Ice Cream Sandwich takes a bite out of Gingerbread, represents 15.9 percent of Android devices

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/ice-cream-sandwich-now-on16-percent-of-android-devices/

Two major updates later (three if you count the tablet-exclusive Honeycomb), and Gingerbread is finally starting to falter. According to Google's latest two week survey of devices accessing the Play store, Ice Cream Sandwich is on the rise, filling out 15.9-percent of the Android user base. That's a full five points ahead of Android 4.0's July score, and it's eating into the OS' other flavors: Gingerbread (Android 2.3) dropped by 3.4-percent, Froyo (Android 2.2) by 1.8 and Eclair (Android 2.1) by a meager half a percent. Google's latest confectionery update, Jelly Bean (Android 4.1), made an appearance as well, eking out a shy 0.8-percent of the market. Check out Google's collection of charts for yourself at the source link below or let us know where your devices falls in the comments.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Software

Ice Cream Sandwich takes a bite out of Gingerbread, represents 15.9 percent of Android devices originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/samsung-starts-mass-producing-4x-faster-mobile-flash-memory/

Samsung isn't content to leave fast NAND flash memory to traditional solid-state drives. Its Pro Class 1500 promises a big jolt to the performance of frequently pokey smartphone and tablet storage. By how much? That name is a clue -- it reaches 1,500 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) when writing data, which along with 3,500 IOPS data reads is about four times faster than any previous embedded flash chip Samsung has tested. In the real world, that leads to as much as 140MB/s when reading data and 50MB/s for writes. The speed comes after Samsung has thrown virtually every trick in the book at its new chips, including a dense 20-nanometer manufacturing process, quick toggle DDR 2.0 memory with its own controller and a new JEDEC memory standard with 200MB/s of bandwidth to spare. Samsung hasn't named customers for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB parts that are rolling out of the factories, although we'd do well to remember that a flourishing phone business doesn't guarantee that the only major customer is Samsung itself: even in the face of legal challenges, Samsung still has at least one noteworthy client that tends to snap up much of its flash supply.

Continue reading Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Storage

Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-pricing-spotted-in-hong-kong/

Lenovo floated the ThinkPad X1 Carbon past us in May without so much as a whisper of what the lightweight Ultrabook's price would be. The company doesn't mind shouting it out in what looks to be a Hong Kong back-to-school promo flyer, though. As long as the Newsmth.net post represents the final pricing, local residents can normally expect to pay about HK$12,880 ($1,660 US) for an X1 Carbon with a 1.7GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. That's quite the premium if you compare it directly to what we see in the US for a PC like the Samsung Series 9, although it's tricky to tell if prices will be comparable on the other side of the Pacific: there's no sales tax in Hong Kong, among other factors. Even if the price varies by the time of the US launch later this summer, students in the city are already getting a discount to HK$9,180 ($1,184) that suggests at least some wiggle room if competition among Ultrabooks grows especially fierce.

[Thanks, Sam]

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos teases G10 xs with first press shot, vows launch in three weeks

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/archos-teases-g10-xs-with-first-press-shot/

Previously, Archos has only ever given us a fleeting glimpse of the G10 xs tablets it's planning to launch this year -- FCC filings don't count. Cogs in the company's media machine are turning once again, as the company has posted a teaser press image on Facebook with confirmation that a launch is just three weeks away. It's difficult to read the tea leaves from the oblique shot we're given, although we already know that the Android 4.0 slate will support microSD, mini-HDMI and a connector for that Eee Pad Transformer-style keyboard dock. Our main questions now center on when the G10 xs pops up in the US as well as the degree of bang we'll get for our buck.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Archos teases G10 xs with first press shot, vows launch in three weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 03:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazing 'Fire Rainbow' Image Captured In South Florida

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-fire-rainbow-image-captured-in-south-florida-2012-8

So-called "fire rainbows" are neither on fire nor are they rainbows, but they sure are stunning.

They are technically known as iridescent clouds, a relatively rare phenomenon caused by clouds of water droplets of nearly uniform size, according to a release by NASA. These clouds diffract, or bend, light in a similar manner, which separates out light into different wavelengths, or colors.

That makes them similar to rainbow-colored glories, which are also formed by diffraction, and also produce an oscillating pattern of colors ranging from blue to green to red to purple and back to blue again.

Although iridescent clouds have rainbow-like colors, the way light is scattered to produce them is slightly different. Rainbows are formed by refraction and reflection. When light is refracted, it is bent by passing through mediums of different densities, such as water or a prism. Reflected light bounces off a surface at an angle equal to the angle it hit the surface at. Diffraction, though, involves light waves being scattered into a ring-like pattern.

As with other iridescent objects, like peacock feathers, the color changes depending upon one's position relative to the sun and the object.

Iridescence usually occurs in newly formed clouds. That appears to be the case here as well. According to the Weather Channel, these are pileus clouds caused by a fast-growing thunderstorm that shoved air into the upper atmosphere through a layer of moisture. This created a fog-like cloud that looks like a glowing dome atop the thunderstorm.

Iridescent clouds are not to be confused with circumhorizontal arcs, which form bands of color parallel to the horizon.

The phenomenon was captured in a photo taken on Tuesday (July 31) in the clouds over South Florida.

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