Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia really ought to keep on eye in the rear view mirror these days, as its Korean competitor is slowly creeping up from the back with entries like its latest media-oriented smartphone, the G810 — a successor to the G800. The phone breaks from Samsung’s fascination with Windows Mobile and goes the Symbian route, also touting HSDPA data, a 2.6-inch QVGA display, a 5-megapixel camera, GPS functions, WiFi, 150MB of memory (plus a microSD slot), and Bluetooth 2.0. The new handset is expected to be introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, and will likely retail for around €580. If you’ve been brushing up on your Czech, hit the read link for more in-depth info — otherwise, you might want to stick to the via.

[Via Unwired View]

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Forget that shrinking nonsense Intel keeps talking about — squeezing battery-sipping processors inside minuscule form factors — it’s totally played. We got here some numbers on Intel’s new Skulltrail gaming platform, featuring dual quad-core QX9775 processors and other ridiculous specifications designed for besting the likes of AMD and that pesky Crysis frame rate. If you want to get into all the tech nitty gritty, the read links have all the bullet points to satisfy, but here’s the long and the short of it: those eight Xeon cores and various other server-inspired innards blow away every sort of competition in multi-threaded applications, and other single-threaded CPU-heavy tests put the QX9775 near or at the front. Unfortunately, the board is held back by its use of DDR2 800 FB-DIMMs, which landed it a bit behind the QX9770 and QX9650 Core 2 Extreme in Crysis benchmarks — one of the few benchmarks that Skulltrail even felt any competition from the rest of the pack. It seems like the board mainly shines when it has multiple graphics cards to back it up, and it’s also clear that the Crysis Everest won’t be bested by CPU juice alone. There aren’t any specifics on price or release date yet, but expect to pay $600 or more per CPU.

Read – Hot Hardware
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Techgage
Read – Custom PC

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

We’ve been hearing rumors all morning that Microsoft would release Vista SP1 this week. Now, according to Reuters, Microsoft has just sent Vista SP1 to manufacturing. In the same presentation to investors, Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing as well. However, the server software won’t formally launch until February 27th. Now we’re just waiting for the SP1 download link and/or Windows Update package. Twiddle, twiddle… ah hell, we’ll just update you when we get it — this could take a few days.

Update: Hands off the F5 key kids, Microsoft says SP1 won’t be available to customers until March, starting with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. Server 2008 will be available for purchase on March 1st.

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World Mobile Congress doesn’t kick off until next Monday, but that hasn’t stopped LG firing off an all new slider a whole week before the shindig in Barcelona.

The KF510 clocks in at a super slim 10.9mm, but the Koreans have managed to shoehorn in a not-too-shabby 3 meg snapper and MP3 player.

Other than that, word on features is thin on the ground, so we’ll have to wait ’til we hit the floor next week and get a proper hands-on look.

Style wise, your looking at a metal clad bod’ and tempered glass touch interface, which, we’re assured will work thanks to “advanced touch technology.”

If that’s the same touch tech that’s already been wheeled out for the distinctly underwhelming Prada and Viewty, then we’re not so sure how this bad boy is going to work out.

It’s due to hit stores in March, but we’ll be getting a close-up feel next week in Barcelona. Be sure to keep it here for all WMC news as it happens.

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Portable Video

After teasing us with a lustful peep from their V900’s marketing collateral, E-TEN had the good grace to make their newest Glofiish official. Their first handset to offer mobile TV does so without hesitation — DVB-H, DVB-T, T-DMB, and DAB broadcast media are all supported on that generous VGA display. These consumer oriented Windows Mobile phones pack an unspecified GSM radio, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS underneath a new, E-TEN developed touch-based user interface. Presumably, E-TEN has a TouchFLO-like layer to hide the consumer-unfriendly ugliness of Microsoft’s increasingly dated and finger-meat hating mobile OS. Also announced is E-TEN’s new Glofiish M810 with HSDPA, WiFI (b/g), and GPS with full QWERTY in tow. More on these with their unveiling at GSMA.

[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]

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