Canon today announced addition of four new PowerShot digital cameras, the PowerShot SX210 IS, PowerShot SD3500 IS, PowerShot SD1400 IS and PowerShot SD1300IS. The new cameras offer Smart Auto mode along with new Scene Modes and Image effects.

Canon PowerShot SX210 IS: The camera offers 14.1-megapixel sensor, 14x optical zoom, 3-inch LCD screen, 720p video recording, image stabilization, face detection and various scene modes. The SX210 IS will ship in three colors including black, purple and gold for $349.99. Canon PowerShot SX210 IS is available on Amazon for pre-order.

Canon PowerShot SD3500 IS: Offers 14.1-megapixel sensor, 3.5-inch touchscreen, 5x optical zoom, 720 video recording, Smart Auto, 22 scene modes and image stabilization. The touchscreen on the camera enables intuitive operations as users can customize their photo settings by simply dragging icons to their preferred on-screen location, then utilizing tap operation to switch between images during playback. The SD3500 IS will ship in black, silver and pink colors for $329.99 this month. Canon PowerShot SD3500 IS is available on Amazon for pre-order.

Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS: This super-slim camera offers 14.1-megapixel sensor, 4x optical zoom, 2.7-inch screen, 720p video recording, smart auto, 22 predefined setting and low light mode. The SD1400 IS will ship in pink, orange, silver and black colors for $249.99 this month. Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS is also available on Amazon for pre-order.

Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS: The last PowerShot camera announced today includes 12.1-megapixel sensor, 4x Optical zoom, image stabilization, smart auto, 18 predefined settings, 2.7-inch screen and low light mode. There is no HD video recording on the camera. The SD1300 IS will ship in silver, pink, green, blue and brown for $199.99 in February. You can pre-order Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS on Amazon.

Engadget has posted that Motorola DROID will be getting the Android 2.1 update soon. According to Engadget the update will being following features:

No word on when Verizon will actually release the update yet.

A French website Nowhere Else claims Apple will release new MacBook Pro models tomorrow. This information was given to the website by an anonymous source close to Apple. It has been rumored for past few weeks that Apple is planning to update their MacBook Pro lineup. It was previously believed that the company would announce the update at the Apple media event, which took place on 27th January.

Last week, someone posted benchmarking result on Geekbench of yet announced MacBook Pro model featuring 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 620M processor, further indicating that the release is imminent. If Apple launches the new MacBook Pro models tomorrow they will feature Intel’s new Core i5 and i7 processors offering over 25 percent performance improvement.

Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope wrote in his research note that Apple is open to iPad price cut if the demand of the device is lower than expected, like the company did after iPhone launch in 2007. He wrote after his meeting with Apple executives “While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated)”. Shope also noted that Apple doesn’t believe iPad will cannibalize sales of products like iPhone, iPod or MacBooks.

In other iPad related news, VentureBeat claims that PA Semi the company Apple bought in 2008 to design its own processors wasn’t responsible for A4 chip. A very trusted source told Paul Boutin:

Apple use to design chipset for PowerPC processors and it is very likely that they started working on a custom ARM solution even before Apple bought PA Semi. Our sources say that PA Semi engineers are presently playing a very big role in Apple’s processor development plans and they might have been part of A4 development also.

Canon today officially announced new Rebel T2i DSLR with 18-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor and Full HD video recording. The new features on T2i include 3.7 fps continuous shooting, ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 12,800), a 63-zone Dual Layer Metering System and DIGIC 4 image processor.

The Rebel T2i DSLR can capture 1080p (1920 x 1080) video at 30, 25 and 24 frames per second. In 720p (1280 x 720) or standard definition 640 x 480 it can capture video at up to 60 frames per second. For better sound quality when shooting video, the Rebel T2i includes an external stereo microphone jack and a built-in monaural microphone. The camera also has a HDMI port for video playback on HDTV.

Other features on Rebel T2i are 3-inch 3:2 LCD screen with 1040k dot resolution, +/-5 stops exposure compensation, UI support for Eye-Fi cards, Live mode, self cleaning sensor and SDXC support. You can get more information about the camera on Canon’s website.

The Canon EOS Rebel T2i Digital SLR camera will ship in early March, and will be sold in a body-only configuration for $799.99. It will also be offered in a kit version with Canon’s EF-s 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens at an estimated retail price of $899.99. Canon Rebel T2i is available on Amazon for pre-order.

BenQ has launched V2220 21.5-inch LCD display, which the company claims is the thinnest in its class measuring just 15mm (0.59-inch). The display has edge-lit LED backlight and BenQ says that it offers 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. However, its static (true) contrast ratio is 1000:1 like most other displays available today. Video Input on the display includes DVI, D-Sub and HDMI. The new V-series displays from BenQ will range from 18.5-inch to 24-inch in size and ship later this month. No word on price yet.

Sony announced the development of millimeter wireless intra-connection technology that can replace complicated wires and internal circuitry of electronic devices with wireless connections. The new technology offers high-speed wireless data transfer inside electronic products such as television sets. According to Sony, by replacing wires and internal circuitry (IC) with wireless connections, this technology enables a reduction in the size and cost of the IC and other components used in electronics products, delivering advantages such as size and cost-reduction and enhanced reliability of the final product.

This new wireless intra-connection system is based on millimeter-wave wireless data transfer technology. Millimeter-wave refers to electromagnetic waves with a frequency of 30GHz to 300GHz, and wavelength between 1mm to 10mm. With their high frequency, millimeter-waves are suited to ultra high-speed data transfer, while a further advantage is their ability to transfer data using only very small antennas. The high frequency technologies used in this system also draw on Sony's extensive expertise and years of experience in the field of wireless communications and broadcast products. Specifically, Sony has integrated highly energy efficient millimeter-wave circuits on 40nm-CMOS-LSIs (with an active footprint of just 0.13mm2 including both the transmitter and receiver), to realize high speed, 11Gbps data transfer over a distance of 14mm using antennas approximately 1mm in size.

This technology can one day bring even slimmer and lighter electronic devices to the market that are highly energy efficient.
[Via Engadget]

Verizon will get the second Android based Motorola handset called DEVOUR in March 2010. The DEVOUR will be the first Verizon phone to support MOTOBLUR, offering automatic content deliver to the home screen and easy to manage social network streams. The phone will also come with pre-loaded Google apps like Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps with Google Maps Navigation.

The key features of the phone are 3.1-inch touchscreen, slide out QWERTY keypad, 3-megapixel camera, EVDO Rev.A support, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and microSD card slot with 8GB card included. The phone will run Android 1.6 rather than the latest Android 2.1 to run MOTOBLUR, which doesn’t support latest Android release. Verizon will ship the phone is March and it will require $29.99 monthly Data Package for smartphones along with the usual Nationwide Talk plan. No word on price of the device yet.
[Via SlashGear]

It is rumored that Microsoft will showcase Windows Mobile 7 at Mobile World Congress later this month. Many website have now posted details about the upcoming smartphone OS from Microsoft. And it looks like Microsoft has taken a page out of Apple iPhone playbook for development of their new OS, which can be a good thing for the company.

Like the iPhone, Windows Mobile 7 won’t support Multitasking and use push notifications in place of it. Microsoft will provide servers to support push notifications for various applications. Windows Mobile 7 will also not support Flash and instead include support for Microsoft’s Silverlight 3.0 with mobile specific features. Application downloads would be only through Windows Mobile Marketplace and there would be no support for manual installation. Syncing will be handled by Zune desktop software like iTunes is used by the iPhone. Windows Mobile Marketplace will be integrated in Zune desktop software.

Windows Mobile 7 user interface codenamed “METRO” will be very similar to Zune HD to improve touchscreen support. The new UI will have completely new home screen and won’t allow custom interfaces like Sense and TouchFLO used by smartphone manufacturers to differentiate their phones.

Browser on the new OS is based on IE 7 with some features from IE 8. According to the rumors, it’s faster than Safari browser on iPhone 3G but slower than iPhone 3GS. And it looks like Apple will have another iPhone OS and iPhone hardware update before the Windows Mobile 7 ships, which can be bad news for Microsoft’s mobile browser.

Windows Mobile 7 will not offer backwards compatibility with .NET Compact Framework and hence all the old applications for Windows Mobile 6 or 6.5 won’t run on WM7. Zune and Xbox 360 integration along with full support for social networking will be at the forefront of the new OS.

Devices based on Windows Mobile 7 would start shipping by Q4 2010 and Microsoft believes that analysts / journalists will be surprised as Microsoft is actually ahead of late 2010 or early 2011 launch schedule for WM7. Why would anybody be surprised, Windows Mobile 7 was supposed to ship in early 2009. Microsoft is already late by one and a half year (actually 3 years if you compare to iPhone launch in 2007), and still WM7 won’t have features like multitasking and Flash to outcompete iPhone.

We should find out more about Windows Mobile 7 at Mobile World Congress that starts on 15th February.

It has been rumored for quite sometime that Apple will update their MacBook Pro lineup. And recent benchmarking result posted on Geekbench indicates this update will come sooner than later. The test result show that the benchmarking tool was ran on MacBook Pro featuring 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 620M processor with 4GB DDR3 RAM. The present MacBook lineup uses Core 2 Duo processor and it is believed the update will bring recently announced Core i5 and Core i7 processors to the MacBook Pros.

The new MacBook Pro, which is referred by model number 6,1 in the result, scored 5260 compared to around 4000 scored by present generation MacBook Pros. Showing that the new Intel processors will offer more than 25 percent performance increase over existing generation. The result also show memory bandwidth has almost doubled when compared to previous generation models, which is a direct result of integrated memory controller on the new Intel Core i7 and i5 chips. Overall, the new MacBook Pro showed at least 15 percent performance improvement in every test.

Apple will likely use 2.4GHz Core i5-520M, 2.53GHz Core i5-540M and 2.66GHz Core i7-620M in the upcoming MacBook Pros. It is also rumored that Apple might use quad-core Intel Core i7-720QM and Core i7 820QM in top of the line MacBook Pro. We should find out more about upcoming MacBook Pro lineup by March.