The brand new HTC Radar, which is to be the latest Windows Phone device from the incredibly popular carrier, is to land on US shores courtesy of T-Mobile as early as November 2nd, according to an official confirmation by the carrier posted on Facebook. For those looking to get their hands on the highly anticipated [...]
Evidence is mounting up by the day regarding the imminent release of Apple’s next generation iPhone 5, with early October now seeming almost certain for the arrival of the fabled device on the Sprint network. The latest smoking gun comes by way of an allegedly leaked document from within the Sprint ranks, which announces a [...]
The highly anticipated though once incredibly unlikely three-way Apple release involving the iPhone 5, the iPad 3 and iOS 5 suddenly seems much more of a distinct likelihood, according to new reports. Leaked documents from within the industry have suggested the iPad 3 is well and truly in production and is likely to hit the [...]
Sprint has made the official announcement that the new BlackBerry Torch 9850 and BlackBerry Bold 9930 Smartphones are to arrive on August 21st – both of which will be the first BlackBerry 7 devices for the nation’s third largest carrier. The Bold 9930 comes packed with a 1.2GHz processor, 2.8 inch touchscreen with physical QWERTY [...]
During this week’s monthly earnings call for Motorola, the company CEO was surprisingly forthcoming and relaxed about details on upcoming products. Not only was a timeline finally confirmed for the elusive Motorola Droid Bionic, but he also went on to reveal the intention to launch another two 4G LTE tablet PCs before the end of [...]
&h=&q=90&w=90&h=65&zc=1" class="alignleft" alt="">
This bad boy isn’t exactly official yet, but that’s never really mattered before, right? We hear the Acer Aspire 1825PT notebook will come with an 11.6-inch capacitive touchscreen with a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. We don’t know the price just yet, but in case the 1825PT is a bit too rich for you, there’s always the lower-end 1825PTZ. Apparently this second model forgoes 1GB of RAM and rocks 3GB instead, and has a bit slower 1.3GHZ Intel SU4100 CPU. Of course these are just rumored specs and model numbers at this point. Acer will probably announce them along with their release dates and price whenever they feel like it. [ SaveOnLaptops via Liliputing ]
&h=&q=90&w=90&h=65&zc=1" class="alignleft" alt="">
An outstanding e-mail showed up in my inbox a few moments ago promoting the release of Donkey Kong Country 2: Serious Monkey Business . It’s a remix album from OC ReMix, the people who are famous for, you know, remixing video game soundtracks. (I used one of their Street Fighter remixes in a video review about a year ago.) But, yeah, Serious Monkey Business! The album is totally free to download, and it totally brings me back to 1995/1996 , perhaps the last year I was legitimately happy. That there video is a preview of what you can expect. I don’t know, I figured at least a few of you would get a kick out of it.
&h=&q=90&w=90&h=65&zc=1" class="alignleft" alt="">
With Microsoft becoming increasingly marginalized in areas like mobile media, DirectX is becoming less of a must-use toolset and more of a gaming-specific one. The other side of the coin is, of course, the increasing relevance of standards like OpenGL, OpenAL, and OpenCL: powerful cross-platform systems for graphics, audio, and parallel processing . You may remember OpenCL from its debut on the Mac in Snow Leopard, and OpenGL ES of course powers the UI on the iPad . OpenAL is still a ways from being brought under the public eye, but it’s getting there. In the meantime, OpenGL 4.0 was announced today at GDC, and clearly it has DirectX in its sights. 4.0 has a lot of features which users like you and I don’t really need to know about. Texture swizzling? Awesome. Tessellation? Sure, as long as it’s not like whatever they used in Messiah — remember that game? These new toys for developers will make for a richer and faster graphical experience, to be sure, but I’m not going to list them off for you. The big news for graphics is handhelds right now. Mobile gaming is blowing up and Microsoft can’t get a foot in the door. Hell, it’s getting its foot booted out from the other side. In the other corner, OpenGL (and the rest of the Open toolset) is setting itself up as being flexible enough to be applied on a handset, a laptop, or a desktop. It may not have DirectX 11 fidelity in water shaders or the latest normal mapping technique, but it’s damn close and what’s more, it doesn’t need a high end graphics card to be the library in use. Though I feel I should add that the games coming out on Windows Phone 7 Series and the Zune HD 2 are looking pretty awesome. This race isn’t over by far. The OpenCL thing is great as well. If you remember, OpenCL is a set of tools for offloading certain tasks from the CPU onto the GPU, when those tasks are better served by parallel processors. Loading web pages may work fine on your Snapdragon, but decoding video will have it at 100% and drain your battery — better to send it over to the GPU. The GPU computing thing hasn’t quite taken off yet, but it’s pretty much inevitable that it’ll start being implemented on a low level, since it can improve the user experience so dramatically. I’m always happy to see this kind of steady progress. More capabilities, more competition, and better devices for everyone, OpenGL-based or not. If you’re interested, there’s much more information available. Many links in the press release:
© 2012 Headline News. All Rights Reserved. Log in