Earlier today NVIDIA announced that it would begin licensing its Kepler GPU architecture to 3rd parties. This is a sensible next step for NVIDIA, but an unprecedented one among the two remaining discrete PC GPU suppliers. Note that what NVIDIA is announcing today is contrary to AMD’s semi-custom approach to SoC production. AMD is offering to build (semi) custom tailored silicon to customer needs, while NVIDIA is taking a more ARM-like approach and offering its GPU IP to 3rd parties for integration on their own. In other words, NVIDIA is looking to compete with ARM and Imagination Technologies rather than AMD or Qualcomm. In addition to its GPU architecture, NVIDIA is now also open to licensing its visual computing patents to 3rd parties. The visual computing...
Apple Seeds iOS 5.1 Beta to Developers
Apple seems to have had a Cyber Monday surprise of its own lined up, releasing iOS 5.1 Beta (build 9B5117b) to developers this evening. We've updated an iPhone 4S...
13 by Brian Klug on 11/28/2011
Understanding Wireless Storage: Kingston Wi-Drive and Seagate GoFlex Satellite
Let me pose a hypothetical situation: say you bought an iPhone or iPad, but cheaped out and got a 16GB model. You’ve got around 10GB worth of music, a...
31 by Vivek Gowri on 11/21/2011
Galaxy Nexus & Ice Cream Sandwich: Initial Performance Analysis
The road to Google's Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is finally nearing its destination. As of yesterday, the Samsung made Galaxy Nexus went on sale in...
70 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/18/2011
Motorola Mobility Shareholders Vote to Approve Google Merger
Motorola Mobility shareholders have overwhelmingly approved of a potential merger with Google, the next step in the deal that was first announced in August. Ninety-nine percent of all voting...
3 by Andrew Cunningham on 11/18/2011
Qualcomm Announces a Bunch of Krait Based Snapdragon S4 SoCs
In February at MWC, Qualcomm unveiled three SoCs based on its brand new Krait microarchitecture: the single/dual-core MSM8930, dual-core MSM8960 and the quad-core APQ8064. More recently, we dove into...
6 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/16/2011
Adding Vellamo to our Mobile Benchmark Suite - Six Android Phones Tested
For a while now we've been keeping track of mobile browser performance using two relatively popular JavaScript heavy benchmarks that are a regular fixation in our smartphone reviews. If...
82 by Brian Klug on 11/16/2011
BlackBerry London Image Leaked: The First QNX Phone
First reported by The Verge and subsequently confirmed by Boy Genius Report, the first image of BlackBerry's first BBX phone has leaked, and it is a significant departure from...
4 by Jason Inofuentes on 11/15/2011
Android 4.0.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Coming to AOSP
Jean-Baptiste Queru, a software engineer working on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), just confirmed that Android 4.0.1 source is now available. This is the version of Android that...
9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
Samsung and AT&T Announce Galaxy Tab 8.9, Six new LTE Markets
Not to be outdone by Verizon with its LTE-enabled Galaxy Tab 10.1 (which we reviewed), Samsung and AT&T today announced that it's introducing an LTE enabled Galaxy Tab 8.9...
9 by Brian Klug on 11/14/2011
Samsung Licenses PowerVR SGX MP from Imagination Technologies
Samsung is a bit of a mobile GPU conoisseur it seems. Its previous flagship, Hummingbird, used a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU. Its most recent high-end SoC, the Exynos 4210...
18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/10/2011
Understanding Intel's Android 4.0 x86 Optimizations
Earlier this week Computer World published a story about Intel adding x86 optimizations to the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android (4.0). The story itself was fine but a...
11 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
ARM's Mali-T658 GPU in 2013, Up to 10x Faster than Mali-400
ARM's licensed CPU cores dominate the mobile space. This year the core of choice for high-end smartphones and tablets is ARM's Cortex A9 and late next year it'll be...
21 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
Adobe Kills Mobile Flash Plug-In
Adobe announced via a press release today that it would cease development of the Flash Player for smartphones and tablets, and would shift its focus to HTML5 support for...
40 by Andrew Cunningham on 11/9/2011
NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Launched: Architecture Revealed
Originally announced in February of this year at MWC, NVIDIA is finally officially launching its next-generation SoC. Previously known under the code name Kal-El, the official name is Tegra...
94 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
HTC Rezound Announced:LTE, Beats by Dre and HD SuperLCD on Verizon
We knew this was coming, but HTC still had some surprises in store. The HTC Rezound will hit retail channels for $299 on November 14th. This latest halo phone...
23 by Jason Inofuentes on 11/3/2011
Apple Confirms Battery Life Bug in iOS 5 - Releases iOS 5.0.1 Beta
Since the launch of iOS 5, a number of users have begun reporting decreased battery life on their iDevices, and alongside it have been reports of battery life issues...
26 by Brian Klug on 11/2/2011
Apple iPhone 4S: Thoroughly Reviewed
History loves to repeat itself, and even Apple isn’t immune to the yearly cycle of rumor and release. Leading to each year’s iPhone refresh, excitement, rumors, and hype build...
201 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 10/31/2011
Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket and HTC Vivid: AT&T's First LTE Phones Launch Nov. 6
As if we didn't have enough phones to review, AT&T, HTC and Samsung announced today the first LTE phones to launch on AT&T's newly rolled out network. The five...
16 by Jason Inofuentes on 10/31/2011
Siri Gets Hacked: Running on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G
When iPhone 4S was announced earlier this month, one of the mightiest features was definitely Apple's new voice control software: Siri. Siri understands normal speech, so you can send...
33 by Kristian Vättö on 10/30/2011
Sony Acquires Sony Ericsson
Sony has released a press statement which announces Sony's purchase of Sony Ericsson. Before today, Sony has owned 50% of Sony Ericsson while Ericsson has held the other 50%...
21 by Kristian Vättö on 10/27/2011