android
Amazon’s Budget Friendly Tablets?
So remember about a week ago we mentioned that there were some hints of Amazon coming up with their own range of tablets, partly in thanks to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos who dropped the not-too-subtle hints. Well the code name of these tablets are “Coyote” and “Hollywood” and according to information the Coyote will be a 7-inch tablet powered by the Nvidia Tegra-2 processor, while the Hollywood will be among the first devices on the market to feature Nvidia’s quad-core “Kal-El” chipset.
Take note that these are not just souped up Kindles but rather full fledged Android tablets that will allow users to read books, watch movies, listen to music, run applications and much more. The 7-inch version should run about $349.99, with the 10-inch version selling with a $449 price tag. Rather competitive pricing considering the other Android tablets in the market are going for about $500-600 these days. Of course we’re not sure if the prices rumored are just for the WiFi only models or the 3G models, but even at an entry level, for $350 for the 7-inch model seems to be very budget friendly.
Availability is not known at this point and the pricing is still a rumor but if it turns out to be true, the rest of the tablets on the market better watch out. Of course prices may be dropping as we reported earlier thanks to ASUS’s Eee Pad Transformer’s competitive pricing so maybe Amazon is going to be following this trend.
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 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.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?