Nokia announced their new luxurious handset, 8800 Carbon Arte. The casing of the handset is made using high-end materials like carbon fiber and titanium. The phone has a 2-inch 16.7 million color OLED screen with 240 x 320 resolution and a 3.2-megapixel camera. It measure 4.3” x 1.8” x 0.6” and weighs 5.3oz. The new 8800 supports tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz) and UMTS (2100MHz only) for European 3G networks. Bluetooth with A2DP profile support and 4GB of internal memory are also present on the phone. Two unique features on this luxury phone are the ability to tap the area below the screen to reveal the display clock and users can simple flip the phone face down to silence an incoming call.  The battery life for the phone is 3 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time. The Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte will ship in Q3 for Euro 1100 (US$1625). The price and casing of the phone are definitely high-end but the features are quite ordinary, as you can get a phone with all the above features for less than $500.

Lenovo updates its ThinkPad X300 series of thin and light laptops. The new ThinkPad X301 series adopts the Centrino 2 platform and uses the ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo processors. The X301 will be available with 1.2GHz U9300 and 1.4GHz U9400 processors; both the CPUs will have 6MB L2 cache and 1066MHz front side bus. The 64GB SSD on X300 will be replaced with 80GB SSD or an option of 128GB SSD.
Lenovo says that the ThinkPad X301 notebook provides on average nearly 20 percent better performance over the ThinkPad X300 notebook due to the latest DDR3 memory and the new Intel Core 2 Duo ultra low volt processor.
The new laptop will support DisplayPort along with VGA output for watching high definition content on multiple displays. The ThinkPad X301 offers models with high-speed (3G) mobile broadband and WiFi to connect wirelessly to the Internet, and also with Bluetooth and Ultra-Wideband technology to connect wirelessly to other devices. Models supporting WiMAX will be available later this year. Lenovo will start shipping the laptop on August 26th for around $2,599.

Apple has just released iPhone Firmware Update 2.0.2 and as before the release note just says “Bug Fixes”. Apple has provided no other information about the firmware. The new firmware can be downloaded through iTunes by clicking ‘check for update’ option when you connect your iPhone. The update weighs in at 248.7 MB and is available now. We will post more information about the new features in the update as soon as we get more information.

We already know that Asus has partnered up with telecom vendors to offer low price netbook bundles. The bundle will give the Eee PC netbook for very low price with a monthly subscription to wireless access. In UK, Orange has joined Asus and will now offer an Eee PC 900 16GB as a part of “Internet Everywhere” bundle. Users will get the Eee PC netbook, a mobile broadband dongle and mobile broadband service. It will be priced £25 a month on a two-year contract and come with 3GB of data per month limit. The 3GB data limit would be a problem, if user starts using Asus’s Eee Storage and Download services that they will launch later this year in Europe or Eee PC becomes the primary computer for Internet access, VOIP and video chat.

A French Tech website CanardPlus have got their hands on slides from an upcoming Intel presentation. The slide starts off with Nehalem processors, which Intel will ship under Core i7 and Xeon label. The i7 well see Intel’s first big architectural change in two years, new point-to-point bus technology and return of Hyperthreading will be the main features. Intel will discuss the technology in detail at Developer Forum and will ship the processors starting this fall.
From here, the slides go in a territory, about which Intel has never talked in detail before. Intel has talked a lot about its “Tick-Tock” cycle, Tick stands for decrease in size of manufacturing technology like in 2007 Intel introduced 45nm manufacturing technology with Penryn processors. Where as, Tock stands for advancement in processor technology, for example it will introduce new Nehalem architecture in 2008. Intel will continue its tick-tock cycle and will shrink the die size from 45nm to 32nm in 2009 and will introduce Westmere processors based on Nehalem architecture.
 2010 will be a tock year and Intel will launch Sandy Bridge architecture. The Sandy Bridge will introduce support for new programming features known as Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX). AVX will replace today’s 128bits SSE instructions with 256 bits instructions that will support as many as three or four calculations in one instruction. The new extensions should accelerate performance in media encoding, 3D modeling and vector based math functions. The Sandy Bridge chips will be built with the capability to handle at least eight cores on a single chip. The L2 cache will be much less at 512KB, but the decrease in L2 cache will be made up by a large 16MB L3 cache.
In 2011 Intel will shrink the size of manufacturing technology to 22nm (tick) and the new processors will be called Ivy Bridge. Intel will introduce Haswell architecture in 2012 (tock) that will add new memory cache system and a revolutionary power management system. Intel will discuss the upcoming processors in more detail at its Develop Forum that is starting on 19th August.

In past week, complains about iPhone 3G reception and network speed are growing. iPhone customers are reporting that the phone keeps dropping calls, data speed is very slow and call quality is below average. Many tech analysts, journalists and company spokespersons have blamed it on number of issue.
First 3G networks were blamed and few analysts said, as 3G network have shorter reach and requires more bandwidth, the cellphone carriers are not able to meet the demand, put on their networks by sudden jump in 3G devices, because of higher iPhone sales. T-mobile in the Netherlands posted on it blog that the problem is not network related but a hardware / software specific issue of the iPhone itself. Also a Vodafone’s spokeswoman told Sidney Morning Herald that the problems were specific to the iPhone and not their network.
Next, Infineon’s 3G chip that Apple uses in the iPhone was blamed. Richard Windsor, an analyst with Nomura Securities said, “We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier.” This didn’t please Infineon and a company spokesman told Business Week “our 3G chips are for example, used in Samsung handsets and we are not aware of such problems there.”
According to Ny Teknik, an analysis for Sweden engineering weekly the test reports, which he obtained from unknown sources, shows adjustments between the antenna and an amplifier, which capture the faint signals received by the antenna, are defective. This makes the phone likely to drop calls and have slower than hoped data speeds.
It was also suggested by an analyst that Apple programmed the Infineon chip to demand a more powerful 3G signal than the iPhone really requires. So if too many people try to make a call or go on the Internet in a given area, some of the devices will decide there’s insufficient power and switch to slower network – even if there is enough 3G bandwidth available. This shows that it a software problem and Apple can resolve it.
There is no information about how widespread the problem is or what is causing the problem. Apple as always has kept quiet about the problem. Analysts have estimated that about 5 percent of the iPhone customers are affected by the problem and according to reports the problem is more widespread in areas with higher number of iPhone users like in San Francisco or New York.
Business Week’s Peter Burrows cites two of his well-placed sources as saying that the problem is related to Infineon chip and it can be solved by software update. Apple will address it via an upcoming software update rather than through a more disruptive step, such as a product recall. Both Apple and Infineon are currently testing the fix, which Apple will issue via a software update by September – if not by end of this month.

A Brazilian website Odontoplam has posted that Dell will officially launch Dell E netbook on August 22nd and it will be called Inspiron 910. The netbook will have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 512MB or 1GB RAM, 1.3-megapixel webcam and flash memory of 4GB/8GB/12GB. The 910 will support WiFi, where as Bluetooth and 3G will be optional. The ports include are three USB, one VGA, multicard reader and Ethernet. The netbook will have choice of Windows XP or Ubuntu and will not have a function key row. In Brazil it will be priced around $740 because of very high local taxes, but in US it should be around $300 mark.

Logitech today announced that they bought the privately held Ultimate Ears a company known for its custom made earpieces. Ultimate Ears has historically focused on in-ear monitors for live musicians, but recently started making in-ear headphones.  Logitech has acquired the company for $34 million in cash and the deal is expected to close this month. Logitech has provided no information about management or employee changes that will take place at Ultimate Ears because of the deal. Buying Ultimate Ears gives Logitech a direct entrance to high-end in-ear headphone market, which is ruled by companies like Shure and where Ultimate Ears had started to build a reputation as one of the best on the market.
[Via Engadget]

The new PSP – 3001 was revealed this week by an FCC filing done by Sony for the device. Engadget is reporting that even though Sony requested confidentiality when filing the papers they got their hand on device information. FCC tested the device on 2.4GHz spectrum for 802.11b WiFi and it looks like Sony is not adding any new wireless technology, as FCC didn’t test for Bluetooth or GPS or any other wireless technology. The picture shows that the PSP – 3001 is almost identical to present PSP model. It is believed that their won’t be many changes made to original design externally, but internally the new PSP will see CPU and graphics engine upgrade. Not much information is available about the device. Sony is expected to announce the PSP – 3001 before holiday season this year.

PhoneNews is reporting that Apple is preparing to release MacBook Air update. The external design will remain unchanged, but the internal components will receive significant boost. Apple is presently using a custom version of Intel Core 2 Duo chip for its laptop that has 17W TDP. The new MacBook Air will use the standard Penryn based Core 2 Duo that will have 20W TDP. This will increase the clock speed to 2.0GHz and beyond, but will also increase the power requirement. To meet the increased power requirements Apple will add a higher capacity battery to the new laptop. PhoneNews confirms that the new MacBook Air will require a 60W power adapter to fully charge. The hard drive version of the Air will get upgraded to 120GB and optional 160GB hard drive will be available. There is no information about whether Apple will use higher capacity 128GB SSD or will stay with the 64GB SSD model. The new MacBook Air might be released as early as next month as retailers are being alerted to be prepared for the upgrade.