No case of the Mondays here, we’re locked and loaded to bring you the best in tech in today’s US Update. Coming to you live and direct from the land to the west, we’ve got the scoop on how to add a Smart Cover to your original iPad. We’ll break down details of the Sony NGP game releases then hop over to coverage of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and more.
March, 2011
The roller coaster of gadget trends has resulted in a growing demand for large-screen smartphones. Back in 2001 the mobile industry focused on making phones smaller and more compact. Today small screens are out and big boy screens are in. Smartphones with 4-inch or larger screens now represent 24 percent of the market. Meanwhile smartphones with screen smaller than 3.4-inches dropped 30 percent over the past year. Wondering where the iPhone’s 3.5-inch display fits in?
Early tomorrow Samsung is expected to take the stage at CTIA to announce the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. Today our friends at pocketnow.com managed to find the display area for the tablet, confirming Android 3.0 Honeycomb is a go, alongside Samsung’s own UX. Here’s the latest on the mid-sized Galaxy Tab.
Sony’s Next Generation Portable (NGP) has stirred up quite the buzz since being announced in January at a Tokyo press event. Today, the topic of discussion is focused on game launches. Following in the footsteps of the PSP Go, Sony’s NGP will primarily focus on digital content, but like the original PSPs there will also be physical copies (flash cards), released simultaneously.
We witnessed the announcement, we had hands-on time and we even reviewed it. The Asus EEE Pad Transformer is scheduled to launch in Taiwan in a little over three days, beating our April estimate. Over on the company’s official Facebook page, a countdown is underway leading to the Taiwan launch.
If you’ve become jealous of your iPad 2 touting comrades, a simple do-it-yourself hack will help level the playing field. Simply apply some glue and a few rare earth magnets to the side of your original iPad and your flashy new Smart Cover awaits — ready to find out more?
Look what’s gone live today: pre-orders for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, AKA the PlayStation Phone, on Vodafone, plus the waif like Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.
Our best iPhone apps column doesn’t usually feature children’s apps. In fact, this may well be the very first time we’ve featured a full-on kid’s app but Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime justifies that. At first glimpse, Nursery Rhymes appears to be a fully animated story book with a selection of classic fairy stories built-in (The Owl And The Pussycat, Jack And Jill etc) but it has a killer feature, the StoryTime bit…