Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The quality of cameras in phones has risen exponentially in the last few years from poor VGA to the fairly good 3 megapixel and beyond.  But there is always progress to be made, and Sony Ericsson have outlined some fairly ambitious aims in the release of their four year plan for smart phones; not only with cameras but other aspects of the phones as well.

However I will begin with cameras, and Ericsson’s vision is that by 2012 the cameras on phones will be capable of 20 megapixels and even the ability to shoot full HD video.  This is incredibly ambitious in four years, especially considering the current economic climate, but there is nothing to suggest that it cannot be done.  This will certainly have far reaching effects regarding home videos allowing near professional home films to be made via phone cameras, which would be pretty cool! 

Keep reading for more info on where Sony Ericsson plans to take phones.

MORE »

Planning on building that new gaming rig? Here’s some good news. Putting pressure on rival chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel has surprisingly halved the prices on its Core 2 Quad Q6700 (from $530 to $266) and Quad-Core Xeon X3230 (from $530 to $266). Overall, fourteen processors experienced a price cut, ranging from 12% to 50% off. Other CPUs with slashed prices include the Core 2 Quad Q6600 (from $266 to $244), Core 2 Duo E6850 (from $266 to $183), Dual-Core Xeon 3085 (from $366 to $188), Celeron 560 (from $134 to $107) and more. All prices reflect 1,000 unit shipments. The reason for the discounted prices is Intel’s transition from their 65nm to 45nm process. All of the chips on sale are based off of the old 65nm technology. AMD announced its plans to begin shipping their 45nm chips in fourth quarter 2008, which puts them one year behind Intel, who began selling their 45nm CPUs back in November 2007.

MORE »

Forget quad-core, AMD is preparing a dodeca-core chip. If you didn’t stay in boarding school if you need refreshing with your greek vocabulary, dodeca means 12, and that’s 12 cores for you right there. Imagine, a dozen times faster than a normal chip. But how fast does one’s computer ever really need to be? AMD doesn’t seem to care if there’s an answer to that question or not (just as its closest competitor Intel doesn’t), and moves on with their plan to produce a 12-core processor to be released by late 2008. It will reportedly be called the Shanghai, and will be a 45nm successor to their not-so-successful Barcelona chip.

MORE »

Intel has recently shown off not one, not two, but three ultra-portable laptops running on their much-awaited Atom processors. Pictured here is a little lappie from a little-known brand called Thinno, perusing Intel’s Atom processor with Windows XP. Register Hardware was unsure of the third laptop and calls it a mystery, but Engadget was keen to point out that it’s actually the MSI Wind, which according to its official specs, will have Intel’s new Atom processors right off the bat. Suddenly, the ASUS Eee PC doesn’t seem so remarkable. Yes, I can’t wait either. Expect retail versions of these new ultra-portables to be available soon.

Read [Register Hardware]

• Dual Core Via nanos by 2010
• Intel to manufature small-size, high-capacity flash memory
• Dell Inspiron Mini 12 now available in the US, priced from $549

Intel announced a new family of low-power processors that will run its low-cost PCs and mobile internet devices (MIDs). Branded as Intel Atom, this new processor will be based on a new Intel microarchitecture designed specifically for small devices and runs on low power. Despite its size the new process still has the same Intel Core 2 Duo instruction set compatibility which consumers have grown accustomed to in their PC and the internet.

MORE »