Asus Unveiled the worlds thinnest LCD Display LS221H that is just 24.8mm (0.98-inch) at its thinnest point. The display uses material like leather at the bottom half of the frame to give it rich look and an extra-hardened glass that prevents scratches and improves visual quality. The Display has 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, 2-millisecond response time, 300 nits of brightness, 4,000:1 contrast ratio and VGA/ HDMI video inputs. Asus has yet not announced release date and price for the display.

Chi Mei, One of the leading manufacturers of displays said that it expects to increase the AMOLED panel yield from 70% to 85% by end of 2008. Improved yield will result in reduced cost of production and ultimately bring down the cost of AMOLED in the market. The Taiwan based company is the only company that has started volume production of AMOLED panels in sizes of 2” QCIF+, 2.4” QVGA, 2.8” QVGA, 3.4” WQVGA and 4.3” WQVGA. The company is also planning to start volume production of 7.6” WVGA panels by end of 2008. The company says that total production will reach 800,000 units by end of 2008 making it the largest producer of AMOLED panels. The benefits of AMOLED displays compared to LCD includes better contrast ratio, more accurate colors, very low power requirements and they are very thin, resulting in smaller device profile. Chi Mei Optoelectronics is showcasing a 25” AMOLED panel at Display Taiwan 2008 and the company says that they will start volume production of 25” displays in 2010.
[Via Digitimes]

Engadget has posted slides of upcoming Dell Mini-notebooks. Dell is working on two models, Dell E - an 8.9” model aimed at Eee PC and Dell E Slim - a 12.1” model meant to compete with MacBook Air and Lenovo X300. The Dell E will have three notebooks, the E classic, E Video and E Video+. The E classic will be super low-end machine with bare minimum specifications of 1.6GHz Atom processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB Flash Drive that will start at $299. The E Video and E Video + will have 1GB RAM, 8GB or 12GB Flash memory, Webcams and the + model will also have Bluetooth. As the name suggests the E Slim notebooks will be just 0.8” thick and will come in two models E Slim and E Slim+. The E Slim will use the 1.3 GHz Intel Silverthorne processor, 1GB RAM, 40GB hard drive, Webcam and WiFi. The Dell E Slim+ will use 1.6GHz Intel Silverthorne processor, 2GB RAM, 60GB HDD, Webcam, WiFi and Bluetooth. It is believed that all the models will run Linux and Windows XP. According to Engadget, an instant on, Linux version called BlackTop will be included in all of the notebooks. The BlackTop will be an instant on interface for emailing, calendar, contacts, web surfing and chatting. The Dell E will be released in August and the Dell E Slim will ship in September.

Apple showed the new iPhone App Store this Monday at WWDC and talked about how developers can use it to sell their iPhone applications. Apple at that time didn’t talk about size or price limitations for these iPhone applications. Appleinsider has learned that the maximum size limit for a given application will be 2GB and the price limit is maximum $999.99. Apple doesn’t say whether the limit is technical or for other reasons. But if someone is selling an iPhone application for more than $20, I am not going to buy it. The App store lets the developer manage almost all the business and presentation related issues. It even lets developer decide in which country they want to sell iPhone applications. As always Apple won’t let developers put adult rated content on the App Store. It is largely believed that most of the iPhone applications will be free and the ones that have a price tag will mostly be priced less than $10.

LG announced today the world’s most energy efficient monitor Flatron W2252TE. The 22” display has 1680 x 1050 resolution, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 2ms response time, 170 degree viewing angle and 250cd/m2 brightness. Spec-wise the display sounds excellent and LG claims that they have reduced the power consumption by 40W, making the display 45% more power efficient than any display sold by LG. The display will ship in the UK in August and LG has yet not announced the price.
[Via Engadget]

Asustek’s President Jerry Shen told investors that Asus would ship a total of 6.6 million mini-notebooks Eee PCs in 2008. That will be a 50% year-over-year increase as 4.3 million units were shipped in 2007. He said that the growth would be despite component shortage and rising cost concerns. Shen estimated that the market size for mini-notebooks should hit 10 million mark this year, meaning the company will grab more then 50% market share. Asustek will use both the Atom and Celeron M processors to off set the Atom processor shortage. It is no secret that Eee PC has been huge success, but as the competition increases will Asus be able to maintain their market share above 50% in 2009.
[Via DigiTimes]

Last year, when Microsoft announced Surface table many companies had announced that they will deploy Microsoft’s Surface in their store but till now only one company AT&T has added Surface to its selected few stores. Now you can add a second company to the list Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., as they will deploy the Surface Table at iBar ultra-lounge at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. Harrah’s and Microsoft have created an innovative suite of custom applications to provide guests with hip new ways to create their own ultimate entertainment experience in an ultra-lounge venue. Below is a list of unique application the Harrah’s has developed for their customers.

Harrah’s launches Microsoft Surface at Rio iBar on June 11, 2008. So if you at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino go and check it out.

Wall Street analyst Gene Munster talked with the developers at WWDC conference and found that around 50% developers were attending conference just for iPhone development and the rest 50% percent were doing it for both Mac and iPhone platforms. According to the analyst 15% of the apps will be location based, 10% for entertainment, 10% for video games and 15% for Enterprise. The average selling price for the apps will be around $2.29 and 71% will be free. This can change as Apple is encouraging developers to consider charging for the apps.
More than 70% of the attendees have written applications for other mobile platforms, but approximately the same percentage of their iPhone bound apps will not be available for rival platforms. The most important finding of his survey was that all the developers except one said that the iPhone developer tools made applications development easier than they had expected and majority of the developers praised Apple for providing the most intuitive mobile development platform ever. This is a very good indication for Apple, as happy developers make great applications, resulting in very happy iPhone customers.
[Via Appleinsider]

Verizon and LG announced three new handsets. Isn’t it irony that the touchscreen handset is called “Dare”. The other two handsets are Chocolate 3 a clamshell phone and Decoy a slider device. The Dare is a touchscreen phone that doesn’t have hardware keyboard and uses stylus and fingers for input and control. Even though the phone has touch inputs only, it doesn’t support multitouch input. The phone comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera and can handle on-phone image editing. The CDMA phone will support EVDO for faster Internet and Bluetooth, No word on WiFi capabilities of the phone. It will be launched sometime in July to coincide with iPhone 3G launch. Verizon hasn’t yet announced the pricing for the phone, but my guess is it will be very similar to iPhone pricing.
The second phone that Verizon announced is Chocolate 3, the music phone. LG has switched to Clamshell design for their latest Chocolate phone. The phone has a jog-wheel to select track on the external display and comes with stereo speaker for audio without headphones. The other features on the phone are Bluetooth, EVDO, 1GB on board memory, microSD card slot and 2-megapixel cameras. The phone will be launched in July.
The third phone on the list is Decoy a slider phone that will be released on 16th June. The phone has a detachable Bluetooth earpiece that offers hands free calling without the need of buying a separate device. The phone has 2-megapixel camera and Verizon will announce the pricing at the launch.

Toshiba today announced the world’s first 160GB 1.8” hard drive that runs at 5400RPM. Last year both Samsung and Toshiba had announced 5400RPM hard drives with 120GB capacity. The new drive comes in two models: the 80GB single platter drive and the 160GB twin platter drive. The drives will be slightly heavier at 60 grams compared to 45 grams of the regular 4200RPM 1.8” drives. They will be thicker also at 8 mm compared to 5mm. The hard drive uses SATA for faster connection and will ship in august.

The Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog has posted information about the latest Cyber-shot flagship phone C905 codenamed Shiho. Like all Cyber-shot phones it will also come loaded with various camera features. The C905 will have 8.1-megapixel camera, auto focus, face recognition, image stabilization, red-eye reduction, Xenon flash, LED flash and video stabilization. And yes it a camera phone not a stand-alone camera. Actually camera is just the beginning, the phone has a long list of features. It has A-GPS, UMTS, HSPDA, Quad-band GSM, WiFi with DLNA support, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth. The 2.4” QVGA screen is protected by scratch resistant mineral glass and the camera has glass lens. The phone has a TV out cable that makes it possible to watch photo slideshow on big screen TV. The phone will be announced on 17th June and ship in Q4 2008.

Apple announced on Monday that the new iPhone 3G will come with GPS, but one thing missing would be turn-by-turn navigation with voice directions. TomTom plans to change that, the company is working on iPhone version of its navigation software and it’s almost ready. TomTom hasn’t provided much detail about features the new application will include. Nonetheless one of the most likely advantages of TomTom's software could be a local database of maps that users can access and customize even if they don't have an Internet connection. iPhone 3G requires an Internet connection to get the maps from Google. TomTom has yet not decided on price and release date for the application.

Apple has posted updated iPhone Software 2.0 beta for developers, which includes the minor changes that were announced yesterday.  Apple has now changed the .Mac setup references to MobileMe service that was rollout on Monday. The build also addresses an issue where an IPSec VPN account with pre-shared key authentication would fail to establish a connection. Apple will release iPhone Software 2.0 for general public sometime in early July.
Apple has handed physical Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installation disc to developers attending WWDC. The disc contains the first public beta build of the next generation operating system. Screenshots of the new OS have been posted on many websites. Apple has already said that it will focus on performance and security enhancements rather than new features for the upcoming OS X 10.6.

Western Digital released the fastest 3.5” 7200RPM drive on the market, the Caviar Black SATA drives will be available in two capacities 750GB and 1TB. The hard drives have twice the processing power, 32MB cache and uses StableTrac / NoTouch technologies. The drives will come with five-year warranty. The 750GB drive will cost $199 and 1TB drive will cost $249. Both the drive will be available next week.

HP today upgraded its TouchSmart touchscreen desktop with 22” screen, DVD burner and optional TV tuner. The TouchSmart will come with Intel Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB RAM, WiFi a/g/n, memory card slots and webcam. The computer comes with wireless mouse, wireless keyboard and remote control. The IQ504 will be priced $1,299 where as the IQ506 will be priced $1,499 and include a TV tuner built-in. Both the all-in-one desktops will ship on 13th July. It looks like the first all-in-one desktop that will give iMac a run for its money. I just hope HP uses at least 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a discrete graphics card.

Voodoo today announced its new gaming desktop Omen that has an aluminum case with a 7” screen for secondary information on it. The gaming tower comes with 2 CPUs (Quad core or in future eight core), four GPUs (next generation NVIDIA or ATI cards) and up to 8GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM. By now you would have guessed that you could configure this water-cooled system any way you could imagine. This monster gaming system will only be available initially to existing Voodoo customers when it is launched later this year. The starting price of Omen will be around $7,000.

Voodoo today introduces the 13.3-inch Envy 133 notebook that will directly compete with Macbook Air and Lenovo X300. The carbon fiber notebook comes with LED backlit screen with 1280 x 800 resolution, Intel GMA X3100 graphics, 1.6GHz or 1.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1.8” hard drive or SSD option. The Envy has WiFi a/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0 and Voodoo Aura PowerConnect – an AC power brick that comes with Ethernet port and functions as personal wireless 802.11 b/g access point. The ports on the laptop are HDMI, audio out, one USB and one combo port that functions as both e-SATA port and USB 2.0 port. The laptop has webcam and comes with a 33 Whr battery that can last up to 3 hours and 45 minutes. One of the most interesting features of the Envy 133 is instant on function. The Voodoo IOS (instant on solution) comes to life with in 5 seconds of pressing the power button and gives access to a Linux based system that allows you to surf web, Skype, chat via Pigeon, play music or watch photos. The starting price for the Voodoo Envy 133 will be $2,099 and it will be available before end of Q3 2008. Below is a video of the Voodoo Envy 133 check it out.

Canon today announced a new entry-level DSLR EOS Rebel XS, which in combination with EOS Rebel XSi will replace Rebel XT and XTi. The Rebel XS comes with 2.5” LCD, 10-megapixel sensor, and 7-point auto focus. The Live view feature on the camera allows you to view a shot through the LCD rather than the Optical viewfinder. The camera can shot unlimited picture (till your memory card fills up or battery dies) at burst rate of 3 frames-per-second. The camera comes with image-stabilization lens EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS that helps to substantially reduce blur. The camera is launched today in Japan and will be launched in July for US market. The Rebel XS will be price between $600 to $800 range, as it will replace Rebel XTi that goes for $699.

O2 today confirmed that the company will give 8GB iPhone 3G free with 45 pound per month contract or 16GB iPhone 3G free with 59 pound per month plan. The 75 pound per month contract will get 16GB iPhone free. The 2.5G iPhone owners already on 45 pound plan will be able to upgrade to iPhone 3G for free on July 11th through O2's website. The customers with 59 and 75 pound per month contract will get 16GB iPhone 3G upgrade for free. For customers with 35 pound per month contract, the upgrade to iPhone 3G will cost 99 pound. The renewals will add another 18 months to the contract. Business customer who have tariffs exceeding 26.25 pound will get the new 8GB iPhone 3G free with their business plans. New customer opting for a plan less the 45 pound per month will have to pay 99 pound for 8GB iPhone 3G and 159 pound for 16GB iPhone 3G. The least expensive plan for iPhone will be available for 30 pound with 75 minutes talk time, 125 texts and unlimited web browsing. O2 will announce details for a Pay & Go option in July after the iPhone 3G comes to the market.

Apple announced yesterday that they would improve Safari’s performance in Mac OS X 10.6. Today Apple started seeding developers with a very early beta version of Safari 4 (5526.11.2). According to Apple the biggest improvement in Safari will be faster implementation of JavaScript, increasing the performance by 53 percent. The improvement will make Web 2.0 applications like upcoming MobileMe, faster and more responsive. It is believed that Apple will use the SquirrelFish technology, it is a new and improved JavaScript interpreter that is under development for Webkit. SquirrelFish almost doubles the performance of Safari for JavaScript.
The other new feature found in Safari 4 is the ability to save webpages as stand alone web application. These web applications are basically Site Specific Browsers that function as separate Cocoa desktop application giving you Dock icon, standard menu bar and separation from other web browsing activities. Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” will be released in about a year, but the speed with which Apple has released Safari 4 Beta to developers, we might even see a public release of Safari 4 before OS X 10.6 is released to public.
[Via MacRumors]

AT&T revealed today that the carrier would increase data rates for iPhone customers. The standard data plan that was $20 will be raised to $30 and the business focused data plan will be available for $45 per month. AT&T's president Glenn Lurie said, " the change reflects the iPhone's development into a full-fledged smartphone." He pointed out that pricing for unlimited data plans for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices are also similar. These changes in data plan cost won't affect iPhone 2G users as long as they choose to use the service.
AT&T will have several apps of its own available along with the App Store in early July. Pricing for those packages hasn't been announced yet. I don't mind the increase in cost as long as that includes GPS, unlimited mobile Internet and full access to iTunes content on air like audio/video podcast downloads on 3G network. If they plan to charge us extra money on top of the additional 10 dollars for services like GPS or maybe to run more applications, it will definitely put a damper on the 3G-iPhone excitement.
[Via Macnn]

Rumors that Apple will focus on performance and not features for its next OS X 10.6 update were proved true today. Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering said, “We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more. In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”
A new technology called “Grand Central” will be added to make it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of multi-core Macs. Apple will add the modern programming language “ Open Computing Language” (OpenCL), this new language will extend power of GPU to any application written in OpenCL. The software limit for RAM will also be raised to 16TB.
Apple will also introduce QuickTime X that will add support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Safari will also see speed boost with optimized rendering engine that will load JavaScript 53% faster. Snow Leopard will have out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007. Apple plans to release this update with in one year. Most probably we will see the public release of Mac OS X 10.6 before WWDC 2009.

Apple today introduced MobileMe, a new Internet service that delivers push email, push contacts and push calendars from the MobileMe service in the "cloud" to native applications on iPhone, iPod touch, Macs and PCs. MobileMe also provides a suite of elegant, ad-free web applications that deliver a desktop-like experience through any modern browser. MobileMe applications (http://www.me.com/) include Mail, Contacts and Calendar, as well as Gallery for viewing and sharing photos and iDisk for storing and exchanging documents online. "Think of MobileMe as 'Exchange for the rest of us,'" said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in the press release. "Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same Push email, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get." MobileMe, available on July 11, is a subscription-based service with 20GB of storage for US$99 per year for individuals and $149 for a Family Pack, which includes one master account with 20GB of storage and four Family Member accounts with 5GB of storage each. To get more information about MobileMe visit Apple’s MobileMe website.

The biggest announcement at WWDC 2008 Keynote was the new iPhone 3G. The phone will have fast 3G, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange and new App Store. The 3G iPhone is more the 2.5X faster than the present generation iPhone and is 36% faster than Nokia N95 and Palm 750. The battery life on the phone is also impressive it gives 5 hours talk time in 3G compared to 3 hours most 3G phones give. It has 300 hours stand by, 10 hours talk time in 2G, 7 hours video playback and 24 hours audio playback. Apple says that it has improved the audio quality of the phone to make it a better multimedia player. The GPS on the iPhone uses Google maps and gives you turn-by-turn directions. The iPhone 3G will support tri-band UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900/2100 MHz) and quad-band GSM/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz). The Phone will also have WiFi and Bluetooth. The camera and screen resolution remains same as present first generation iPhone. The 8GB iPhone 3G will be available in black color for only  $199 (what will other smartphone maker do?) and the 16GB iPhone 3G will be available in black and white color for $299. Both the models will be released on 11th July.

TechzTalk will be doing live coverage of Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC 2008. The live coverage will start at 10:00AM PST / 1:00PM EST on Monday June 9th 2008. You can read our WWDC 2008 rumors roundup to keep yourself busy till the event start. To get live coverage of the WWDC keynote please visit live.techztalk.com.

Steve Jobs keynote at Worldwide Developers Conference tomorrow is one of the biggest events in tech world for this summer. Announcement at WWDC will definitely affect the whole mobile phone and computer industry. As a result there are so many rumors floating around in the blogosphere about what Apple will announce at the conference. Here is the list of major rumors circulating and their likelihood of coming true.
The 3G iPhone: Well it’s almost like a fact now that Apple will show the new 3G iPhone at WWDC, unless they want to surprise everyone and decide not to announce it at the keynote. Engadget claims to have information about the complete hardware and another website Web-mobile.net claims to have photos of the new phone. There is some doubt whether the new phone will have camera for video calls or not. Plus no one is sure if the phone will be thicker or thinner than previous generation iPhone. From what I know about Apple, it will be thinner. The specification that most believe new iPhone will have are 3G, quad-band GSM, 16GB and/or 32GB, WiFi, Bluetooth, same size screen and may be GPS. We will surely get complete specifications tomorrow.
iPhone, iPod touch Firmware 2.0 and Apps Store: Apple had announced that they will release the firmware 2.0 and the Apps Store in late June at their iPhone Software Roadmap event in March. It is possible that Apple will release both on Monday immediately after the keynote. KPCB’s Matt Murphy has said to Time magazine that Apple will have more than 1,000 applications ready for the Apps Store launch. At WWDC we will see the firmware 2.0 and Apps Store in action and mostly Apple will release the software for general public.
.Mac Service Revamp: Even Steve Jobs has accepted in an interview with Walt Mossberg that .Mac service needs a complete renovation. For past few days there have been strong hints that we will see the new service at WWDC. The new service might even see a name change like ”Me” or “MobileMe” and add feature like over the air sync, better windows integration and push email. According to rumors their will be a price cut and increase in storage space. The most unbelievable part of the rumors is that with iPhone you will get the service for free. I am sure that we will see an updated .Mac service but like everyone I am not sure whether there will be a name charge or not.
Mac OS X 10.6 Announcement: This new rumor started last week, TUAW first reported that Apple will introduce Mac OS X 10.6 at WWDC with focus on security and stability only. Arstechnica later concurred with TUAW and revealed that the OS X 10.6 is code named “Snow Leopard”. Arstechnica also said that it will be released in January 2009 and will be Intel only. But recent rumors indicate that it will support PowerPC Macs also. Largely it is believed that the new update will be more focused on security and performance than on new feature. We have to wait and see what Steve Jobs decides about the next update.
A Entry Level iPhone model: RBC’s analyst Mike Abramsky wrote in his research note that Apple might introduce a entry level iPhone or low price 3G iPhone to accelerate sales to more than 20 million for the year 2008. It has been rumored since the first iPhone was introduced that Apple is working on a second iPhone that will be smaller than present iPhone and will cost less around $200. Recently a Taiwanese touchscreen maker released diagrams showing 2.8” and 3.2” touchscreens, which it claimed will be used in an upcoming iPhone. Apple is definitely working on more than one iPhone and they will release a smaller model for sure, but if they release a new smaller iPhone at WWDC that will be a pleasant surprise.
Introduction of new touchscreen device: Many analysts believe that Apple is working on a touchscreen device aimed at the emerging Mobile Internet Device (MID) market. This device will have screen size between 4” to 7” and will add more features compared to iPod touch. It is inevitable that Apple will introduce more touchscreen based devices but will it be show or released at WWDC is everyone’s guess.
There are many other rumors floating around like Mac Tablet and Apple TV SDK, but I don’t think they have a chance of coming true at this year's WWDC. TechzTalk will be doing live keynote coverage tomorrow at 1 pm EST. For live WWDC Keynote coverage visit live.techztalk.com on Monday.