Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, a stream of rumors flowed from Sun Valley, Idaho, where Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executives supposedly talked about a Google-branded phone. Iā€™ll explain what happened, but first off, it doesnā€™t appear to be true, and second, what is more important than whether a gPhone is in the works or not, is that the Google Android developer community is starting to show signs of malcontent.More… Read the rest of this entry »

2007 was the year of speculation of a Google Phone, or Gphone. Handset manufacturer HTC was the center of attention around most of the rumors. But Google eventually squashed those rumors by announcing the Open Handset Alliance and Android. Instead of building an iPhone like device and service combined, theyā€™d be backing an open source mobile operating system that could finally break the carriersā€™ stranglehold on the mobile market.
Read the rest of this entry »

We have been playing with the Android prototypes scattered through the Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona. ARM had theirs running on one of their lower-end processors. No fancy graphics demos, no iPhone-style multimedia fizzbang, just a humble ARM9 processor in a plain white prototype “to demonstrate the scalability of Android” and serve as a “development platform.” Our verdict: it works, it’s fluid, but it’s boring. Qualcomm’s Android prototype, however, is a real beast Read the rest of this entry »

I certainly wasn’t expecting the events of the past few days to play out the way they did…

Over the course of this week, I’ve been subjected to some pretty heavy marketing messages from both AMD and Nvidia and it’s fair to say that we’re well past the sleeve-rolling-up stage ā€“ the daggers are out and they’re being waved around pretty frantically.

As I was preparing to board the plane to Malaga for AMD’s Radeon HD 4000-series press event, I received a call from Nvidia to tell us that it was seeding certain websitesā€”including bit-techā€”with GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards ahead of their mid-July launch. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were thinking Nvidia had no answer to the AMD HD 4850 and was only launching the 260 GTX and 280 GTX, you might want to think again. Nvidia dropped into our offices today to give us a sneak peek at the new 55nm G92 part it has been working on - the 9800 GTX+ (plus). Older 9800 GTX, 8800 GTS 512 and 8800 GT parts were made using a 65nm G92 core, which was evolved from the original G80 part that launched in November 2006 - but this card doesn’t have that weakness. Read the rest of this entry »

Nvidia GeForce GTX 280.. or is it the 260? Either way, both are even cheaper now!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tentatively set your calenders because week 44, or late September, since this is when X58 and Nehalem’s Bloomfield boards will arrive for us consumers.

Well, maybe. Between hearing the news and writing the news there was an insinuation that Intel might push it back because the new chipset and architecture might have a few issues. Read the rest of this entry »