!!!....Electronics world....!!!

It looks like the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 might soon be getting a low-end sibling.                       The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 S6500--codenamed Jenna--could make its debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, according to a  leaked promotional image  sent to GSMArena. The specs attached to the image shows some improvements over the original; the new device sports a bigger, 3.3-inch screen with higher resolution, a faster 800MHz processor, and 3GB of storage. Along with rounded corners, the device will feature the same 3MP camera and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA connectivity as its predecessor. Another throwback is its operating system: the new smartphone will run  Android  2.3 Gingerbread. No word on a retail price, but the image reportedly includes a label that says "February 2012." With HTC expected to offer seven phones this year running the new Ice Cream Sandwich version of ...

                                            Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 2. Samsung has announced the follow-up to its 7-inch Galaxy Tab. Dubbed the Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) , the 7-inch  tablet  sports  Android  4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and a 1GHz dual-core processor. The Galaxy Tab 2 will come with both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. On the software side, Samsung's upcoming tablet will ship with its Hub services, including Music Hub to access over 17 million tracks, and Readers Hub for acquiring e-books. The offering will also come with Video Hub, which Samsung says, will allow users to rent or buy over 1,000 films. The Galaxy Tab 2 will also become the first mobile device from Samsung to ship with its AllShare Play service. AllShare Play allows users to stream multimedia content to the tablet from their PCs, Samsung smartphones, or third-party cloud...

Intel CEO Paul Otellini hinted that Windows 8 tablet  production may not be that far off, while asserting that  Android  tablets won't be able to compete against the  iPad  until Ice Cream Sandwich becomes more widespread. In an earnings conference call  after the chip giant posted better than expected earnings today , Otellini said Android-based tablets don't have what it takes to compete against the iPad--yet. "Tablets are a little bit about hardware and an awful lot about software," he said. "Until you get to Ice Cream Sandwich, the offering isn't as powerful as with what's out there with Apple. As Ice Cream Sandwich tablets start shipping, you'll begin to see a little bit better receptivity...everything got a little bit better with ICS," he said, referring to Android 4.0. Then he made an interesting comment about Windows 8 tablets and production schedules. "The other part of that test [of competing with iPad] of course is t...

Microsoft has struck another key patent-licensing deal in the  Android ecosystem.                                                            The software company announced today that it has inked a deal with LG that will see it license operating system patents for devices running Android and Chrome OS. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. LG has been relying heavily upon Android for its mobile push. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week, the company showed off its new flagship device,  the LG Spectrum . The smartphone, which will be launching later this month, runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and will be upgradeable to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). "We are pleased to have built upon our longstanding relationship with LG to reach a mutually beneficial agreement," Microsoft corporate vice president and deputy gene...

AS VEGAS--Texas Instruments is offering one of the most revealing demos of Windows 8 on  ARM  yet at CES .                           That's not saying a lot, though, as demos of Microsoft's next operating system on ARM processors have been extremely restrictive, if nonexistent to date in public (Nvidia's untouchable, relatively static CES demo is behind closed glass). But TI pushed the boundaries a bit in a demo for CNET at CES. The demo  tapped TI's freshly minted OMAP4470 ARM processor , according to Bill Crean, an OMAP product marketing manager. Needless to say, I was not permitted to take video. But TI's Crean demonstrated live scrolling with Windows 8 Explorer on the CNN news site. Scrolling was fluid and I didn't see the jerkiness that I do get, by the way, with my Verizon-Motorola XyBoard  tablet  on  Android  3.2. Again, that's not revealing a lot, but Windows 8 on ARM is a...

Liu Jun of Lenovo holding up the K800, Lenovo's first Intel-powered smartphone, at CES 2012. Intel's new chip for phones is surprising in many respects, but the biggest shocker is speed. The "Medfield" Atom Z2460 chip for smartphones,  announced at CES , handily beats some of the fastest phones on the market, review site Anandtech said in  this  post. Is this fast enough to be smartphone-market disruptive? Will battery life measure up? Only Lenovo and Motorola know for sure (Anandtech  thinks Medfield will be fine  on battery life). One thing is for certain, though: neither of those companies are signing up for Medfield out of pity, as Anand Shimpi points out. And--another shocker--the results that Anandtech cites are not that different from a bar-graph slide (below) that CEO Paul Otellini showed at a Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference back in November. (I should add that I had somebody whispering in my ear before  CES  to take those be...

Row upon row of tablets at CES 2012. In spite of manufacturers' best efforts, the  tablet  hits of the past year could have been counted on the hand of a careless woodshop teacher. Among those hits are a  $199 tablet  designed as a loss leader, and an orphaned  HP tablet  that was abandoned in the liquidation bin. Needless to say, if there had been a thin selection of tablets at this year's  CES , I would have understood. But that wasn't the case. The show floor of CES 2012 was littered with tablets--perhaps even more than the previous year. Granted, the majority of these tablets were off-brands and OEMs that will never find their way into U.S. hands, but there were big-name announcements as well. Asus's Memo 370T tablet is one of the first tablets to pack Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor. As I see it, the tablets announced at CES came in three flavors: budget; premium; and mutant (not as bad as it sounds). Furthermore, I suspect that these themes wi...