Galaxy Nexus lands in Verizon stores

We know you've been impatiently awaiting its arrival, but fear not Android fans -- the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus is almost here... we think. A tipster sent in a shot of an internal VZW email outlining the next few weeks of launches and in-store displays. Chief amongst those is the December 8th arrival of banners, signs and other marketing materials for the world's first ICS handset. Our source reports that posters and all the relevant merch will be rolled out after close of business and the Nexus will officially go on sale December 9th. As a bonus, this also seems to confirm that the Droid 4 will be launching this Thursday. So, if you're fine with Gingerbread and have a thing for QWERTY keyboards December 8th could still be the day all your dreams come true. The rest of us will just have to wait just an extra 24 hours.

[Source of http://www.engadget.com]

HTC Titan Review

A four-point-se-ven-inch smartphone. It sounds grotesque. It sounds like a distended, bloated mess of plastic and pixels, the Tsar Bomba of the bigger-is-better smartphone era. But the HTC Titan is wonderful.

Why It Matters

Windows Phone has been an outstanding mobile OS, obscured by a glossy black parade of lame, uninspiring hardware. So. Many. Generic. Black. Rectangles. The Titan, alongside Nokia's offerings, is perhaps the first Windows Phone handset worth running your eyes over (and over and over). People will notice your phone, and want to touch your phone, and care about your phone. You'll care about your phone, most importantly.

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Windows Phone was born for the big screen—it looks absolutely gorgeous inside a giant frame. If you inflate Android to these measurements, it's a cluttered mess. You're just making room for more widgets. Ditto for iOS—all you're adding are more rows of apps. But WP is unlike anything else—it doesn't just expand, it luxuriates inside a big display.

It's an inherently rectangular OS—an interface of vivid, superflat gliding tiles, not various clocks and bars and bubbles and weather balloons. It's regimented, spartan, and visually delicious. And when you take those tiles and transpose them onto a larger surface, there's only more to love—and this is the way it was meant to be. Windows Phone is an OS of hugeness—giant photos, grids of everyone you know, giant, fabulously legible text. All of these things look splendid on the Titan's crisp, vivid screen. Yes! It looks crisp, even with the pixels of that Windows-mandated resolution puffed up.

So it's really not that surprising, then: a phone based on beautiful rectangles is great when it's an even bigger rectangle. It might look or sound unmanageable, but the Titan belies its name—it's skinny, light, and slips easily into your back pocket or bag. Consider it a small, friendly giant.

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That screen girth doesn't run on fairy dust—big display means big battery suckage, and the Titan can't defeat physics here. You'll find yourself charging the thing daily with regular use. The camera also leaves you wanting images worthy of the screen they're on—HTC should have crammed in their mightiest camera, and the difference is a real shame. More discerning eyes might be bothered by stretching out 800x480 worth of pixels across the Titan's display.

Should I Buy This

If you're not afraid to have something 4.7 inches in your pants, yes. If you want the most visually pleasing birthing of the most visually pleasing smartphone UI out there, yes. If you want something more compact and battery-conscious—and that's OK!—probably not. But the Titan is more than just a gimmick phone. Unlike its Android peers that point at their AMOLED crotches and grin, HTC's big boy isn't big for the sake of its size. Windows Phone sings at this size. There's a reason supermodels are tall. [HTC]

HTC Titan

• Dimensions: 131.5 x 70.7 x 9.9mm
• Screen: 4.7-inch, 480x800
• Processor: 1.5 GHz
• Memory: 512 MB
• Camera: 8 MP still, 720p video
• Price: $200 with 2-year contract

source of http://gizmodo.com

HTC mulling Chromebook

Samsung's Chromebook may soon have more company

HTC is reportedly considering creating an 'internet access device' using Chrome OS and Android.

According to Digitimes' component maker sources, the company is looking at combining "the advantages" of Chrome OS and Android for some kind of tablet or Chromebook device.

It's not abundantly clear how this dual-OS scenario would work, perhaps by dual-booting the two OSes or in some mash-up between the two.

We're not sure what form the 'internet access device' would take either - HTC has more heritage in mobile devices like the smartphone and tablet, but Chromebooks have thus far been netbook-style offerings and Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) really has the tablet side of things covered.

Chrome-look

The news that HTC is eyeing Chrome OS comes despite disappointing sales of the Acer and Samsung Chromebooks already on the market.

We're not really convinced that HTC would make a netbook - and with HTC and Google staying firmly silent on the matter and only Digitimes and its anonymous source's word to go on, we can't award this rumour much more than a grudging 'it's possible' on the TechRadar rumourometer.

From Digitimes

Is there even life in the old Chromebook yet? We ask and answer the eternal cloud-loving netbook questions in our video on the topic below:

source of http://www.techradar.com

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2011) review

Apple's 13" MacBook Pro has been refreshed rather than overhauled

The late 2011 MacBook Pro refresh is the laptop line's second update this year, but a far smaller revision than the one we got in February.

While the early 2011 MacBook Pro refresh of the 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch laptops brought us new Sandy Bridge second-generation Core i-series processors and a Thunderbolt port, the late 2011 update is more incremental, with only minor upgrades to the processing speed and bigger hard drives.

The entry-level 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro late 2011 retains its dual core Intel Core i5 processor, but has gone from a 2.3GHz to a 2.4GHz chip. The more expensive model, which we reviewed, moves from a 2.7GHz to a 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 processor.

Hard drive capacities have been increased, with the entry-level model going from 320GB to 500GB, and the higher-end version from 500GB to 750GB. Hard drive speeds remain unchanged, at 5,400 rpm.

Aside from these two relatively minor changes, everything else about the late 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro remains the same. Its logic board is too small to support a discrete graphics chip, and a legal dispute prevents the integration of an Nvidia chipset into the new Core-i processors, so graphics are once again left to the Sandy Bridge chips' in-built Intel HD Graphics 3000.

The screen is still a glossy 13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colours and a 1280 x 800 native resolution.

The internal, non-user-changeable battery still lasts for up to seven hours of wireless web browsing, and keeps running for around three times as long as a standard battery before wearing out. Connectivity options are still two USB 2.0 ports, a single FireWire 800 port and a new, high-speed Thunderbolt port.

One more thing that hasn't changed is the price. It's still £999 for the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and £1,299 for the more expensive version.

Next Page: Specification

source of http://www.techradar.com