Samsung Preps Champ Deluxe and Champ Deluxe DUOS Phones

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung is getting ready to launch two new affordable handsets in the Champ family, namely Champ Deluxe and Champ Deluxe DUOS

Basically, they are the same device, only that the DUOS version offers support for dual-SIM configurations, expanding the capabilities users can benefit from. 

Both mobile phones arrive on shelves with EDGE support (no 3G capabilities), and run under Samsung’s proprietary OS. 

These handsets also pack a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen display, 1.3MP camera on the back with support for video recording, Bluetooth 3.0, a microSD card slot with support for up to 16GB of additional storage space, a 1000mAh battery, and Samsung’s TouchWiz Lite 2.0 UI.

Samsung has yet to confirm official details on the availability and pricing of Champ Deluxe and Champ Deluxe DUOS. Rumor has it that they should both land on shelves in the near future.

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ARM’s Next Gen 64-bit Processor Will Be Called Atlas and Apollo

Processors licensor ARM Holdings, has recently disclosed the code names of its upcoming CPUs based on the company’s v8 architecture which are the first ARM cores to bring support for the 64-bit instruction set.

ARM has chosen to go with a pair of classical names from the Greek mythology for its next-generation high-end processing cores, which will be dubbed Atlas and Apollo, according to EETimes.

From the info that was made available by ARM at this point in time, we know that both chips are being designed for likely implementation in 20-nm manufacturing process technology, while addressing applications from servers down to smartphones.

"We expect Atlas, Apollo to come into volume in 2014 and at that time it will be a 20-nm world out there," said Warren East, ARM’s chief executive officer.

As the company previously revealed, the ARM v8 architecture will consist of two main execution states, AArch64 and Aarch32, the former enabling its chips to run 64-bit instructions.

This approach will also allow chips based on the ARM v8 architecture to fully support software developed for 32-bit ARM v7a processors.

The move to 64-bit should enable ARM to bring the advantages of energy-efficient 64-bit computing to new applications such as high-end servers and computing.

So far, ARM has four licensees for this new architecture, including AppliedMicro and Nvidia, although the latter also plans to release its own 64-bit ARM processor design with the introduction of Project Denver.

The first 64-bit ARM processors are expected to make their appearance later this year, while the actual server prototypes running on the new architecture are scheduled to arrive in 2014.

In addition to Atlas and Apollo, ARM will also release a pair of next-generation graphics cores code named Skrymir and Tyr as well as an ultra-low power ARM processor core dubbed Flycatcher.

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Asus Transformer TF300T Tablet Breaks Cover

We all knew that Asus planned to release a new Transformer TF700 tablet this summer, but now a picture making its way from China comes to reveal that the company is also getting the TF300T ready.

Apart from what we can tell from the image below, little else is known about this tablet which sports a textured rear panel with a red coat of paint.

If we were to guess however, we would say that the TF300T packs the same Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core SoC as the Transformer Prime, but it could arrive running a different operating system, probably Windows 8.

If this will indeed be the case we might be looking at Asus’ first Microsoft-powered 10-inch tablet, which, dare we say it, doesn’t look half bad.

More info about this should be available in the coming months, so make sure to return to dannzfay News regularly if you want to keep up to date with the TF300T.

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Nikon 1-Series Cameras to Get 4K Video Support and Brighter Lenses

Nikon’s 1-Series cameras have proven to be quite popular in the short time since they’ve been out, but despite their success the Japanese company doesn’t plan to rest on its laurels.

According to a high ranking Nikon official, the company has already started thinking about the improvements it will bring to its next-gen of interchangeable lens cameras.

Tetsuya Yamamoto, Nikon's head of development, talked to DPreview about these plans during CES 2012, where he revealed that quite a few improvements would make their way into the next-gen 1 System cameras.

The most important of these is the addition of 2K and 4K video recording, as Yamamoto believes that the 10.1MP sensor fitted inside the 1-Series bodies is powerful enough to support this feature.

Furthermore, the company’s rep also talked about the need for a set of brighter lenses with faster auto-focusing, while the V1 successor could also receive manual AF control and in-camera RAW editing support.

The Nikon V1 and the J1 started selling at the end of October 2011, and both of these include a 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, dual-core EXPEED processing engine, a 1200fps slow motion capture mode, as well as a 10fps burst shooting mode.

Full HD video capture is also supported, users having the option to choose between 1080/30p or 1080/60i, with the movie files recorded being capped at 29 minutes.

Compared to its smaller brother, the J1 also adds a built-in flash, auto-noise reduction on movie clips and a 73-point auto-focus system, all fitted inside a magnesium alloy chassis.

The 10.1MP image sensor installed in both of these cameras, uses the newly introduced CX form factor (13.2mmx8.8mm) with a crop factor of 2.7x, which is significantly smaller than the sensors used by Nikon's competitors, most of them going for Micro Four Thirds or APS-C, while ISO speed is limited at 3200.

Sadly, Nikon’s rep hasn’t mentioned when the company plans to unveil the successors of the V1 and J1, or if these will coexist with the current models.

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Fujifilm X-Pro1 Shows Up on Amazon, Priced at $1700 (1,293 EUR)

Fujifilm might not have officially released the X-Pro1 yet, but this hasn’t stopped Amazon from listing the retro-looking ILC camera on its Website.

Scheduled to arrive later this month, the X-Pro1 will apparently set you back a whopping $1,699.95 (about 1,290 EUR) for the body only, with the 18mm f/2.0 and 35mm f/1.4 lenses being priced at $500 (380 EUR) each.

For those of you that like to get even closer to the action, Fujifilm also sells a larger 60mm (91mm equivalent) f/2.4 macro lens for $600 (457 EUR).

While the $1,700 price tag is definitely high for a camera this small, the retro looking X-Pro1 does come with some pretty high-end specs including a 16MP APS-CMOS sensor sporting a new filter array and proprietary EXR processor, as well as with a hybrid viewfinder.

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Nokia Still Top Phone Maker, IDC Reports

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has been losing market share lately, mainly due to the transition from the Symbian OS to Windows Phone, but it appears that it still managed to retain the top position on the mobile market. 

The latest data coming from IDC shows that Nokia remained the top handset vendor in the world in 2011, and that it maintained the position in the fourth quarter of the year as well. 

In Q4 2011, Nokia brought to the market its first Windows Phone devices, the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710. Although they had a slow start, Nokia still managed to sell 113.5 million devices in the timeframe, based on data from the IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. 

Samsung came in second with 97.6 million phones sold in Q4, while Apple grew to the third place with 37 million devices. LG Electronics fell to the fourth place with 17.7 million units, while ZTE ended the quarter on the fifth place with 17.1 million sold devices. 

In the last three months of 2011, the worldwide mobile phone market grew 6.1 percent on a yearly basis. A total number of 427.4 million units were shipped in the timeframe, compared to 402.8 million units in the same period the year before. 

"The mobile phone market exhibited unusually low growth last quarter, which shows it is not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. 

"The introduction of high-growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth. Yet overall market growth fell to its lowest point since 3Q09 when the global economic recession was in full bloom." 

IDC also notes that feature phones registered a steep decline in the three-month period. However, even if smartphones enjoy increased popularity, feature phones still account for the largest chunk of shipments. 

"Feature phones accounted for a majority of shipments from four of the five market leaders during the quarter," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends team. 

"Even though their proportion is eroding, feature phones maintain their appeal on the basis of price and ease of use.”

For the full year, the mobile phone market experienced a growth of 11.1 percent in 2011, down from the 18.7 percent growth experienced the year before.

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Nikon Coolpix P510 Offers Massive 42x Zoom, 1080p Video & Built-in GPS

If the Coolpix L810 that we presented yesterday can’t get you as close to the action as you would have liked, Nikon also has the P510 for you, which can offer a massive 42x zoom.

Equivalent in the 35mm world with a 24-1000mm lens, this VR stabilized Super Zoom also features a backlit 16MP back-lit CMOS sensor, with all the high-speed, multi-shot image processing modes one would require.

Geo-tagging your pictures is also as easy as it gets since the P510 has a built-in GPS, which is accompanied by a 921k-dot 3-inch vari-angle LCD, 1080p video recording support, a 100-3200 ISO range (expandable to ISO 6400 - Hi1) and stereo sound recording.

If all this sounds tempting to you, the P510 should become available later in February, for $429.95 (328 EUR).

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NFS: The Run Italian DLC Out Now, Fresh Screenshots Also Available

Electronic Arts has finally released, in a rather stealthy way, the Italian DLC car pack for its Need for Speed: The Run racing game on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

The Run appeared last year and, although it promised to deliver a Hollywood-style story, it ended up disappointing racing game fans with the paper-thin plot and forgettable characters. Seeing as how its gameplay was still top notch, managing to keep players interested in the game, EA started deploying DLC for the racing game.

After the Signature Edition content, the company has now released the Italian DLC, which brings seven new cars from the European country, as well as new events for the Challenge Series.

The cars included in the DLC are the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, the Pagani Zonda R, the Maserati MC12, the Lamborghini Diablo SV, the Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera, the Maserati Granturismo MC Stradale, and the Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione.

The add-on didn’t receive that much attention, as the first details appeared last week, but it’s now available for download on the PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms. You can check out the cars in all their glory below.

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Samsung Galaxy S III Might Be Launched in April

The successor of Samsung’s flagship Android-based Galaxy S II might not make an official appearance before April this year, some of the latest reports around the Internet suggest. 

Samsung has previously confirmed that the mobile phone, supposedly called Galaxy S III will not be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, but did not offer info on when the device might be launched. 

New reports, however, suggest that it could arrive in April, roughly two months after the MWC closes its gates in Barcelona. 

Packing a quad-core application processor inside, along with a Super AMOLED Plus HD display and 4G LTE connectivity, the handset will prove a true successor for the last year flagship phone. 

Moreover, the Galaxy S III is expected to arrive on shelves with Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, the same as Galaxy Nexus did last year.

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Download New Firmware for Canon EOS-1D and EOS 5D DSLR Cameras

Today we're bringing you two new pieces of code for two of Canon's professional line cameras, the EOS-1D and EOS 5D.

These DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflection) cameras had some firmware errors reported by users and the new firmware seems to have eliminated them. First of all, for the EOS-1D, the 1.0.4 firmware fixes the network error which used to occur when using the wireless file transmitter. 

Then it's the sudden disconnection between the EOD-1D and the computer, when using the EOS Utility to shoot movies and the DSLR would not recognize the wireless transmitter.

The EOS 5D firmware version 2.1.1 addresses two other errors: some mistakes in the Dutch language menu screen and the continuous/ Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) shooting being stopped after capturing the first image.

Both pieces of firmware are available for Windows and Mac, and here are the links:

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV WFT-E2II A/B/C/D Firmware 1.0.4 for Windows
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV WFT-E2II A/B/C/D Firmware 1.0.4 for Mac
Canon EOS 5D Mark II Firmware 2.1.1 for Windows
Canon EOS 5D Mark II Firmware 2.1.1 for Mac

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