Thread: Anandtech News

Recently, Verizon made some waves by EOLing its entire LTE data card and personal portable hotspot line. It was pretty much obvious at that point that replacements would be announced at CES, and sure enough, today Verizon has announced two personal WiFi hotspot products. Both are nicknamed "The Verizon Jetpack," though their more formal names are the EuFi890 from ZTE and the MiFi 4620L from Novatel Wireless.

ZTE Mobile Hotspot (Left), MiFi 4620L (Right)

Back when we reviewed both Verizon 4G LTE portable hotspots, I complained that neither included 5 GHz WLAN connectivity. While neither the EuFi890 or MiFi 4620L include 5 GHz WLAN (instead 802.11b/g/n similar to before), they do include global WCDMA and GSM/EDGE support in addition to CDMA 2000 1x/EVDO and LTE for Verizon. The MiFi is 3.76” x 2.36” x 0.53”, and the ZTE model is 3.49” x 3.49” x .70”, and both include OLED status indicators and an interactive keypad on the front. We'll doubtless be taking a look at how these fare when they're available "in the coming weeks." Source: Verizon (ZTE), Verizon (MiFi)

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A few weeks ago, Intel updated their Atom platform with the launch of Cedar Trail, the successor to Pine Trail. While CPU performance isn’t likely to have changed much—we’re still looking at a dual-core plus Hyper-Threading in-order architecture—the GPU core received an upgrade to a PowerVR SGX 545 (from the precious GMA 3150). The new chips are also fabbed on Intel’s 32nm process, making for a very tiny and power efficient processor that should improve on Atom’s already impressive battery life. Naturally, a new Atom platform means new Atom netbooks from all the usual suspects, and first out the door (at least in terms of detailed announcements) is ASUS with their updated Eee PC lineup. ASUS also has AMD-based netbooks and ultraportables, and with the release of E-450 a couple months back ASUS is also updating their Brazos offering.
Gallery: ASUS Eee PC Flare 1025C


First up is the ASUS Eee PC Flare 1025C—note the addition of the word Flare to the ASUS Eee PC brand; Flare appears to refer to the upgraded design and appearance. The Flare 1025C will be available in a variety of colors—we have pictures of black, brown, red, blue, pink and gray (or City Gray, Gentleman Blue, Lipstick Red, Paris Pink, and Tuxedo Black if you prefer the ASUS names), all in a matte finish—while specs receive a few minor bumps relative to previous Eee PC offerings. Specifically, the CPU is the new N2600 (1.6GHz), the standard hard drive size is now 320GB (5400RPM), and it comes with a 56Wh battery and a suggested price of $299; the battery life is quoted at 10:12 in the MobileMark 2007 Productivity test. Other features include 3x USB 2.0 ports, a 1024x600 LED backlit LCD, 2.4GHz 802.11n WiFi, VGA, HDMI (a new feature for vanilla Atom), 100Mb Ethernet, and a Flash memory reader. The 1025C is your typical 10.1” netbook and tips the scales at 2.7lbs.
Gallery: ASUS Eee PC Flare 1025CE


The Eee PC Flare 1025CE is very similar in specs to the above with two notable exceptions: it uses the Atom N2800 processor (1.86GHz) it includes a single USB 3.0 port (and two 2.0 ports) and has an MSRP of $319. The colors are also different with a metallic finish: Addicting Pink, Mysterious Blue, Plucky Purple. The addition of a USB port requires a separate USB chip, and combined with the faster N2800 CPU there’s a slight reduction in battery life: ASUS quotes battery life at 9:38 in the MobileMark 2007 Productivity test. $20 extra for a faster CPU with USB 3.0 and a slight reduction in battery life seems reasonable. ASUS is also suggesting a 3-5 second resume time with up to two weeks of standby power (it’s not clear if that’s 3-5 seconds to resume from hibernate or sleep mode, but we’d assume the former as resume from sleep tends to be nearly instantaneous on any modern laptop). Both the 1025C and 1025CE are scheduled for availability in North America in February, and they ship with Windows 7 Starter.
Gallery: ASUS Eee PC X101CH


The final new addition in the Eee PC line (for now) is the X101CH—this time without the Flare addition, which means less interesting color choices of red white and blue (matte finishes). This is the lightest and least expensive of the bunch, though some features are cut in order to reach the desire price point. The processor is once again the N2600, and the majority of the features are the same as the above two netbooks, but the X101CH comes with just two USB 2.0 ports and a 3-cell battery. The result is a pretty substantial drop in battery life: ASUS quotes 4:01 on the X101CH, less than half of the 1025C.
Gallery: ASUS Eee PC 1225B


On the other side of the fence ASUS is also updating their Brazos offering with the 12.1” Eee PC 1225B, available in red white or blue (textured finish) at an MSRP of $399. The APU is the recently updated E-450, sporting a 1.65GHz base clock speed, and an HD 6320 GPU that can run at 508-600MHz. The base clockspeed won’t make for a major upgrade to the previous E-350 APU, but the Turbo Core GPU feature is a welcome addition. Other specs include a 1366x768 LCD, 2GB RAM, 320GB (5400RPM) HDD, and Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit). The 1225B also comes with two USB 3.0 ports, an additional USB 2.0 port, 2.4GHz 802.11n WiFi, 100Mb Ethernet, Bluetooth 3.0, and a flash memory reader. The battery is a 6-cell 56Wh model and ASUS quotes up to 6:02 of battery life. As with the other netbooks, North America availability is slated for February.




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We've been tracking and updating our iPhone 4S' to each beta of iOS 5.1, and today Apple has pushed out an OTA version of iOS 5.1 Beta 3 (build 9B5141a). The update changes baseband firmware on the 4S to 1.5.04 (from 1.4.00 in iOS 5.1 Beta 2) and also reintroduces the 3G toggle on our AT&T iPhone 4S. This is a very welcome and timely change especially considering that AT&T WCDMA is almost unusable in Las Vegas, making EDGE sometimes the only way to stay connected.

iOS 5.1 B3 Above - And yes, that's AT&T in the Venetian in Las Vegas this very moment.

I'll be testing the heck out of iOS 5.1 B3 to see whether the baseband instability introduced by 1.4.00 has been fixed finally, or whether the problem persists. In the meantime, having the 3G toggle back is a huge breath of fresh air. I'll be updating as necessary.

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Finally, we're getting somewhere. After seeing nothing but Thunderbolt storage devices with built in, overpriced drives, Seagate is going to be delivering the first GoFlex docks with Thunderbolt support. Granted you'll still have to use a compatible GoFlex drive, but this is at least a step in the right direction.
There are two models: the GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt adapter and the GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter, priced at $190 and $100 respectively. The GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt adapter will support 3.5" GoFlex Desk drives, while the standard GoFlex adapter will support 2.5" drives. The 2.5" GoFlex is bus powered and only has a single Thunderbolt port, while the GoFlex Desk adapter requires external power and has two Thunderbolt ports.
The pricing is still a bit high, but Seagate blames the cost of the Thunderbolt controller for that. If true, I hope Intel will deliver a cheaper alternative later this year like we've heard.
The GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt adapter will be available in February, while the GoFlex adapter will be available in two weeks.
Gallery: Seagate's GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapters




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Not content to release a few hotspots and phones, Verizon Wireless is giving Pantech and AT&T a run for their money with the release of an LTE variant of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7. Alone amongst the Galaxy Tab family, the Tab 7.7 features Samsung's Exynos processor clocked at 1.4 GHz; and this marks the first occasion that Exynos will be paired with an LTE radio. The Galaxy S II LTE variants relied on Qualcomm solutions for both their SoCs and LTE radios, while all prior Galaxy Tab LTE variants featured NVIDIA SoCs.

The 7.7" display on this latest Samsung tablet features the largest Super AMOLED Plus display currently available, so viewing angles and color accuracy should be top notch. If you're following Brian (@nerdtalker) on Twitter you know that VZW LTE has held up so far in Las Vegas so we're excited to get some hands-on time with VZW's latest devices. What we don't know is a price or a release date. We'll work on that shortly, for now enjoy the press images we have.



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We're live at the Nokia CES press conference where the Finnish smartphone manufacturer has finally officially announced the Lumia 900 with LTE in tow. We'll be updating with more details as the event unfolds, but thus far the device looks to confirm the rumors.

The device includes an F/2.2 camera with wide focal length 28mm optics, and support for AT&T's 4G LTE network. The Lumia 900 includes a 1830 mAh battery. There's a front facing F/2.4 camera for video calling as well with the built in WP7 Tango video application. Like the other Lumia devices, the 900 likewise includes a 1.4 GHz MSM8x55 SoC.
Gallery: Nokia Lumia 900


The device looks superficially very similar to the Lumia 800 and incorporates the same polycarbonate unibody design.



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ASUS just showed me their first 27-inch 2560 x 1440 IPS panel (pictured above). Pricing and availability are both unknowns although I am hearing 2H 2012 may be likely for the display. There are VGA, DL-DVI, DP and HDMI inputs of course. The panel can be rotated 90 degrees as well.
We'll keep you posted as ASUS finalizes details on the VA278Q.
Gallery: ASUS' VA278Q: 27-inch 2560 x 1440 Display Due Out This Year





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I just met with ASUS where I got to play with the newly announced Transformer Prime TF700T. If you missed this morning's announcement the major changes are a new RF transparent plastic strip across the back of the tablet as well as a new 1920 x 1200 display. The rest of the specs remain unchanged.
The demo unit had an early build of Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.3) running although neither the hardware nor the software are final at this point. The display looks great. Unfortunately I didn't have a macro lens on me so I can't provide really good shots but it definitely looks sharper than the stock 1280 x 800 panel.

I couldn't get GLBenchmark working on the device, but Shadowgun seemed to be running at full 1920 x 1200 resolution at a greater than 30 fps frame rate. The entire system seemed to put up with the increased resolution quite well despite using the same Tegra 3 GPU as the 1280 x 800 version. I'll reserve final judgement until we see final hardware hopefully in May.

ASUS' suite in the Trump hotel here in Vegas does a great job of blocking all RF so I wasn't able to really test the impact of the plastic strip on the back of the unit.
As I mentioned earlier, the TF700T is going to sit above the standard Prime (TF201) with a starting price of $599. The price increase is almost entirely due to the new high-res panel, although over time I'd expect these high resolution panels to drop in price as economies of scale kick in.
The TF700T will be compatible with the existing TF Prime dock.

Gallery: Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF700T: Hands On with ASUS' 1920 x 1200 Tablet running ICS 4.0.3




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We're at the Nokia press conference now where Jen-Hsun Huang just took the stage to talk about tablets, automotive, and what's in store in 2012 for Nvidia.

Nvidia views he tablet market as something that will continue to rapidly grow as different niches and use cases evolve. Just as the automotive industry has many different categories of automobile, the vision is to have a wide variety of different tablets each fulfilling a different niche, for example tablets with active pens and a variety of form factors.

Jen-Hsun showed off an ASUS Transformer Prime (which we've reviewed) running ICS and showed how smooth the UI is, including a number of applications leveraging Tegra 3. Snapseed - a photo editing application built entirely around a touch UI - was among the demos, which ran very smooth on the Transformer Prime. Snapseed is a popular iPad application that will now be available on the Android Market as well. The tablet app includes a number of desktop class photographic editing tools and filters.

Updating...

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Ivy Bridge is apparently on track for an early Q2 release so it's no surprise that we're starting to see 7-series motherboards at CES. Although Ivy Bridge should be backwards compatible with supported 6-series Sandy Bridge boards, you do get some features from moving to a 7-series board. For starters there's native USB 3.0 (many 6-series boards provided it through a 3rd party controller) as well as guaranteed PCIe 3.0 support on the slots that branch off of the CPU.
MSI showed us two Z77 boards, the Z77A-GD80 and the Z77-GD65. The GD80 is unique because it will actually ship with Thunderbolt support. The controller hasn't been placed on the board yet, nor has the Thunderbolt port, but the design is nearly complete. MSI doesn't have an estimate on pricing yet but I'm hearing that the Thunderbolt controller should add another $20 - $30 on average to any design.
Gallery: MSI's Z77 Ivy Bridge Motherboards at CES, Now With Thunderbolt Support




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