Thread: Anandtech News

Nokia President Chris Weber announced in an interview today that the company will completely stop selling feature phones and Symbian-based smartphones in the US in order to focus on its new Windows phones. Weber gave no specific timeline for the transition, but said that the company would be "essentially out" of both market segments by the time the new Windows phones launch in late 2011 and early 2012.
Nokia announced this past February that it would be entering into a partnership with Microsoft to use the Windows Phone operating system, but had previously expected to keep Symbian around for lower-end smartphones, which is apparently no longer the case. Symbian's market share is much higher in other regions than in the United States, where it has barely been able to attain single-digit share, so don't expect Nokia to lose too many sales as a result of this decision.
Both Nokia and Microsoft have seen their market share fall off precipitously in recent years, but both companies hope that their partnership will result in well-integrated smartphone hardware and software that will stand out in a playing field increasingly dominated by Android and iOS. We'll find out soon enough whether this bet will pay off.
Source: AllThingsD


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With Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade promotion becoming an annual success, Sony’s prepared an answer: the PlayStation Network PLAY program. Pre-orders for the program begin today (August 9), and the first game hits the PlayStation Store on August 23.
If you purchase a PLAY title during the promotion, you’ll receive downloadable content unique to that game. Pre-ordering a PLAY title will grant you a new theme, as well. Those with deep enough wallets for all four games will be given a voucher code for the PSN exclusive PAYDAY: The Heist – if they’re 18 years and older.
Included in the event are Capcom’s Street Fighter III Third Strike Online Edition, Hothead Games’ DeathSpank sequel The Baconing, Majesco’s side-scrolling platformer BloodRayne: Betrayal, and SEGA’s top-down vehicle shooter Renegade Ops. All four games will run $14.99. If you’d like to purchase PAYDAY: The Heist separately, you can for $19.99. PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive a 20% discount on all PSN PLAY titles.
It’s encouraging to see Sony putting effort into promoting its online store and attempting to rehabilitate its reputation in the wake of this year's massive PSN security breach. The PlayStation Store is full of indie gems like the PixelJunk series and Joe Danger, and programs like PSN PLAY can draw much-deserved attention their way.

Source: PlayStation Blog


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Earlier this year while at MWC, Anand and I broke news of a Samsung Galaxy phone with Tegra 2 inside. At the time, we assumed it was a Galaxy S2 variant, the GT-I9103. At the time, the suspicion was that either Samsung was preparing a Tegra 2 variant in case Exynos yields weren't good enough, or that it was a cheaper regional variant for some markets. Since then, we've seen Galaxy S2's international launch come and go, with no Tegra 2 variant.

That changes today, as Samsung today is announcing the Samsung Galaxy R, which includes a Tegra 2 SoC along a number of other important changes that differentiate from Galaxy S2. Most notably, instead of Super AMOLED Plus, the Galaxy R includes a 4.19" 'Super Clear' LCD display and 8 GB of NAND, as opposed to 16GB or 32GB on the Galaxy S2. In addition, the Galaxy R shoots 720p HD video, runs Android 2.3, and has slightly larger dimensions of 125.7 x 66.7 x 9.55 mm. Judging from the photos, the Galaxy R is styled very similarly to the international Galaxy S2, and likewise includes a front facing camera of unknown resolution, though on the rear it looks like a 5 MP camera with LED flash.
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Armed with all that information, it does look like Galaxy R is the Tegra 2-based Galaxy S2 that we suspected all along, but under a different name. It appears that the Galaxy R is shaping up to be a lower-cost, mass-market Galaxy S2 alternative in some markets, as evidenced by component selection that seems to be mature or available in steady volume (Tegra 2, 5 MP camera, LCD display, e.t.c.). There's no word on price, but the Galaxy R is immediately available in Sweden, and coming soon to North & Eastern Europe, South East & West Asia, Middle East Asia, and China.


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The world of wireless networking products has been slowly advancing over the past decade or so. We started at 11Mbps 802.11b and 54Mbps 802.11a in 1999, added 54Mbps 802.11g in 2003, and then 802.11n in 2009 (though we first saw this in Draft-N form in early 2008) brought us support for 150Mbps and up to 600Mbps connections, depending on the controller and antennae configuration. We have yet to see any 600Mbps parts, and since the launch of 802.11n, the major differentiating factor among the product landscape is what level of 802.11n support they provide. Is the card 2x2:2, or 3x3:3 MIMO (or something else)? Does it have dual-band support or is it 2.4GHz only? How many data streams can the card support on each frequency? All of these elements affect potential performance and throughput, but is there still a difference between products that are otherwise specced the same? Enter the Bigfoot Killer Wireless-N 1102.

In order to prove that all wireless networking products are not created equal, Bigfoot is entering the market and claiming to be the new king of the hill. We’ve been testing their 2x2:2 MIMO part, the 1102, for the past couple of months. It has dual-band support with connection speeds of up to 300Mbps. Bigfoot claims to have the best throughput of any current wireless device, including most 3x3:3 solutions, and they have custom drivers, firmware, and software to help improve latency and other aspects of performance. To help us do some real apples-to-apples testing, Bigfoot shipped us two identical notebooks, courtesy of Mythlogic Computers, with the only difference being the wireless chip in each laptop. Of course, we have other wireless devices on hand, so we decided to throw additional combatants into the ring. Can Bigfoot’s Killer 1102 live up to their claims of overall superiority? Join us as we investigate performance under a variety of situations.


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GameFly continues to impersonate Netflix. The videogame rental service, which has long followed the Netflix disc-by-mail delivery model, recently announced plans to emulate Netflix’s Instant Streaming service by offering PC games for download – for free.
GameFly’s announcement comes almost three months after its acquisition of digital distribution service Direct2Drive from IGN Entertainment. Direct2Drive’s infrastructure should allow GameFly to meet the storage and bandwidth demands of “Unlimited PC Play”.
The new digital client will launch this fall, beginning with a closed beta on September 8, 2011. It will offer GameFly subscribers a variety of tools to manage their collection, but the killer feature is the ability for members to “download and play as many Windows/Mac games as they want, from a large and ever-growing collection of titles.”
“It’s kind of like a Spotify or Rhapsody or a Napster,” co-founder Sean Spector told USA Today on Tuesday. “You have access to the content as long as you a subscriber, but when you are no longer a member, the content then disappears.” The service will begin with over 100 available titles, and Spector is optimistic that more aren’t far behind, adding, "We are in discussion with all the major publishers.”
GameFly’s “Unlimited PC Play” most closely resembles GameTap, which offers roughly 600 games and survives largely on the appeal of its nostalgia offerings. To gain any traction, GameFly’s service will need to offer new games from major franchises like Call of Duty and Mass Effect. If publishers say no, it’s bound to go the way of the Sega Channel.
Source: PR Newswire


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With each subsequent generation, Samsung's SSDs have been getting noticeably better. Two years ago its drives were unrecommendable, but just this year we met the Samsung SSD 470. While still slower than the competition, the 470 was fast enough to at least consider. It's biggest selling point? Reliability. The OEM version, the Samsung PM810, is used by many large manufacturers. In fact, one of the two SSD options in the 2011 MacBook Air uses a custom version of the PM810.
Today Samsung is announcing its successor: the PM830. Two major changes accompany the new drive: 6Gbps SATA and 2x-nm Toggle NAND support. The move to 6Gbps SATA helps boost sequential read/write speed. Samsung is claiming up to 500MB/s reads and 350MB/s writes, both very impressive numbers if they're accurate. Supporting 2x-nm Toggle NAND should help drive costs down in the long run as well, similar to what we saw with the 25nm ONFI move that Intel and SandForce partners made this year.
The drive still uses Samsung's own controller with its own firmware. Samsung couldn't give me any details on what's changed since the PM810/SSD 470, only to say that the tweaks are likely evolutionary in nature.
The PM830 is shipping to OEMs now in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. A consumer branded drive will follow at some point in the future.


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At this year's Computex Intel announced a "new" category of notebook computer designed to further blur the lines between traditional notebooks and tablets: the Ultrabook. Requirements for an Ultrabook are straightforward: it needs to be thin and light, it needs to have an SSD and it needs to be available at less than $1000. Think MacBook Air, but for everyone. Intel eventually wants Ultrabooks to mimic the always on, always connected features of tablets and smartphones, but concedes it'll take a couple of years to get there.
The first Ultrabooks will ship this year, including ASUS' new UX Series in late September. We'll see more performance and features next year with Ivy Bridge, and the segment will really go mainstream with Haswell in 2013.
Tonight Intel Capital is announcing the creation of a $300M Ultrabook Fund to help further innovation in this space. The funds will be available over the next 3 - 4 years for both startups and established companies across the globe. Intel Capital wants to invest in companies "building hardware and software technologies focused on enhancing how people interact with Ultrabooks such as through sensors and touch, achieving all day usage through longer battery life, enabling innovative physical designs and improved storage capacity." Basically if you've got an idea that could make Ultrabooks cooler than a regular thin and light notebook, Intel Capital wants to talk to you.
Startups looking to get in touch with Intel Capital to get some of that Ultrabook money should visit Intel Capital's website and/or send an email to intelcapital@intel.com.
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In the rush to move everything into the third dimension, Toshiba has announced their latest glasses-free 3D notebook, the Qosmio F755 3D. The laptop is even capable of displaying 2D and 3D content at the same time. So how does it all work?
Toshiba achieves the 3D glasses-free viewing by using the latest in auto-stereoscopic display technology. The 15.6" LCD is a full HD TruBrite panel with Active Lens technology, with double parallax technology that allows it to project two sets of images at the same time, splitting them between the left and right eyes to create the 3D effect. Toshiba’s Face Tracking technology then uses the laptop’s webcam to optimize the projection of the image by reacting to the motion and position of the viewer, delivering a broad viewing zone from which to view 3D content. The end result is the ability to view and enjoy real 3D sans no glasses.
What about simultaneous 2D and 3D content? There's nothing particularly revolutionary here; as one of the first implementations of windowed 3D content (courtesy of NVIDIA's latest drivers), users can watch 3D content in a full-screen or condense it to a smaller window, leaving the rest of the content in standard 2D mode. Like other 3D laptops, Toshiba also includes the ability to convert 2D movies into a faux-3D mode, though I've never felt that looked particularly good.
The Qosmio F755 3D comes with all the other accoutrements you'd expect from a modern high-end notebook, though the GPU is lacking if you're hoping to play games with 3D Vision enabled. The CPU is a Core i7, while graphics come in the form of the GeForce GT 540M. Storage consists of a 750GB hard drive and a Blu-ray/DVDR combo drive, and as usual Toshiba uses harman/kardon speakers to deliver improved sound quality.
The Qosmio F755 3D will be available in mid-August with a $1700 MSRP at select e-tailers and ToshibaDirect.com. Pre-rendered images of the laptop are below, showing Toshiba hasn't lost their verve for glossy red exteriors.
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Earlier tonight HTC announced, via AllThingsD, that it would be investing $300M in Beats Electronics, LLC, creators of the famous Beats by Dr. Dre brand. Beats is still a privately held company so there's no indication exactly how much of the company will be in HTC's control, although Beats mentioned it would continue to operate independently of HTC and alongside current partners including HP.
It's unclear exactly how much Beats contributes to the audio path of products that carry its brand. HP's TouchPad with Beats Audio for example used a slightly more featured audio codec, limiting Beats' involvement to software alone. HTC likely hopes to gain audio street cred via the Beats brand rather than an unequaled technological advantage as competing companies should be able to implement similar DSPs/software should they desire to.
The big news out of all of this is that all smartphone and tablet makers will be taking audio more seriously going forward.
Source: AllThingsD


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It's a depressing time to be covering the consumer SSD market. Although performance is higher than it has ever been, we're still seeing far too many compatibility and reliability issues from all of the major players. Intel used to be our safe haven, but even the extra reliable Intel SSD 320 is plagued by a firmware bug that may crop up unexpectedly, limiting your drive's capacity to only 8MB. Then there are the infamous BSOD issues that affect SandForce SF-2281 drives like the OCZ Vertex 3 or the Corsair Force 3. Despite OCZ and SandForce believing they were on to the root cause of the problem several weeks ago, there are still reports of issues. I've even been able to duplicate the issue internally.

It's been three years since the introduction of the X25-M and SSD reliability is still an issue, but why?
Read on for a current state of the union on SandForce SSDs as well as a discussion of SSD reliability in general.


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