Bringing you the latest tech news on this fine holiday evening it’s your US Update. We’ve got the latest scoops from the annual Computex trade show in Taipei, including the new tablet smartphone hybrid from Asus, a 7-inch ViewSonic Honeycomb tablet and a 12-megapixel Windows Phone smartphone from HTC.
The Asus Padfone takes a 4.3-inch smartphone and conceals it in the rear of a 10.1 tablet. The two devices share a single SIM card, applications transition between devices and there’s a single storage pool so no need to transfer data. This is the definition of device synergy. Love the MacBook Air design but not ready to stomach the sticker shock? The £120 MeeGo-powered Asus Eee PC X101 netbook could be your cure. Available in either a HDD or SSD configuration, this netbook is a mere 17.6mm thick and weighs in at just 950grams.
ViewSonic is taking the Android Honeycomb fight to the HTC Flyer and upcoming Acer Iconia Tab A100. With the race to deliver the first 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablet heating up, the dual-core Tegra 2-powered ViewSonic ViewPad 7x might be the tablet to beat. Next week when Apple kicks off its annual WWDC convention, we might see a mid-year refresh of the MacBook Air. Now priced at $829 (£503), down from $849 last week, the refurbished 11-inch MacBook Air sits at a 17 percent discount. Will we see an ARM-powered MacBook Air or is this the Sandy Bridge Core I refresh?
Last up this morning is the HTC Mazaa, a 12-megapixel Windows Phone packing a new CPU and GPU configuration. We’ve seen the device in Microsoft Mango IE 9 demonstrations, but for the first time the device is handled in detail by notorious Nokia insider Eldar Murtazin — this is a video you don’t want to miss. That wraps up the latest and greatest in the fine world of tech news. As always I’m Nick Marshall and I’ll see you again tomorrow.
