Thanksgiving holds spiritual importance for many. But for us gadget freaks, it’s the day after Thanksgivings that holds even more importance. Yes, it’s the ever important Black Friday. The day made for shopping freaks. The day retailers go crazy with discounts. And if you’re an Apple fanatic then Apple has something in store for you too.
Thanks to regional time differences, the Australia online Apple Store is officially in Black Friday mode. Apple has some decent discounts on some of its most popular products. This includes the new iPad 4, iPad 2, MacBook and all its variants like Air, Pro and Retina versions. Other than accessories like AirPort base station, mice and keyboards too have great discounts.
iPad with Retina display | From A$ 498.00 (Save A$ 41.00)
-iPad 2 | From A$ 398.00 (Save A4 31.00)
-iPod touch | From $A 298.00 (Save A$ 31.00)
-iPod touch 4th generation | From A$ 194.00 (Save A$ 25.00)
-iPod nano | From A$ 158.00 (Save A$ 11.00)
-MacBook Pro with Retina Display | From A$ 1,794.00 (Save A$ 105.00)
-MacBook Pro | From A$ 1,244.00 (Save A$ 105.00)
-MacBook Air | From A$ 994.00 (Save A$ 105.00)
-AirPort Express Base Station | A$ 108.00 (Save A$ 11.00)
-AirPort Extreme Base Station | A$ (Save A$ 21.00)
-Time Capsule | A$ 298.00 (Save A$ 21.00)
New development regarding Sony’s next generation console was made today. According to VG247, developers are being shipped new versions of the Orbis or as its more commonly known – the PS4 dev kit.
The PS4 dev kit supposedly will have four revisions, the first one was essentially a graphics card while the version shipping to developers now is a “modified PC”. The other two revisions will be more refined, with the third one being much closer to the final spec. It will be making its debut in January. The final one will be arriving in the developer’s hands sometime “next summer”.
Sony is also inviting some US developers to their offices to explain what the machine can do along with informing them of the hardware. According to VG247′s sources the devices is being touted as the Orbis instead of the much expect Playstation 4 or PS4.
The PS4 dev kit contains an AMD A10 APU, an APU if you didn’t know is a chip with both the CPU and GPU combined. Sony wanted to create hardware which was capable of running 1080p res games at 60fps in 3D. The Orbis will also have either 8GB or 16GB of RAM along with Blu-ray and a standard 256gb storage device although it wasn’t specified if it will be a HDD or a SSD. The PS4 will also have the standard input and output connectors including HDMI, Ethernet and WiFi. The hardware currently is not being made in Sony’s home country of Japan (China maybe?).
The UI is also revamped and will allow users to navigate all around the system mid-game by just pressing the PS button. The PS4 will also be able to download updates in the background and will always be in standby mode, the automatic updates although can be turned off.
The announcement according to the source will be made at an event before E3 2013.
What do you think the PS4 or Orbis will look like? Something like the recently announced PS3 Super Slim or a brand new design? Let us know in the comments below.
We recently got the chance to interview the makers of TRYST, a PC exclusive RTS game. The whole interview with Vinnie Reddy of BlueGiant Interactive is below:
Dan: How did you originally come up with the idea for Tryst? Vinnie: We started off with the intention of making a sequel to our first title – Apox. It didn’t take the team long to decide that we wanted to do something different. We loved Apox but we wanted to try something new. Tryst is what happened.
Dan: How successful has Tryst been? Has it exceeded your expectations? Vinnie: Unfortunately, not. Reception to the game hasn’t been anywhere near what we’d been predicting or expecting. We’ve learned a lot from this project and at some point of time we will consider publishing a postmortem to chronicle the ups and downs of our production.
Dan: Do you plan on releasing DLCs in the future? Vinnie: Without a doubt. We promised DLC right out the gate and that’s a promise we intend to keep.
Dan: Has Tryst sold well enough to warrant a sequel? What’s the customer reaction like? Vinnie: We’re not in a position to contemplate a sequel at the moment. Its like I said earlier, reception has been a little lower than what we’d expected.
Dan: How do you think Tryst matches up against other RTS games like Blizzard’s Starcraft and Warcraft series? Vinnie: That’s a comparison we try our best to stay away from at the studio. The work Blizzard has done is phenomenal and they’re among a long list of studios and dev’s that we all look upto.However, to answer your question – I think we all agree that we’ve got some ways to go, yet. We’re getting there, though. Slowly, but surely.
Dan: Has Tryst been created as a result of any kind of inspiration, or was it a planned project from the beginning? Vinnie: It was more a result of inspiration. We’d wanted to move away from Apox’s setting; try out something new and see what we could do with it. A lot of us at BlueGiant love Sci-Fi, so that became the obvious choice. The rest of the game was a very fun mix of planning, realizing that we need more plans and lots of inspiration and hard work!
Dan: Can we expect to see Tryst on other consoles? RTS games may be difficult on consoles other than a PC, but a spin-off perhaps? Vinnie: We’re PC guys out here. We’ve developed two games for the platform and are comfortable enough with it now to begin pushing ourselves more. Developing for the console is a whole new beast and not one we think we’re ready to tackle just yet.So, no, I doubt you’ll see anything Tryst related or by us on a console anytime soon.
Dan: How is it like developing games in a country like India, did you have trouble finding game developers? Vinnie: Yes and no. No, in the sense that we’ve got a pool of talent out here. Most of the industry knows us for our art potential but we’ve got a lot of great programmers out here… the problem being that there just aren’t that many companies out here for them to consider sticking around.And it was difficult in the sense of finding the right people with the right attitude, skills and mindset. We actually interviewed more than 6000 people before we finalized our programming team of 6.
Dan: What are BlueGiant’s plans for the future? Vinnie: At the moment, we’re focusing on supporting Tryst. We’ve been sending out weekly patches ever since we launched, fixing bugs, crashes, and updating the multiplayer balance. We’ve also got resources working on the DLC we had talked about earlier. Between those two, we’ve got the next few months charted out for us. Beyond that, well, we’ll see.
The Roxio Game Capture HD Pro is hitting stores and you should definitely be interested. The Roxio Game Capture HD is the first capture card able to stream live gameplay, and that too in glorious 1080p resolution.
The Game Capture HD Pro is certainly a huge upgrade over last year’s standard Game Capture. New features include the ability to record and stream 1080p content, direct live streaming onto TwitchTV and Windows 8 compatibility among numerous others.
The Roxio Game Capture HD Pro is retailing for just $150 and comes with the company’s own video editing software, the device itself, a USB cable and a starting guide. Check out more details on the Roxio Game Capture HD Pro here.
Nintendo has released a brand new animated trailer for Pokemon Black and White 2. Although no gameplay footage is shown off you can get a clear idea of the game’s characters and Pokemon. The trailer was first released a few months in Japanese for the game’s local release but this new one is in English with super cheesy dialogue, check it out below:
Pokemon Black and White 2 is all set to release in North America on the 7th and in Europe on the 12th of October 2012.
With just a few million shy of a billion account (995 million accounts current) Facebook is biggest social network on the planet right now but not all of its users are real. The recently public company claims that 83.09 million of its accounts are either fake, dupes or false accounts. So if you are included in this number then be prepared as Facebook plans on disabling these accounts.
Facebook’s chief security officer Joe Sullivan talked about the situation with CNN recently:
“On Facebook we have a really large commitment in general to finding and disabling false accounts,”
“Our entire platform is based on people using their real identities.”
45.8 million (4.8%) of the accounts are duplicates, sometimes users would create multiple accounts or accounts for other people for example a parent making an account for his or her child.
22.9 million accounts are misclassified accounts. They are personal profiles made for pets, companies, or groups.
14.3 million accounts or 1.5% of the overall account are the undesirables. These accounts specifically break Facebook’s terms in conditions to conduct tasks like spamming.
In short, you better read the terms and conditions.
Digg just confirmed the news through an official blog post that they’ve been sold to Betaworks for just $500,000. Its really hard to believe that a company once valued at $200 million by Google just a few years ago could crumble down to just 0.0005 an Instagram (1 Instagram = $1 Billion).
One of the major reasons for the decline of Digg was its highly unpopular redesign back in 2006. Currently the website rakes in around 4.5 to 7 million unique visitors each month which they aim to improve after joining with their new parent company’s News.ME platform.
Do note that Digg’s employees though are not part of the deal.
Wondering why you can’t open Twitter today? Well unfortunately its currently down across all platforms including web and mobile apps. Twitter updated their blog with the following statement just moments ago:
Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.
The downtime was reported first at around 12:15pm ET and has impacted the website, all third party and even the official apps.
How are you dealing with the downtime? Finally got the time to check up on your Facebook or *shreek* MySpace maybe? Let us know in the comments below.
Apple dropped some real bombshells yesterday at WWDC, like that slick new MacBook Pro. One of the announcements was regarding iOS 6. iOS as we all know is Apple’s mobile OS. An OS that Apple calls the ‘most advance OS in the world’. It got a major version bump. There are over 200 new features in iOS 6. Let’s look at the top three.
Facebook Integration
Facebook has long been ignored by Apple. And when I mean ignored, I mean it looked like an intentional omission in iOS 5 since it had Twitter all over it. Whatever beef the two companies had with each other is now settled and iOS 6 will come with Twitter like Facebook integration. You can directly link your Facebook account with iOS like you did with Twitter. Similarly you can now share photos via pictures, update statuses right from the OS, ‘like’ apps from the App Store and share them on Facebook and even sync contacts with Facebook.
Maps
Apple has given the boot to Google Maps. In comes a solution from Apple. Powered by TomTom these new maps finally support turn by turn navigation powered by….you guessed it; Siri. Also included are 3D maps which quite frankly, look stunning. The new maps are vector based which means loading time is a lot faster compared to bitmap maps. However it doesn’t have street view, something exclusive to Google Maps…..for now.
Siri
Siri was a mixed bag in iPhone 4S. It has now been given a dramatic update. Siri can now launch apps, something that was sorely missing. It can also give you sports updates and pretty much any sort of information related to baseball and basketball; and movie schedules. You can also make restaurant reservations using Siri. It also speaks in a lot more languages now. Also, Siri is now available on the new iPad.
The HTC One X is part of HTC’s new One series of phones along with the HTC One S and HTC One V. The HTC One X is HTC’s current flagship phone coupling a high quality polycarbonate industrial design along with a NVIDIA Tegra Quad Core processor which reminds us of the age old tale of the Beauty and the Beast. Can the One X bring back HTC to its former glory? Find out in our review below.
Unboxing
Box
HTC is using a new kind of box which although we’re not sure what its made of resembles a mixture between foam and recyclable paper which makes it very easy to recycle. Tearing off the paper with all of the phone’s specification and other information gets you to the two piece box, removing the top of which presents you the phone sitting in the middle.
Below the phone you can find the charger, earphones which unfortunately are not of the Beats by Dr. Dre variant, instruction guide, SIM removal tool with a guide on how to cut down your normal SIM to microSIM specifications, all the relevant warranty information and instruction manuals.
Specification
Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
4.7″ 16M-color Super LCD 2 capacitive touchscreen of HD resolution (720 x 1280 pixels) with Gorilla glass “Infinity Display”
Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4.0
8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; face detection and geotagging
1080p and 720p video recording at 30fps with stereo sound
720p front-facing camera for video-chat
Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
GPS with A-GPS
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Accelerometer, proximity sensor and auto-brightness sensor
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
microUSB MHL port
Stereo Bluetooth v4.0
Hardware
The HTC One X measures in at 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm and weighs in at 130g which is very light for a phone this big, for comparison the Galaxy Nexus weights in close at 135g.
The HTC One X is a GSM only phone supporting quadband UMTS (850/900/1900/2100) which helps it support AT&T’s network in the US among others all over the world. AT&T’s One X sports a Snapdragon S4 processor instead of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 variant we have here, the prior supports LTE but our only goes up to HSPA.
The One X features a beautiful 4.7-inch Super LCD 2 720p screen with Gorilla Glass which HTC likes to call an “Infinity display”, also note that the One X’s display is a RGB pixel arrangement offering better viewing angles and image reproduction as compared to Pentile displays. One X’s display is THE best screen you can get on a smartphone. There’s also the 1.5-Ghz Quad Core processor +1 companion core which help improve battery life when extra performance is not needed.
We also have 1GB of RAM, 32GB of non-expandable on-board storage, WiFi b/g/n, DLNA, FM Radio with RDS, Bluetooth 4.0 and a whole set of sensors including an accelerometer, proximity sensor and auto-brightness sensor. The phone’s 1800 mAh battery is charged through the phone microUSB MHL port. The battery lasted us just over a day with heavy usage.
The camera on the back of the One X is a f2.0 8MP 1080p sensor while the one on the front is a 1.3MP shooter mainly intended for video calls. The image quality is pretty g00d but certainly not the best; the colors can be a bit bland, the autofocus has problems focusing in at the right spot and the images have a lot of noise in low light. This is a shame since the One X’s camera application is really good.
Design
The HTC One X is one bea-u-ti-ful device and easily one of the best looking devices on the market. The One X is a much needed refreshment to HTC’s last year’s design portfolio.
The phone is available in two colors, white and the black one which we have here. The front of the phone features the huge 4.7-inch “Infinity Display” which is basically the glass wrapping around the edges of the body of the phone, do note its just the glass that wraps around not the screen itself.
The earpiece is built right into the phone’s unibody design instead of the standard metal grill, and it looks much better this way. Right to the speaker grill we have the 1.3MP front facing camera with all the front sensors just below it. The HTC One X brings with it many firsts from the Taiwanese company including a three button layout instead of the four they’ve used previously. Although we would have preferred no buttons at all, the three button combo is certainly not bad, although Ice Cream Sandwich requires a menu button so older apps will have a software menu button at the bottom of the screen taking around 80 pixels which can be a hindrance for some.
On the top of the phone we have the power button to the right and removable SIM card tray and 3.5mm headphone jack to the left. On the left hand side of the One X we have the microUSB port while on the right side we have the volume rocker. On the back of the phone we have the 8MP shooter on the top along with the single LED flash, the speaker grill is at the very bottom just below the Beats Audio branding and finally to the top right is the five pin dock connector.
Overall the phone feels really nice in the hands but the smooth backing doesn’t really allow you to get a firm grip on the phone. The polycarbonate backing might also pick up stains very easily although cleaning it isn’t too hard.
Software
Like previous HTC phones, the HTC One X too comes with HTC Sense albeit a new and improved version called HTC Sense 4.0. Although Sense has been known for being a bloated mess and always offering eye candy while sacrificing performance. Luckily Sense 4.0 is a much need improvement and has been toned down a lot.
The widgets have been improved a bit but they still consume a lot of battery life and have problems updating at the right time, hence its better to manually update them. A new function in HTC Sense 4.0 which should’ve been added way back is the ability to add or remove homescreens unlike the previous versions which limited you to having seven screens. The notification has also been revamped and resembles stock ICS a lot as now it only displays notifications instead of a list of previously used apps.
HTC has greatly improved its Email client which is much better than the stock ICS client. You can have threaded conversations and even use Smartsync to improve battery life. HTC has also revamped the multitasking in Sense 4.0 making it much similar to WP7 Mango offering an over the top view allowing you to choose between multiple windows at once.
Although HTC didn’t pack in any Beats by Dr Dre headphones in the box the HTC One X does have the in-built Beats audio enhancer but to use it you’ll have to buy separate Beats audio hardware. You also get 25GB of Dropbox storage free with the phone so that’s definitely worth a mention.
Camera Samples
Video Samples
Performance
The HTC One X is the first Android phone to come with NVIDIA’s quad core Tegra 3 processor and we expected huge performance improvements over dual core processor, unfortunately that wasn’t the case. The One X can lag quite a bit in daily use, especially when opening folders and navigating through menus. Casual users won’t notice that much though.
Benchmark performance was really good, the One X scored 4413 in Quadrant, 12834 in CF Bench and 48.571 MFLOPs (1.73 secs) in Linpack.
Overall
The HTC One X is a brilliant phone but still has room for improvement. The Quad core Tegra 3 processor is pretty new and powerful but fails to offer lagless performance we all want from Android, we hope HTC fixes that with the S4 version of this phone.
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