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Panasonic Toughbook, An Android You Can Drop
Smartphones and tablets usually come in the fragile variety, made out of glass and metal that would usually result in huge cracks or dents when dropped. Of course to be fair they weren’t designed to be thrown around but perhaps Toshiba’s Toughbook is.
The Toughbook according to Panasonic was designed with enterprise users in mind, so perhaps while it won’t exactly be thrown around, passing through many hands a day may result in some knocks and accidental drops during the entire day. Which company’s boss would be happy to replace, say a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 every other week? The Panasonic Toughbook is a 10.1-inch tablet running on Android’s Froyo 2.2 (although that may change to Honeycomb 3.0 upon release) with a high-brightness matte display for readability in direct sunlight and low light environments.
It will also come with a active stylus for use with point-of-sale systems or perhaps note-taking applications. Panasonic also said the Toughbook tablet will come with built-in GPS, and come in Wi-Fi and 3G/4G models. Interestingly it also features a “User” button at the bottom which may indicate that perhaps we will be able to store multiple profiles on it. No word on when exactly we will be seeing the device or its price, but keep your eyes peeled.
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.