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Asus had some great news during the AsiaD conference today. Not only did they finally show off the next generation Transformer (now called the Transformer Prime) but they also announced Ultrabooks, the Padfone and gave us a rough idea of when we can expect to see Ice Cream Sandwich for their line of Android Tablets. Now that we have set the table let’s dive in and see how each one of these tastes.

To kick things off Jonney Shih brought out the new Transformer Prime. This is the one that everyone has been talking about since rumors first popped up about a new Quad Core tablet in early September. Then just yesterday Asus dropped a nice teaser video on the internet that again ran around like mad. Now we are finally getting to see this new device. Although not a complete launch (that is on the 9th of November) Jonney showed use a 10 inch tablet with an 8.3mm thick slate. Under the hood is a Quad Core Tegra 3 SoC which should be more than capable of handling just about anything you throw at it. Although the amount of memory has not been fully disclosed we are betting on 2GB as that is in keeping with the typical 512MB per core that nVidia likes to have. Other items of interest on the Prime are a mini-HDMI, an SD Card Slot… pretty much the same thing you find on the current Transformer.

Next up is something that we have been wondering about since we saw a video explaining Asus’ direction for the coming years. This is the Padfone, at the time it show it was all concept art and not much else. However now we find out that it is going to launch in Q1 2012 and should ship with Android 4.0. For those of you that are no familiar with this it is basically a “super phone” with a 10.1-inch tablet that it can dock into. Think of the Atrix with quite a bit more style and class.

Last on the list of cool things coming from Asus was an announcement of Ultrathin Netbooks that will look something like the Zenbook, only smaller. According to Shih the netbook is not dead but does need to evolve to survive. We will try to get some more information about these items (especially the Transformer Prime and Padfone) in the next few weeks and get this out to you as soon as we get it.

Source and Image Credit Engadget

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I am sorry Dave; I can’t let you do that… This line from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 a Space Oddesy is what came to mind when I showed off this interesting little trick to a friend of mine. While playing around with Siri on their new iPhone 4S we discovered that even when the phone is locked you can send email, text play music, call someone, use the camera and more than a few other things making just about all security useless on the new phone. This is not the first time that security holes have been found on one of Apple’s devices (like finding that the encryption key is stored in plain text on the phone), but I do think this one is one of the funniest.



With all the furor and excitement over what is not much more than a speech to text engine that can run queries against predefined commands to find out that those commands appear to be able to bypass the lock security. What’s more is that Apple allows this by default. I would think that this would not be something that you would want open on a phone with a passcode; however Apple seems to think they know what is best for their customers. I will say this, at least you can turn this feature off, I just think it should have been off already…

For those of you out there thinking about corporate data and email, I have a feeling that Microsoft will add a new security feature into their corporate phone requirements making it impossible to have this running with the lock requirements. I wonder what that will look like…



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Last night was all about Ice Cream Sandwich from Google. We heard all about it from so many sources on the internet that we started getting details mixed up. In the end we highlighted the features that were typically the most complained about or the “coolest” in our opinion. Now this is the stock Google ROM that we saw yesterday so what about those companies that offer more than the stock ROM? Companies like HTC or even Asus with their Transformer flavor of Honeycomb?

While we have a feeling that the minor changes that Asus made to their version of Android will pose no major issues we are not so certain about HTC. The Sense UI that HTC uses is a massive change to the default ROM from Google. In many cases it is better, (like a much better email client and tap to focus on the camera) but now that these items are being included in the stock ROM what will HTC do?

For the time being HTC is stating that they are reviewing the new flavor of Android and will make their decisions at a later date.

“We are excited about the latest update for Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, and are currently reviewing its features and functionality to determine our upgrade plans. Our goal for Android updates is to give every customer an improved user experience, which means balancing each phone's unique hardware, HTC Sense experience and the Android kernel. While our goal is to upgrade as many of our recent devices as possible, we are committed to maintaining every phone's performance and usability first. Please stay tuned for more updates on specific device upgrade plans.”

We are sure that many HTC owners (us included) are a little disappointed to hear this, but when I stop and think about it this is really the best course for HTC. After all I already have many of these features built into the SenseUI. Ok, so I do not have facelock, or the new scalable font Roboto but I really can live without those if it means making sure I do not lose the items that I have come to enjoy in the SenseUI.

Still, I can’t help but check for that new update each time I unlock my EVO 3D and Transformer…

Source Engadget

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Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich has finally been launched. This new version of Android which will officially be Android 4.0 is supposed to not only bring new features to the table, but it also going to address some items that have been lacking on Android. According to many sources this new version of Android will touch every native app in some way. We can only hope they did something to improve the poor email app that currently is in Honeycomb, but we will have to see about that once the update is available for our Transformer.

Aside from the updates to all of the native apps we are hearing that there will be some very cool new features including a facial recognition lock. This will allow you to use the built in front facing camera to interrogate your face and compare it to an image stored on the device. If it matches you can access the device, if not; well you can figure that one out on your own.  Android 4.0 will also feature a new NFC-enabled feature called Android Beam. This will allow you simply tap two phones or devices together to share files, links and other information. Google is saying that this is being designed to work with a number of app that are already in the market so you won’t have to wait long to start bumping phones.

Next up is an overhaul of the camera app. This is also a very welcome feature as the current default one is very immature.  With the new interface you can access the camera right from the lock screen (if you choose to). You also FINALLY get a zero shutter lag in a mobile phone camera, this combines with the continuous focus and face detection. Android is also adding touch to focus and exposure lock. These are features that many phone makers have tacked on (like HTC) but are now showing up in the native app as well. Android did not stop with the Camera though, you also get some nice new features in the gallery including filters and a built in Photo Editing app which allows you to make changes and still maintain the original file for later tinkering.

We are sure there is a lot more to Android 4.0 that we are missing in our roaming around the net, but you can be sure we will be taking it for a test drive and comparing it to what you get with Apple’s new iOS 5 just to see if Android is lagging behind or actually catching up. If it is the latter then we can see the Android Tablet market picking up, especially with the Holidays coming up quickly.

Source All Over the Internet

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