The U.S. Justice Department’s case against Apple Inc. began in court yesterday with both sides having presented their opening statements.

The Justice Department claims that ahead of the launch of the iPad and iBookstore back in 2010, the company conspired with publishers to raise e-book prices.

When confronted about the matter in an interview at the D11 Conference last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple rejected the settlement offer because it would have had to admit it did something wrong.

“We’re not going to sign something that says we did something that we didn’t do, so we’re going to fight,” he says.

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Samsung is on course to drop the 7 inch tablet for good, and replace it with an 8 inch variant. We first saw this with the release of the Galaxy Note 8.0, and now within their Galaxy Tab line as well.

The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, very much like its larger brother, the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, is a mid-range device. That being said, it does have a better camera and more RAM. Interestingly, the resolution of the screen is exactly the same as the 10.1 inch variant, meaning that it will have a much sharper pixel density. This device will replace the current Galaxy Tab 3 7-inch device. (more…)

Asus has launched its 7-inch Android Fonepad tablet in South Africa.

Running Android 4.1 and powered by a 1.2Ghz Intel Atom processor the Fonepad, that doubles as a phone – all 7-inches of it –  also features a microSD card reader, 1.2 megapixel front facing camera and 3 megapixel rear-facing camera available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models.

Videsha Proothveerajh, Territory Manager for South and Sub-Saharan Africa in Intel Corporation said that ”Extending our long history of collaboration, including most recently on the Ultrabook and Intel-based tablets, we are very excited to be partnering with Asus again.”

The Asus Fonepad is available now for a recommended retail price starting at R3499.

Source: iAfrica

Sony has launched the new Xperia Tablet Z in South Africa at an event in Cape Town.

The Xperia Tablet Z, that Sony is calling “the slimmest 10.1-inch LTE tablet available” follows the launch of the Xperia Z smartphone and similarly is powered by a 1.5Ghz quad core processor and is water resistant, capable of being kept under up to 1 metre of water for 30 minutes.

Sony has confirmed that the tablet will  launch with Android 4.1 followed by an upgrade to Android 4.2.

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In a new advertisement released for Windows 8,  titled Windows 8: Less talking, more doing, Microsoft is taking a fresh dig at the Apple iPad’s OS and pricing using its very own Siri.

In the advert, Siri acknowledges it’s inability to complete various tasks while the the Microsoft ASUS VivoTab Smart tablet with Windows 8, does so with ease using Powerpoint and side-by-side apps with Live Tiles.

Surrendering to Windows 8, Siri suggests playing chopsticks, in a parody of the iPad Mini Piano advertisement released in November 2012,

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Amazon.com leaked the world’s first small-screen Windows 8 tablet briefly before removing it from its website.

As a result of the leak, Amazon revealed a number of specs about the Acer Iconia  W3-810 tablet, rumours of which first surfaced in late April.

We now know that the 8.1-inch tablet offers a dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, a 1280 x 800 display, about 8 hours of battery life, 32GB of storage, 2-megapixel front and rear cameras and a micro USB 2.0 port.

Its brief appearance revealed a price of $379.99.

Source: PC World

A product range that many would have laughed off a few years ago is now a reality and against all expectations, the phablet phone (for those not up to date with silly tech jargon, a phablet is a phone larger than 5 inches and smaller than 7 inches) does have quite a large market as seen with the immensely popular Samsung Galaxy Note range.

Citing unnamed sources, the Financial Times reports that Nokia may be working on its own phablet device. Details are scarce though, but the sources suggest that the rumoured device will be Nokia’s flagship device for 2013. (more…)

Even though the Nexus 7 has almost been around for a year, a revamped version was released more recently and we put it through its paces. At such a low price point, the Nexus 7 is a premium device for very little money. We think it’s the best 7-inch Android tablet by a country mile, but how does it compare to something like the iPad Mini? Check out our video review below. (more…)