AT&T will be launching the Mobile TV network using QualComm’s MediaFLO network on 4th May. The two cellphones that well take advantage of the new service are LG Vu and Samsung Access. The LG Vu a touchscreen phone with 2-megapixel camera and Bluetooth will be available for $300 with 2 year contract and $100 rebate. Where as the Samsung Access a candybar phone with large landscape display will cost $200 with 2-year contract and $100 rebate. The Basic package of TV service starts at $15 per month in addition to monthly fee for your Voice plan. The Mobile TV Plus package for $30 a month includes unlimited Mobile TV, unlimited mobile Web browsing on MEdiaTM Net and unlimited CV mobile video. There is also a limited basic package for $13 a month, which give you access to four channels: CBS Mobile, FOX Mobile, NBC 2Go and NBC News 2GO.

Hitachi had showcased their thin LCD TV in January at CES 2008. The 1.5” thick display are the thinnest LCD TVs available today. The TVs will be available in four screen sizes (32”, 37”, 42” and 47”) in two different series the Director’s Series and the UltraVision series. The Director’s X series will have five models, the 47” UT47X902 for $4,699, the 42” UT42X902 for $3,699, the 37” UT37X902 for $2,999, the 32” UT32X812 for $2,299 and the 32” UT32X802 for $1,999. The UltraVision V series will also have five models the 47” UT47V702 for $4,499, the 42” UT42V702 for $3,499, the 37” UT37V702 for $2,799, the 32” UT32V502 for $2,099 and the 32” UT32A302 for $1799. The UltraThin 1.5 TVs will be released between now and September.
[Via Earth Times]

French iPhone blog iPhone.fr has posted leaked images of the 3G iPhone that they received from an anonymous and unverified source. There is a possibility that the photos might be Photoshopped or a knockoff, but the images do look legit as they match with the details leaked on the web about the size, shape and color of the upcoming 3G iPhone. In the images the phone doesn’t look thicker then the present generation iPhone, as was posted by Engadget. It is definitely shorter on the top of the screen and the tapering is quite similar to what iLounge had described. We will come to know exactly how the iPhone looks when it is releases by Apple in June, till that time blogosphere will keep guessing.

According to a Garmin survey AT&T might release the Nuvifone for $499 with required Unlimited Internet and Navigation and two year contract. The question asked in the survey was “How likely would you be to buy the Garmin Nuvifone if offered by AT&T for $499.99 with two year contract? You would be required to have both a data plan that would include unlimited Internet browsing and unlimited Navigation for $19.99 per month and one of the standard voice plans for a monthly fee.” The Garmin’s upcoming phone will have 3.5” touchscreen, HSDPA, WiFi, GPS, 3-megapixel camera and multimedia applications. From the survey it look like Garmin is trying to follow in the footsteps of Apple’s iPhone release last year. The problem is Garmin doesn’t have the following that Apple products enjoy neither has Nuvifone generated the kind of hip iPhone did.
[Via Engadget]

BGR has posted photos of upcoming BlackBerry clamshell phone codenamed the Kickstart. The flip phone uses the SureType keypad found on the BlackBerry Pearl. It also has the TrackBall for navigation like the Pearl. The external LCD on the phone gives you information about incoming call, SMS, time and email. There is a camera above the external LCD. No information is available about technical specifications of the phone. According to BGR the phone will be launched before end of 2008. The phone is not bad looking and when opened it resembles Motorola Razr.

Apple today announced that new movie releases from major film studios would be available on the iTunes for purchase on the same day as their DVD release. “We’re thrilled to bring iTunes Store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios.” The new releases will be priced at $14.99. I am bit confused here will the newly released movie be available for rent also on the same day as DVD release?  When I checked “American Gangster” was available for rent and purchase but “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” was only available for purchase. So it looks like not every movie will be available for rent on the same day as DVD Release.

According to iLounge the next generation iPhone will basically have same size, but will come with slightly different curves, coloration and materials. The iPhone will come with glossy black plastic back like most other website claimed. The enclosure will be tapered like Macbook Air, thinner near the edges. The front of the iPhone will remain nearly same but the bottom speaker and microphone grilles will be replaced by holes along the Dock connector. The screen will remain of same size but there will be three sensors in place of two sensors in present iPhone. The third sensor can be a video camera for video chats. The 3G iPhone might come in three colors black, white and red. At the end of post iLounge adds only Apple and its key partners know if any of this is correct, but some companies are assuming that it is and have start designing accessories based on the information.

Since the time that music was available to download via services like iTunes, I have had two wishes. One - DRM Free Music: Something that came true last year, Two - CD quality (AIFF or lossless encoding) - This just came true when I stumbled upon the HDtracks site. HDtracks is an online music store offering CD-quality music from world's leading independent labels in three DRM free formats AIFF, FLAC and 320 kbps MP3. You can buy individual tracks for $1.49 or complete albums for $11.98, you will get cover art and liner notes as a PDF with complete album. Well, as you might have guessed, none of the big four record labels are supporting this service. It isn't really a surprise considering that the big four are always last to the party. Like DRM free music, which was first sold by small services like E-music and then adopted by big music services like iTunes and Amazon. I hope the biggies offer CD quality music downloads soon.

Many in the blogosphere have tried to predict the size and look of the upcoming iPhone and some of these predictions have been done by renowned sources. Kevin Rose of Digg said that the iPhone will have two cameras, front one for video chats and back one for taking pictures. Analysts Gene Munster and Shaw Wu claimed that both the present model and the upcoming 3G model would have a redesigned casing. iPodObserver posted that the new iPhone will have black plastic casing and Engadget claimed same black casing as iPodObserver but added that the 3G phone will be thicker than present iPhone model. Well the latest prediction comes from Taiwanese newspaper Economic News, according to their claim the new model will be lighter and weigh 110 to 120 grams compared to present iPhone weight of 158 grams. They also added that the 3G iPhone will be more compact and will have a 2.8” screen versus the 3.5” screen that the iPhone has now. I do agree that the iPhone will get lighter if the aluminum back is replaced with a plastic one but I don’t think Apple will decrease the size of the screen. One of the main reason behind iPhone becoming such a big hit is its near perfect screen size for web browsing on a handheld device and decreasing the screen size will be a disadvantage for web browsing. Only one thing is known about the upcoming iPhone and that is it will be 3G phone every other information making rounds in the blogosphere is either rumor or guess work.

Nokia has added Real Time Traffic Information (RTTI) to its phone that comes with Nokia Maps 2.0 software. Nokia will charge a premium for the service, as it is an add-on to the basic service. Nokia’s representative said “by adding RTTI, Nokia can save precious time for drivers by alerting them of traffic, construction or other road hazards that could affect their journey. When Nokia Maps receives the road updates from ARC, the application can dynamically re-route during navigation and provide a faster route.” The service will be available in 16 countries and Nokia will be partnering with ARC Transistance. The only problem with GPS on mobile phone is its very slow, if Nokia can change that very soon personal navigation devices will become obsolete.
[Via PMP Today]

Samsung has started selling the Bluetooth enabled Soundbar HT-X810 that they showed at CES this year. The 300 watts surround-sound soundbar (basically a home theater system) is designed to sit underneath the TV and comes with a separate subwoofer that is connected wirelessly to the main unit. There is an upscaling DVD player hidden in the casing that supports Divx, CD, DVD-Audio, JPEG, MP3 and WMA. The Bluetooth on the soundbar allows users to stream music from their portable device directly to the soundbar. The HT-X810 surround-sound Soundbar will be priced for $699.
[Via Slashgear]

Canadian Wireless Carrier Rogers Wireless announced today that they would bring iPhone to Canada later this year. “We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year,” the carrier said in a statement. “We can’t tell you any more about it right now but stay tuned.” Since the launch of iPhone last year Rogers has constantly show interest in launching the phone in Canada. Last year Rogers Chief operating officer Nadir Mohamed said, “I’m not saying whether we have agreements or anything, but given the iPhone was launched on GSM, we’re in good position to reinforce that we’re the first and have the best feature devices.” Last week Toronto Star claimed that Rogers will launch the iPhone by July and right now it looks like they will indeed start selling iPhone in July when the new 3G iPhone is launched.

NETGEAR announced the first six-bay small form factor desktop network attached storage (NAS) solution. The company will ship three models of ReadyNAS Pro RNDP6350 (1.5TB storage), RNDP6310 (3TB storage) and RNDP6610 (6TB storage). Designed for small and medium businesses, workgroups and home offices, ReadyNAS Pro can work on LAN or WAN to store, backup and share data from a combination of Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms. It supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and auto expandable X-RAID2 to provide robust data protection against single disk failure. The ReadyNAS Pro Products support up to six SATA 1 or SATA 2 hard drives via six lockable, hot-swappable disk trays. Three USB 2.0 ports enable the connection of USB drives or printers directly to the system. The ReadyNAS comes with 5-year hardware warranty and will be available in Q3 2008. The price will start at $2,000 making it out of reach for most people planning to use it as NAS for their home. Drobo is still the best storage solution available for home networks.

Speculation about the chips used in the new iMac have been rampant and many believed that Apple got special treatment and received the next generation Montevina chips that have 1066MHz front side bus and speeds up to 3.06GHz. The reason for this speculation was that present generation Penryn chips have 800MHz front side bus and processor speed range from 2.0GHz to 2.8GHz. Well Apple did get special treatment in form of special made 45nm Penryn with clock speeds up to 3.06GHz and 1066MHz front side bus. So the processors are not the next generation Montevina or Centrino 2 chips that Intel will release in June but they are the faster (overclocked) versions of the existing Penryn processors. The specially designed chips consume more power than the present generation Penryn processors as well as upcoming Montevina processors. The 3.06GHz chip will have a TDP of 55W compared to 44W of present and upcoming Core 2 Duo Extreme processors. This is the second processor Intel has designed specially for Apple that might be making Dell and other competitors really jealous.

After super successful launch in Japan, where Wii Fit sold in excess of 1.4 million units to date, making it one of the fastest selling Wii titles in Japan. Wii Fit was released last Friday in UK and if early reports are any indication it going to be super hit in UK also. Play.com sold its complete pre-order allocation in one day leaving the online retailer “overwhelmed” by demand. According to Pocket-lint DSG group, that includes Currys, PC World and Dixons.co.uk were selling a copy of Wii Fit every 4 seconds on Friday and most stores were sold out by Saturday. Amazon.co.uk also was sold out within 24 hours. Wii Fit will be launched in US on May 21st and if you want one better preorder or be prepared to stand in-line.

The 11” ultraportable laptop IdeaPad U110 will be available for order starting on 29th April and the price will start at $1,899. The laptop will be available in two colors, black and red. The U110 will have 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo L7500 processor, 11.1” LED backlit screen (1366 x 768), 2GB RAM, 120GB Hard drive, GMA X3100 integrated graphics, WiFi, Bluetooth and 1.3 megapixel webcam. The laptop will measure 10.8” x 7.7” x 072-0.88” and weigh only 2.4 pounds. The ports on the laptop will include 3 USB, 1 Firewire, Express card slots, 6-in-1 card reader, audio in/out and 10/100 Ethernet. The standard four-cell battery will last 2 hours only, you can go for optional 7 cell battery that should last about 8 hours. It is believed that a 3GB RAM config will start shipping in mid-May for $1,999.
[Via Engadget]

The supercomputer developer Cray announced today that it is working with Intel on advanced supercomputers. The main goal of the partnership is to develop technology for clusters and improve the in-processor technology used in multi-core processors. Cray will for the first time use Intel processor in its supercomputer in place of AMD’s Opterons it used in previous generation of its supercomputers. Neither Intel nor Cray has given any roadmap for the products that will be made using the technology developed by the partnership. Intel has already shown a processor that has 80 cores and said that one of the biggest problems in development of massive multi-core processor is in-processor data transfer, partnering with a supercomputer maker should definitely help Intel.

Apple is celebrating 5 years of iTunes store that was launched on April 28th 2003. Apple wrote in a note on iTunes “Has it been five years already? On our fifth anniversary, we’re taking a look back at all of the great music, video and exclusive you first discovered on iTunes, highlighting the songs and shows that defined each year.” Apple described the year 2003, as “This is where it all began Launching on April 28, 2003, the iTunes Music Store offered an easy way to download the music you love for $0.99 a song with no subscription fees. We had more than 200,000 songs and a handful of exclusive tracks. (Today we’ve got more than 10 million.) Below is a selection of the bestselling songs and albums from our first year, accompanied by our hand-picked favorites.” You can check the best selling albums and songs as well as Staff favorite albums and songs for every year from 2003 and onwards. You can also check best selling Music videos, TV shows, games, movies and more for years after 2005.
[Via iTunes]

A Taiwanese newspaper Commercial Times is reporting that Foxconn (Hon Hai) has landed a contract to manufacture the new 3G iPhone for shipment in June. Foxconn also manufactures the first generation iPhone. Foxconn will start the assembly of 3G iPhone by end of May according to the information obtained by Commercial Times from various component suppliers. Foxconn is expected to ship 3 million 3G iPhones in June and produce 24-25 million units before introduction of third revision of iPhone. It is almost like a know fact that Apple will launch the 3G iPhone in June but shipping 3 million iPhones in June is a clear indication of Apple’s plan to have a global 3G iPhone launch.

Following the announcement of 6600 Slide, Nokia announced two more handsets the 6600 Fold and the 3600 Slide.  The 6600 Fold is a clamshell handset that features an electromagnetic opening mechanism that opens the phone smoothly. The Fold comes with an OLED outer display, 2.2” QVGA inner display, 2-megapixel camera, a second camera for video calling, microSD card slot and Bluetooth. The phone supports quad-band GSM and WCDMA (850/2100MHz) and will be available in Q3 for €279. The second phone the 3600 Slide is a slider phone available in two colors, charcoal and wine. This is also a quad-band GSM handset that comes with 240 X 320 resolution screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, microSD card slot, FM radio and 2.5mm audio jack with TV-Out capability. The 3600 Slide will be released in Q3 2008 for €175.
[Via Mobile Burn]

Nokia announced today the 6600 Slide, a sleek slider handset that features an aluminum center button and outer covering of glossy steel. The phone comes with accelerometer that allows users to activate the time on the display or silence inbound calls simply by tapping twice on the cellphone. The S40 OS based 6600 comes with 2.2” QVGA screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, 18MB on board memory, microSD slot and Bluetooth. The phone supports Quad-band GSM and WCDMA 850/2100MHz for communication. The slide measures 3.7” x 1.8” x 0.6” and weighs 3.9oz. The phone will be available in Europe in Q3 for €250.
[Via Mobile Burn]

Apple has updated all-in-one iMac with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and the most powerful graphics ever available in an iMac. The ultimate all-in-one desktop computer includes faster processors with 6MB L2 cache, a faster 1066 MHz front-side bus across the entire line, and 2GB of memory standard in most models. And the 24-inch iMac now offers a 3.06 GHz Intel processor and the high-performance NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics as options. Available immediately, the new iMac starts at just $1,199. Design-wise there is no change in the new iMac in fact it’s exactly same as the previous generation iMac. There are two 20” models and two 24” models. The first 20” model comes with 2.4GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, SuperDrive and 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400XT for $1199. Configuration wise this is the leanest iMac, 1GB RAM and 128MB HD 2400XT graphics card is really bad if you are paying $1200. This 20” model only offers updated processor and nothing else compared to last generation 20” iMac, its should have been priced $999. The second 20” model has updated 2.66GHz processor and 2GB RAM all the other configurations and price is exactly same as previous generation 20” iMac that was available for $1499. The first 24” models also has the same story, it comes with updated 2.8GHz processor and 2GB RAM. Other configurations and $1799 price remains same as before. The second 24” model with 3.05GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 500GB hard drive and 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS is the most improved iMac and is the only iMac in the line-up that justifies its $2199 price tag. My problem with the new iMac line-up is that they should have added better graphics cards and 2GB RAM should be standard for any computer above $999 price tag.

[Via Apple]

TUAW has posted that according to the code found in the latest beta firmware 2.0 released by Apple for developers, Apple is working on a new iPhone application called iControl. It will allow the iPhone to control and stream media from local iTunes libraries. Apple uses the media-streaming feature in existing products like the Apple TV and Airport Express. Apple has also applied for patents on concepts of remotely controlling iTunes and streaming of media from iTunes to portable device, so adding iControl seems a natural step. It’s been rumored that Apple would add few new applications to the upcoming firmware 2.0 update and iControl might be the first of those applications.

NVIDIA has been king of high-end graphics cards for past two years. Engadget is reporting that NVIDIA is planning on pushing up the release of their new high-end graphics card GeForce 9900 to July. The reason behind the push is that NVIDIA doesn’t want to take a chance of losing their dominance in high-end graphics card market to upcoming ATI’s RV770 based Radeon HD 4800 graphics card. It is rumored that both the cards will have one billion transistors and more than 512MB GDDR3 memory. This fight to be on top will definitely benefit high-end graphics card consumers.

Executives of Apple and Immersion are in talks for licensing and using haptic touch technology in iPhones. Immersion has licensed its haptic touch technology to other cellphone manufacturers like Nokia to be used in their future phones. The biggest compliant about the touchscreen has been that you don’t get any physical feedback, like you do when you press the keys on a keypad. Haptic technology is used to give feedback to the user by applying forces, vibrations and/or motions when user touches the screen. If this talk between the executives of the two companies is successful we might see haptic feedback in the 3rd revision of the iPhone in 2009.
[Via Palluxo]

The latest rumor in the blogosphere is that LG is again partnering with Italian designer label Prada. I hope they don’t design a TV like Samsung and Armani did. It is believed that they will design LG Prada 2 handset that will add 3G, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, WiFi and slide-out QWERTY keyboard to the original LG Prada phone. The phone will also include 3” touchscreen (400 X 240 resolution), Quad-band GSM, 5-megapixel camera, front camera for video calls, Bluetooth, Full web browser, FM radio and microSDHC slot (up to 8GB). The original LG Prada handset didn’t become a major hit because of its price, lack of 3G and direct competition with the iPhone. As per the rumors LG is adding 3G and I hope they will price it right this time. The only problem now left is the iPhone and there is no solution for that, unless LG designs a user interface better than iPhone.
[Via PMP Today]