital audio out. 

Other features are not yet known at this point in time, but both of these Republic of Gamers notebooks are expected to be officially announced in April this year, most probably right after Intel makes its first batch of Ivy Bridge CPUs official.

Read more »

Nokia Belle Officially Confirmed for February 8

Nokia Belle has already been delayed once, but the Finnish company is determined to keep its promise and deliver the long-awaited update in February.

Shortly after the handset maker confirmed that some of its Symbian Anna smartphones, such as the N8, C6-01, C7 and other were already shipping with Nokia Belle on board in some regions, Nokia’s Vietnamese branch made it official on its website that the update would be released on February 8.

Obviously, the update will be released in stages and is expected to go live only in several countries at first, but Nokia plans to complete the roll-out process by the end of February.

No additional details have been unveiled by Nokia Vietnam, which is the only one that confirms plans to deploy Nokia Belle update in the first half of February.

Read more »

Sony LT22i Nypon Launching in April as Sony Xperia P

Earlier this month, Sony unveiled two new Android smartphones at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the Xperia S and Xperia ion. 

These are the first smartphones that will be released with Sony’s brand logo, after the Japanese company bought Ericsson’s share in the joint-venture.

However, Sony plans to launch more Android devices during 2012 and some of these smartphones will be announced next month at the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona.

Sony’s Android roadmap for the Q2 and Q3 has already leaked online about two weeks ago, along with prices and release dates.

One of the smartphones that appear in this leaked document, Sony LT22i Nypon is expected to arrive in stores in April. The Android-powered smartphone is priced at 370 EUR (490 USD) outright, but this might be changed closer to the release date.

The folks over at GSMArena have just learned that the Sony LT22i Nypon will be available on the market as Sony Xperia P. It appears that the Japanese company decided to name its new Android smartphones using the alphabet’s letters and adding the ‘Xperia’ series name.

This is why we already have the Xperia S, which is expected to be launched in March, while the Xperia U, also known as Sony ST25i Kumquat is slated for an April release, just like the Xperia P (Sony LT22i Nypon).

When it comes to specs sheet, Sony Xperia P is positioned one tier lower than the Xperia S. The smartphone is based on NovaThor U8500 chipset and packs a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal memory, as well as an 8-megapixel rear camera with full HD (1080p) video recording.

Sony Xperia P sports a 4-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports 540 x 960 pixels resolution, and a secondary 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls. Rumor has it that the Xperia P runs Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, but this has yet to be confirmed by Sony.

Read more »

KFA2 Officially Launches Quad-Display GTX 580 MDT Graphics Card

Almost a month after KFA2 made official the GTX 580 MDT X4 EX OC graphics card with quad-display support, the company announced the European launch of this flagship solution based on the GF110 core.

KFA2 was able to overcome Nvidia’s two monitors per card limitation by using a third-party IDT VMM1400 controller, a chip that is usually found in multi-display hub devices.

Despite this change, KFA2's latest creation somewhat resembles the company's previous GeForce GTX 580 Anarchy as it uses a similar tri-fan cooling solution, but which was now painted black together with the PCB for a more aggressive look.

However, unlike the other GTX 580 model in KFA2 lineup, the MDT version drops the usual dual-link DVI outputs in favor of three mini-HDMI and a single DisplayPort connector, which can support up to four monitors simultaneously, double than Nvidia's reference design.

Three of the displays attached to the card can be combined to form a single surface (for multi-monitor gaming or productivity) with a resolution of 5760x1080 pixels @ 50Hz.

The monitors attached to the graphics card can be controlled from the KFA2 EZY Display Setting Management software that is bundled together with the GTX 580 MDT X4.

As far as clock speeds are concerned, the GPU is factory overclocked to work at 840MHz (1680MHz shaders), while the memory frequency is set at the standard 1002MHz (4008MHz data rate).

"The GTX 580 MDT is highly over-clocked at 840MHz with a triple LED cooling systems and the option for Multi Display, all these features combine, has produced a new level to consider when looking at the GTX 580 range," said Graham Brown, European marketing manager.

KFA2 hasn’t provided us with any details regarding the price of the GTX 580 MDT, but a previous report revealed that the graphics card would hit retail in Sweden for 5,100 SEK including VAT (569 EUR or $743 US).

Read more »

Windows 8 on ARM Now Stable, Devs to Receive It in February

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system is bringing along support for ARM chipsets, among other great new features. 

The platform is increasingly stable on ARM configurations, and Microsoft is quite happy with the way things evolve. In fact, the company is so content, that it plans on pushing the platform to developers as soon as next month. 

Sources familiar with the matter confirmed this state of facts, CNet reports. People who had the chance to play with Windows 8 on ARM claim it is impressive and stable.

Apparently, Microsoft is working hard with its hardware partners on the release of Windows 8 devices that sport ARM chips, and will be able to deliver them to devs next month. 

ARM devices that run Windows 8 are expected to be much cheaper than those packing Intel processors. Rumor has it that the price difference might be of hundreds of dollars. 

Moreover, Windows 8 on ARM is expected to deliver the same level of performance as it would do on Intel configurations. 

Of course, it has been suggested that Intel tablets running Windows 8 will have the great advantage of supporting legacy applications, yet ARM devices will also have a lot to offer. 

And there will also be Metro applications available for their owners - apparently, these apps are based on HTML5. 

Previous reports suggested that, while the first Intel-based Windows 8 tablet PCs would arrive this year, ARM devices with support for the platform wouldn’t be here until 2013. 

However, it appears that Microsoft plans on pushing Windows 8 on both ARM and Intel at the same time. 

Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Nvidia will all want to have a piece of the market, and they will work closely with manufacturers to have tablets packing their chips and running Windows 8 available on shelves as soon as possible. 

Next month, Microsoft should make available for the public the Beta version of Windows 8, and additional details on ARM and Intel devices to support it might be unveiled at that time.

Read more »