AMD has long been playing catch up to Intel in the processor wars, with both companies recently finding that their main competitor is actually ARM Holdings for the future and not so much each other. In this regard, Intel recently launched its Ivy Bridge series of CPUs for the thin MacBook Air-esque “UltraBooks” and Trinity from AMD is their competitor for the same products which they refer to as “SleekBooks”. The HP Envy SleekBook is the only such device with a Trinity chipset on the market at the moment, but Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba all have competing devices in the pipeline.

Trinity will debut AMD’s Piledriver microarchitecture, but is still based on a 32nm process (compared to the 22nm process of Intel’s Ivy Bridge). AMD claims that the dual-core Trinity APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) will perform at the same level as the dual-core Llano APU, effectively doubling the performance per watt with the new generation, and notebooks using the APUs are expected to get an impressive 12 hours of battery life when idle due to new energy efficiencies.

The biggest change for Trinity, however, is the introduction of the AMD HD Media Accelerator suite, which takes on a lot of the previous media heavy lifting (like transcoding video) with more efficiency in the APU. The suite offers:

• AMD Perfect Picture HD: Automatic video processing, which will make fine adjustments to image quality on the fly
• AMD Quickstream: Handles bandwidth intelligently with higher priorities for applications and websites that make use of the GPU to try and help avoid streaming video buffering
• AMD Video Converter: Dedicated hardware-based encoding lets Trinity transcode media files faster and more efficiently
• AMD Steady Video: Helps stabilize shaky recorded video
• AMD Eyefinity: Multi-display support without needing a discrete GPU meaning SleekBooks can potentially output to three external displays

AMD Launches Trinity To Compete With Intel’s Ivy Bridge was originally published on TechFruit

Users of Nokia’s Lumia 800 and 900 smartphones have been singing their praises, but they have barely made a dent into the smartphone market in terms of sales so far. But it appears that the glowing reviews from users are starting to have an effect and get the message out – to the extent that users of the latest Apple iPhone might be a little upset.

Siri was the biggest update make its way to the iPhone 4S and the iPhone has been sitting pretty as the best mobile phone in the world for a number of years. However, if you ask Siri “What’s the best cellphone ever” then it will tell users that it is the Nokia Lumia 900 in cyan. Seriously. Siri gets its results from the Wolfram Alpha semantic search, which will give you exactly the same result for that question as can be seen here. And before everyone claims that it is only the US where this result is found – searching for “What’s the best mobile phone ever” offers the same results for those of us on this side of the pond.

I’m sure plenty will disagree with this result, but from looking at user reviews and how people have actually responded to the Lumia 900 – there is no doubt that Nokia is finally starting to make some headway in the smartphone mindshare. Now they just need to convert that into sales…

[via WMPpoweruser]

The Nokia Lumia 900 Is The Best Mobile Phone In The World According To iPhone’s Siri was originally published on TechFruit

We’ve seen a string of announcements from Nokia this week as the company tries to make up for its poor financial performance over the past 12 months. We’ve seen exclusive apps and WiFi tethering announced, and now the Finnish company is releasing its own eBook reading app in Europe this week with other countries following soon.

Nokia Reading will be coming toLumia owners in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK first and is backed by publishers from Penguin to Hachette to Pearson with a large selection of English titles and a wide range of local titles for each market. Reading Sherlock Holmes or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo just got more integrated, with Nokia taking firm aim at Amazon’s Kindle software with this release. The app is more than just a simple eBook reader though and will include resizeable type and a night reading mode from the off, with audio books, and RSS news stream integration proposed as future free updates.

reading small amounts of text is perfectly fine on the 3.5″ – 4.5″ displays, but they are simply too small for any longer periods. With this app a Nokia exclusive, it implies that Nokia have some tablet aspirations. They may be waiting until the release of Windows 8 before finally announcing those ambitions, but if they believe that e-reading is a market that they could make an impact in, we can hope that they become the first major manufacturer to use a screen like those from PixelQI that can offer both high resolution colour for video playback, but also e-ink for reading and use in direct sunlight.

Nokia Reading App Comes To Europe This Week With A Tablet On The Way? was originally published on TechFruit

We live in a connected world that becomes smaller by the day as technology and the internet brings everyone closer together. National boundaries mean very little online, and industries that still try and impose geographic restrictions are the ones that are suffering most in this digital revolution. If a film, album, or some software is released in one country before another it is promptly pirated and “released” worldwide. But it is not just digital goods that are impacted by the worldwide nature of our outlook but services and even physical products.

It used to be that a company could release a product or service in one country, and then if that product was successful then they might launch in other markets around the world over the coming years. Now, however, if you don’t launch a product or service worldwide, then a local competitor may well emerge using you as their “inspiration”. Or they will simply start using the products or services of your wide-eyed and world-focused competitor. And it is on these terms we can look at Microsoft.

Microsoft was born in a time before the modern internet, when they sold a software product with little service attached to that. They still make their profits from selling Windows and Office licenses, with their cloud-based offerings coming under much tougher competition than the offline versions ever did. As people move more and more towards software as a service (SaaS) and away from desktop computers towards a combination of laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Microsoft in its current form with its current business practices has had its peak – it is still a hugely profitable business, but when it comes to the connected world they are under huge pressure from the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and smaller independent companies.

With such competition it is as important than ever to get products right at launch, but when web companies trial or roll out new features – they either let users sign up for early access (like SoundCloud is currently doing), or apply it to a random few and see how it works out (like Facebook and Google). These methods can both help users give a company momentum and word-of-mouth publicity when leading up to a major release – but location is not a factor. Microsoft, however, is releasing the latest version of Bing for US-users only. All geo-focusing does is alienate every other country not getting the update at the time and with no release date in site. Such moves can be forgiven when content licenses are needed such as with maps or music – but this new Bing service is just a better layout that looks like it may actually get social search influence right. Why is this US only with no international launch date?

If you claim to be an international company with relevant products for each country – then you should treat each country evenly. The US may currently be the biggest single market for Microsoft, but when they are playing catch up to Google – their services need to be snapping at Google’s heels in every country.

Why Is Microsoft Still US-Centric? was originally published on TechFruit

Since ditching Ericsson, Sony has been dropping some of the most elegant smartphone onto the market under its Xperia brand – but their latest unveiling looks to put them squarely ahead of the pack in terms of features as well. The Xperia GX will be released in the coming months and is sporting both a bigger and more beautiful display than any previous Sony smartphone, but also a camera that would put most point-and-shoots to shame.

It features a whopping 4.6″ HD reality Display capable of 720p resolution, with a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor running the show with a likely 1GB of RAM. There may be only 16GB of internal storage, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they offered a range of storage options like the iPhone and Galaxy SIII – but there is also rumoured to be a MicroSD slot for further expansion anyway. And will will all be running Google’s latest verison of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, obviously.

The device may have a beautifully big screen and be rather svelte measuring just 131 x 69 x 10.5 mm and weighing in at 127g, but it is the camera that really makes it stand apart from the crowd. We all know that it isn;t all about megapixels anymore, but with 13MP Sony Exmor R CMOS sensor you know you are in for a treat.

Alongside the announcement for the Xperia GX was the Xperia SX – it’s little brother that is not short on featires either. The SX is only 115 x 54 x 9.4mm in size and lays claim to be the lightest smartphone on the market at only 95g. It comes with a more manageable 3.7″ 540×960 display capable, but is also running the 1.5GHz dual-core S4 under the hood with Android ICS and a very useful 8MP Exmore R camera. Oddly, the SX only seems to be offered in a 8GB flavour which is pretty paltry by modern standards – but hopefully Sony might rectify that before release.

Both the GX and SX have only been sceduled for release in Japan so far, but fingers crossed they’ll be heading are way very soon.

Sony Unveils Xperia GX Superphone And The 95g Xperia SX was originally published on TechFruit

No-one can say that Microsoft and Nokia are resting on their laurels in trying to fix up the little quibbles users have found with their Lumia smartphones and improving upon the feature set available. Just a few days after the latest fix, we get news that two of XDA-Developers’ members have got hold of the latest ROM for the Lumia 800 in China and found WiFi tethering available with a simple switch.

Lack of WiFi tethering has long been a gripe of Nokia Lumia users, as the function is available in Windows Phone, as it is offered on phones from other manufacturers running the OS, but up until now the option was hidden from Lumia users. The Chinese ROM also swaps out Facebook and Twitter integration for Weibo and other social networks that are allowed behind the Great Firewall – but I would imagine that is a location specific change.

Now if only they would add rotation-lock…

WiFi Tethering Coming To Nokia Lumia Smartphones With Windows Phone Tango Update was originally published on TechFruit

The last few years has seen a huge change in how people listen to music with more and more people turning to services like Spotify, Deezer, Napster, and We7 to stream music alongside purchasing it outright through iTunes, Amazon, or others. The streaming services give everyone millions of songs available at their fingertips for just a few pounds per month (or even free in a limited capacity), and by being able to cache these songs on mobile devices for use where there is no internet connection – many are starting to use them as their main music library.

It is about time, then, that these streams started actually being counted towards the charts and the Official Charts Company is doing just that starting next week. Alongside this announcement, they have also released the top 20 most streamed artist countdown alongside the most purchased chart which is an interesting read. Now we just need SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and Official.fm to start reporting into the lists to get some more independent artists on there.

[via Official Charts Company]

Official Streaming Charts Finally Come To The UK was originally published on TechFruit

Nokia has seen its fortunes disappear over the last couple of years as smartphones overtake all other types of mobile phones in people’s pockets with the power shifting from traditional handset makers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson to Apple and Google. However they do seem to be turning their ship around over recent months with the Lumia range receiving positive reviews from across the board – they may not have created an iPhone killer yet, but they at least have some horses in the race in the Lumia 800 and 900.

The Nokia Lumia smrtphones are running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) operating system, which is both a help and a hindrance to the uptake of the phones. It means they are not competing simply on specs with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the HTC One X, but they also don’t have the huge variety of apps available on Google Play. The Windows Phone Marketplace has grown dramatically over recent months, but it still pales in comparison with the app stores from Google and Apple, and it is difficult to woo app developers to a platform with only about 2% of smartphone users in contrast to the 40+% of users running iOS or Android. Microsoft has started addressing this issue by setting up an app fund for Windows Phone apps, but Nokia is also getting behind apps by gaining deals for exclusive launches on its Lumia phones from the likes of Rovio (Angry Birds), ESPN, Groupon, EA, PGA Tour, Tripdots, PayPal, AOL Entertainment, TIME, Newsweek and Box.net.

With all this investment in the Windows Phone app economy and the upcoming launch of Windows 8 and integration between desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones that this will bring – it looks as if we will be seeing a real three-way OS race in 2012/13. Now all Nokia needs to do is manage to get assurances for Lumia owners that they will get free upgrades to Windows 8 when it comes out in September/October of this year. The n users will be able to buy the smartphones and know that their device will only improve over the coming months whilst iPhone and Android users will find their devices falling behind the pack.

[via Wired]

Nokia Offering Exclusive Apps To Lumia Smartphone Owners was originally published on TechFruit

Scammers and con artists on the internet generally make their money by tricking the less web-savvy amongst us into parting with either their credit card or login details through fake sites, or convincing us that by paying them you can get unfettered access to all the pirated bounty of movies, music, and software that resides online. People are generally getting wiser to these tricks, but when there’s easy money conned out of people – there will always be someone ready, willing, and morally shady enough to oblige.

It would be difficult to have missed the recent UK court case in which the copyright industry have managed to get the major UK ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay – the famous bittorrent site that offers easy access to all types of pirated content. In response to this, various people and organisations have created proxy sites to enable users to access The Pirate Bay and skirting around those technical blocks (I wrote previously how pointless these blocks are in reality). Most of these proxies have been set up by people aligned with the Pirate Bay’s free culture philosophy and are free to use, however there are a few that alter the Pirate Bay site through their proxy and only provide access to the torrent files once a user has “donated”. Whatever your stance on “illegal” downloading, there is no doubt that if you are paying money for content then that money should go to the creators.

Luckily those behind the Pirate Bay are onto the problem and are breaking through these proxies as they find them and redirecting users to their blog post describing the problems. Moreover, they have also set up Pirate Reverse which both explains to users how to set up their own proxies to the Pirate Bay and actually works as a proxy itself to the Pirate Bay, Torrentz, ISOhunt, and others. Technological censorship simply does not work, it is about time the legal system starts to appreciate that.

The Scammers Trying To Get People To Pay For Pirated Content Are Still Here was originally published on TechFruit

The changes Facebook has made to its site over the years rarely go by without controversy – from opening the network to everyone, to changing privacy settings, to more recently introducing “frictionless sharing”. Whether you know the term or not, you’ll have definitely come across frictionless sharing at some point – it is the reason for the various feeds in your timeline telling you what your friends have recently read, watched, or listened to. Social Reader apps are those from the likes of the Washington Post and The Guardian that are linked in to Facebook so that they can track what you are reading and share it with your friends whether you wanted to or not through frictionless sharing – and they are dying. Fast.

The popularity of social readers of both The Guardian and the Washington Post have fallen off a cliff over the last month – falling by around 75%. TechCrunch points out that this drop coincides with the change Facebook made to how the articles are displayed in users’ timelines – moving to the current “Trending Articles” box as opposed to the much bigger “Recently Read” box of a few months ago. Yes this would certainly have had an effect on social reader usage, but it is more that people in general have hated them. It turns out people are embarrassed to spam their friends. The articles displayed through frictionless sharing are not curated, a user hasn’t given that article a stamp of approval and decided that their friends might be interested in it or should read it. No, frictionless sharing just displayed everything you read – a stream of clicks with no regard to quality or interest outside of the headline. It was the online content version of vomiting on someone’s desk and asking them to fish through it for something interesting.

Facebook still hasn’t removed its frictionless sharing by any means. The Trending Articles box still shows whatever stories had headlines to catch your friends’ attention and Spotify still pops up telling me my friends listen to a lot of guilty pleasures on Spotify – but their priority in the timeline is being much reduced. Myself and those on Twitter who called celebrated the death of social reader apps on the news, however, would love the ability to turn all of it off. Curation is an active game, frictionless sharing takes consideration out of that and produces a stream of content that no-one would actively choose to follow.

Social Readers Are Dying, Is This The End For Frictionless Sharing? was originally published on TechFruit