Motorola's recent partnership with Intel may manifest itself soon if a possibly leaked render is accurate. The shot captured by PocketNow showed a silver, wedge-shaped design with no buttons on the front. Appropriately, it would be using Android 4.0 and appeared to have a handful of tweaks, such as a hybrid battery/time/weather widget and badges for missed messages.
Multiple sources stated Monday that the ARM-native version of Windows 8 is in good enough shape to reach developers in February. The release was deemed "quite stable" by CNET contacts, which had been told by hardware partners to anticipate a release sometime in February. There was no indication that Microsoft planned to separate the Intel- and ARM-based versions of Windows.
HP showed the changing roles of netbooks on Monday with the introduction of its first new netbook for 2012, theMini 1104. The 10-inch netbook is focused on schools and business and primarily adds Intel's faster Cedar Trail-era 1.6GHz Atom N2600 for faster graphics and overall performance. It comes with Computrace Pro and a TPM security chip to help track the netbook if it's stolen.
Intel on Friday shook up its executive structure at both technical and formal levels. To reward Dadi Perlmutter's responsibility for the chip architecture group, he would be promoted to the spot of chief product officer to take up responsibilities given by newly full-time executive chairman Andy Bryant. He would still head up architecture, but would take on a wider responsibility.
Intel has posted its full-year financial details, pointing to a record year with $54.2 billion in overall revenue. The chip maker's profits were up nearly six percent in the fourth quarter, as its PC client division posted a 17-percent jump in revenue for both the fourth quarter and the entire year.
Sony had a surprisingly large number of prototype devices at CES 2012, including a pure tablet. Those were only a small piece of its prototypes. We revisited to catch the rest as well as to see just how Sony was gearing up what looked to be a more direct challenge to Apple for 2012.
An insistence on earlier pricing policies from Intel and Microsoft may put Windows 8 tablets out of contention, notebook PC builders getting into the field claimed Monday. Intel was reported by Digitimes contacts as unwilling to cut profit margins on its Clover Trail-based Atom chips, while Microsoft wasn't planning on trimming its Windows 8 price. As such, Intel-based Windows 8 tablets might start at a minimum $599 and scale up to $899, all well over the benchmark $499 price of the iPad.
Intel is currently showing off a Lenovo tablet, the IdeaTab K2110, that appears to be the first Atom-based Android device to run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich build. The tablet utilizes the same Atom Z2460 processor that powers Intel's own Medfield smartphone reference design and Lenovo's K800 Android smartphone that are also on hand this week at CES.
Lenovo brought its new Atom-powered smartphone, the K800, to a special event following Intel's keynote at CES. Electronista had a chance to try out the unique device, which is expected to be the first Android handset to arrive on the market equipped with Intel's mobile processor.
Although Intel is focusing on ultrabooks this week at CES, the company also brought along a prototype Android handset referred to by the CPU code-name Medfield. Electronista had a chance to try out the Atom-based platform, which aims to compete with ARM-based hardware utilized by most Android smartphones.
Sony in the aftermath of its CES 2012 opener began showing a slew of unmentioned concepts and prototypes at its booth. Among the examples was a new, mystery VAIO tablet concept behind a glass case. The new device, presumably intended to run Windows 8, had an all-rounded design with an aluminum back and a separate, illuminated, capacitive touch keyboard.
An upcoming Toshiba NB510 netbook with Intel's Cedar Trail Atom chip has been spotted by Notebook Italia. The PC will get a choice of Atom N2600 or N2800 processors and sport 1GB of RAM along with a 320GB hard drive. It sports a 10.1-inch, 1024x600 screen and is preloaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition.
PC gaming peripherals maker Razer has released a teaser video for a mysterious new gadget it plans to reveal at CES on January 10. A video put up on the company's 'PC gaming is not dead' website (and embedded below) suggests something called Project Fiona will be unveiled. The video shows gameplay from Assassin's Creed Revelations, Tom Clancy's Hawx2, and FireFall, suggesting hardware capable of supporting these titles is coming. This may indicate a revamped or follow-up version of the SwitchBlade handheld gaming PC, which was unveiled at last year's CES as a prototype, may arrive.
ASUS has given a tease of the full strategy for the Eee PC 1200 series with renders and details of how they'll appear at CES. Now called the Eee PC Flare, the netbooks will have curvier designs colored almost end-to-end, with black, blue, red, and purple wrapping around the entire body. They should have a MacBook-style hinge that brings the display behind the base as well as a chiclet keyboard and a 'stealth' trackpad.
Acer and Lenovo are putting their faith in Intel-based Windows 8 tablets for the summer, part suppliers claimed Monday. The two, according to Digitimes, would depend on Intel's tablet-oriented Clover Trail Atom platform. No details existed for the tablets, although Clover Trail would help get thinness and battery life closer to ARM tablets like the iPad and some future Windows 8 models.
Pricing for a new Intel Cedar Trail-based Acer netbook have popped up in Europe. The Acer Aspire One D270 (AOD270) is a 10.1-inch said to be running the newer, faster 1.6GHz Atom N2600 processor. The D270 is also believed to come equipped with 1GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. It will be available with either a three-cell or six-cell battery.
A rumor spread Friday has asserted that LG will be the first to make phones using Intel's Medfield platform for Atom chips. Citing unnamed executives from both companies, the Korea Times would have LG use the CES expo to show at least one Android smartphone running on an Atom. When it would ship, if at all, wasn't apparent.
Lenovo has quietly chosen to show a netbook without waiting for CES. Both an official teaser video (below) and a listing at ProVantage point to the 10-inch mini PC being Lenovo's first with Cedar Trail-based Atom chips that should give a big lift to graphics and 64-bit OS support. It would carry a 98 percent of full-size keyboard and get relatively advanced extras such as USB 3.0 and a two-megapixel webcam.
The first tablet running Android 3 on Intel's Medfield platform has been spotted out in the wild by AndroidCommunity. While the Medfield tablets and smartphones are expected to be officially unveiled at CES, this latest leak reveals some tech specs. The 10.1-inch tablet will have a version of Android 3 preloaded and likely use a dual-core 1.6GHz processor. The source said the build quality of the tablet is great, with a hefty weight and thin build.
Intel ushered in what might be the swansong for netbooks on Wednesday by finally shipping Atom processors based on its Cedar Trail platform. Confirming rumors of another delay, it was shipping the 1.6GHz N2600 and 1.83GHz N2800 with the expectation that they would be available in early 2012. Familiar netbook supporters Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba had pledged new systems using the chips.
A new discovery Tuesday has shown that Intel's Medfield chip for smartphones and tablets could temporarily claim the performance lead when it ships. Benchmarks at VR-Zone of a 1.6GHz example of the new Atom had it reach a score of 10,500 in Caffeinemark 3, an Android test for Java. The best ARM chip in the test, the 1.2GHz Exynos from the Samsung Galaxy S II, scored 8,500 points and let Intel take a roughly 24 percent lead.
New details have emerged of a shift in Intel's Atom strategy as it backs off of netbooks. The previously hinted-at Centerton platform is now said by Digitimes to be refocused on network-attached storage (NAS) hubs for the home and basic servers. It should be an all-in-one, system-on-a-chip design using a modern 32-nanometer process; past tips have pointed to it supporting 64-bit software and single-stick 8GB memory while running at 1.6GHz.
Intel in a rare step gave a hands-on test of its Medfield-based Atom phone and tablet reference designs to MIT. The institute's Technology Review in testing the Android 2.3-based phone called it "powerful and pleasing," noting that it could play "Blu-ray-quality" video with wireless TV streaming and could shoot burst photos at up to 15FPS for 10 shots. It was "on a par" with newer Android and iPhone hardware, according to the close look.
Intel later on Wednesday confirmed talk that it was uniting divisions to boost its poor standing in mobile. The mobile communications, mobile wireless, netbook and tablet, and ultramobile groups under one single mobile and communications group. It would be headed up by Mike Bell, a former iPhone team member who left Apple in 2010, and by ex-Infineon veteran Hermann Eul.
A series of early benchmark tests centering around the upcoming Intel Atom N2600 have been performed by NetbookLive. The low-power Cedar Trail chip uses 32nm architecture and uses dual cores to attain its 1.6GHz clock speed, though these specs aren't yet official. Intel's integrated HD 3600 graphics running at 400MHz are onboard and it should support as much as 2GB of RAM.
The Chinese-made copy of the MacBook Air introduced back in October has just been reviewed by MIC Gadget. The $500 notebook obviously falls short of the original, which starts at $1,000. The body is not as thin, it outweighs the Apple product, and the body is plastic with a coat of matte finish.
The unofficial first Android 4.0 x86 port won't get help from Intel, the company's Google program lead Alec Gefrides said in an interview Friday. He noted to EE Times that the Android-x86 project, which is focused on bringing Android to traditional PCs, was largely a straight compile of the basic source code with generic PC support that wasn't Intel's focus. Intel was focused only on optimizing Android for Atom-based phones and tablets, and a spokeswoman added that supporting Android-x86 might fragment the platform further.
Intel is giving Windows-based ultrabook makers a $100 discount to help them try to undercut Apple on price, part suppliers in Taiwan claimed late Tuesday. Designers were getting the "marketing subsidy" in a move that Digitimes understood would lead to prices dropping five to ten percent below the $1,000 mark. The drop would follow an earlier cut expected before the end of 2011 and would presumably come from Intel's $300 million ultrabook fund.
Netbooks may have seen one of their chances at keeping competition afloat after a possible scoop on Thursday had Intel once more delaying its next Atom processors. An original November ship target for the future Cedar Trail platform was now understood by VR-Zone to have been moved back to the end of December. With companies reportedly not allowed to ship until mid-January, likely in sync with the CES expo, they would be forced to miss the holidays.
Lenovo staked out an aggressive claim Tuesday by launching the IdeaCentre Q180. The nettop is billed as the "world's smallest desktop PC" and, Lenovo says, has the footprint of a paperback. It gets to that claim by becoming one of the first mainstream nettops to use Intel's new Cedar Trail-based Atom processors, picking the dual-core 2.13GHz Atom D2700 to use just 10W of power.
ASUS may be shipping its first Intel Atom Cedar-Trail-based netbooks in time for the Christmas shopping season. Netbook News has posted copies of pages from ASUS' in-house magazine, Tech in Style, showing the Eee PC 1025C and 1025CE netbooks. The photos show both devices decked out in holiday gift boxes.
Intel's tablet-oriented Clover Trail processor got more details through a claim late Thursday. Having originally intended its Medfield processor for both smartphones and tablets, Intel was now supposed by Digitimes contacts to be limiting Medfield to phones and reserving Clover Trail solely for the larger slates. The aim would be to directly challenge equivalent Intel ARM processors, including in peak design power.
Dell overnight put up a pre-order page for its delayed Latitude ST tablet. The 10-inch Windows 7 slate is now known to cost $859 and, in the first wave of orders, should arrive by November 29. Base trim gives it a 1.5GHz Atom Z670 chip, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB solid-state drive along with rear five-megapixel and front 720p cameras.
HP late Wednesday refreshed its lone remaining tablet through the Slate 2. The Windows 7 hardware keeps the same outside form with an 8.9-inch, 1024x600 display but trades up from the 2009-era Atom of the original Slate 500 to a modern 1.66GHz Atom Z670 from the Oak Trail family. The upgrade theoretically nets it six hours of actual battery life versus the original's claimed five and often much less.
HP today announced Project Moonshot, a new industry initiative to help customers reduce complexity, energy use and costs. The program has three components: a new server development platform, a customer discovery lab, and partner program that includes AMD, ARM Holdings, Calxeda, Canonical and Red Hat. The server development platform, code-named Redstone, will initially use ARM processors and add Intel Atom processors in the future.
One of the many clone developers in the Shenzhen area of southern China, Shenzhen Technology, has produced a MacBook Air clone that may draw extra fire from Apple. Where most clones are conspicuously different on the outside, the unnamed 13-inch system spotted by Shanzhaiben is much closer to Apple's actual design and actually slightly smaller and lighter. Rather than use Intel's low-voltage Core i5, though, it's using the as yet unreleased 1.86GHz Atom N2800 based on the Cedar Trail platform, making it closer to a netbook.
Chinese electronics maker ITG is preparing a successor to its Windows XP-running smartphone in the xpPhone 2, which uses Windows 8. The first smartphone to do so, it gets a 4.3-inch touchscreen to display the desktop software's Metro-inspired interface. It measures in at a large 140x73x17.5mm (5.5x2.9x0.7 inches), and hardware will also be nearly desktop-like, with a 1.6GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, and as much as 112GB of storage space.
The hot-selling biography of Steve Jobs has revealed that the Apple CEO at one point wanted to use Intel's Atom chip for the iPad. He had contended that Intel was reliable for mobile chips, even when the iPhone was already shipping with ARM. Then-key executive and later Nest Labs founder Tony Fadell was not only adamant that ARM would be better but even threatened to resign on the spot at a board meeting where Jobs was making the case for the Atom.
Intel marked another record quarter on Tuesday and partly bucked expectations that the iPad would cut more into sales. It cracked $14 billion in revenue for the first time at $14.3 billion, up 29 percent from a year ago, based on "double-digit" jumps in processors for portables. Its net profit was up nearly as much, climbing 24 percent to $3.7 billion.
Intel is shuttering its Digital Home Group in what could trigger a sea change in TV media hubs. New details unveiled just late Monday to AnandTech had it keeping the pure embedded set-top box business but dropping the full-scale Digital TV business responsible for some of its lowest-power Atom processors. Staff would be rolled into Intel's recently established tablet group.
Zotac, maker of home theater PCs such as the Atom-powered Zbox HD-ID11-U, has now brought out two budget models. The ZBox nano VD01 and the Plus version that adds a 320GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM. Both can now be powered by VIA's 1.2GHz Nano X2 U4025 dual-core processor. The onboard graphics are VIA's own Chrome9 and can play back HD video formats including Blu-ray, MPEG2, H.264, and VC-1.
Asus' upcoming Eee PC 1025 netbooks have surfaced at the FCC. The Commission's documents do not bring any surprises, however the testing suggests both models, including the 1025C and 1025CE, may be nearing their respective launch dates. The netbooks may be some of the first devices to arrive on the market outfitted with Intel's Cedar Trail processors.
SKYTEX Technology on Friday announced a partnership with EXOPC that would bring the latter's touch user interface to the former's Skytab S-series Windows 7 tablet PC. The tablet uses a dual-core, 1.5GHz Atom N550 CPU and sports a 9.7-inch, 1024x768 capacitive multitouch display that has as many as four points of touch recognition. Also on board is 2GB of RAM.
Intel is reportedly planning to rebrand its Atom chip lineup sometime next year, unnamed sources within the industry have told DigiTimes. The move is said to be in response to sliding sales for Atom chips, a problem that the company appears to be partially blaming on a poor brand image under the current "Atom" name.
Netbooks may have faced another crucial setback as Intel's Cedar Trail platform was moved back again. Once intended to arrive for end users in the fall, the next-generation Atom platform should now ship to partners in the fall but won't be in end user devices until 2012. Netbook and hybrid division marketing lead Cindy Ng suggested at the Intel Developer Forum that it was coming out of a pair of technology additions.
Intel and Google on Tuesday detailed a collaboration that will make Android compatible with the Atom range of low-power processors. This will help bring out Intel-based smartphones with Android to market quicker. Android developers will also have the option of bringing apps to the x86 platform for the first time.
During the opening keynote at the Build 2011 conference, Microsoft's President of Windows and Windows Live, Steven Sinofsky, revealed the minimum required hardware specs of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. An early-generation Atom processor and 1GB of RAM such that the Lenovo S10 netbook possess is all that's needed to run the software, as it requires less system resources than Windows 7. A slide was shown that proved only about 281MB of RAM and 29 processes is what's needed.
Intel appears to be readying some of its Atom processors to run Android, however the feature will not arrive until early next year. Although developers have already achieved success with Google's mobile OS on Atom chips, including hardware that serves as the basis of Google TVs, such endeavors have yet to be met with official support from the chip maker.
Amazon is accepting pre-orders for ASUS' new Eee PC X101. The 10.1-inch ultrathin computer is one of the first notebooks to run the Windows-alternative MeeGo, Intel's Linux-based, open-source software platform. Amazon is showing a price of $227, but gives no indication when the netbook will actually begin shipping.
NEC announced an addition to its LaVie line of portable computers, a new tablet today dubbed the LaVie Touch. The Touch features a 10.1-inch IPS LCD panel with 1280x800 resolution and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. It will be bundled with wireless keyboard and mouse, and a DVD dock that also serves as a stand. The Touch is 10.4in x 7.2in, 0.62in. thick and weighs 1.6 pounds.
