Remeber the Motorola i1? Moto has just added its second rugged(ish) Android handset in the 3.7-inch Gorilla Glass-fronted Defy. It’s dust-, scratch-, impact-, and water-resistant, matches up to the IP67 durability spec, and is expected in Europe in Q4 2010. 854 x 480 is your screen resolution, backed up by an OMAP 3610 chip running at 800MHz (there had to be some tradeoffs, right?). Android 2.1 is another slight disappointment, we’re not clear on why Froyo had to be left off the table, but at least Motorola has bundled Swype as the default input mechanism. Should be a boon for some, we suppose.

Motorola Defy: Android 2.1 goes rugged with water, dust and scratch resistance originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even without yesterday’s premature video promo, you had to know Motorola wouldn’t leave its international audience without a successor to the Milestone, so today — surprise, surprise — we’re being treated to the Milestone 2′s launch. The first thing to be said here is that if you’ve handled a Droid 2, you’ve also handled a Milestone 2 — the new phone follows Moto’s tradition of being a simple rebadge away from the Verizon-friendly Droid naming scheme, which means it retains the same 1GHz OMAP SOC, 512MB of RAM, 5 megapixel camera, 8GB of integrated storage, and Android 2.2 as the default, albeit Motoblured, OS. Also, we got this straight from the Motohorse’s mouth: Motoblur’s not going anywhere, it’s the company’s “Android solution” and is here to stay.

One advantage over the Droid 2 here is the addition of 720p video recording. It’s still the exact same imager as on the back of the first Milestone, but now you can catch moving visuals in HD resolution. Moto were keen to point out the 5-device hotspot capabilities (courtesy of Froyo) on the Milestone 2, but they showed it off using a wired connection since the demo handset’s O2 SIM card wouldn’t permit wireless tethering. Well, that was a grand demonstration of how vulnerable our Android 2.2 goodness will be to the whims of mobile carriers. The Milestone 2′s expected to launch around Europe in Q4, with carrier-dependent pricing as per usual.

Motorola Milestone 2 arrives, 720p HD video, Android 2.2, and Motoblur Enhanced in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Visitor arrivals to Singapore registered 24.1% growth to reach 1,095,000 in July 2010 the highest ever recorded visitor arrivals in the month of July. This is also the first time that visitor arrivals have exceeded 1 million in a single month….

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LONDON – Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt and two of the country’s star strike bowlers were grilled by British detectives probing an alleged betting scam Sunday in a scandal which has rocked the sport. Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif were interviewed by Scotland Yard officers after they arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers during the Test match against England here at Lord’s. The News of the World newspaper said it paid 150,000 pounds (230,000 dollars, 185,000 euros) to a middle man in return for details about the timing of three no-balls in the match, which ended Sunday in victory for England. The report said Aamer and Asif delivered blatant no-balls at…

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Infineon, the company behind the baseband chips inside your super-duper new phone, is about to cash out from the wireless industry courtesy of Intel’s insatiable appetite. The Wireless Solutions Business (WLS), which accounted for nearly a third of Infineon’s €3 billion ($3.83b) revenue last year, is being sold to the American chipmaker for a cool $1.4 billion. For its part, Intel is quick to reassure the world (and its antitrust authorities) that WLS will continue to operate as a standalone business and continue to support ARM-based devices. Chipzilla’s perfectly innocent ploy is to harness Infineon’s knowhow in future smartphone, tablet and laptop products, providing both the processing and wireless capabilities. Specifically mentioned in the news release is Intel’s ambition to “accelerate 4G LTE” through this deal, while also not neglecting its ongoing efforts with WiMAX, with the overarching strategy being described as “a combined path.” We should know more about where this path will take us when the acquisition is completed in the first quarter of next year.

Continue reading Intel gobbles up Infineon’s mobile unit in $1.4 billion deal, looks to ‘accelerate 4G LTE’

Intel gobbles up Infineon’s mobile unit in $1.4 billion deal, looks to ‘accelerate 4G LTE’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This, dear friends, is a sad, sad day. ATI, the name of hope for all PC gamers who were sick and tired of NVIDIA rebadging the same GPU over the past couple of years, is to be no more. The callous souls over at AMD have decided that our little consumer brains aren’t sophisticated enough to handle two awesome brands, so they’re just axing the use of the ATI moniker from here on out. Product line names will be retained, with the Radeon and FirePro branding still intact, but ATI Eyefinity will now be known as AMD Eyefinity. The first graphics cards to, erm, benefit from the new nomenclature will ship “later this year,” and the whole thing is said to have been motivated by AMD’s move to Fusion APUs — hybrid CPU and GPU chips — where it’s considered beneficial to have a unified branding strategy. Great, but did anyone consider the fact that the graphics wars will now be fought between two teams wearing green jerseys?

Continue reading AMD kills ATI brand, you can look forward to blood-stained Radeons

AMD kills ATI brand, you can look forward to blood-stained Radeons originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tax on alcohol should rise by ten per cent to reduce deaths, fund treatment and discourage the production of extra strong beer, Alcohol Concern has said. The issue of alcohol pricing has been a thorny one for the coalition government with the Liberal Democrats supporting a minimum price per unit while the Conservatives have rejected the idea. Photo: PA In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, the charity highlights the Treasury’s own figures showing that a ten per cent rise in tax would cut deaths from alcohol-related conditions by a third. The issue of alcohol pricing has been a thorny one for the coalition government with the Liberal Democrats supporting a minimum price per unit while the…

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Britain’s Laura Robson will on Saturday be aiming to reach her first Grand Slam by right in the final round of qualifying for the US Open at Flushing Meadows. Robson has played at Wimbledon twice since winning the junior title at the All England Club in 2008, but was given a wild card on both occasions. However, the…

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Ferroelectric isn’t just a ridiculously fun word to say, it might just also be the future of computing. While that possibility is still a ways off, researchers have been making considerable progress in recent years, and a team from Japan’s Tohoku University has now set a new record for ferroelectric data storage. That was accomplished with the aid of a scanning nonlinear dielectric microscope, which allowed the researchers to hit a data density of 4 trillion bits per square inch. As you might expect, the exact process is a bit complicated — involving a pulse generator that’s used to alter the electrical state of tiny dots on the ferroelectric medium — but the researchers say that the technology is a leading candidate to replace magnetic hard drives and flash memory, or “at least in applications for which extremely high data density and small physical volume is required.” Unfortunately, they aren’t going so far as to speculate when that might happen.

Researchers set new record for ferroelectric data storage originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re like us, you’re constantly on the hunt for the perfect small computer. Now, we’re not saying we’ve found it in this new set of Zotac Zboxes… but we do like where they’re coming from. The minimal slivers pack Ion chipsets along with Intel CULV CPUs, making for a power-sipping experience that can actually push a couple of pixels (a couple, not many more). The company is dishing out a few varieties of the mini PCs, all loaded with some variation of Intel’s Celeron processors. The HD series (the NS21 and ND22) pack a Celeron 743 or SU2300 CULV (respectively), DDR3 RAM slots, a 2.5-inch hard drive slot, HDMI and DVI-I ports, along with NVIDIA’s Ion GPU. There’s also an ITX series, all sporting those same CPUs, a single PCI Express x16 slot, a handful of SATA / eSATA hookups, and HDMI, DVI-D, and VGA connections. All the systems have a slew of USB ports, the boxes can be mounted in four different positions (including on the back of a monitor), and though retail pricing hasn’t been announced, it looks like at least the ND22 should list for around $270. Hit the source link for all the details, and More Coverage for a review.

Zotac’s Zboxes are small, Ion-fueled, and cheap originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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