The British police are about to get a new toy in the fight against riots. Back in August, London suffered one of its worst bouts of rioting when small groups of vandals caused mayhem in the city for a week. To combat any further incidences the U.K. police force will begin testing their new laser weapon that will shoot a three meter wide “wall of light. This weapon reportedly will cause blindness similar to looking directly at the sun. This new deterrent will make rioters think twice before stomping their boot into an unsuspecting windows or at least bring a good pair of shades.
For those lusting for some quad-core Tegra 3 goodness the wait will soon be over. The Asus Transformer Prime, which has seen its fair share of delays, will be released December 20th. Now like any hotly anticipated product launch their may be one last little delay but rest assured you’ll be using this powerful tablet and dock by next weekend. The original Asus Transformer sold out for months so I would make sure to be first in line.
Rumors are a dime a dozen in the technology world. Almost every week theirs a new features or release date for an upcoming hot product. Unfortunately most of the time these rumors are wrong so I’m going to set the record straight on at least one product, the iPad 3. Expect the next iteration of the iPad in the middle of March 2012. History shows that Apple generally releases their new iPad around this time frame and there is no ‘solid’ indication that this will change. As for upgrades expect a higher resolution display around 2048×1536 and/or some updated internals such as the ‘rumored’ Apple A6. I highly doubt the A6 will be a quad-core processor, so expect either a speed bumped A5 or if Apple is very generous dual-core ARM Cortex A15s. As for the size of the tablet, expect more of the same. Don’t expect a price drop to compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire.
The saga of AT&T’s quest to consume T-Mobile has gone on since the beginning of the year and it will continue into 2012 despite its bleak outlook. It is getting worse and worse for ma bell now that Department of Justice and the district court are going to dismiss the lawsuit. There is a ton of doubt that AT&T can get the approval of both the FCC and DOJ, so on December 15th a judge is going to decide to dismiss the antitrust case. In a nutshell the deal is pretty much dead though AT&T’s lawyers would like you to think otherwise.
As 2011 is winding down, the CEO of big red is looking forward to 2012 and announcing an interesting tidbit. Verizon’s CEO has confirmed that their will be family data plans coming 2012. They will act the same as shared minutes, just with data. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing but expect big changes in the coming new year.
To celebrate the Android Market’s 10 billionth download, Google is offering ten top Android Market apps for a dime a piece. Fieldrunner HD, Paper Camera, and Swiftkey X are the standouts from the ground. See the above picture for the rest of the apps. For only a dime an app I would highly suggest getting them all, you never know when they may come in handy.
Even with the AT&T/T-Mobile merger crashing down in flames Ma Bell is still moving forward with her LTE plans. If you live in the Big Apple and are sporting an AT&T LTE device you may have noticed some drastic increases in internet speeds. Reports are coming in indicating 10 Mbps down with 3 Mbps are to be expected. AT&T has yet to officially announce NYC as a LTE city, citing ‘it is in testing’. Looks like the tests are going pretty well.
Sprint must have a lot of faith in their business partner Clearwire because they are dumping a huge amount of money into its bleeding business. Clearwire is the company that is powering Sprint’s WiMAX network and eventually their LTE network which should launch in 2013. Sprint already owns 53% of Clearwire and with this latest cash infusion puts Sprint’s bet at over $5 billion. You would think, with all this cash invested, Sprint would just assimilate Clearwire.
No other game on the mobile platforms is as polished, good-looking, and fun to play as Infinity Blade. Chair, the developer of Infinity Blade, will be graciously launching the sequel to this Epic franchise tonight. I am told it will run fine on any IOS device 3GS or newer. For those sporting an A5 chip expect upgraded visuals and effects to complement the added horsepower. Expect Infinity Blade 2 launch 11 PM Eastern, costing $9.99, and weighing in at almost 1GB. I cannot wait.
Have you ever wondered if there are greener pastures in the smartphone world? If you want to try the ‘other guys’ smartphone OS without actually taking the full plunge then you are in luck. Microsoft has created an interactive demo of Windows Phone 7 and can experience it from the comforts of your mobile browser. All you need to do click on http://aka.ms/wpdemo on your IOS/ Android device and you’ll be tasting the tiles of Redmond. I’ve played with it for the past 30 minutes and I have to say I am pretty impressed.
