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ASUS Eee Pad Transformer 2 With Windows 8?
According to Notebook Italia who heard it from ASUS at Computex, it looks like the company may be set to release the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer 2 in 2012, the successor to the Eee Pad Transformer which has been highly successful to date and constantly running out of stock due to high demand, to the point where even Toys “R” Us saw its potential and decided to stock up on the tablet too.
Now there are probably two platforms coming out soon that most are looking forward to, Google’s Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Microsoft’s Windows 8 platform which has been designed with mobility in mind. Apparently in the case of the Eee Pad Transformer 2, the choice of platform should be Windows 8, at least if the rumors turn out to be true. The choice of Windows as a platform for tablets usually indicate that it was designed for productivity in mind and will probably be aimed at business users, not so much consumers.
Notebook Italia’s Sascha’s speculated specs of the Transformer 2 look rather optimistic, featuring a 10.1-inch display along with NVidia’s Tegra 3 which means it would be a quad-core processor along with 2GB of RAM and a keyboard dock like the current transformer. Believable? Perhaps ASUS is looking to build off the success of the current Transformer, but I guess we will have to wait and see. As it stands this is the only tablet at the moment rumored to run Windows 8 as its platform.
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It is quite a feeling to have a smartphone getting the latest operating system update up and running, that is for sure. After all, you can never quite tell just what kind of goodies that your handset would receive now, can you? Those who are rocking to a Windows Phone 8.1 device might be looking forward to spending Christmas with a Windows 10 Mobile update but it seems that such hopes will have to be shelved for the moment.
It seems that there will be no Windows 10 update arriving this month as originally speculated, and the time frame itself has been altered, being even more vague in nature – where it has been mentioned to be “early next year”, which could jolly well mean any time, even in April. Looks like patience needs to be had in boatloads here.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.