Zhesty.NET - Gadgets and Technology

Frankly speaking, the phones that Lenovo have announced so far this week haven't been all that exciting (unless, of course, you're somehow aroused by its 5-inch tabletphone), but it turned out the folks had a little surprise for us: the LePhone K2. What we got here is a 4.3-inch IPS display (resolution of which not yet announced), a powerful dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8260 chip, 1GB RAM, 1GB ROM and an eight megapixel 1080p camera. Sadly, like the S2 and the S760, this crouching tiger also packs Android 2.3.5 instead of Ice Cream Sandwich, but without a price or a release date, perhaps there's still a small chance that we'll see it eventually launching with the newer OS. Anyhow, that's just our wishful thinking.

A poet would say it's like a piece of ivory: both beautiful and sad. Meanwhile, Nokia's official blog says the white N9 is coming to the UK before the end of the year with a rarefied 64GB of on-board storage. We have no idea as to the price, but we suspect dedicated MeeGo memento hunters will hardly care.

Oh hell, sorry Britannia. We actually meant to say it's coming to all those (not very many) countries where the N9 is already available. Nokia confirmed to us today that it's on target to supply white N9s those markets in December. Everyone else will have to get it via a price-inflated import. Apologies for the bad geography.

Sammy's current Cortex A9-based chips are hardly slackers -- the Galaxy Note already proved that to any lingering doubters. Nevertheless, the next-gen Exynos 5250 SoC promises to double that sort of performance, by harnessing two Cortex-A15 chips clocked at 2GHz each, along with a GPU that can output resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 (WQXGA). It's like big.LITTLE computing, except without the LITTLE. Samsung reckons it'll start mass producing the 5250 for use in high-end tablets by the second quarter of next year, which should be just in time to stop NVIDIA from getting too cocky.

Hey, remember those volume issues that European Galaxy Nexus users were complaining about? While a software fix may have already floated around the internet ether last week, Google has informed us that it'll be officially distributing the retweak very soon. Or, in its words: "We're currently rolling out a fix for the volume issue which will reach everyone in the coming week."

Sure, we've seen Siri used to do a host of things, including controlling the temperature in a hacker's home. But the folks over at Autoblog were curious to know just how well the virtual assistant would work with Bluetooth-enabled car stereos. Once your iPhone 4S is properly tethered, holding down the handset's home button will activate Siri. Treating her as an incoming call, your Notorious B.I.G. playlist will pause before the ready-for-command chime sounds. The in-car assistant was tested on two Mercedes-Benz automobiles, a Chrysler 300, a Dodge Charger and a Nissan Maxima, with the Maxima showcasing the best results. It comes as no surprise that mic placement on each stereo and in-cabin background noise provided a noticeable difference in Siri's listening abilities during the test. For a glimpse of the action before trying it out yourself.

It's inevitable that these two 5-inch tabletphones -- the Dell Streak 5 on the left and the Lenovo LePad S2005 on the right -- are to meet in the Chinese capital. With the exception of the slightly taller body on the S2005 everything else are suspiciously similar, especially the button and camera layout. Well, there's a good explanation for this: we've been informed that this new tabletphone hails from the same ODM, Qisda, as Dell's counterpart. Too bad Lenovo decided to keep the same screen resolution though.

According to Stone Ip from Engadget Chinese, he found that the S2005 has a nicer grip than the Streak, and he also digs its more masculine appearance -- obviously this is open to debate. Performance-wise this slate responded well to our input, but the lack of promise on an Ice Cream Sandwich update will probably make potential geeky buyers think twice. Well, good thing we have some awesome modders around the interwebs these days.

Why Sony chose to sit on this one, we have no idea, but the company just revealed that its software update for the 2011 lineup of Xperia phones -- which was released last month -- also adds browser support for WebGL. This means that if you're holding an Xperia Arc, Mini, Neo, Play, Ray... or any other of its most recent handsets, then there's a good chance you're wielding one of the first Android phones to support this modern graphics platform. Designed to bring advanced visuals and gaming to the web, the API holds roots in javascript and has been used to develop everything from Angry Birds to far-out music videos. Sony Ericsson first previewed its WebGL efforts back in February, and after all these months, its official arrival is a welcome one, indeed. For a quick demo video

Alongside the LePhone S2 and the two-and-a-half tablets from earlier today, Lenovo also showed off a 3.7-inch Android 2.3.5 phone dubbed the S760. Packed within is a 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, a vibrant AMOLED display, five megapixel camera and Lenovo's usual customised UI. Externally the phone looks very much like the S2, though the former's shiny plastic backside gives out more of a toy-like feel. No prices just yet but expect this to hit the Chinese market at the end of December.

For now ASUS' Transformer Prime is the lonely king of the quad-core tablet hill, but as we'd heard a few weeks back, it looks like it'll have company soon enough. Insider sources have reported to DigiTimes that you'll be able to snag a nifty Android tablet with a quad-core GPU for between $459 and $599 in 2012. Acer and Lenovo are apparently set to target Apple's iPad tablet as well as ASUS with NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 GPU tablets running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the first quarter of 2012. These sources also stated that since neither Acer nor Lenovo have a direct advantage over Apple or Amazon's tablet devices, they'd only be competing for about 10 to 15 percent of the total PC tablet market. And yes, there are mathematical formulas that prove that owning a reasonably priced tablet with a quad-core GPU does make you the coolest kid on the block.

The great thinkers of the world have long known a secret that we're now happy to disclose: it's not necessity that's the mother invention, but rather laziness. Fortunately, expending a great deal of effort on a project -- simply to perform a task effortlessly -- sometimes brings very cool results. A concept app known as ZuneVoice easily passes muster in this realm, which is used to control Zune software on the PC with only a standard microphone and spoken commands. As you can see in the demo video, its creator, keyboardp, is able to play individual songs, issue commands such a "pause" or "next song", and even display full-screen music videos from YouTube. The developer even crafted an app for his Lumia 800 known as PhoneZune, which serves as a remote control for times when he's away from the box. Neither application is yet publicly available, though feedback is welcome. Next, we're told to expect Kinect integration. Perhaps one day, these gems will see the light of day.