Otaku Gadgets

Here we are once again, with a round up of all that is hot in tech in the past few days. A lot has been happening as usual with the year end approaching. The anticipation for the new year is building with so many different companies readying their devices for launches through the first two quarters of 2010. Of course, not all of them are talking about it but the leaks do that work for them, whether they like it or not. So get over to the other side and get updated.

Nvidia ION 2 Confirmed, Not A Figment Of Tech Imagination

NVIDIA has fially confirmed that the ION 2 exists, only they call it the “next generation ION”. They confirmed its existence to Fudzilla a few days back during a conference call.

NVIDIA’s original plan had apparently been to start selling ION 2 by the end of this year. But with the original ION still pretty fresh on the market, manufacturers requested the company to hold off releasing the new version till they have recouped their own investments. So even the CES 2010 date (that was rumored earlier) has been delayed and the new date is some time around Q2 2010. However, CES 2010 will not be completely ION-free. It will have a few devices to showcase the ION’s power.

The new ION will have more than 5 hours of battery life and 5-10 times faster graphics performance as compared to what’s available from Intel’s Pinetrail — according to the company. [read]

Asus’ Latest Netbooks With Pinetrail Go Official

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The Asus Eee PC 1005P and the 1005PE netbooks were leaked quite some time back as the first Asus netbooks to be powered by the Pinetrail platform. Of course, it is not like they were not going to make netbooks with Intel’s new chips. The netbooks have now gotten official shots and you can ogle them as much as you want.

They are both 10.1inch netbooks and come with the new Atom N450 processor from Intel and GMA 3150 graphics. The 1005P comes with 160GB storage and the 1005PE comes with 250GB storage. They both come with WiFi b/g and a 6-cell lithium-ion battery. RAM is standard netbook fare at 1GB. The 1005P costs about $395 and the 1005PE costs about $439. [read]

New Phones from Palm, Motorola and LG Leaked

It seems like Verizon is expecting a whole new roster of phones some time pretty soon. If everything about this is true, then the carrier will receive one new phone for each of three major mobile OS’ — WebOS, Android and Windows. Of course, I won’t blame you if you are only interested in the Android device because frankly, I do not see the WebOS or Windows making a splash right now.

Palm will apparently be releasing a new model called the Palm Pre Plus. It could possibly have some extra features that will differentiate it from the original Palm Pre but why Palm would want to cannibalize its own sales and upset a partner in the process, I don’t know.

Then there is the Motorola Devour A555. They are certainly keeping the ‘scary’ feel of their phones alive. It is is supposed to be the “little brother” of the Droid and is also believe to be the Calgary. It also has the MOTOBLUR interface to top off the insult (of being a limited, wannabe DROID phone). So it is basically a phone that no one will want.

The LG VS750 is a Windows Mobile phone (WinMo 6.5). This is Verizon’s first LG phone. It will apparently support both GSM and CDMA networks and hence be a world phone. I can see this being pushed at business users. [read]

Google’s Nexus One Is Now Confirmed, About Time Too

Because the leaks made it pretty certain that the Google Nexus One phone was anything but a figment of Arrington’s imagination. There have been a lot of hands on pics and some videos (which are no longer available) that show the phone in action. So if you are planning to buy a super phone, hold on for a bit longer.

New reports have claimed that the phone only support’s T-Mobile’s 3G and hence you will be limited to EDGE on AT&T’s network. At least this way you will get more coverage on AT&T!

Nexus One still is an unlocked phone but I guess the US 3G spectrums are just too haywire for one phone to support all networks. [read]

DoCoMo Prepares For LTE

Whilst the rest of the world is still struggling with 3G connectivity, DoCoMo has started its operations to start LTE service by this time next year. They are currently in the process of upgrading and changing their base stations to support the new service.

LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and it is the new standard that is basically 3G on steroids. It is ‘technically’ not 4G but it gives speeds that are unimaginable on current 3G services. [read]

Nook Updates to 1.1, Nothing Ground Breaking

We’ve all been talking about the Nook having a lot of potential in the right hands and have been expecting the update to fix issues. Well, the update is here and users have not reported anything significant so far. Even if it is all under the hood, they should’ve at least fixed the bugs that had been uncovered earlier. There have been no reports of such things happening, although there are scattered reports of better performance. If you have a Nook and have updated it, we would love to hear from you. Tell us about your experience, what do you think? [read]

XPERIA X10 On  the FCC, Again

Sony Ericsson’s latest and greatest phone — the XPERIA X10 (also their fist ever Android phone) — has appeared on the FCC again. Only this time, the phone has 3G bands that match those used by AT&T. So it looks like another great phone is about to go into the clutches of AT&T. Although Sony Ericsson unveiled the phone (in order to put down the wild speculations probably) some time back, they are still unclear about the exact dates. Their time frame has been early 2010 but whether or not they will make it is a big question. Also, the FCC unit had no brading on it and that has started another round speculations, which I won’t join, yet. [read]