IBLOG SPACE

Unfortunately for rich gamers everywhere, Razer’s Blade laptop isn’t available for general sale yet. But they’re showing off the insane hardware at CES, and we couldn’t resist swinging by for a look at that integrated video touchscreen. The customizable screen adjusts for supported games, and works as a secondary display or trackpad for other uses. Razer’s solid build and restrained bling styling are present in all aspects of the Blade – you might mistake it for an uper-class business notebook when closed. Open it up and its gaming intentions become clear, with backlit keys, macros and of course the additional module. Above the touchscreen are ten OLED keys that adjust based on the game or function of the touchpad, and you can manually assign keys or macros for games without official support. The laptop itself is big and heavy, as you’d expect. It’s got an appropriately expensive feel with tough plastica all around, and Razer accents where you’d expect the normal HP or Dell logos t

Home automation is something plenty of geeks dream about, but has a reputation for being tricky and expensive to implement; now Belkin hopes to address both of those concerns with its new WeMo standard. Using a combination of a WiFi-enabled AC plug adapter – which can be remotely turned on or off – and a WiFi-enabled motion sensor, along with a free iPhone and iPad app, WeMo promises to make setting up a smart home headache-free. The Home Control Switch allows you to plug in a lamp or other mains gizmo and then turn it on both remotely, via the app, or locally, via a button on the box itself. Alternatively, you can have it trigger automatically, when the Motion Sensor spots movement, either turning lights or other devices on when you walk into range, or off when you leave the room. Belkin only has these two devices so far, but promises that a remote garage door opener, door lock, lighting controls and a baby monitor – with streaming audio – are in the pipeline. The company has als

Unlike the Huawei Ascend P LTE, the Ascend P1 doesn’t sport 4G LTE capabilities or an extended screen absent of softkeys. However, the 4.3″ screen on the P1 is truly dedicated to your tasks. Even though it doesn’t rock LTE, it is capable of HSPA+ speeds of up to 21Mbps – which is still good. Both new Ascend models were running the same version of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and had the same bugs. It lagged at times, and you could really tell it wasn’t fit to ship quite yet. The P1 is very thin at 7.69mm and has a full-body plastic casing. It was no where near the build quality of the P LTE. Other specs include a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage, and a microSD slot capable of holding 64GB. It also has an 8MP rear camera and dual LED flash. No front facing camera included. And unlike the P LTE’s 2000mAh battery, this phone comes with a 1650mAh. For such a decently sized screen, a larger battery would have been expected.

Polaroid has turned to Android for its latest digicam, the SC1630 Smart Camera, a 16-megapixel shooter with integrated WiFi for uploading shots immediately to Flickr, Facebook and other online galleries. More camera that happens to run Android than a phoneless Android handset, despite appearances to the contrary, the SC1630 has a 3x optical zoom, 3.2-inch touchscreen and onboard image editing tools. The camera weighs 5oz and offers 18 different scene modes, along with automatic face and smile detection. Geo-tagging can mark each image with information on where it was taken, and there are cropping, red-eye removal, resizing and color correction tools to tweak pictures before they’re uploaded. WiFi and Bluetooth are standard, and cellular – data-only – connectivity is an option. Unlike most cameras, though, the SC1630 offers access to the Android Market and all the apps there, which means you can can play games and use other third-party software in-between shots. The rechargeable bat

The gaming world sat up and took notice when Razer released its Blade gaming laptop with a built-in video touchpad and assignable buttons. Now they’re showing off a more conservative desktop keyboard with the same features, and themed it for the ultra-popular Star Wars: The Old Republic massively multiplayer online game. We checked out Razer’s CES booth for a quick demonstration. The video touchscreen hangs out on the right side of the keyboard, where the number pad would normally be. The low-resolution screen is a laptop-style touchpad when not in active use, with a series of ten buttons on top with tiny OLEDs embedded in them. The buttons change depending upon which app you’re using on the keyboard at the time – for example, in the browser or YouTube app, you get the basic back/forward/reload navigation buttons. The profiles can be changed for each game or application. The standard Razer bells and whistles apply to the rest of the keyboard, including backlit keys with comfy switc

We were here at the Huawei booth and noticed the latest version of their Ascend line of phones. The Ascend P LTE looks strikingly similar to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and even runs an untouched version of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The OS was still pretty buggy, but it was definitely not a letdown. This early in the game, it’s expected the OS would have these bugs. The main innovation here is expanding the screen size by leaving out the capacitive buttons (again, like the Galaxy Nexus). It has a plastic battery cover, but trimmed in rubber. It definitely makes the phone feel like it won’t slip out of your hand. This version of the Ascend has LTE built in, but no word on which carrier it might be coming to. We know it won’t launch on Verizon, because CDMA bands are completely absent – so AT&T seems like the logical choice in the US. Detailed specifications include a 4.3″ qHD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 960×540, 1.5GHz dual-core MSM8960 processor, 1GB RAM, 4

Imagination Technologies has announced its PowerVR G6200 and G6400 CPU IP cores, which are the first in its PowerVR Series6 GPU core family. The PowerVR Series6 has set a new benchmark for high performance with ultra-low power GPU cores that are scalable from mobile and tablet markets to high-end gaming and computing. The new IP cores are based on the PowerVR Rogue architecture that uses a scalable number of compute clusters. These compute clusters are arrays of programmable computing elements designed for high performance and power efficiency and minimal bandwidth requirements. The first two PowerVR Series6 cores are the G6200 with two compute clusters and the G6400 with four clusters. The PowerVR Series 6 GPU cores promise 20 times better performance than current generation GPU cores and 5 times the efficiency. Performance is said to exceed 100gigaFLOPS and even reaches the teraFLOPS range. There are already eights licensees for the PowerVR Series 6 cores, including ST-Ericsson a

ViewSonic has announced a new Ice Cream Sandwich tablet, the ViewPad E70, a 7-inch budget slate running Android 4.0 on a 1GHz processor. Packing 4GB of storage – plus a microSD card slot – and an HDMI output, the ViewPad E70 also has a front-facing camera and WiFi connectivity. As you might have guessed, the ViewPad E70 is most definitely a case of price leading functionality, with ViewSonic shaving away at the spec sheet in order to hit the expected $169.99 price tag. The single-core processor is the start of that, but we’ll also be looking closely at whether important things like the display are usable, or if the E70 is just another crap tablet. The ViewPad E70 will arrive sometime in late Q1 2012. We’re hunting hands-on with the slate now, and will update later when we know more.

If you need a little more enterprise-friendly functionality in your broadband mobile router, Seagate and Verizon have a treat for you. Their new combination storage/mobile access device allows for sharing both a Verizon LTE mobile connection and files across the built-in hard drive. The 500GB conventional drive acts as a standard shared drive/file server for up to three active users, just like Seagate’s similar WiFi-only FreeAgent product available today. It comes with a battery as well, so untethered access should be god for a few hours, though excessive use of the hard drive will lower this. The unit is being developed for corporate customers at the moment, with consumers coming some time after initial release. To that end, the drive also includes remote server access built-in t its software. Connect to your FTP site, and files can be automatically downloaded to the drive’s on board storage. To keep things interesting while you’re waiting for your flight, it connects naively with

Samsung has already beat Nokia in terms of revenue, but now the South Korean company believes it will overtake the Finnish group in total shipments as well. Speaking to reporters in Las Vegas, Samsung CEO Choi Gee Sung revealed that the company had surpassed Nokia in revenue in the latest reported quarter and is confident it will be able to top Nokia in shipments, becoming the world’s largest cellphone maker in 2012. Nokia had dominated the mobile phone market for over a decade, but the company has been struggling when it comes to smartphones with the surge of Android and iOS. Nokia’s smartphone sales lost to Apple in the second quarter of 2011 and now the company’s betting on its partnership with Microsoft to launch new Windows Phone devices. According to Reuters, Nokia expected to sell 418 million mobile phones in 2011 while Samsung expected 320 million. This year that gap has closed to 388 million for Nokia and 359 million for Samsung. Although analysts believe that Samsung coul

JVC has outed a bevy of new in-car head units, ranging from double-din touchscreen multimedia receivers through to motorized entertainment/multimedia systems, at CES 2012 today. Both the KW-AV multimedia range and KW-NT navigation range offer large LCD displays, iPhone multimedia support and, optionally, HD Radio access. Meanwhile, JVC has also added Bluetooth smartphone support with the new JVC KS-BTA100 module, as well as detailed incoming support for apps in its head units. JVC Multimedia units: KW-AV50 ($379.95; available now) – Detachable 6.1-inch QVGA touchscreen, SiriusXM read and iPhone/iPod connection support. Powered USB port plus 4.0V line and subwoofer pre-output level; USB PMP/drive media playback of WAV/MP3/WMA files. 50W x 4 plus 3 pre-out terminals. KW-AV60 ($429.95; January) – DVD/CD/USB receiver with detachable 6.1-inch WVGA display. App link mode support, plus Satellite and HD Radio ready; same WAV/MP3/WMA compatibility and connectivity. KW-ADV64BT ($489.95;