Not too long ago, we saw a specs page on Amazon.com, which listed a new 8-inch tablet from Acer. The listing revealed a few features of the tablet, but they weren’t very reliable. Read about it here. Since the specs weren’t reliable and hence the listing vanished from Amazon’s website within a matter of hours.

A few days ago, Acer revealed that the tablet in question — the Iconia W3 — is an 8.1-inch Windows 8 tablet, but full features of the device would be revealed at Computex on 4th of June. But Acer couldn’t hold the specs of the tablet until 4th of June and hence they’ve created a dedicated specs page at Acer.fi domain.

Acer Iconia W3 features an 8.1-inch WXGA (1280 x 768) display, is energized by an Intel Clover Trail Atom Z2760 processor, has 2 GB of RAM under its hood and comes in two storage options – 32GB or 64 GB.

Apart from that, it features a 2-megapixel front facing camera for Skype and thanks to the x86 architecture of Clover Trail Atom processors, the device runs full-blown Windows 8 Pro operating system.

If the price of this tablet listed in Amazon’s specs page was correct — $379 for the 32 GB model — then Iconia W3 from Acer would become the most cost-effective Windows 8 tablet in the market.

For some time now, Smartphone audio wasn’t a very big concern for Smartphone makers, because they majorly focused on hiking the numbers (like 4-core processors, 2 gigs of RAM, 1080p displays etc.) so as to look more appealing to consumers.

But now, it seems, since they’ve done what they could in terms of scaling their hardware, Smartphone giants like Samsung could team-up with Wolfson audio to create better “studio” sounding Smartphones. If marketed correctly, this could give the South Korean company a leading edge over its arch rival HTC, which is already getting mass attention because of Beats audio processors in their Smartphones.

The current generation of Smartphones doesn’t face any problems while playing CD-quality music, which is 16 bits per sample, sampling 44.1 thousand times per second.

Sure, many Smartphones doesn’t have those spectacular speakers to do justice to the quality of the music, but if you’d listen to the songs on a good quality headset, you’ll certainly hear the music — loud and crisp!

Wolfson Microelectronics’ latest audio processor — the WM5110 aims at making Smartphones deliver “studio master” quality audio i.e. 24 bits per sample, sampling at 192kHz.

For the record, some of the recently launched Galaxy S4 houses the Wolfson WM5102.

The quad-core audio processor from Wolfson — the WM5110 does good noise and echo cancellation and is also quite power efficient.

OEMs would get a look of these next-gen audio processors in Q3 of this year, and we could probably see these in the next generation of Smartphones, maybe in the Galaxy S5!

NVIDIA SHIELD: the portable gaming console which was announced at CES in January is now available for pre-order at the official NVIDIA website and other online stores such as Newegg for $350. You would also be able to pre-order the handheld, Android-powered portable gaming console from physical stores like GameStop, Micro Center, and Canada Computers.

For some reason, Gaming companies and Gaming startups think that Android gaming could be big; Android brings flexibility, and since it is open-source, a developer can load it onto any device that can have a micro-processor — be it a watch, a refrigerator, a television or even a fan.

Just a couple of months ago, OUYA, another Android gaming start-up released their product for the world to play. They are offering their Android-based console for $99; it can be connected to any display and runs graphically intense games without any issues.

NVIDIA Shield is a device which is very much like OUYA, but portable. The SHIELD has a flip-out design, the upper half has a 5-inch 720p display and the lower half has a console-grade gaming controller.

As for the hardware, Shield has a lot to offer. First up, it is powered by Tegra 4 processor — 72-core GPU and quad-core ARM-based A15 CPU. Apart from that it supports Wi-Fi, has integrated speakers, and pure stock Android operating system. While the people who buy this device would most of the time use it for Gaming, but they can also enjoy music, WhatsApp and movies, if they wish to.

As of now, there are not too many games that would do justice to the amazing control that Shield would provide. A few titles that have been Shield-optimized are ARMA Tactics, Dead Trigger 2, Hamilton’s Great Adventure THD, GTA Vice City, Conduit etc. If sales of OUYA and SHIELD grow, the whole set-up of controller powered Android gaming would expand, and more developers would jump into creating games to suit the hardware.

Check Out: NVIDIA Shield: the portable Android gaming console

Sony has posted a job opening on LinkedIn for a “Speech Recognition Engineering Intern.” The person would be responsible for developing a software that can detect what is being said by the gamer, especially in loud environments, and then process that data clearly. This clearly indicates that Sony would be using voice commands as a control for next generation of PlayStation consoles. As of now, we don’t know anything about the platform for which this software would be developed, but most probably, it would be company’s next generation Gaming console — the PlayStation 4.

In February, when Sony officially unveiled the PlayStation, they showed the world the all new DualShock 4 controllers and a double-camera PlayStation 4 Eye peripheral, which comes with “four channel microphone“. With PS Move, Sony has made Gaming a lot more interactive, and treading the same path, with speech recognition, the company would look to make Gaming even more engaging and realistic; maybe all these dots connect to a big niche of Gaming that isn’t very well capitalized by consoles — Social Gaming. These are vague ideas, but we will hear more substantial plans by Sony at the upcoming E3 event. Stay tuned!

Clearly, If Google decides to give away free “Google Glass” units to tech bloggers in India, I won’t be one of them, because I really don’t like the idea and I’m not afraid to share it on my blog.

With more internet services readying apps for the platform, it feels like Google Glass will make mockery out of people who are already addicted to social media and the internet.

Previously, only Path and the New York Times were developing apps for Google Glass, but now, companies like Evernote, social networking trio (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr), Elle and CNN are also making apps for Glass.

• Elle’s app for Glass would let you browse through photos from the stories of their magazine. Also, the app is capable of reading the stories to you.
• CNN’s app will let you select topics of interest and whenever there is some breaking news, it will pop-up in front of your eyes — like magic!
• Apps from the trio will bring updates to you and would enable you to post updates, photos, voice messages etc. Sharing is caring you see.
• Evernote’s app will let you read notes that you’ve created using your computer or your mobile device.

This is just the beginning, Google plans to make Glass mainstream and they sure have the resources to do so. At the moment, the technology is freakishly expensive, so I won’t be able to afford it; since it clearly doesn’t solve “a greater purpose,” it is of no use to me. Google is already making the Glass experience videos, so if the company is trying to make a profit out of this device, an extensive promotion will follow the official release. Let’s see whether Google manages to turn us all into Robocops!

Bang & Olufsen have designed a new compact surround system which should attract any frugal music lover — the BeoLab 14.

The first thing to notice about this tiny surround sound speaker is its design; it’s a round silvery speaker, which can be placed in rooms with a stand or hanged on the walls.

The company says that they have designed this speaker so as to make it appear more adorable to women, who prefer buying stuff that suits with their home decor.

Bang & Olufsen have provided an elongated white lampshade-style subwoofer in the system, and because of that BeoLab 14 is capable of delivering unreal bass. Apart from that, BeoLab 14 can become a part of a 4.1 system or a 5.1 system and still sound amazing. In fact, when Pete Pachal of Mashable.com heard these tiny 2.5-inch spherical speakers in Bang & Olufsen’s showroom in the NYC, he claimed them to sound pretty great.

Listening to female vocals as well as the sharp movie sounds of the original Iron Man trailer over the speakers, everything came through crystal clear, with great separation and surround effects. I was struck by how small the speakers were — with the subwoofer, they really deliver big sound. You’ll barely notice them, though, and when you do, it’s because of the beautiful design.

As I mentioned these speakers were for frugal music lovers, these speakers aren’t cheap. 4.1 system variant costs $3,995 and 5.1 system variant costs $4,395.

It was a rumor before, and now we know it for sure — Google will be selling unlocked Samsung Galaxy S4 directly from the Play Store, and that phone will run on the stock Android v4.2. Jelly Bean.

Google broke this news at its I/O event.

By this move, Google wants to deliver “the Nexus experience” on a device that is capable of becoming the best Android Smartphone. This obviously means more sales, hopefully, for both Google and Samsung.

Unlocked Galaxy S4 would run on AT&T and T-Mobile’s network and would get software updates as soon as Google makes them available for Nexus phones.

Surprisingly, Google’s S4 would cost more than the Samsung’s S4, yeah, you would have to pay $649 to buy this phone directly from Google.

Shipping starts from 26th of June; would you buy the US S4 hardware (quad-core processor) with unadulterated Android software?

At an event in London, Nokia unveiled its much talked about phone — the Lumia 925. Unlike all other Lumia phones, this Smartphone has a metallic body; it would sell in three colors viz. Black, white and gray. Priced at 469 euros (before local taxes), the device is expected to sell in UK, USA, Germany, Italy and China, sometimes in the month of June. In the US however, the phone would be released exclusively with T-Mobile’s supercharged LTE network, at least for the initial period. T-Mobile announced in a press release that Lumia 925 would be the first WP 8 Smartphone to make use of the company’s super fast LTE network.

As for the specs, Lumia 925 is not very different from other phones in the Lumia series. It has 4.5-inch WXGA display (w/ Clearback technology), 2.25 D sculpted Gorilla 2 Glass screen, an 8.7-megapixel rear camera, and a 1.2-megapixel front facing camera. On the inside, it has a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, PureView imaging technology, 16GB of internal storage and 1GB RAM. If 16 GB isn’t enough for you, you can get the 32 GB version of the phone exclusive with Vodafone. Lumia 925, like Lumia 820 doesn’t have built-in support for Wireless charging, however a case is what you need to buy from Nokia to enable Qi-charging on your Lumia 925. Photography quotient of Lumia phones is excellent and Nokia will be improving the image processing software in all the WP 8 devices by rolling out a Nokia Amber update in this summer.

About two years ago, I wrote an article on this blog that reflected the negative effects of excessively using Facebook and other social networking websites. If Facebook has become an addiction for you, then it’s better to deactivate the account and spend some time away from the biggest social networking website on the internet.

One of the sad parts with leaving Facebook is that you can get back to it when you wish to; there’s no real loss in deactivating your Facebook account once in a while, but that is going to change with Social Roulette.

If you’d ask a person to deactivate his/her Facebook account for a week, he/she might do it, but if you’d ask them to delete everything on their account, like pictures, posts, status updates, notes, apps etc., they would probably be more reluctant. That’s where Social Roulette comes in.

Social Roulette belongs to Douglas Rushkoff, a form Facebook user, and probably an addict. Social Roulette is inspired by Russian Roulette, you have 5 out of six chances to survive, and if you’re really unlucky, you’ll have a lot to lose. In Social Roulette, that “lot” is your entire Facebook profile.

Are you ready for something like this?

You can play Social Roulette at www.socialroulette.net once per day, with your own Facebook account. If you survive, the app will post the “I survived!” message on your wall, but if you don’t, you’ll lose your Facebook data, forever!

This is no joke! Try at your own risk!

By the way, they’re also selling survivor T-shirts. Check them out!

The Middle Ages!

The Renaissance!

More videos. Coming Soon.

Following is a list of best Nokia Asha phones that you can buy right now.

Nokia Asha 305

Nowadays, everybody is having a touchscreen phone, so if you want to have a branded touchscreen phone, without having to shell out a lot of money, then you can easily pick up Nokia Asha 305. Sadly, it has a resistive touchscreen display, but still it’s a fine multimedia mobile phone.

Read complete tech specs

Price: Rs. 4,350

Nokia Asha 311

Another touchscreen phone, with much better design and hardware specifications (1 GHz processor). It runs on the same operating system as the Nokia 305, but can handle games, and multitasking better. It also has a 3.2-megapixel camera on its rear.

Read complete tech specs

Price: Rs. 6,250

Nokia Asha 302

This cell phone from Nokia’s Asha series has a physical QWERTY keyboard, which makes stuff like typing and searching much easier. Like Asha 305, it has a 1 GHz processor and 3.2-megapixel rear camera; Also, you can expand the storage by up to 32 GB.

Read complete tech specs

Price: Rs. 6,548

Nokia Asha 303

Another full QWERTY phone, but with a better looking design. The phone runs on Nokia’s S40 platform and because of that, it supports a lot of Java based video games and applications. Asha 303 also has Wi-Fi connectivity, expandable storage and a 3.2-megapixel FF rear camera.

Read complete tech specs

Price: Rs. 7,500

Notion Ink is geared up to release the second generation of Android-powered Adam tablet, which is called Adam II. The tablet was unveiled at National Technology Day Awards and would be priced at Rs. 12,000 when it is released in Indian markets.

Adam II, like its predecessor, has a 10.1-inch high-definition display (1280 x 800 pixels); the company would’ve easily bumped the resolution to Full HD, but they didn’t so as to up the battery life.

The device is powered by a 1.5 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, 1 GB of RAM and runs on the latest Android operating system — version 4.2.2. Jelly Bean.

Adam II has dual display, the secondary display is located at the edge of the tablet, and display information about the book that you’re reading and easy navigation options.

The tablet features all the connectivity options such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and micro HDMI-out; Also, it runs on the stock Android OS and not the custom Eden UI that original Adam had.

The tablet is powered by a 6,000 mAh battery, which is touted to deliver 10 hours of juice. Release date not yet revealed!

Looking for a portable USB charger for your Smartphone that’s a little off the standard, Nokia’s got one ready for you.

The new DC-18 portable USB charger is nice tile-shaped gadget that packs 1,720 mAh cell, built-in microUSB cable and indicator lights.

The portable USB charger is capable of giving your Smartphone some addition juice, if you run out of it at a time when you most need your phone —  like in a forest, or something.

DC-18 will sell in four colors viz. red, white, yellow and blue, in a few regions. Pricing and shipping dates not yet revealed by Nokia.

A mobile security company called NQ mobile has released a report which says that there was a 163% increase in mobile malware in the year of 2012 and over 65,000 new types of malware exploits were discovered.

The security risks that Android platform has isn’t new. We’ve heard it from most of the anti-malware companies who are more than happy to offer their premium anti-virus apps to cope with the security issues, but how many of us would spend money on an anti-virus program when we’re not keen on paying 99 cents on a paid game.

The report says that 25.5% of infected devices belonged to people in China, followed by India (19.4%) and Russia (17.9%).

Clearly, the number of infected devices was higher in the countries where either premium apps are not available – like China, or where people are ready to spend on money on getting premium apps – like India. People who resort of third-party app stores and websites for nulled premium apps are most likely to be infected by malware.

The malware problem with Android phone isn’t just limited to China and India; roughly 9.8% of 32 million infected devices belonged to the people of the United States. Malware can not only play with your device, but it can also steal your sensitive information and because of that it is very important to stay vigilant when it comes to your phone’s security.

If you want to protect your device from malware, make sure you stay away from pirated content. Use Google Play or Amazon app store for downloading both free and paid apps, movies, music and television shows. Using pirated stuff on your Android phone would put it at risk of getting infected.

Electronic Arts announced this week that they won’t be paying gun manufacturers money for depicting weapons in its video games.

The company faced a lot of negative reactions after giving shout to a few assault weapons dealers on the website of Medal of Honor: Warfighter. At the time, EA said that the promotion was the company’s attempt to raise some money for war veterans.

Because of the awful shootings that happened in Newtown, Connecticut in December, people are not happy with video games that promote violence. Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of National Rifle Association called the gaming industry, “a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.”

Since EA won’t be paying to depict registered guns in its video games, the question that arises is whether gun manufacturers would sue the company like Bell helicopters did. As of now, gun makers haven’t taken any action in this matter and EA says that they would be using guns in their games but that doesn’t mean they are motivating people to break laws.

Bell Helicopters has sued EA for using one of their choppers without permissions in its game Battlefield — trial for which begins this June.

[Source Reuters]

Amazon.com has reserved a sweet description page for Acer’s new tablet — Iconia W3 — which apparently is not yet announced by the company.

The details given on the page by Amazon.com aren’t very reliable, because they have mentioned “1.5 GHz Apple A4″ in the processor field, which is very unlikely to be true.

When you scroll a little down, the details seem more realistic.

Iconia W3 shall have an 8.1-inch display 1280×800 pixel resolution, an Intel Atom Dual-Core Processor Z2760, 64 MB integrated graphics, 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage, front and rear cameras and 3,500 mAh battery, which the company claims to provide 8 hours of juice.

The device would run on Windows 8 operating system and if the details are correct, shall sell for $380.

Shipping date not yet announced.

[Source Amazon]

Lumia 820: Lumia 920′s successful younger brother.

Microsoft recently revealed some download stats of its app store for Windows Phone powered devices.

The company revealed that since the release of Windows Phone 8, app downloads count has doubled and the revenue earned by app developers through paid apps has increased by 140%.

One of the biggest challenges that Microsoft faces with selling Lumia devices is that it doesn’t have enough great apps, but these stats indicate that Microsoft is trying their level best to engage developers in getting their app ready for WP 8 and users to pay for those apps.

Microsoft has recently opened app submissions for developers in 6 more countries viz. Afghanistan, Iraq, Montenegro, Serbia, Timor-Leste, and Ukraine and has tied with mobile operators for ease of payment.

Microsoft says that a customer is likely to purchase a paid app by up to three when made to pay via mobile operator and not with credit cards.

Microsoft is trying to make the process of submitting apps and buying apps from the WP 8 app easier for people and that should produce some results in the future. What do you think?

When it comes to manufacturing portable digital cameras, Samsung has tried to dethrone Nikon and Canon by offering lightweight, high-quality and completely connected range of portable digital cameras, but it hasn’t been successful.

While Samsung may not have achieved great success in this niche, it certainly has given the market several nice cameras, such as the NX series.

Samsung recently launched a new portable digital camera called NX2000.

The NX2000 packs a 20.3MP ASP-C CMOS Sensor, which is made by Samsung and can capture photos that are rich in color, contrast and detail. The image quality is further enhanced by DRIMe IV engine that the camera packs under its hood.

NX2000 takes burst shots at 8fps, and because of ultrafast 1/4000th second shutter speed, it can take really high quality shots of objects moving at high speeds. Wide ISO range of 100-25600 enables photographers to take optimal images regardless of the lighting conditions.

Apart from that, the Samsung NX2000 portable digital camera can shoot 3D still images, record Full HD videos, has Wi-Fi connectivity and because of Samsung SMART CAMERA app, it can seamlessly connect to Android and iOS devices.

Samsung NX2000 portable digital camera will sell in three colors – white, black and pink. Pricing remains undisclosed.

HTC Watch, company’s on-demand movie service, will be closing in six countries due to unpopularity.

HTC has been focusing on delivering rich multimedia entertainment services to its customers but it seems its on-demand movie service isn’t very popular in Denmark, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, and that’s why HTC had decided to shut down its ‘Watch’ service on the 31st of May.

People love on-the-go entertainment but it seems competition — Google Play movies — hasn’t left any hope for HTC Watch to flourish. Google Play has a rich collected of videos, movies and music and most people use it over any other service.

If you were one of the few people who actually used HTC Watch, it’s time to move on!

The service allows people like you to share reviews of local restaurants, bars and cafes so that other people can enjoy great places and relish some exotic dishes.

People living in New Zealand can now download Yelp’s official app on their Smartphones from yelp.co.nz and start writing reviews of local eating joints.

Yelp also opens for food businesses in New Zealand; owners can go to biz.yelp.co.nz and claim the page of their food joint for Free.