Anything that is in RED will take you to the product page to learn more information!
This week Apple announced the next iPhone, Amazon has found
a new Fire, and I look into the beta of the new Xbox Dashboard.
Big
news! The new iPhone was announced by Apple yesterday. The iPhone 5 has all the features I’ve talked
about for the last few weeks, except NFC.
The new phone has a 4-inch screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It has a glass and aluminum body at 7.6mm
thick, which is 18% thinner than the iPhone 4S.
You can
now have five rows of Apps on the Home screen, rather than four. Touch sensors are now built into the screen,
rather than a sensor under the display.
It now has 4G LTE for AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint! It has a new A6
graphics chip, which is twice as fast as the A5X chip.
You
will get 8 hours of 3G talk time, LTE browsing, and 3G browsing time. There is 40 hours for music and 225 hours of
standby time. The camera has a new
low-light setting for two more f-stops and Panorama mode. You can take photos while recording video,
like the HTC One X. The front camera is
now a FaceTime 720p HD camera and has moved above the ear speaker, rather than
next to it.
There
is a new “Lightning” dock connector. It
is now an 8-pin connector, not 30-pin. It can be plugged into the phone with
either side of the connector, making it easy to plug it into the phone. There is also an adapter for 30-pin to 8-pin
which costs $29.
The
phone will come in white with a silver back and black with a slate back. You can pick up the 16GB version for $199,
32GB for $299, or 64GB for $399. You can preorder September 14th and
it will release September 21st.
The iPhone 4 is now free and the 16GB iPhone 4S is $99. iOS 6 will
release September 19th.
The 7th
generation iPod Nano is here. It is 5.4mm thick, which is 40% thinner than the
last generation. It is back to being
long like the originals, but it has a 2.5-inch touch screen. It comes in seven colors and has a FM
tuner. It will also have Bluetooth with
30 hours of music playback. 16GB will
cost you $149. You can pre-order on September 14th and will release
in October.
The new
iPod Touch 5th generation has with the same size screen as the
iPhone 5 and is 6.1mm thick. This also
has the new Lightning port. It has the
A5 chip found in the iPhone 4. You will
get 40 hours of music and 8 hours of video playback. There is a hidden button on the backside
called “iPod Touch Loop”, which lets you attach a wrist strap.
The
back camera is 5-megapixels with a FaceTime HD front facing camera. The new
Touch now gets Siri! It comes in silver,
black, blue, yellow, and red. A 16GB
version will cost $199, 32GB $299, and 64GB for $399 and be available in
October but you can pre-order on September 14th.
The rumored
redesign of the earbuds was true! Apple revealed the EarPods. They are available today and are packed in
with all these new devices. They are supposed
to be more comfortable and sound better.
Amazon revealed two new Kindle
Fires. The Kindle Fire HD comes in a 7-inch body with Android 4.0 in 16GB and
32GB storage for $199 and $249 respectively.
The other tablet, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 comes with better screen
resolution, a 8.9-inch screen, and the ability to have 4G. A normal 8.9 16GB
will cost $299 while a 32GB will cost $369.
The 8.9-inch 4G 32GB will cost $499 and a 64GB version will cost $599.
I would
like to end this article by taking about the new beta for Xbox 360’s Dashboard update. I was lucky enough to be one of the beta
testers for Microsoft. The beta comes
with a few new additions, as well as apps.
On the
home screen, there is now a new row of content, for easier access. There is a feature called “Pins” where you
can pick videos, games, demos, or apps to launch from the Home screen.
The big
new App that is usable is Internet Explorer!
This thing is awesome! I love using this App more than I like using IE
on a PC. It was easy to save webpages,
zoom, scroll, and search. I’m not sure
if there is a copy & paste action yet.
IE was flash enabled, but I did not try to play any flash based
games. I will say that I had crashing
issues while using IE, but I’m not sure if that is because it was in beta or
because I did not have a good connection at that time.
Overall,
this is not a huge improvement over the last few updates, but the addition of
IE is significant. Xbox SmartGlass was
not part of the beta, so I was not able to test it. I’m hoping that it will be available to test
before it is launched in November.
Well,
that’s it for this week Spectators, join us next week for another exciting
issue. The question for this week is, “Would
you rather buy a new iPod Touch or the iPhone 5?” Send your responses to smsetser@valdosta.edu or post them at
www.vsuspectech.blogspot.com
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