Nicholas Kolakowski

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Samsung will offer the Galaxy Tab 8.9 in two flavors: 16GB and 32GB. It will be WiFi-only, with a metallic-gray backing, and will run Android 3.1 (“Honeycomb”). Side-by-Side View The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 (top) alongside the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (bottom): The Tab 8.9 feels lighter than its larger brother, and […]

Amazon’s Kindle Fire seems poised to make a significant play in the tablet market, where its competitors range from Apple’s iPad to the growing legions of Google Android tablets. The Kindle Fire will retail for $199.99, significantly undercutting the sticker price for virtually all the tablets currently on the market. It will link into Amazon’s […]

Bezos During a Sept. 28 presentation in New York City, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos positioned the Kindle Fire as a device capable of consolidating Amazons various multimedia and cloud services onto a single piece of hardware. Kindle Sales Before Bezos launched into the Kindle Fire part of his presentation, he offered a graph showing consumer […]

Microsoft has entered into a cross-licensing agreement with Samsung, in which the latter agrees to pay royalties for its Android tablets and smartphones. Financial terms were undisclosed. A Microsoft-issued press release indicated that Samsung would also collaborate on development and marketing for Windows Phone. Over the past several quarters, Microsoft has engaged in an aggressive […]

Apple seems ready to launch its next smartphone, sending to media an invite for an Oct. 4 event. “Let’s talk iPhone,” it reads, below a calendar icon for that date, a clock icon set to 10 a.m., a phone icon and a map icon indicating Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Increasing chatter over […]

Microsoft will offer the ability to sign into Windows 8 with a Windows Live ID, a move that places the next-generation operating system in heightened competition with both Google Android and Apple’s upcoming iCloud. According to a Sept. 26 posting on the “Building Windows 8” blog, doing so will “ensure that each PC user has […]

Microsoft’s rollout of its long-awaited Windows Phone “Mango” update (also known as Windows Phone 7.5) has begun, but some smartphone owners may need to wait several weeks before it arrives on their device. Microsoft hopes that Mango’s hundreds of tweaks and new features will draw more attention from consumers, and give its hardware partners-including Nokia-a […]

Samsung is doubling down on its Galaxy devices, with the announcement that its Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet will ship Oct. 2. Over the past year, the company has affixed the “Galaxy” brand to a growing number of smartphones and tablets, in a bid to offer an alternative ecosystem to Apple’s iOS. The newest Galaxy Tab, […]

Amazon is widely expected to unveil its long-rumored tablet Sept. 28 at a New York City event. According to an early September posting by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, who had an opportunity to play with an early version of the tablet, Amazon’s device will feature a custom Android interface (complete with a tabbed Android Webkit browser […]

Microsoft is detailing some of its security procedures for Windows 8. Key to Windows 8’s “platform integrity architecture” is its Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), a set of specifications for how the operating system communicates with platform firmware during the boot-up process. UEFI features a firmware validation process known as “secure boot,” which dictates how […]

Samsung has unveiled its first smartphone preloaded with the Windows Phone “Mango” update: The Omnia W, which features a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic LED) display in addition to a 1.4GHz processor. Samsung has included two productivity applications with the device: Samsung AllShare, which apparently facilitates content transfer between the device and DLNA-certified (Digital Living […]

Touch-Centric The new BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860 embrace the current smartphone trend of a touch screen sans physical keyboard, a significant departure from the “traditional” BlackBerry model of physical QWERTY keyboard paired to a smaller screen.??í Hardware The Torch offers a 3.7-inch touch screen (which RIM claims on its Website is “the largest on […]