Sony shows off some of the capabilities its Google TV-enabled televisions at the IFA 2010 (not the real TV, just the video of it). The two-plus minute video loop runs through web search, Google Maps, YouTube and Picasa functionality, app favorites, and picture-in-picture, which you won’t miss a single minute of the show you’re watching while searching on something on the web. This could be the future of televisions where it works almost like your computer. Cool? Have a look at the video embedded below.

Source: Engadget

There’s a few unofficial Android Tablets out there but Samsung has come up with their first official Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab with their official teaser video put up online. No official specs revealed yet, but the video clip reveals the Galaxy Tab will ship with Android 2.2 with Touchwiz UI, have Flash Player 10.1 support, and the ability to make video calls.

Based on several leaks on the web so far, the Galaxy Tab is really just a super-sized Galaxy S with a 7-inch display featuring 1024×600 pixel resolution, 3.2MP camera, QVGA front camera, GPS, 3G support, 802.11N WiFi, 4000 mAh battery, and 16 GB of internal storage. The official reveal will be in Berlin (at IFA) on September 2nd. Until then, if you can’t wait for it, have a look at the “Transformers movie trailer alike” video below for your own amusement.

Press release as follows.

POCKET-SIZED HTC ARIA DEBUTS IN ASIA PACIFIC

Malaysia – 18 August, 2010 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced HTC Aria™. This pocket-sized dynamo packs a punch with a five megapixel camera, a bright 3.2 inch HVGA display, and offers users Android smartphone functionality in an amazingly easy-to-carry design.

HTC Aria features the acclaimed HTC Sense experience, which automatically delivers the most-wanted information by bringing it to the forefront of the mobile experience.  Featuring the latest version of HTC Sense, HTC Aria offers even more ways to stay connected, including Friend Stream, which delivers Facebook, Twitter and Flickr updates in a single, consolidated view.

“Its unique combination of compact size and beautiful design instantly separates HTC Aria from the pack of ‘me-too’ smartphones,” said Jack Tong, vice president of HTC Asia Pacific. “But what really differentiates HTC Aria from other smartphones is the acclaimed HTC Sense experience. By putting people at the center of everything it does, HTC Aria organizes all of your communications in the most human way possible – by person.”

“DiGi is always exploring new ways to enrich our customer experience, and through our exclusive arrangement with HTC, we will be the first to offer this sleek and affordable Android handheld to all our customers. The HTC Aria will be perfect for those who are venturing into Android smartphones for the first time. Together with HTC and DiGi’s attractive smartphone packages, the HTC Aria will offer our customers a new experience of mobile connectivity in their lives,” said Loh Keh Jiat, DiGi’s Head of Product Marketing.

A full selection of the newest and most popular Google services can be accessed with HTC Aria. This includes Google search, Google Maps, Google Maps Navigation, Gmail, YouTube and more. With Android Market, customers can also choose from more than 70,000 applications to further personalize the mobile experience.

Along with being ultra-small at just over 10cm long and weighing a mere 115g (battery included), HTC Aria’s seamless wrap-around soft-touch back cover eliminates sharp edges, making HTC Aria exceptionally convenient to carry and comfortable to hold as well.

Pricing and Availability

The new HTC Aria is available at all authorized resellers at a suggested retail price of RM 1,799*. Availability at DiGi Centres and DiGi Specialised Stores will be in early September 2010. Standard retail HTC Aria package will come with a 2GB microSD™ card.

*All prices are subject to pricing policies of individual retailers

As retail price is at RM1799, getting a 12 months contract from Digi might give you around RM400 – RM500 discount on the phone I think. Is this a good buy? Probably, if you think it’s better looking than the HTC Legend and the yellow background under the hood.

The rumored HTC Desire HD has now surfaced! This gigantic phone comes with 4.3inch screen, 8 megapixels camera with dual LED flash, and it’s running on Android 2.2. No other specs available yet though. This phone looks similar to the EVO 4G, only with the front camera no where to be found. Gosh.. Why didn’t you include the front camera HTC?? Have a look at the video below. HTC, can I get one?? Please??

Few weeks ago, I got myself the HTC Desire. The Desire is the cousin to the Google Nexus One, with just a little bit of extra features and different design. Powered by 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 576MB of RAM, you can imagine how fast and smooth this phone is. The Desire is running on Android 2.1 Eclair, which updates for Android 2.2 Froyo is already on going for Europe set owners.

Hardware

The retail set comes with standard package. Charger, earpiece, micro USB cable and a 2GB SD card which is definitely too little to use on this gadget. SIS Malaysia should have done better by providing a larger size SD card as same like Touch HD which I owned quite some time ago. Even the overseas retail sets comes with a 8GB SD card.

Once you turned on the HTC Desire, there is no turning back to your old Winmo phones. It’s fast, smooth, way too smooth compared to my Touch HD. If you owned a HD2, it’ll be a different story though.

Desire comes with 3.7 inch Amoled display. Compared to Touch HD and the iPhone 3Gs, the latter ones actually have a slightly wider screen compared to Desire. Yet, the screen’s height is longer though.

The Amoled display is gorgeous. It’s bright, colorful and responsive. To be honest, the color is a bit over saturated and a bit too responsive. Until you get use to the responsiveness of the screen, you might end up accidentally clicking on some apps and buttons that you don’t want to.

The build of the phone is solid. It might not be as solid as the HTC Legend’s unibody design, but it’s just acceptable. The back of the phone comes with soft-rubberish finish which is very nice to hold with. The downside of the back cover is that you need to rip open the back cover using the top slit. You might break the back cover if you are not careful enough when opening it, although I haven’t seen any report regarding this. The Sim card and SD card slot is located under the battery which the battery have to be removed in order to gain access to it. So hot swap is not possible.

Compared to Google Nexus One, the trackball feature had changed to optical track-pad instead. Noise cancellation on Nexus One is left out but Desire comes with physical buttons instead of touch-sensitive buttons.

The 5 megapixels autofocus camera captures 5:3 wide still images. The photo quality is acceptable, and there are options for white balance and ISO for you to play with. Video capture offers 800×400 resolution and is pretty good as well. The Froyo updates actually enables 720p / H.264 video capturing capability though.

The battery life for Desire is one of the downside for this phone. Occasionally web browsing, listening to songs, sms, phone calls and playing some games during the day, you’ll be very lucky if the battery can last for more than 18 hours. Heavy usage at one time might last you around 5-7 hours. The charging cable must be with you all the time if you want to stay connected before you get home.

Software

HTC Sense UI is one of the best custom UI made for Android phones so far. The Homescreen widgets, Friendstream Apps, Social Network integration for contacts and also the great keyboard compared to the lousy stock Android keyboard. Flashlite is pre-installed so most of the flash contents on websites can be shown on your chrome browser, even flash videos too! But some of the flash contents are a bit laggy which you will see a better experience once updated to Android 2.2 Froyo.

Wrap-up

Overall, the HTC Desire is a great phone. One of the greatest Android phone so far. There are some better competitors like Samsung Galaxy S or Motorola Droid series but none the less, the HTC Sense UI made the Desire comes out the best compared to others. As Android 2.2 Froyo update is on the way, you might expect more features and stability out of this phone. At the retail price of RM2199, this phone definitely worth it (Most of the shops out there are selling at RM2000 nowadays).

So if you don’t mind, time for me to hunt some good quality phone cases and also install some custom ROMs on my Desire. I’ll come up with the root procedure for this phone in a while.

Source: Engadget

Wildfire will be the cheapest phone in HTC’s Android line. Compared to HTC Legend, there’s not much difference other than a slightly lower processor speed and some software add ons. Yet, Legend comes with higher screen resolution and unibody design. The looks of the Wildfire seems like a trim down version of the HTC Desire. Press release as below.

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE WITH HTC WILDFIRE

Share apps, updates and experiences with the latest social powerhouse from HTC

Malaysia – 14 July 2010 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced HTC Wildfire™, a new HTC Sense-based Android phone that integrates the most popular social networks to help bring your friends closer to you. HTC Wildfire closely follows the success of the acclaimed HTC Desire and makes the company’s signature HTC Sense experience accessible to a younger audience.

“Today’s social networks provide an essential forum for friendship with more than 400 million users* – many of whom are young adults – actively sharing their lives with their friends through Facebook,” said Jack Tong, Vice President, HTC Asia Pacific. “HTC Wildfire makes the HTC Sense experience available to young mobile users for the first time. It brings all your communications into one place, whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, images or email, ensuring that you are never far away from the conversation and always close to your friends.”

HTC Wildfire helps you stay connected with those who are most important to you through HTC Sense, a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. You won’t miss out on the fun as HTC’s Friend Stream application seamlessly gathers and displays content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised stream of updates. HTC

Wildfire enables you to stay up to date with your friends’ posts, comments, alerts and photos, wherever you are.
In addition, each contact viewed in HTC Wildfire’s address book includes a thread of recent communications with that person, including when you last spoke, recent text messages and emails, and social network updates. When your friend calls, HTC Caller ID displays their Facebook profile photo and latest social network update, as well as a reminder if their birthday is fast approaching.

Thanks to a new app sharing widget, HTC Wildfire enables you to recommend an application by email, text message or over social networks. Your friends will receive a link allowing them to find the application on the Android Market with a single click and download it to their phone.

Jack Tong continued, “We understand that people need a better way to navigate their way through the tens of thousands of applications that are currently available on the Android Market. In fact, our own independent research found that consumers are not only hungry for the latest and most popular applications that their friends are using, they want an easier way to find and download them. For the first time ever, you can recommend the newest and coolest apps to a friend or group of friends with HTC Wildfire. With so many applications to choose from, there’s a world of content to discover and pass along to your friends.”

HTC’s latest advanced smartphone is great for viewing and sharing photos on Flickr and for surfing the internet thanks to its 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen. A five-megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash allows you to capture special moments, while a 3.5mm audio jack and micro SD card slot mean you are never without your favourite songs.

Pricing & Availability

The new HTC Wildfire will be available this week at all authorized resellers in three colours, Phantom Black, Flamenco Red and Pure White at a suggested retail price of RM 1,199^+.

⁺All prices are subject to pricing policies of individual operators.

HTC Wildfire from HTC at a glance:

It’s official~ The 4th generation of the Apple iPhone is called iPhone 4. The phone was officially launched by Steve Jobs during the WWDC today.

The new phone is powered by an A4 CPU (the same chip used in the iPad) and comes with a 3.5-inch screen with 960×640 resolution, dual mics, and an upgraded camera system which includes HD video recording and editing capabilities.

Here are the technical specs of the new iPhone:

• 9.3mm thick, 24% thinner than current iPhone
• 3.5″ display, same as current iPhone
• 326 ppi display, 4 times the previous iPhone’s pixel density
• Case uses stainless steel and glass, including a glass back for the device. The stainless steel case is the antenna of the phone!
• Powered by the A4 chip
• Larger battery means 7 hours of talk time, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of WiFi browsing, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music and 300 hours of standby – we all know that 3Gs battery sucks don’t we?
• 7.2MB download and 5.8MB upload speeds, depending on carrier capabilities
• Gryroscope in addition to accelerometer
• 5MP camera with 5x zoom, tap to focus and LED flash
• HD video recording, and iMovie for editing video on the iPhone
• Front- and rear-facing cameras for FaceTime, the new video chat app
• iOS will allow for multitasking

The video call function which called FaceTime is only available for WiFi calls from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. No 3G calls available yet as Apple claims Telco operators are not ready for 3G calls yet (AT&T only probably).

Have a watch on the design video below.

It looks like the designers never experienced video calls from a phone before , even though all the functions they mentioned for video calls are available for some simple Nokia phones since 2006? This took them 4 years to make a phone capable of making video calls (WiFi only though). Funny.

Have a watch on the new iOS 4 which features multitasking. This upgrade will be available to iPhone 3G, 3Gs and iPhone 4 very soon.

When can I get this awesome phone?
Pre-orders will be started on the 15th June and the phone will be available on the 24th June (For US only). Other regions will be getting the phone in July while for those of us in Malaysia, expect the phone to be launched here by September. I believe Digi will be the exclusive provider for this iPhone though.. hurray~!

HTC DESIRE DELIVERS OUTSTANDING USER EXPERIENCE

HTC Desire captivates with brilliant display of colours on 3.7 inch AMOLED screen

Malaysia – 27 May, 2010 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced HTC Desire in Malaysia. The HTC Desire is the latest Android smartphone that offers the enhanced HTC Sense experience.

“HTC Sense on the new HTC Desire not only delivers one of the most dynamic and personalized user experiences possible, but also one of the easiest ways to interact and integrate social networks into your life,” said Jack Tong, VP of HTC Asia. “It’s the stuff of powerful inspiration.”

Said Jean-Pascal van Overbeke, Maxis’ Chief Operating Officer, “Maxis is pleased to be first to offer the highly anticipated HTC Desire to our customers, to address their needs on a holistic level –  ensuring unique access to the latest advancements in device technologies and interfaces in order to enjoy rich contents over best network speeds for mobile data and browsing.”

“The device’s focus on intuitive exploration is very much a reflection of Maxis’ commitment to making it easy and natural to manage every aspect of your life, through technology and service solutions which meet the range of human desires. We are pleased to work together with HTC in enriching our bundled service offerings and adding a new dimension of enjoyment and interpersonal connection to our customers’ lives.”

HTC Desire delivers intense brilliance, sharp contrast, and true colors on the expansive 3.7-inch AMOLED display. The 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor makes the phone incredibly responsive while the instinctive HTC Sense experience lets you wield the power of the HTC Desire with the greatest of ease.

HTC SENSE

HTC Sense is a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were developed by observing and listening to how people live and communicate. These core tenets of Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected continue to be the key to the new HTC Sense experience.

The new HTC Sense experience continues to focus on improving your interactions with your most important people.  This begins with a new HTC application and widget called Friend Stream that seamlessly aggregates all of your social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates. This simple aggregation makes it easier than ever to focus on what friends are doing as well as to view the images and links that they share.  In addition to Friend Stream, people can be organised into specific social circles, such as groups of friends, colleagues or any other way that makes sense.

The new HTC Sense experience also introduces broad improvements to applications including the browser, email client and others. In addition, the new version of HTC Sense includes a new newsreader application and widget, as well as a new seven-screen ‘Leap’ thumbnail view for quick and easy access to specific screens.

Pricing & Availability

To be first to experience the HTC Desire from Maxis, please look for the Maxis-HTC Desire roadshow at Ground level of KLCC from today till 3 June.

The new HTC Desire is now available at any of 28 Maxis Centres nationwide and at selected Maxis Exclusive Partners at a subsidised price of RM 1,499.00 with contract. The retail units will be available at all authorized resellers at a suggested retail price of RM 2,199.00* from 24^th June 2010 onwards.

*All prices are subject to pricing policies of individual operators.

At the price of RM2199, do you think it’s reasonable? Hell yeah!~ This will be one of the best phones of the year though. With Android 2.2 Froyo updates coming soon, this phone gonna be real fast and responsive. If you are still wondering why, check out the specs of the phone below.

HTC Desire from HTC at a glance:

¹ Twitter is a trademark of Twitter, Inc., and is used under license.

Have you opened the Google homepage today? Any difference? The Google logo had changed to Pacman game!! In conjunction of Pacman’s 30th anniversary, Google had changed the homepage logo into a playable Pacman game.

The game is just as addictive as the original, and as Google’s Marcin Wichary says, “[We] made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980s masterpiece.”

The company even changed its “I’m Feeling Lucky” button to “Insert Coin” in honor of the occasion. And with that, the world’s collective productivity takes a sharp plunge on this Friday.

Google is getting more and more cooler these days huh?

Folks at Gizmodo just scored the ultimate review of the year – the iPhone 4. Apparently a hapless Apple employee left his prototype iPhone 4G in a bar in Redwood City. The device, made to look like an iPhone 3GS, is presumably an early version of the next-generation handset.

So what’s new??

• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic

Can’t wait to see the real product though. Tell us what you think about the new phone!~