http://www.leethegeek.com

Well all the rumours we’ve been hearing over the last few weeks will either be proven of disproven come march 2nd. A couple of things are for sure, dual front and rear cameras and more RAM, probably a new “A5″ processor , beyond that is just speculation. We are all hoping for stereo speakers, higher resolution screen, 128GB options and an SD card slot. We shall see. Comment and let me know what you want!

A recent revelation about the Netflix app on android devices shows that it will not run unless you have a snapdragon processor with DRM libraries at a hardware level.

In basic terms this means if you want to stream video content from netflix, and maybe even other video services, you’ll only be able to do so if you have a chip with rights libraries that confirm your allowed to view the content.

The netflix app itself is said to be smooth and beautiful, lets just hope the processors start showing up on devices soon!

Technorati Tags: snapdragon, processor, android, netflix, streaming, DRM, rights, video

HTC has barged into the tablet market with a powerhouse product; This tasty thing has a 1.5GHz single core processor backed by 1GB of RAM. On the storage side of things it has 32GB of flash memory expandable via micro SD. All that loveliness is encased by a aluminium unibody fronted by a 7 inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600.

On the rear it has a 5 megapixel camera for capturing some frames and a 1.3 megapixel up front for your video chats.

For all these power hungry components we have a 4000mAh battery, which should run video on this for around 4 hours, you should expect similar for internet use.

It will disappointingly not be running android 3.0, you know that tablet friendly edition, instead it will run 2.4. HTC say that this does not matter as the new version of sense they are bringing out with the flyer will be the focal point of this device; it will make up most of the user experience. Obviously HTC place more importance on sense as oppose to the underlying OS.

Other goodies included Movie streaming and cloud gaming software. You should see the flyer on sale after april this year.

Hands on video over at engadget. Thanks too engadget for the photo too !

The 3.7 inch Desire S packs a MSM8255 1GHz processor and 768mb of ram, so plenty of power. For taking snaps you’ll be equip with a 5 Megapixel with a single flash; Up front there is a 1.3 Megapixel camera for video calls and such.

To power the gizmos it will have a 1450mAh battery. To run it all it will have Android Gingerbread 2.4 with HTC Sense over the top of it.

****UPDATE****
HANDS ON VIDEO!
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Set to launch globally later this year, somewhere around april; HTCs new flagship device is the new Incredible S.

The new phone will have Android 2.2 onboard and sport the Qualcomm MSM8255 at 1GHz supported by 768mb of RAM, so certainly no shortage on power. In the media department in has an 8 Megapixel autofocus camera capable of 720p video and packing a dual LED flash, very similar to that of the Desire HD we saw launch late last year.

Up front we see a 1.3 megapixel camera and a lovely 4 inch screen at 800 x 480. To power all of this we have a 1450mAH battery. Another nice addition is that the capacitive android buttons rotate depending on how you have the screen, portrait or landscape.

All in all i like this new handset from HTC, nice industrial design which you know will be solid; with a lot of nifty features!

****UPDATE****
HANDS ON VIDEO!
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Finally Samsung are entering the dual core mobile world with the latest edition of its galaxy smartphone line, the galaxy S II.

It’s a skinny one, the phone is only 8.49mm at it’s thinnest point, beefing up too 9.9mm at the camera module, making it, at least at its thinnest point; the thinnest smartphone i know of, especially with the sort-of power this thing packs!

Speaking of power, it will have a 1GHz dual-core Orion / Exynos processor; I hope the battery will be good enough to power this beast of a processor. Likely hood is this thing will benchmark will the best of them.

The most important part of any smartphone these days, the screen, will be a 4.3 inch super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 800 x 480;  This sounds great, so hope they keep it AMOLED and not change down to cheaper LCD at the last minute.

Swiftly along to connectivity, it will sport NFC ( contact-less payment), Bluetooth 3.0, and 24Mbps HSPA+.

On the OS front, it will sport the newest android edition of honeycomb. So it’s all looking rather sweet with the latest smartphone from samsung.

On a personal note, i am not too keen on samsungs’ touchwiz user interface for android, it’s a bit of an iOS (iphone OS) copy cat, so i really hope this comes without it; Which it is tipped too as a google experience device for 3.0.

****UPDATE****
Hands on video over at engadget!

Unfortunately it will have touchwiz 4.0! – Although it does look better than previous versions, lets see how it matches up too HTC Sense.

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Specification( so far)

• 1GHz dual-core Orion / Exynos processor.
• 4.3 inch 800 x 480 Super AMOLED.
• NFC
• Bluetooth 3.0
• 24Mbps HSPA+
• Android 3.0
• 8 megapixel camera ( 1080p video )
• 2 megapixel front facing camera
• 1GB RAM
• 1600mAH + battery

**UPDATE**

The guys over at engadget have had a play with it, video here : http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/hp-touchpad-first-hands-on/

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There has been a lot of muttering about this in recent months, and it’s finally here! HP’s input to the tablet market, the touchpad.

HP acquired Palm about 9 months ago, and there has been much speculation as the what HP would do with the company, well it seems Palm is no more and HP has placed their own branding on webOS ( Palms mobile operating system).

The New tablet includes webOS 3.0, and the UI looks amazing. The body does look an awful lot like the ipad, there’s no denying that, and weight in at 1.6 pounds and measuring 13.7mm thick, it’s only a little heavier and thicker.

TouchPad will also have touchstone, a nifty little feature which lets your HP pre 3 talk to your touchpad; it can send over notifications and even texts messages, which id rather nice.

HP have also stirred in a lovely email application, VPN support and wireless printing !

It’s shaping up to be a very nice device, maybe a serious contender for the top tablet spot!

Specifications

• webOS 3.0
• 9.7-inch display (1024 x 768 screen resolution)
• Dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon CPU
• Inbuilt gyroscope
• Accelerometer
• Compass
• 16GB / 32GB of internal storage space.
• Front-facing 1.3 megapixel webcam
• Support for video calling
• 802.11b/g/n WiFi
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• Stereo speakers (Beats Audio)

SOURCE

The guys over at BBC have finally got together and decided they should make apps for ipad and Android platforms, something that is long overdue.

Reports suggest that they will be released before the end of this week, 13/02/2011.

If you want the android flavour, you’ll need 2.2(froyo) or above along with flash 10.1. They suggest a powerful device with a wifi connection.

Here are the key features on Android and iPad:

• Watch live TV and listen to radio (not previously widely available on mobile devices)
• Access the BBC’s full catalogue of catch-up programmes; seven-days’ TV and radio on demand as well as series stacking (as you get on the web)
• A simple and intuitive design with high picture quality and personalised favourites (making the most of the touch-screen UI, and a popular feature on the website)

I recently bought myself a NAS drive, a Network Attached Storage drive. The benefit of these drives over regular hard drives is the ability to share data over your network and much more.

When you get your NAS, you plug it into your router/switch/hub via an ethernet cable to tie it into your home network. Most people these days have a wireless router, just plug it into an available ethernet/RJ45 socket on the router, and your live!

Accessing and configuring these drives vary by which drive you have, and which operating system you are using. Most who are suing windows will get a CD with a bit of software on it that will help you along, but if your using windows 7, it should just detect it right away, if not after a restart. You’ll find it under my computer as if you have plugged it in like any other drive.

if your using Mac OSX 10.4 or above, it will detect it right away under shared in finder, no problems.

Configuring your drive is easy, either use the software provided with windows, or just enter its IP address into the url of any web browser, and use the default password and username in the manual to login.

Another benefit with NAS drives, is that once you have copied over all your media and data, you can stream video, music and pictures to network attached media receivers like the PS3, Xbox and lots of blu ray players now too!

Lots of NAS drives also have the ability to share a printer over the network, wireless printing! Just by plugging the printer into the NAS via a USB, if it doesn’t, there is usually a hack out there to get it too work anyway!

If your allow them too, any other computer on the can also access what is on the drive.

Most come with software to backup to the drive over the network, with a mac just use time machine, its about the best out there in my opinion!

One of the cons of these drives is they are not portable. If portability is what your after, get a 2.5 inch portable HDD.

Sorry if this all a bit vague and generalised, there are lots of different drives and operating systems, ask any questions you want!