The Apple event on October 16 is now official after the company sent out invites to the press. The event going to be held in Apple’s Town Hall auditorium on the Infinite Loop Campus in Cupertino, California at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.
The invite containing the words “It’s been way too long” leads to the event that will see the debut of Apple’s refreshed iPad Air and iPad mini. Thanks to the plethora of leaks surrounding the two we know they’re both packing the Apple A8 chipset with an M8 co-processor, Touch ID, Apple Pay. Both slates will be thinner than their predecessors with the iPad Air 2 measuring just 7mm (and sacrificing the vibrate/mute button because of it).
Additionally, the company is preparing to announce a new iMac line-up. It’s going to tout new, higher resolution screens – 6400 x 3600, 5760 x 3240, and 4096 x 2304 pixels. It’s also possible that Apple is ready to also reveal a 12-inch MacBook with Retina display, but we haven’t heard much about it.
Mac OS X Yosemite Beta 5 and Golden Master Candidate for developers have started seeding today and we suspect Apple is going to be ready for the OS final release to coincide with the October 16 event. Expect updated iWork and iLife apps as well as redesigned iTunes 12.
The event is a little more than a week away, so stay tuned as we’ll cover every bit of it.
We recently saw the arrival of Nokia’s first Windows Phone tablet, the Lumia 2520. Now we have news about a Nokia 12-inch Windows Phone tablet that has futuristic specs. Sadly, though this Nokia tablet is a concept design, but read on to see some ideas that will blow your mind and a video.
From time to time we like to show readers concept designs as they can offer an intriguing look at upcoming devices or what the future might hold. Sometimes specs are realistic and in other cases simply not credible, but nevertheless they remain interesting renders.
This Nokia 12-inch tablet comes from designer Ashraf Amer and it has advanced specs such as a 12.4-inch OLED flexible display, 6GB of RAM and 500 GB of internal storage! It gets better (read more unrealistic) with an 82-megapixel Pureview rear camera with dual-LED flash, and a 20-megapixel front-facing Pureview camera.
Design-wise you’re looking at a tablet that measures just 0.3 cm thick and comes in several color options. If you check out the brief YouTube video below this story you’ll see a render of this Nokia tablet created with 3D Max 2014 software.
I would say ‘spoiler alert,’ but I’m sure it’s far too late for that. Photos of shells and components belonging to Apple’s fifth-generation tablet have been bouncing around the websince January of this year.
But these new images offer an extremely clear look at the so-called iPad 5—perhaps the best we’ve seen thus far. And they give us a really good idea of what we can expect to see from Apple later this month…
The photos come from Australian writer Sonny Dickson, who has been responsible for a number of accurate iPhone and iPad leaks over the years, and they depict the upcoming tablet’s casing and front panel.
For those who haven’t been keeping up with the iPad rumors, the 9.7-inch slate is expected to get a significant redesign this year. The new case is supposedly thinner, with smaller bezels, similar to the iPad mini.
In addition to its new looks, the tablet is also believed to be getting all-new internals. It’s said to feature the 64-bit A7 processor, 2GB of RAM and an 8MP camera. And it’s possible it could come with Touch ID.
Of course, we should know all of this for sure in a couple of weeks. Yesterday, the credible AllThingsD website reported that Apple is planning told hold its iPad-centric event onTuesday, October 22.
Flurry data told us that so-called phablets comprise only a minuscule portion of smart devices compared to mid-size phones and large tablets, such as the iPhone and iPad, but there’s no doubt that devices with five-inch or larger screens are gaining acceptance, largely thanks to Samsung’s willingness to experiment with a bunch of different form factors. Even Apple acknowledged the trend by making the iPhone 5′s four-inch screen the new gold standard for iPhones.
But with Samsung launching a five-inch Galaxy S4 soon and rumors of an upcoming Galaxy Mega line with 5.8 and 6.2-inch handsets making rounds, Asian suppliers are advising Apple to follow suit and blow up the upcoming iPhone’s display if it wants to capture the next phase of smartphone growth…
Business Insider relays a note by Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White has been on a tour of Asian suppliers earlier this week.
In a note issued to clients today, White wrote:
Our discussions this week in Taipei and China continue to highlight the need for Apple to launch a larger-sized iPhone to cater to the Asian market.
Essentially, we are being told that the minimum size needed by Apple is a 4.5-inch display on the iPhone; however, a five-inch to 5.5-inch would be optimal.
Before you discredit the report, remember that pundits used to be adamant that no, Apple will never bow to trends and increase the iPhone’s display.
Then the iPhone 5 came along with and Apple even aired a television commercial aiming to make the case for its four-inch display.
Interestingly enough, the commercial has been pulled recently from Apple’s YouTube channel, perhaps ahead of larger form-factor announcements?
A recent Samsung profile by Bloomberg Businessweek let us in on the company’s thinking, which basically boils down to throwing a bunch of form factors against a wall and see what sticks.
Apple’s approach is fewer models, each of them exquisitely designed. Samsung’s is try everything, and fast.
“When we released the Galaxy S III, our research showed that, for some people in some markets, the handset was too big,” says DJ Lee. “So we were able to create the same phone with a 4-inch screen, and we called it the Galaxy S III mini.”
Getting the smaller device into production took about four to six months, says DJ Lee. “We watch the market, and we immediately respond,” he says. The new Galaxy S 4 is coming out only nine months after the GS3.
“Samsung has taken differentiation to a new art,” says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner (IT). “If I want something in between an iPad and an iPad mini, I can’t get that from Apple.”
Samsung, of course, can afford experimenting with different form factors that may not necessarily turn profit because it also produces display, memory, processors and other, giving it “a flexibility competitors can’t touch.”
Sometimes, the results are just plain funny.
Here’s Samsung’s eight-inch Galaxy Note phablet.
Various analysts are approving of phablets now.
Here’s IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo, via Bloomberg:
This is a trend that can’t be missed. People are using smartphones in different ways now, consuming media by streaming over faster mobile networks. A five-inch screen for a smartphone just feels right in the hand.
Though analytics firm Flurry Monday reported that phablets with screens between five and 6.9 inches diagonally account for only two percent of devices it saw during February, IDC said sales of handsets five inches or bigger soared to 29.7 million units last year from 1.2 million a year earlier.
One could indeed argue that more screen is better given today’s smartphones are basically computers.
As for Apple, it’s definitely worth remembering that the pretty accurate Japanese blogMacotakara reported back in March 2012 that Apple was working on a five-inch iOS gizmo with a Retina screen of either 1,600-by-960 or 1,280-by-960 pixel resolution.
The blog claimed Apple was shooting for a 2013 release.
Recent leaks from China suggest this five-inch devices is actually the iPhone 6 , with DigiTimes (I know, don’t start), China Times and iLounge all claiming that a near five-inch iPhone actually is in the works.
Asus has just announced one of its most prosperous quarters, and its success has a lot to do with the
strong sales of the Nexus 7 tablets. Up until now, we knew Google’s tablet is doing okay, but we had no numbers to put this into perspective. Now, Asus reveals that the Nexus 7 sells at around 1 million units a month.
“At the beginning, it was, for instance, 500K units a month, then maybe 600, 700K. This latest month, it was close to 1 million,”Asustek CFO David Chang said.
We don’t have the actual accumulated sales figure as Google is careful to keep it a secret. This probably means that it has sold far less than the mainstream option that is the iPad, but closing in on 1 million sales is a solid figure to report on and it seems to be getting good traction.
Earlier speculations pegged Nexus 7 sales for the whole of the third quarter at between 800,000 and 1 million, but with this new
information it seems the actual sales clocked in higher.
As the Holiday quarter approaches, the Nexus 7 will fight against the iPad mini and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. It has the advantage of sporting full and unrestricted Android unlike the Kindle Fire, and can boast with a price tag of $199 for the 16GB version.
It definitely looks competitive, but it’s hard to say whether Google and Asus have enough of a sales representation to push sales to iPad-like levels.
The Apple event on October 16 is now official after the company sent out invites to the press. The event going to be held in Apple’s Town Hall auditorium on the Infinite Loop Campus in Cupertino, California at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.
Asus has just announced one of its most prosperous quarters, and its success has a lot to do with the
strong sales of the Nexus 7 tablets. Up until now, we knew Google’s tablet is doing okay, but we had no numbers to put this into perspective. Now, Asus reveals that the Nexus 7 sells at around 1 million units a month.
Elie Chahine 