Earlier Hardware
Move over Radeon, GeForce – Intel has a new graphics brand: Iris
Intel is getting increasingly serious about integrated-graphics performance, and to prove it they've done what any self-respecting marketeer would demand: they've rebranded their top-performing parts.
Meet "Intel Iris Graphics", slated to appear in the top-performing parts of Chipzilla's soon-to-be-released "Haswell" chippery. …
FONDLESLAB market DEATH STRUGGLE: Latest rankings in
The latest numbers are in from the battle for global tablet market dominance - and the questions everyone is asking are: Is Apple holding on? Has Microsoft got anywhere yet? Where's Amazon? Has Android crushed everything into tablet paste?
The good news for Microsoft is that Surface broke into the ranks of the top five selling …
Samsung Galaxy chip confusion halts bonking plastered apps
Samsung's Galaxy S4 flagship mobile can't grok data transmitted by stickers sold by Samsung to eager app makers.
Electronics embedded in the labels fire out pre-programmed information when a compatible wireless NFC chip comes within range, and work with Samsung's Galaxy S3.
But a new NFC chip in the S4 is incompatible with the …
Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves
In a perhaps desperate bid to drum up sales, Barnes & Noble is selling its Nook E Ink-based e-book reader for a pound less than 30 quid - a discount of £50.
If you want the version with an illuminated screen, it’ll be £69 - £40 less than it usually is. Oh, and the firm’s 9-inch Nook HD+ tablet has also had its price slashed, …
Brit horologist hammers out ‘first’ ATOMIC-POWERED watch
Pic Could this be the chronometrist’s ultimate timepiece, the peak of horological haute couture? British bespoke movement maker Hoptroff today claimed to have produced the world’s first personal chronometer with an on board atomic clock.
The result, says Hoptroff, is a accuracy of 1.5 seconds every 3.15 x 1010 seconds - that’s 1000 …
BlackBerry: THE TRUTH about that 5.1 per cent UK market figure
BlackBerry has rebutted a claim that its UK smartphone market share was just 5.1 per cent during the first three months of 2013.
It says independent sales figures show it notched up ten per cent of the market during that period.
The smaller figure comes from Kantar WorldPanel ComTech, a market watcher, and was released earlier …
Review: Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 WinPro 8 tablet
Vid In the UK, Panasonic is not known as a high-street PC player - but the company’s Tough range of products makes quite an impression in the world of business.
Out in the field you’ll spot them in the hands of BT engineers and the like where the manufacturer's rugged laptops, and now tablets, survive the rigours of white-van man …
AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough
AMD has released details on its implementation of The Next Big Thing in processor evolution, and in the process has unleashed the TNBT of acronyms: the AMD APU (CPU+GPU) HSA hUMA.
Before your eyes glaze over and you click away from this page, know that if this scheme is widely adopted, it could be of great benefit to both …
Ultra-hackable Google Glass could be a security nightmare
Google's high-tech Glass headsets might be a gadget enthusiast's dream, but in their current form they're far too vulnerable to malicious hacking, according to one developer who has had access to the devices.
In a lengthy blog post on Tuesday, technology consultant Jay Freeman – who goes by the hacker handle "Saurik" – gave a …
Budweiser's bonkable Buddy Cup brings Facebook to the pub
Are you spending so much time on Facebook that the prospect of actually going out and socializing has become a little unnerving? Don't worry; mega-brewer Budweiser has got you covered, with a new beverage cup that helps merge the physical and online worlds.
"The Buddy Cup brings together the in-bar experience with Facebook, the …
Fanbois vs fandroids: Punters display 'tribal loyalty'
Does how you feel about your current smartphone really inform the handset you’ll acquire two, three or four years hence? The Yankee Group, a market watcher, thinks it might. And that’s good news for Apple. Possibly.
Apple currently sits just behind Google in the future purchasing stakes. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, …
Pirates scoff at games dev sim's in-game piracy lesson
Australian games developer Greenheart Games has released a cracked version of its own product – a games business simulation called “Game Dev Tycoon” – as an experiment in education of pirates and their reaction to a game that tells them their software-pinching ways are evil.
The startup outfit detailed its exploits here, …
Japan's naughty nurses scam free meals with mobile games
Japan’s male mobile gaming geeks are being taken for a ride in ever-greater numbers by hungry, cash-poor women who befriend them online before tricking them into paying for an expensive dinner for two.
This particularly devious scam is on the rise in the Land of the Rising Sun as single Japanese women struggle to pay the bills …
China became world's BIGGEST PC market in 2012
China has surpassed the US as the world’s largest PC market, in terms of annual sales, with the nation's huge untapped rural market offering manufacturers a rare growth opportunity, according to industry watcher IHS iSuppli.
PC shipments in China during 2012 reached 69 million units, three million more than the States could …
The Chromebooks are coming! New models due late 2013
While sales of Windows PCs and notebooks continue to disappoint, Acer, Asus, and other hardware makers are readying a new volley of Chromebooks to launch in the second half of 2013, sources close to the companies' Asia-based supply chains claim.
According to a report in Taiwanese tech pub DigiTimes, the new push will be …
Google to Glass devs: 'Duh! Go ahead, hack your headset'
Google might not want people selling its Google Glass Explorer Edition high-tech specs, but it has no problem with developers hacking on the hardware and software, if recent developments are any indication.
The Chocolate Factory released the GPL-licensed portions of the source code to the software that powers Glass over the …
Combover King Donald Trump: 'I miss Steve Jobs'
Never being a man to shy away from whatever current controversy might get his name into headlines*, the indefatigable Republican presidential candidate, Obama-baiting birther, and TV "personality" Donald Trump has weighed in on whether Apple should offer an iPhone with a larger display.
I have a lot of @apple stock--- and I …
LG beats Samsung to OLED flexi-TV with hella pricey 55-incher
At this year's CES, both LG and Samsung proclaimed that concave OLED screens are the next big thing in televisual entertainment, and promised working systems. Now LG has began taking orders for a 55-inch model and will begin deliveries next month.
LG's 55-inch curved OLED TV screen Great curves, shame about the price
The …
Peak txt: 1.5 BEELLLION more chat app msgs sent than SMSes a day
WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger and other online chat apps handled more messages than telcos handled texts, says market research biz Informa.
And by the end of 2013, the number of online messages will be double the number of SMS texts, leaving the phone network operators scrabbling for revenue.
Informa pegged 2012's global SMS …
iPhone 5 totters at the top as Samsung thrusts up UK mobe chart
Apple’s three most recent mobiles together took more than a quarter of smartphones sales in Britain during the first three months of 2013, we're told.
The iPhone 5 was the period’s most popular handset, but the Cupertino giant's UK market share continues to be eroded by Android - and even Windows Phone 8.
Google’s Linux-derived …
Next Xbox to be called ‘Xbox Infinity’... er... ‘Xbox’
The next Xbox will be called the Xbox Infinity, if a piccy of an allegedly leaked logo is to be believed.
Or perhaps it’ll just be plain Xbox, as a separate, equally unofficial, just as questionable logo suggests.
The Xbox Infinity - not actually a name, just the word XBOX with an infinity symbol superscript - and the tagline “ …
Ten ancestors of the netbook
Feature Come 2015, we’re told, the netbook will be dead and gone, out-evolved by the more fleet of foot, more desirable media tablet.
We shouldn’t mourn the netbook’s passing, though. It has had, in one form or another, a good innings. While some folk may look back to the category’s debut in 2007 with the launch of Asus’ Eee PC 701 - …
What work? Tablet owners prefer to slack off with their slabs
Tablet owners love their fondleslabs, but hardly anybody thinks of them as tools for business, according to a new report from JD Power and Associates.
The study, based on a survey of 1,857 tablet owners that was conducted in February 2013, found that just 20 per cent of them admitted to using their devices for "business …
PEAK iPHONE? Apple mobe growth slumps to ‘lowest in its history’
Samsung has extended its lead over Apple by shifting considerably more smartphones than its adversary during the first quarter of 2013.
The South Korean giant also managed to ship 56 per cent more mobes in those three months than it did in the same period a year ago.
Among the world’s top five smartphone vendors, Apple - …
Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Returning from a school trip to New York, my son handed back most of the $350 spending money we’d given him. Yes, I too thought it was a lot of dosh for a four-day tour but then I have no experience in the matter. When I was a kid, a school trip involved walking up to the pond to catch tadpoles for biology class, not …
Can't find your motor? Apple patents solve car park conundrums
Apple has filed a series of patents which will help people find their motors in a crowded car park and then open the doors without using a key.
The patents that emerged today are called "method for locating a vehicle" and "accessing a vehicle using portable devices".
The first sets out a system for anyone who wants to leave …
Review: Nokia Lumia 520
A few years ago the late music magazine The Word coined the phrase "landfill indie" to describe the thousands of generic groups it encountered. Today the shops are full of "landfill Android": utterly generic, non-too-inspiring handsets. It’s into this Valley of Death that Nokia tosses its new Lumia 520.
In the UK, the average …
Mosaic turns 20: Let's fire up the old girl, show her the web today
NCSA Mosaic - marking its 20th anniversary this week - was not the first web browser, but it was the first to be widely used.
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, describes its early days in his book Weaving the Web. Berners-Lee states that the first browser - WorldWideWeb - was text-based, and he had an early version working …
Samsung to launch Galaxy S 4 without Knox security layer
After hyping it for months, Samsung has delayed the release of Knox, its new enterprise security framework for its Galaxy line of Android phones, sources claim.
The South Korean mobile maker first touted the new security features at February's Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, claiming they would ship with its forthcoming …
Smartphone and tablet displays: Reg readers weigh in
Survey results In January 2012 we ran a Reg reader survey to find out what you think about your smartphones and tablets, and the results are now in.
Given the diverse range of device sizes now on the market we were interested in your take on what size you like your device to be. In particular, we wanted to see whether bigger does equal better …
Kindlevision? Amazon reportedly developing set-top tellybox
Amazon will be the latest tech biz to release a set-top TV box later this year, according to the rumour mill, incorporating its video-on-demand services.
The box will plug into users' tellies and bring along the LoveFilm and Instant Video services already available on connected TVs, Xboxes and Playstations, sources whispered to …
Microsoft carves out 'niche' in tablets, says numbers chap
Apple had to watch Android match then exceed its share of the smartphone market and now it’s having to watch Google’s OS do the same thing in the tablet space.
First quarter figures from Strategy Analytics show Android running in 52 per cent of the fondleslabs that shipped during the period. Apple’s iOS was in 41 per cent of …
Mobes' pay-by-bonk just isn't cool enough, sniffs Tesco bod
Tesco reckons contact-less pay-by-wave technology in phones has had its day - and the shopping giant is moving back to relying on cash and traditional payment cards.
The stumbling shelf-stacking titan will continue to punt its customer loyalty schemes and vouchers on smartmobes - but bonking NFC-capable devices against tills to …
High-rollers’ shop pitches wallet-pounding, wall-pummelling MONSTER TV
Suddenly found yourself with £35,000 in your pocket and can’t think what to spend it on? Wander on down to posh shop Selfridges which says it has the answer: Samsung’s S9, an Ultra HD enormo-telly boasting 4K x 2K resolution.
And you’ll get a whole penny in change.
Selfridges, which describes the Samsung set as “truly a work of …
Review: Western Digital Sentinel DX4000
Western Digital makes Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices and recently sent a Sentinel DX4000 to El Reg for review. When I was asked to write about it I was initially unsure exactly how I would approach this: where's the novelty in a small consumer or SME device?
The Sentinel stands out for me not only because it's the first …
Microsoft to unveil new Xbox console on May 21
Microsoft has confirmed that it will unveil the next iteration of its Xbox gaming platform next month.
The new console will be revealed at a special press event that will take place at Microsoft's Redmond campus on May 21. The event will also be streamed on Xbox Live and Xbox.com and simulcast on Spike TV in the US and Canada …
Boffins KALQ-u-late the ultimate 'board for two-thumb tablet tappers
Boffins in Scotland, Germany and the US of A have calculated what they claim is the most efficient two-thumb keyboard it’s possible to put on a tablet, at least for folk writing in English on a 7-inch slate.
Researchers at the University of St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Montana Tech crunched the …
Cook: iPad is a gateway drug which leads to harder Mac addiction
Apple CEO Tim Cook has claimed that surging iPad sales could result in people buying more Mac computers.
Answering questions after he announced quarterly results last night, the Cupertino overlord said that tablet sales could end up getting users hooked on Apple products, perhaps encouraging them to graduate to more expensive …
Hidden dragon Huawei: 'We’re making increased efforts at transparency'
Huawei sent out a clear signal to its competitors in the global enterprise IT market on Tuesday with predictions of stellar growth for the vendor’s smallest business group over the next five years to reach revenues of $10bn by 2017. But analysts are sceptical about its chances of becoming a genuinely disruptive alternative to …
Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow
Pics Open-source hardware outfit BeagleBoard has formally announced a major revision of its BeagleBone board computer that ups the spec and downs the price.
The BeagleBone Black's single-core processor jumps from its predecessor’s 720MHz to 1GHz. It’s a Texas Instruments AM335x system-on-a-chip, which uses ARM’s Cortex-A8 …
Your phone may not be spying on you now - BUT it soon will be
Infosec 2013 Tibetan political campaigners targeted by mysterious smartphone-spying software. Eastern European governments' mobiles allegedly snooped on by state-sponsored hackers. Malware feared injected into gadgets during customs inspections.
You've seen these headlines. And according to Kaspersky Lab’s senior malware analyst Denis …
Review: Corsair Voyager Air 1TB wireless hard drive
Corsair has made a name for itself offering solid-state drives, fast memory and other components to fit inside high-performance PCs.
But its latest product takes the supplier out of its comfort zone and into the world of smartphones and tablets. It also carries the company into the network-attached storage arena.
It’s a good …
