It hasn’t been long since Sprint announced the overpriced TouchPro2, but looks like going overpriced is fast becoming the norm with the carrier. Sprint will begin offering Samsung Instinct HD on September 27, and it wants $250 for a two year contract, and that after a $100 mail-in rebate.
The Instinct HD doesn’t exactly look like a phone that would warrant that price. It isn’t exactly HD, except that it supports HD output from the phone, not that its 3.2-inch 320×480 touchscreen could have offered that anyway. The phone offers EVDO Rev.A, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, 720p video recording, landscape on-screen QWERTY keyboard, and comes preloaded with Opera Mobile 9.7, Twitter and Facebook access, Visual Voicemail, Sprint TV, and Sprint Navigation.
Toshiba has unveiled the Qosmio X500, its new flagship gaming notebook. To be made available in the UK, notebook comes with a 18.4-inch display, and can display full HD (1080p). Another interesting thing about this notebook is that it will be powered by Intel’s Core i7 CPU. This will make the X500 the second notebook ever to use the i7. The i7 processor normally runs at 1.6GHz but it can make a quick move to 2.8 GHz in its Turbo Boost mode.
Qosmio X500 will also geat a Blu-ray burner, HDMI-CEC support for remote control of the notebook, up to 8 GB of RAM, up to 1 TB HDD, GeForce GTS 250M, backlit keyboard, Harman Kardon speakers, multi-touch trackpad and a webcam. The notebook will be available in UK stores in October, and though the price has not been announced yet, it will naturally cost more than Qosmio X300, which sells for $2135.
UMID will officially show its M2 ultra mobile PC at Intel’s Developers Forum, and it has been quite an upgrade over the previous M1. The M2 has an 4.8-inch screen, with a 1024×600 resolution. While the screen remains the same as its predecessor, the M2 actually fares better due to an upgraded design and screen angle. Also making their appearance are an optical mouse and mouse buttons that make redundant the requirement of a USB port dongle.
The M2 will also get a faster processor, 1.2 GHz or 1.6GHz Atom, in place of the 1.33GHz processor on the M1. The RAM has been upgraded from 512MB to 1GB, and the operating system is Windows 7 in place of XP. UMID did put on display a non-working prototype of the new M2, and the fully working unit is expected to make its appearance within this week.
Motorola Entice W766 has made an entry into the Verizon lineup to replace its predecessor, the W755. The W766 is a plain features phone, with one-touch access to the music player, 2.2-inch display with 176×220 resolution, 2 megapixels camera, Bluetooth, 2.5mm headphone jack, speakerphone, micro SD expansion that can go up to 8 gigs, Verizon 3G data access, and a souped up IM-style text message editor.
The mobile phone will also have access to Verizon’s wireless services like V Cast, Navigator, family locator, dashboard and other similar services. It seems pretty good for a simple mobile phone, even though those specs may look insignificant compared to popular smartphones of the day. The Entice W766 however, does not back down on the price and will cost a seemingly “expensive” $40, and that’s after a $50 rebate and with a two year contract.
Asus has unveiled two new notebooks for its Republic of Gamers laptop series. The new gaming laptops, the G60 and the G71X come with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB of dedicated memory, 16-inch screen, 4GB DDR3 RAM, gigabit ethernet, blu-ray drives, HDMI and eSATA ports, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, S/PDIF port, four USB ports, 2 megapixels webcam and Altec Lansing speakers. The laptops will come preloaded with Windows Vista Ultimate, but will be eligible for a Windows 7 upgrade when the OS launches.
Apart from the common features listed above, there’s a lot that differentiates both notebooks. The G60 comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1,366×768 resolution, dual HDD setup in RAID array for 640 GB total, a/g/n wireless connectivity, backlit keyboard and a manga themed casing. The G71X on the other hand, has an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 1,920×1,200 display, 1TB HDD RAID array setup, and b/g/n wireless connectivity. The Asus G60 is available for $2,366 while the G71X will cost $3,019.