Meizu has been showing the pics of the iPhone knockoff for more the 7 months but it looks like they won’t be selling them before mid 2008. Plus the latest rumors suggest that it wouldn’t be for $299 but will cost more then $400. The biggest attraction (low price) of the phone has already started to fade out. The phone will come with a 667Mhz CPU, 128MB of RAM, GSM, 3.4” VGA touch screen, Bluetooth and Wi-FI. Not just the image of the phone but the specs looks almost same as iPhone, the only problem is it will be late by a year.

Kohijimsha’s UMPC/ Tablet will get a 32GB SSD option in place of standard hard drive. The other specs will remain the same with 7” 1024x600 resolution display, Intel A100 processor, 1GB of RAM, 1.3 mega pixel integrated web cam, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There is no word how much the price will increase with SSD option but that should be known soon enough.

Creative has rolled out 16GB Zen V Plus Mp3 player, presently it is only available in Singapore. Feature wise there is no change to the Zen V Plus and it’s selling for $399.99 (SGD) that’s around $260 at present exchange rate. We hope that just like last time when Creative spruced up the Zen V Plus from 4 GB to 8GB back in September of 2006, we will very soon see the player released in United States.

This 15” photo frame looks and works like a monster. The Gigantor has a shape screen with 1024x768 resolution, built-in speaker, MPEG Video and MP3 playback, Different media card support and USB drive support as well. The frame includes IR remote control and can play slide shows with multiple transition effects and MP3 music. The best thing about this frame is its cost that’s just $249 only.

For those outdoor people who need a small PC handy everywhere they go, Victum has released its Tablet 8 Full-ruggedized industrial and outdoor PC. The Tablet has an 8.4” TFT touch screen, which can be easily read in sunlight. This Tablet can work in the temperature range of -20 to +60 degree Celsius and humidity of up to 90% and is certified for military standard. The configuration of the system is Intel Pentium M 1.2GHz, Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth (option), GPS receiver (option), 40Gb hard drive, 256MB of RAM and 7 hours of battery life.

Well everyone on planet earth knows or have heard the rumors, about the upcoming Xbox 360 price cuts. But who is going to stop Microsoft from announcing it as a big surprise for everyone on 8th, when they announce the price break with GameStop. Many sources have already confirmed that Circuit City catalog prices are true and GameStop will match those prices. According to Engadget, the biggest news is that in the future Xbox 360 Premium will come with HDMI.

The debate is on about who is winning the format war, but Toshiba is leaving nothing to chance. Amazon has posted few details about the three upcoming Toshiba HD DVD players. There will be three new models HD-A3, HD-A30 and HD-A35 priced $299, $399 and $499 respectively. The HD-A3 will be able to support up to 1080i only where as the higher end HD-A30 and HD-A35 will be 1080p players. You can preorder them now on Amazon.

Timex today unveiled the iControl watches that can wirelessly operate Apple’s iPod and it also works with iPhone when the phone is in airplane mode. According to Vice President of Sports Marketing Timex “iControl offers cutting edge technology and contemporary design, in addition to the functional quality and durability people have come to expect from Timex”. The main features of iControl watch are iPod controls, 50 lap memory, training log, Multi-mode countdown timer, 3 alarms, INDIGLO, 100m water resistance and 3 years of battery life. The watch is offered for $125 in gray, black, blue, pink, orange and green colors.

Intel plans to launch its 45nm quad-core chips few months early, to take out steam from AMD’s recent roadmap announcement. Most likely the new top-of-the-range extreme processor will be clocked at 3.33GHz and will come with 1333MHz front side bus and 12MB of level two cache. Initially only about 2% to 3% of Intel’s desktop chip will be based on 45nm, Intel plans to make this number reach 30% by end of 2008. These new Intel chips will be competing against AMD’s Phenom processors, which will also be released by that time.

Though Apple has never mentioned about enhancements to the iPhone in its documentation ,they have added new features to the iPhone. The first feature is BCC option in mail previously there was just CC option and you had no option to send yourself a copy of the outgoing mail. The other feature is that iPhone now offers up to 1 hour of idle time before asking for Passcode whereas earlier it was up to a minute. The issue of iPhone battery not fully charging has also been solved.

Sony issued a Public Notice to owners of Cyber-shot DSC-T5 camera stating that Sony will offer a free replacement service for the bottom casing of this particular camera. According to Sony, the metal plating on the bottom of the camera unit may warp, causing slight cut or scratch to the skin of the user when it is directly touched.  Totally 416,000 cameras are affected by this recall, out of which 350,000 were sold in United States and 66,000 in rest of the world.

You can check the Public Notice here: Sony's Recall Notice

In a patent filing titled “Audio User Interface for Computing Devices” the iPhone maker said that sometimes using the small screen on handheld devices can cause distractions from critical tasks such as driving and for others it may be difficult to use the small screen for regular everyday use . To end this problem, Apple recommends an audio user interface that generates audio prompts to help a user navigate through different features on the handheld devices. The audio prompt will help the user focus his attention on the critical task on hand. Apple also notes that using the handheld device for text-to-speech conversion gives poor results but if the system is used with a host computer and all the conversions are handled by the host computer the performance of such systems can be improved.

You can read the complete report on: AppleInsider

In the past two years virtualization has been a very strong reason for increased popularity of Intel Macs. First it was Parallels Desktop program that let you run Windows on your Mac and then there was Apple’s Boot Camp. The biggest problem with Boot Camp was that you had to restart the computer to switch into Windows. VMWare will be releasing their Virtualization software named Fusion next week. Like Parallels, Fusion is a virtualization program that will let you run Windows and Windows programs within the Mac operating system. Walt Mossberg compares Parallels and Fusion in his reviews of Fusion. According to Mossberg, Fusion was less system intrinsic program and overall performance was faster than Parallels but Parallels has more features then fusion. So ultimately Mossberg came to the conclusion “You won’t go wrong with either program. Both give the Macintosh a level of versatility that can’t be matched by Windows-only machines”.
You can read the Complete Review here: Fusion Review

ChangeWave published their July 18-20 consumer cell phone survey results today. A total of 3003 ChangeWave Alliance members participated in the survey, which points to an upheaval occurring among cell phone manufacturers and service providers alike. According to the survey 1% of it members were using iPhone and another 16% were likely to buy one in next 6 months, 77% of the current iPhone owners were very satisfied with the Apple products. Among the ChangeWave Alliance members AT&T was the only service provider that saw an increase in market share, all other providers had a decline in market share. According to ChangeWave there is a strong momentum created by iPhone that will affect other cell phone makers and service providers.
You can read the complete report here: ChangeWave

Microsoft today announced that it would be delaying the release of upcoming Office 2008 for Mac until January 2008. The Office 2008 version was supposed to be released in second half of 2007. General Manager  of Microsoft Macintosh business unit said in an interview “It really is just a quality issue across the board”. The switch to Intel processor and the new Office file formats were the other reasons mentioned for the delay caused. So we should expect Office 2008 to be launched at Macworld Expo 2008 or at least demoed there.  

Bluetooth SIG has adopted the latest version 2.1 +EDR. Now you can pair Bluetooth devices in just few seconds instead of minutes, auto-pairing support will be there for some devices and near field communication. There will be improvements to security and power management (up to five times battery life).

Today Acer launched two new laptops based on their design collaboration with BMW Group DesignworksUSA.  The Aspire 5920 and 4710 are both part of Acer’s Gemstone laptop line. The Aspire 5920 comes with 15.4” high def wide screen and Dolby Home Theater Virtual Surround Sound. The machine runs on 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT Graphics card, 160GB hard drive, Dual layer DVD burner, integrated web cam, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Aspire 4710 comes with smaller 14.1” screen, 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 512 MB RAM, 120GB hard drive, Dual layer DVD burner, Intel 945GM graphics chipset and Wi-Fi. The most interesting thing about this unit is it comes with Linux and not Windows. The price for Aspire 5920 starts at $2000 and for Aspire 4710 it starts at $600.

AMD’s diagnostic and validation software for graphics card had a bug that failed to detect defective ATI Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 according to digitimes. Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International and Gigabyte Technology encountered the problem. Channel vendors pointed out that the problem was in the BIOS. Problems in BIOS can be easily solved but the defective cards have to be returned to AMD to reapply BIOS update. One of the first-tier makers has recalled more the 20,000 cards and only few of the defective cards have reached consumers hand.

If you love to use USB devices like USB printers, USB hard drives or USB scanner between multiple computers then this device is for you. The USB 2.0 Server supports both Ethernet and Wi-Fi networks making it easy to print to a USB printer or connect to other USB devices from your Wi-Fi enabled laptop.

Some of us are still confused what DVI and HDMI are and now ATI is adding one more to the bandwagon - DisplayPort in 2008. DisplayPort is a competing technology which some consider is better than HDMI. The fact that ATI will support DisplayPort in 2008 will give a boost to the technology. Now let'ss see which computer company will be first to support DisplayPort.

Logitech today announced that they would be shipping the G9 Laser Mouse and G15 Keyboard in September. The G9 mouse comes with interchangeable grips for better fit in your hand, on-the-fly dpi switching ranging from 200 dpi to 3200dpi, full speed USB laser tracking, an onboard memory profiling system, weight tuning, a custom-color LED and the hyper-fast Scroll wheel. The G9 mouse is designed for extreme customization and super fast gaming. The G15 gaming keyboard now comes with native support for many games using its LCD screen. G15 also has six on-the fly macro keys with three modes that give you a total of 18 programmable keys per game. G15 has backlighted keys for nighttime gaming and includes a switch to disable Windows key. You can get each of these gaming masterpieces for $99.99 in September.

Apple has arranged a invite only press conference on 7th August. According to Apple its a Mac only event but the prices of 5.5G iPod has been dropped on many online stores like Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City and J&R online. Plus there have been rumors going around that Apple will release the 6G iPod very soon. It can just be an attempt by Apple to clear away the excess stock. Nobody knows what will be released but we will find out whats up Apple's sleeve on 7th August.

Not every Xbox 360 model is gettting a $50 price cut but the Xbox 360 Premium is, the other two models Elite and Core are getting $30 and $20 each. These price drops will be effective from August 12th according to the flyer. You will also get a Rockstar's Table Tennis game with the Premium but again nothing comes for free with Elite or Core systems.

The new GHDMIAS4 from IOGEAR is a 4-port automatic HDMI switch, it senses which input source is turned on and automatically switchs to that port. You can even manage the switch with a remote. The device takes in four HDMI inputs and spits out one HDMI output. The switch supports 1080p and HDMI 1.3, its also HDCP compliant. For $189.95 you get the switch plus 6 ft HDMI cable.

If you were interested in knowing what the guys at Dev Wiki were upto with the iPhone hacks but found it way too complicated, you have to try BitSplit's iFuntastic 2.0. This iPhone hack lets you add ringtones, change carrier logo and reorder iPhone application. You need an Intel Mac for this free application to run.

Finally someone did it. Everyone was using the USB port on Apple TV for many different uses but until now no one hacked it for the most important reason "External drive". Apple TV Hacks folks have finally developed a method in which using the terminal and another Intel based MAC you can hack your Apple TV and make it work with external drives.