Nokia's MWC 2012 Lineup Leaks: Lumia 610, PureView 808, Asha 202 / 203 / 302

It looks like Nokia is reading for something big at the Mobile World Congress trade fair, which is set to kick off on February 27, in Barcelona, Spain.

Although there’s no word on any high-end smartphone that might be announced at the end of the month, except the global version of Lumia 900, word on the street is that the Finnish company will launch no less than six new devices at MWC 2012.

The guys over at Pocketnow found out the names of the phones that will be released in Barcelona at the end of the month, but they couldn’t get any details on these devices.

According to them, Nokia plans to debut no less than six new phones at the exhibition: two Windows Phone devices, one Symbian smartphone and three feature-phones.

Aside from the global version of the Lumia 900, Nokia will announce the budget-friendly Lumia 610 Windows Phone handset. The Nokia 808 PureView will be released as well, probably with Nokia Belle on board.

Nokia 808 PureView has been previously tipped as the successor of the old Nokia N8 camera phone. However, the 808 PureView will probably boast a better camera and most certainly a touchscreen display. 

Given the fact that Nokia N8 boasts a 12-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xennon flash and autofocus, it will be interesting to see if Nokia PureView will come up with something better than this.

Furthermore, Nokia will also showcase three new Asha series feature-phones. Nokia Asha 302, Asha 203 and Asha 202 will probably have similar features as their predecessors, Asha 200, 201, 300 and 303.

Unfortunately, there are no additional details on any of the phones’ specs sheets, but more information will probably leak by the time Nokia decides to go official with these devices at the Mobile World Congress 2012.

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Samsung Makes GALAXY Tab 2 (7.0) Official

Today, South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics has announced the upcoming availability of a new flavor of its GALAXY Tab tablet PC, one that runs under Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. 

The new GALAXY Tab 2 (7.0) brings along great multimedia capabilities, along with all of the features that Google has included in its Android 4.0 operating system. 

Samsung’s GALAXY Tab 2 (7.0) arrives on the market with a 7-inch touchscreen display, the same as its predecessor, and also offers support for 3G (HSPA+ 21Mbps) and WiFi connectivity.

Featuring a 1GHz dual core application processor, the new device will arrive on the market in the UK in March, and will reach more countries around the world soon afterwards. 

This is the first tablet PC from Samsung to land on shelves with Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. It will also deliver support for the over 400,000 applications that are available for download via the Android Market. 

"Two years ago, Samsung GALAXY Tab began to offer customers more possibilities on the go. Since then, Samsung has actively enhanced our tablet line-up with several tablets in different sizes," said JK Shin, president of IT & mobile communications division at Samsung Electronics. 

"The new GALAXY Tab 2 (7.0) will provide people with delighted multimedia experience and allow efficient communication."

The new device also includes multimedia access, playback and sharing capabilities courtesy of Samsung Hub services. Moreover, it comes with Readers Hub, with support for over 2.3 million e-books, 3,500 magazines and over 2,000 newspapers in 51 languages.

GALAXY Tab 2 (7.0) will land on shelves with access to Samsung’s Game Hub, as well as with the new Video Hub service from the company, with over 1,000 film titles available for purchase or rent right from the start. 

“Complementing the GALAXY Tab 2 (7.0)'s multimedia offering is Samsung's upgraded Touchwiz user interface that features Hub widgets for one-step access to users' content in Hubs; the device also presents S Suggest, a new service offering recommendations of apps suited to users' tastes directly on a home screen,” Samsung notes. 

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AMD A-Series Trinity APU Specs Unveiled, Top at 3.8GHz

After we presented a series of basic info about AMD’s upcoming A10- and A8-Series APUs last week, a new leak has now reached the Web to reveal not only the names of these chips, but also their specs, including CPU and GPU clock speeds.

Just as it has previously done with Llano, AMD decided to split the Trinity APUs into four product series, covering everything from the high-end to the low-end processor market.

The most advanced of these APUs will be launched in the A10-Series, which includes the A10-5800K and the A10-5700, according to Donanim Haber.

Both of these chips pack four processing cores, 4MB of Level 2 cache memory, support for AMD’s Turbo Core technology and DDR3-1866 memory, as well as an on-board Radeon HD 7660D GPU with 384 shaders.

In the case of the A10-5800K the operating speed of the CPU is set at 3.8GHz (4.2GHz max Turbo), while its smaller brother has a base clock of 3.4GHz and 4GHz maximum Turbo.

In the A8-Series, AMD will release the A8-5600K and A8-5500 APUs, both of these chips featuring pretty much the same specs as the A8-Series Trinity processors, but coming with the slower HD 7560D GPU which packs 256 Radeon cores.

The base clock speed of the A8-5500 is set at 3.2GHz (3.7GHz max Turbo), while the A8-6500K works at 3.6GHz with a 3.9GHz maximum Turbo speed.

Moving to the remaining two AMD APUs, the A6-5600K and A4-5300, we get to see that these include just two processing cores and a mere 1MB of Level 2 cache.

This is however where the similarities between these two APUs end, as the A6-Series chip features DDR3-1866 memory support and a Radeon HD 7540D integrated GPU with 192 streaming cores, while its smaller brother has to make do with a 128 core Radeon HD 7480D GPU and just 1600MHz DDR3 memory.

The rest of the APU specs are available in the table included in this article. According to some previous leaks, the first AMD Trinity APUs are expected to arrive during the second quarter of this year.

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Garmin Shows Off Its BlueChart iPad App at Miami Boat Show

In conjunction with the Miami International Boat Show, Garmin International announces its BlueChart Mobile marine app for iPad and iPhone that lets mariners enjoy the same accurate BlueChart data in Garmin chartplotters on an iPad or iPhone.

The BlueChart Mobile app will be showcased in the Garmin booth (#1689) at this year’s show Boat Show in Miami, where interested parties will be able to test its ability to access ActiveCaptain, a web-based community that provides real-time content generated by mariners for mariners.

ActiveCaptain co-creator and owner, Jeffrey Siegel, will be at the Garmin booth this Friday, as well as in the morning of Saturday, February 18, 2012, to highlight the program and its functionality within the BlueChart Mobile app.

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CDMA Nokia Lumia 800 Emerges En-Route to China CDMA Nokia Lumia 800 Emerges En-Route to China

Nokia’s first Windows Phone out there, the Lumia 800, was made available only in a GSM flavor, yet it seems that the Finnish handset vendor is considering the launch of CDMA versions of the device as well.

The company is getting ready to make the smartphone available for mobile phone users in China, and will do so in the near future.

When unveiling the Lumia 800 last year, Nokia did say that it had plans for making the device available in China as well, and the first signs that things have been put in motion have just started to emerge.

The CDMA flavor of Lumia 800 is expected to become available in the country via China Telecom as soon as next month.

Apparently, Nokia is also preparing the launch of Nokia Lumia 710 in China, and might be even considering the availability of Lumia 900 in the country. Unfortunately, no official details on the matter have emerged for the time being.

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Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Pictured Ahead of Launch

With just a few more hours to go until the Radeon HD 7770 becomes official, a picture of an upcoming HD 7770 graphics card built by Sapphire has just reached the web giving us a glimpse at the successor of the popular Juniper HD 5770/HD 6770 solutions.

For this next-gen midrange graphics card, Sapphire decided to go with a design similar to the one used for some of its Radeon HD 6770 graphics cards.

This relies on a single large central fan to ventilate both the PCB of the video card, as well as a heatsink that draws the heat away from the GPU via a thick copper heatpipe.

On the connectivity front, things are also surprisingly familiar as Sapphire’s creation sports the usual 3 display output configuration which comprises DVI, HDMI and mini-DisplayPort outputs.

Sadly, OBR-Hardware, the website behind this picture, hasn’t revealed the operating clocks of the Sapphire card, but judging by the cooler installed we would say this sticks to AMD’s reference frequencies.

In the case of the HD 7770, these are set at 1000MHz for the GPU, while the memory works at 1,125MHz (4.5GHz in data rate mode).

At the heart of the Radeon HD 7770 video card stands the Cape Verde XT GPU, which is based on the same Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture as the more powerful HD 7900-series graphics cores.

Specs wise, the core features 640 streaming processors, 40 texture units and 16 ROP units, all installed together with a 128-bit wide memory bus that is connected to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer.

AMD’s Radeon HD 7700-series graphics cards are expected to be made official on February 15, but at this point in time their pricing is still unknown.

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Mac Pro Refresh in Q3 with 8-Core Ivy Bridge CPUs - Report

Apple is preparing to refresh its Mac Pro line of workstations, according to a report from China, but don’t hold your breath just yet, as the sources behind this leak say it’ll happen as late as the end of Q3 2012.

M.I.C. Gadget has been reliable on Apple rumors in the past, so it should be worth noting that the blog has learned that “Apple is close to finally updating the Mac Pro.”

As one of Intel’s most valuable partners, Apple has already received “engineering samples for the new [Ivy Bridge] processors, with 8 cores and a shocking 20MB of cache,” according to the blog’s sources.

The overheating issues plaguing existing machines are gone, the sources added, “and the manufacturing yield is now high enough for Apple to maintain its high profit margin,” they said.

The blog is hearing “rumblings” that Apple plans to ship the updated systems “near the end of quarter three.” More in the full report here.

Apple’s first Mac Pro, formally announced on August 7, 2006 at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), was based on Dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors.

On April 4, 2007, a dual Quad-core Xeon Clovertown model was released.

The current model Mac Pro was announced on July 27, 2010. It features Intel Xeon processors based on the Nehalem microarchitecture.

Apple also sells a Mac Pro Server (launched November 5, 2010) which replaces the Xserve line of Apple servers as of January 2011, alongside the server option for the Mac mini.

In other words, Apple’s Mac Pro is quite overdue for a refresh. Some analysts believe the company plans a complete redesign of the desktop computer.

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XFX Radeon HD 7770 Black Edition Pictured

The Radeon HD 7770 might not be out yet, but the first leaked pictures of an XFX HD 7770 have already reached the Web, letting us all have a look at this next-gen midrange gaming graphics card.

Right from the get-go, it becomes apparent that this new Black Edition HD 7770 is somewhat a replica of XFX’ Radeon HD 7970 BE, since it packs the same Double Dissipation cooler design.

For the HD 7770 however, this has been shrunk, since the card has a much lower TDP than its 7900-series counterparts, according to TechPowerUp.

Despite this change, the Double Dissipation cooler is still a much better option than AMD’s reference design, as XFX claims this can be up to 13dBA quieter and 7°C cooler than those stock HD 7770’s.

The card’s operating clocks are not yet known, but the mystery will unravel soon since just a few more hours separate us from the AMD Radeon HD 7700-series launch.

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Enpirion Makes DDR Memory Run on 1.4W Less

Enpirion has announced the completion of the EV1320 VTT 2 Amp source/sink DDR termination converter, which accepts input voltage of 0.95 to 1.8V.

This new converter measures 3 x 3 x 0.55 mm and can make do with a printed circuit board area of just 80 square mm.

Enpirion also made it possible to operate more than one device at the same time, boosting efficiency and cost effectiveness for any applications that rely on large DDR memory capacities.

That includes everything from servers to notebooks, tablets, ultrabooks, solid state drives and embedded computers.

In layman terms, the EV1320 VTT converter allows DDR memory to work with an efficiency of 96 percent, which equates to 1.4 Watt power saving compared to standard LDO (low drop out) regulator-based alternatives.

To put things in perspective, if 10 million servers are deployed in one year, that leads to 110 million Watts of saved energy. Add to that everything else and the estimate rises to 450 million Watts.

“Every generation of electronics products adds new features, functions and compute resources, which in turn drives an increase in DDR memory capacity to the point where the memory termination power is becoming significant,” said Charlie Mera, Enpirion’s vice president of marketing and applications. 

“The EV1320 enables designers to significantly reduce the memory subsystem’s power dissipation without resorting to more expensive, larger switching regulator-based memory termination options.” 

Enpirion is already sampling the product at a price of $0.70 at volumes of 1k units (0.53 Euro).

“Continued focus on innovation in highly integrated power devices combined with improved efficiency will significantly impact every corner of the industry,” said Arnold Alderman, power electronics analyst, Anagensis Inc. 

“The introduction of novel approaches that provide lowest solution cost and smallest size for mainstream applications, such as DDR power, is fueling the rapid adoption of integrated power.”

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Samsung Galaxy Ace DUOS, Galaxy Y DUOS and Y Pro DUOS Now Available in India

Korean handset maker Samsung has just announced the availability of three brand new dual-SIM smartphones in India, Galaxy Ace DUOS, Galaxy Y DUOS and Galaxy Y Pro DUOS.

According to the company, these are the first dual-SIM smartphones launched by Samsung on the Indian market. Although the Galaxy Y DUOS and Galaxy Y Pro DUOS have already been officially unveiled back in December, the Galaxy Ace DUOS is a brand new smartphone.

Indian customers prefer dual-SIM devices and Samsung is trying to boost its market share based on customers’ needs and preferences. 

Even though these are the first dual-SIM smartphones introduced in India, Samsung previously launched two dual-SIM feature-phones, the Champ Deluxe DUOS and Star 3 DUOS.

The brand new Samsung Galaxy Ace DUOS is a budget-friendly Android smartphone, which comes with dual-SIM Dual Active technology, allowing customers to switch to CDMA and GSM networks while on the go.

The smartphone is equipped with a low-performance 832MHz processor, and features a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen display. It is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform, and provides access to more than 400,000 apps via Android Market.

Customers who want to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Ace DUOS must come up with Rs 16,900 (340 USD or 260 EUR) upfront.

The Galaxy Y Pro DUOS is an Android-based dual-SIM smartphone that comes with a full QWERTY keyboard. Just like the Galaxy Ace DUOS, this one is powered by Gingerbread platform and Samsung TouchWiz UI on top.

It comes with a 2.6-inch capacitive touchscreen (400 x 240 pixels resolution), a 3-megapixel rear camera, a secondary VGA front-facing camera for video calls and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB, 2GB memory card included).

Samsung Galaxy Y Pro DUOS is available for purchase in India for a suggested retail price of Rs 11,090 (225 USD or 170 EUR) outright.

Samsung Galaxy Y DUOS is the full touch version of the Galaxy Y Pro DUOS bar smartphone. Aside from dual-SIM capability, the handset comes with a 3.14-inch QVGA capacitive touchscreen display and the same 832 MHz single-core CPU. 

The Galaxy Y DUOS is the cheapest of the three and will soon be available in India for only Rs 10,490 (210 USD or 160 EUR).

“With the increasing demand for being connected 24x7 and yet maintaining a personal life balance, these innovative Dual SIM smartphones enable the mobile consumers to be socially networked through their phones anytime, anywhere, and at the same time separate their personal life from their professional life,” said Mr. Ranjit Yadav, country head, Mobile and IT, Samsung India.

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