Clearly the next big battle in the tech world is TV – not in terms of ever growing screen sizes and resolutions, but rather the software and services that power it. With rumours circling about Apple’s apparent entry into the TV market, many manufacturers are taking a wait and see approach. Not Lenovo though – they decided they will build there first TV as well, and it will be powered by Android. Lenovo is planning to release their first TV in China at first, but international markets will get it later. It should be noted that this TV will not ship with Google TV. Instead it will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich, with Lenovo’s own custom skin, and it will pack some serious processing power. Here are some of the specs:

• Snapdragon processor running at  a healthy 1.5 GHz.
• Two screen sizes – 42 and 50 inch. Both LED, Full HD.
• Built in Webcam with 5 megapixel resolution – great for Skype sessions.
• 8GB of built in storage, which is expandable by SD card.
• The remote control will include a touchpad, and it will recognize your voice with a built in microphone.

The TV will still ship with standard HDMI inputs, so you can still connect your set-top boxes. Lenovo must still announce their streaming services that combine with this TV – which makes us think this was rushed to market as an answer to that apparent Apple threat. Which we are not to certain about either… The idea that Apple would move into a highly commoditzed market like TV manufacturing is still difficult to comprehend, but their advantage will lie in the ecosystem that iTunes will provide. But if a Apple Cinema Display costs $1000, we wonder if Apple can crack the TV market where profit margins are lower than ever.

So what is new? The navigation has been simplified with 4 major buttons – Home, Connect, Discover and Me. If you are already a Twitter user these buttons are not a major change from the previous version, but it does contain a few great enhancements. For example “connect” (which has the familiar @ reply symbol) now also houses things like people who retweet you and new followers, not just mentions of your name as in the past. If you only want to see your mentions, there is still a button for that under Connect.

Under the Discover button you will spot familiar things like Trends, but with a lot more descriptive content. Instead of just a list of trending words, you will see a pretty good description or image of the trending topic. A whole lot easier than trying to decipher some trending topics. Under the Me button your profile page also has a brand new design, also displaying your interests, lists etc a lot more prominently on the left.

So what do we not like? It looks like Twitter is try to discourage direct messages to other users. DMs have been moved a layer deeper into the interface. But Direct Messaging has always been something of a niche function, with many new users not understanding the whole “the person you contact has to follow you” idea. But still – direct messaging has its place, and has in many cases replaced something like SMS.

If images dont seem to tell the whole story – here is pretty great video that was put together by the Twitter folks:

Overall these new changes will make Twitter a lot more understandable to new users, while also giving experienced users great new features. Most impressively, Twitter has managed to roll out the new web site and mobile apps all at once. It is pretty clear to see how important Twitter views mobile, and it is great indication to see how important social networks view their mobile users.

If you do not have access to the new Twitter web interface yet, just sign into your profile from any Android or iPhone that is running the latest version of Twitter. Tweetdeck has also been updated.

One of the major criticisms of Android phones of late is the apparent lack of official updates that land on the devices. Where some other operating systems keep on upgrading existing phones even a few years after production, Android users in many cases will not get any updates at all. There is a variety of reasons for that – one of the major reasons being customized interfaces or skins that need a lot of work from the manufacturers to be rewritten for new software versions. Luckily Google brings out one reference device, called the “Nexus” about once a year with the launch of major operating system upgrades, and these phone typically get new software updates before any manufacturer.

The latest phone to have the Nexus moniker is Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus – a phone that keeps a pure Android interface free of any skins, and more significantly, the first phone to officially ship with Android 4.0, called Ice Cream Sandwich. If the whole iPhone hype is not for you, the Galaxy Nexus makes a very compelling argument.

“Samsung and Google have closely collaborated to push the mobile experience forward. We are pleased to deliver the best and latest Android smartphone experience for customers with GALAXY Nexus. We will continue to move forward with the Android platform to provide the most compelling consumer experience in the mobile world,” says Paulo Ferreira, Head of Mobile Product and Business Solutions at Samsung.

“Ice Cream Sandwich demonstrates the Android platform’s continued innovation with this release which works on phones and tablets seamlessly (and everything in between). Features like Android Beam and Face Unlock show the innovative work our team is doing, and GALAXY Nexus showcases the power behind Ice Cream Sandwich,” said Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile for Google.

The first smartphone to feature Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich

Ice Cream Sandwich brings an entirely new look and feel to Android. It has a redesigned user interface with improved multi-tasking, notifications, Wi-Fi hotspot, NFC support and a full web browsing experience. GALAXY Nexus features software navigation buttons, a first for Android smartphones. The lock screen, home screen, phone app, and everything in between has been rethought and redesigned to make Android simple, beautiful, and useful.

Ice Cream Sandwich also features a new People app, which lets you, browse friends, family, and co-workers, see their photos in high-resolution, and check their latest status updates from Google+ and other social networks. GALAXY Nexus features a redesigned camera which introduces panorama mode, 1080p video capture, zero-shutter lag, and effects like silly faces and background replacement.

GALAXY Nexus is also connected to the cloud, keeping your email, contacts, and all other data synced across your devices. You have access to more than 350,000 apps and games from Android Market.

Ice Cream Sandwich introduces innovations such as Face Unlock which uses facial recognition to unlock your phone. Additionally, using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, Android Beam allows you to quickly share web pages, apps, and YouTube videos with your friends by simply tapping your phones together. Samsung and Google will work with local developers and solution providers to further enhance the application ecosystem locally to leverage the NFC functionality. You can even use fun effects while shooting video or video chatting with Google Talk.

Google Experience

GALAXY Nexus is designed to provide a “pure Google,” experience, and with it, you will be the first to receive software upgrades and new applications as they become available.

It also features a number of Google Mobile services, including: Android Market, Gmail, Google Maps 5.0 with 3D maps and turn-by-turn navigation, Google Earth, Movie Studio, YouTube, syncing with Google Calendar, and a redesigned Google+ app.

Best-in-class hardware meets the most advanced software

GALAXY Nexus is the first smartphone to feature a 4.65’’ display with a market-leading resolution of 1280×720, ensuring you can enjoy GALAXY Nexus’ immersive entertainment capabilities and fast web browsing.

Succeeding the original Contour Display of Nexus S, GALAXY Nexus comes with a rounded shape that fits perfectly within your palm or to your face for phone calling. Hyper-skin backing on the battery cover improves the ergonomic feel of the device and makes the phone slip-resistant. At just 8.94mm thick, with a minimal 4.29mm bezel, GALAXY Nexus provides superb portability alongside an expansive screen.

GALAXY Nexus also features an fast 1.2GHz dual core processor, ensuring you can take full advantage of GALAXY Nexus’ enhanced multitasking capabilities with ease, or enjoy the large, vivid display to its full capacity with high-definition gaming or video streaming. LTE or HSPA+ connectivity combined with a dual core processor delivers high-speed web browsing which ensures you always have the web at your fingertips, wherever you are.

GALAXY Nexus will be available in South Africa from early Q1 2012

RRP between R 6 999 – R7 299

Research In Motion today introduced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – the Company’s next-generation enterprise mobility solution and RIM’s entry into the multi-platform Mobile Device Management (MDM) marketplace. Building on years of leading enterprise mobility management solutions from RIM, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will simplify the management of smartphones and tablets running BlackBerry, Google Android and Apple iOS operating systems.

“We are pleased to introduce BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – RIM’s next generation enterprise mobility solution – to make it easier for our business and government customers to manage the diversity of devices in their operations today,” said Alan Panezic, Vice President, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together our industry-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology for BlackBerry devices with mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices, all managed from one web-based console. It provides the necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations.”

RIM is the leading provider of enterprise mobility solutions with over 90 percent of the Fortune 500 provisioning BlackBerry devices today. The enterprise market for smartphones and tablets continues to grow in both the company-provisioned and employee-owned (Bring Your Own Device or BYOD) categories. BYOD in particular has led to an increase in the diversity of mobile devices in use in the enterprise and new challenges for CIOs and IT departments as they struggle to manage and control wireless access to confidential company information on the corporate network. This has resulted in increased demand for mobile device management solutions.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together the market-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server (version 5.0.3) for BlackBerry smartphones; new management capabilities for BlackBerry PlayBook tablets built on BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology; and mobile device management for smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS operating systems.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will provide the following mobile device management capabilities for all supported mobile devices:

• ·         Asset management
• ·         Configuration  management
• ·         Security and policy definition and management
• ·         Secure and protect lost or stolen devices (remote lock, wipe)
• ·         User- and group-based administration
• ·         Multiple device per user capable
• ·         Application and software management
• ·         Connectivity management (Wi-Fi, VPN, certificate)
• ·         Centralized console
• ·         High scalability

BlackBerry smartphones will continue to benefit from the many advantages of the end-to-end BlackBerry solution including the same advanced IT management, security and control available with BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3, which is part of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion. These advanced features include BlackBerry Balance technology supporting the use of a single device for both work and personal purposes without compromising the organization’s need to secure, manage and control confidential information; over 500 IT policies; over-the-air app and software installation and management; high availability; and much more. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will also introduce new self-service functionality for employees to secure lost or stolen BlackBerry smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is currently in early beta testing with select enterprise customers. RIM is now accepting customer nominations for the closed beta program which will start in January, and general availability is expected in late March.

For more information, visit www.blackberry.com/mobilefusion.

Interested in a Android tablet? You might want to hold out a little. December cannot get here soon enough – the tablet world is about to be shaken up with some real processing power. You know that powerful quad core processor you might have in your PC? Well expect it in your tablet soon enough.

While sporting a quad core processor, the Asus Transformer Prime will a have thinner and lighter chassis than the iPad 2, while also using aluminium for the casing. See Samsung? It can be done.

Asus’s new Transformer Prime will now sport a Nvidia Tegra 3 chip which actually has 5 CPU cores and 12 GPU cores. Now that 5th core is the interesting one – it is a special low voltage core which is only used when the device is idle. During that time the 4 bigger cores are switched off, so you can expect great battery life. In terms of memory you are looking at 1GB, which is pretty run of the mill for Android Tablets now. There is also a 8 megapixel rear camera and a 1.2 megapixel front camera. But that rear camera will have a iPhone 4s-matching f2.4 aperture lens. The 10.1 inch screen should be decent as well. Using an IPS panel, viewing angles should be great with the 1280×800 resolution.

Asus says it will run Honeycomb 3.2 but will also be upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich. Specs and connectivity is pretty great – a MicroSD slot, Micro-HDMI can also be found. But the big news is with the optional keyboard and trackpad accessory that also contains an additional battery for up to 18 hours of unplugged productivity. You simply clip the Eee Pad Transformer Prime into it, and the tablet is changed into a very thin laptop. That dock also carries an additional USB port and SD card slot.

Best of all, the pricing seems to be good as well. At $500 for the 32GB model and $600 for the 64GB model, and a more powerful and thinner design, it might be the first Android tablet to give the iPad 2 a run for its money. We cannot wait to get our hands on this one…

If you want a more thorough explanation of the Nvidia Tegra 3, the folks at ZADroid did a great write-up.

(See our review of the iPad 2 here)

This Android Tablet means business...

The tablet market is in a peculiar situation right now – according to sales figures it is basically Apple’s iPad and then everyone else. This is however not because of a lack of choice. In fact, there is a multitude of Android tablets out there from a variety of manufacturers in all shapes and sizes. The danger with this situation is that the Android tablet market is becoming somewhat commoditized, and there is not really a lot of them out there that are truly unique.

So we have been looking forward to trying the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, which really does seem a bit different from the rest, and not *Just Another Android Tablet*. Yes, it is called the “Thinkpad Tablet” despite Lenovo making a variety of tablets on a number of operating systems. So why is this one different? First off, it carries the Thinkpad name, so it should have good performance and be built well. Right? And secondly, the Thinkpad Tablet has a decent stylus included (at least the one I reviewed) for handwriting recognition and notes. But we will get to that later.

Our current favourite Android tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (see our review here), but the Thinkpad might just take that crown. So how does it do?

Design and Build

This is the one area we expected the Thinkpad Tablet to shine – and it did not disappoint. While we have been partial to the aluminium design of the iPad 2, the Thinkpad Tablet does look like it will be able to take a few knocks. The casing is built from rubberized plastic similiar to the Thinkpad laptops we all know. The great thing about this type of plastic is that it provides superior grip, and it does not easily scuff up like the aluminium body of the iPad. It is indeed very solid – there is no amount of flex in the casing, and the included stylus feels decent as well. On the front there are a few physical buttons which is new on a Android tablet. This is quite welcome – we have not always been fans of Honeycomb’s eradication of buttons. They are adequately stiff in order to not press them by mistake.

The rear of the device is quite sparse. Just high quality plastic with a telltale “Thinkpad” logo. And the dot in that “i” glows red when the device is on. When the stylus is in its slot it has a bright red cap to draw your eye, and its easy enough to remove and replace. It also comes with a long string to attach to the Thinkpad body. Which I quickly removed.

What we did not expect however was the size of this tablet. While by no means big, it is quite a bit fatter than something like the Galaxy Tab 10.1. But then it must be pointed out that this tablet has a number of ports which the other Android tablets do not have. Most importantly, a full USB port, HDMI, full size SD card slot etc. The USB port can be used to access flash disks, something that not many tablets can do right now. Using the onboard USB File Copy app means you can quickly copy files between USB storage and on board storage.

But you know what? The extra size did not bother us in the least. Just like most Thinkpad machines, the little bit of extra heft does give a more substantial, quality feel to the tablet. Rather that than a plasticky super thin device.

Display and Touch (and Pen)

The 10.1 inch display is pretty great. Viewing angles are great, and the colours really pop due to a IPS LCD panel. Resolution is standard fare for Honeycomb tablets – 1280 by 800 pixels, and brightness is decent as well. Touch sensitivity works well, and the display reacts properly – while not quite on the same level as the iPad 2, the capacitative touch panel does its job. But this tablet is all about the stylus – while you might use touch predominantly, the stylus really does add some great functionality to the fairly generic tablet market. Reactivity and accuracy of the stylus is first rate, and it does feel very natural to write. While placing your hand on the device to write might cause the display to react, once you start writing, additional touches seem to be ignored well enough. Too bad that the stylus seems to be let down by the software stack – but we will get there.

Innards, Battery Life

The Thinkpad Tablet runs on a dual core 1GHz processor based on the Nvidia Tegra 2 system on a chip. Despite carrying the Nvidia name, performance did not really blow us away. While it can be blamed on the software, the occasional dropped frames in everyday operation made us wonder whether this Thinkpad Tablet was perhaps a little underpowered. But then again a dual core 1GHz is nothing to sneeze at, so the issues might be with software implementation. If you have used a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (not the 10.1v), expect similiar performance. Inside the Thinkpad Tablet also has 1GB of RAM, and our test unit had 32GB of storage.

Battery life was good – while not quite 10+ hours like the iPad, you can reasonably expect around 7 to 8 hours. But that brings us to something we also like about the Thinkpad Tablet – this device can be charged using a standard Micro-USB plug connected to your laptop’s USB port. This is a much better implementation than Samsung’s fake-iPod dock connector (Samsung we will keep berating you about this). You are also much more likely to get a Micro USB cable somewhere in a pinch. Good decision Lenovo.

Camera

This is a tablet, so you should not care too much about the cameras on board. It is not meant to replace your phone camera. But the Thinkpad Tablet’s cameras really just proves that tablet’s cameras are not decent. The colours are dull, and the images just are not decent. Everything had a look like the lens is smudged. In bright sunlight images looked fine however. Personally I will not use the 5 megapixel camera for anything more than the occasional whiteboard pics in a meeting. Video recording was first rate – the 720p resolution makes for some great videos.

The front camera works well enough with a 2 megapixel resolution. They looked better than the iPad 2 front camera images, but once again this camera will be primarily used for video conferencing. (See our review of the iPad 2 here)

Honeycomb / Software

And here we get to the important part. I am not going to dive into a whole Android vs iPad debate, so I will just compare the Thinkpad Tablet to other Android tablets. Overall there is not a lot wrong with it, but if you do not like Android tablets, the Thinkpad Tablet will not change your mind. If you are a fan of Honeycomb, you ought to find the Thinkpad Tablet a joy to use. Lenovo did not mess around too much with it – the skin is not too influential, and they do supply a few widgets which seem to make little sense. The most ridiculous being the “Lenovo Launch Zone” which takes up way to much space on the home screen. It provides access to 4 very important functions: Email, Read, Listen and Watch. Keep in mind this a “professional grade tablet” meant for business users… There is also a quick link to settings (which can also just be done with the actual Honeycomb supplied settings button on the bottom right). Launch Zone is pretty easy to remove however, which is good. There are also some changes to the Task Manager which uses a carousel-like wheel instead of the standard Honeycomb method.

On board there is some extra software like a trial of Mcafee Mobile Security Software and Documents to Go which seems to go with the intended audience. You will also find the Note Taking app which works works remarkably well. While very slow on launch for some reason, the handwriting recognition really is first rate. It recognized about 95% of what we threw at it – only truly horrible scribes were rejected. This I suspect might be the best reason to get the Thinkpad Tablet. If you like using your Windows tablet with OneNote just for the handwriting recognition, this might be the only tablet for you.

Lenovo also throws in its own appstore (in addition to the Google Marketplace) and a few oddities like the SocialTouch app.

But this brings us to our only major problem with the Thinkpad tablet. For quite some time, “Thinkpad” has been one of the most respected technology brandnames out there. It is synomous with no compromise, reliable, business class portable solutions. This means you expect something bearing the Thinkpad name to keep to that credibility it is supposed to carry. And this is where the Thinkpad Tablet fails. Why on earth would Lenovo ship a “professional class” tablet with nonsense like Angry Birds and a whole stack of silly card games? Sure, some apps fit the profile, like Documents and Citrix Receiver, but why would I want card games, “PokeTalk” and NetFlix preinstalled on a Thinkpad device? And sure, some business users might want some time off – but rather give them the option to go download that themselves.

It almost feels as if there was a lack of cohesiveness with this device – not with the hardware, but with the software bundle. It is as if the hardware and software guys did not sit in the same strategy session. For example: the first time you launch the Lenovo Appstore, it refuses to launch, because the app is “untrusted”. It tells you it needs to be set up to run untrusted apps, and no, there is no explanation how to do this. Now this is nothing new for Android techies out there, but keep in mind the intended audience of the device. So in order to download apps from the official device’s appstore, you first have to set the the device in an unsecure mode. Not great in my opinion.

Final Points

There is a number of Android tablets on the market, and certain manufacturers go out and flood it with devices of all shapes and sizes. The Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet is a comparative breath of fresh air due to first class build quality and stylus based handwriting recognition. When held side by side with our previous favourite Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, one can easily see that not everything in the tablet world comes down to being light and thin. A little bit of extra weight is a great trade off for a device with this level of build quality.

Unfortunately we were let down by the software side of things. While relatively simple in terms of a customized skin, Lenovo’s strange choice of included software makes us really wonder if the Thinkpad brandname is not somewhat diluted with a lack of focus. But at the end of the day you are free to remove and install whatever apps you want, so it might not be as bad as I make it out to be.

Overall the Thinkpad Tablet is blessed with first rate hardware and brilliant connectivity options. Despite some strange software choices,  this is our new favourite Android tablet.

Rating:

Build: 9.5/10

Display: 8/10

Performance: 7/10

Connectivity: 10/10

Software: 6/10

Overall: 7.5/10

Pros: Great build quality, Excellent handwriting recognition. Great connectivity options.

Cons: Poor choice of included software.

Current Pricing in SA is still vague, but expect pricing higher than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. But it is also a lot more tablet…

South Africa was lucky enough to be amongst the first countries to get the new Samsung Galaxy Note device, and they put a great amount of fanfare behind it’s launch. So we headed through to Sandton to attend, and the Galaxy Note did not disappoint.

In case you have not heard of the Galaxy Note – here are the details. Even though it is a smartphone, it is clearly skewed towards users who want to use their phones more like tablets. A huge 5.3 inch display means that this is by no means a small phone. If you have small hands you have to think of this phone as a two handed device. But that nice big screen carries a big advantage – it can carry a massive 720p resolution. It is one of the highest resolutions on any smartphone out there (1280 x 720 pixels) and photos and videos look brilliant on the phone.

Despite the large size, the Note is really very thin.

The other advantage that the Note has is a stylus which can be used for notes and handwriting recognition. You simply pull out a stylus like in the old Palm days, and swipe and click away. It works well enough, and the pen is quite comfortable to use as well. But here is one of the small snags I ran into – depending on how you write, some people like to rest their hand’s side on the writing surface. But this does not work to well with the Note – it looks like it does not ignore your hand when the stylus is close to the screen. This ignoring of the hand is not rocket science – it has been built into tablets for years. On the other hand, it is a smaller device, so you might not rest your hand on it at all.

Build quality on the device is solid – it is basically an oversized Galaxy S2, and it is just as thin (see our review of the Galaxy S2 here). That broad thin body not only gives a nice big screen, but a massive 2500mAh battery as well. I could not test battery life unfortunately, so we will wait for an official review unit. Build quality looks solid – I actually saw one of the Galaxy Notes take a good dive onto a tile floor, and it was fine afterward. The phone is still predominantly plastic on the rear, but there is no flex in the phone.

The Galaxy Note can use HDMI to output to your TV.

In terms of performance I was very impressed – apps launched instantaneously, animations had good framerate and web pages rendered incredibly fast. If you have used an Galaxy S2, expect similiar performance due to the dual core 1.4 GHz processor and 1GB RAM. The current apps on the device is typical Android and Samsung TouchWiz fare, but expect a few extra apps made just for the stylus of the Note. The note-taking app works well, but do not expect handwriting recognition right in the app. For handwriting recognition, you will instead replace the onscreen keyboard with a “Grafiti” style area in which you write. Great for old Palm fans. I really do hope to see some more interesting apps that use the stylus.

Want to do digital sketches? Its quite easy with the included stylus.

At the end of the day one has to ask who this phone was made for – is it a phone or a tablet? But think about it this way: you might like using your tablet a lot, but your phone is always with you. It is for this very reason some people find that they do not use their tablets as much as their phones.  So if you are someone who wants a tablet that fits in your pocket, the Galaxy Note might just be perfect. Personally I am not yet sold on the pen, but that might be something you need to spend some time with. The other issue is the sheer size of the thing – in certain peoples hands the device really does look giant, and it is massive phone to put against your ear. Only time will tell whether people latch onto these supersized phones.

Expect a full review of the Note soon enough, we really cannot wait to spend more time with it.

We have been waiting to see what would be the first phone to come from Google’s Motorola acquisition, but now we know. Say hello to the new Motorola RAZR. Boasting a sculpted glass face, diamond-cut aluminum accents and a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced display, the Motorola RAZR also sports KEVLAR fiber and Gorilla Glass to help the screen stand up to scratches and scrapes. In fact, every part of Motorola RAZR is protected by a splash-guard coating – even the electrical boards inside.

Inside it is pretty great as well – 1GB of RAM hooks up with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and Android 2.3 to get you a fast user interface and the  plenty of power for multitasking. You can also find 802.11n wifi, and 16 GB of memory and a large 1780 mAh battery.

Motorola RAZR comes preloaded with the Motorola MotoCast app, giving you the power to stream or download content from your home or work computer straight to your device so your personal content is always within reach. Watch movies on a screen that sports a wider range of colors than most LCD HDTVs.The cameras are impressive as well – use the cinematic-quality front-facing 720p HD video camera and 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with even sharper 1080p HD video capture to create your own movies – all with image-stabilization technology.

The Kevlar rear on the Motorola Razr

“With the new Motorola RAZR we have re-imagined an icon. The most captivating Android-powered smartphone on the scene, it’s thinner than your friends’ smartphone and better looking too!” says Megan Nicholas, mobile devices lead, Motorola Mobility South Africa. “We partnered with Vodacom to launch Motorola RAZR, and we know Vodacom customers will be lining up to be the first to have the next generation Motorola RAZR.”

Accessories that bring a whole new universe to life

With the Motorola RAZR Work and Play kit, plug the device into the HD Multimedia Station to connect to your HDTV, speakers and other peripherals for large-screen entertainment. Sit back and use the included keyboard and mouse with Bluetooth technology to make the most of Motorola’s revolutionary webtop application, giving you the power to edit documents and browse the Web with a full Firefox browser.  The new Smart Controller lets you take control of your content on the big screen, all while keeping your calls within reach when your phone is docked.

In a similiar fashion to the Motorola Atrix, a a choice of 2 laptop docks will be available. The new sleek and lightweight Motorola Lapdock 500 Pro with a built-in keyboard and 14” HD resolution screen, looks like a slim laptop, but only comes to life when you dock your Motorola RAZR. Watch movies, edit documents, video chat with the built-in webcam and browse the web with the full Firefox browser. Need something smaller? The Motorola Lapdock 100 gives you all the same cloud computing capability but in a smaller and more compact size with its 10.1″ screen.

Availability

The Motorola RAZR will be available with Vodacom in November. The recommended retail price is approximately R6999, and it will also be available on contract at R269 per month x24 on Business Call.

We cannot wait to get our hands on this beauty. Maybe Blackberry should take notes on how to make a good looking phone. You do not need Porsche Design…

BlackBerry might be attempting a very risky move soon with BBM. Many BlackBerry users stick to the platform primarily because of BBM – it is free and (arguably) a lot more stable and reliable than other mobile services like Whatsapp. It does however have a few criticisms – biggest of which is the BlackBerry only nature of communication. You might have BBM, but if your buddy does not have a BlackBerry, well, you will need to use other channels.

Recently leaked images (by TechnoBuffalo) of BBM running on an Android device seem to suggest that RIM is looking at broadening the install base of BBM to other platforms. Current supports seem to suggest that BBM might be coming to Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone platforms. The leaked images on the Android device seem to share the same basic minimalistic interface design as the BlackBerry version, and the app logo also uses the BlackBerry Messaging logo.

But will this make business sense for BlackBerry? The company is facing some strange times. While their first world customers seem to be jumping ship to iOS and Android, BlackBerry reckons they can still hold onto their loyal Enterprise customers. But there is a big shift happening – employees do not want business provisioned handsets anymore, they want choice. They want to run their always-relied-upon apps on whichever device they want to. Taking this into account, the current BlackBerry only BBM model is starting to look more and more antiquated every day.

But then there is the flip side of the coin – part of the reason for BlackBerry’s popularity comes down to the massive use of BBM among the youth, all over the world. Just look at the recent London riots for evidence. There is still a massive market who wants cheap and reliable text communication, and for RIM to give away that competitive advantage is a very risky move indeed. Of course choice is always great for the consumer at the end of the day, but will this not make the BlackBerry ship sink a little faster?

What do you think – should RIM open up BBM to other platforms?

(Images: Technobuffalo)

Samsung was pretty quick on the tablet market to compete with the iPad, but their first 7 inch device was not received too warmly. While the shape and size was great, the Android 2.x operating system was just not properly implemented for the new higher resolution of a tablet, so some apps just did not work too great in the tablet world. (You can read our review here)

Of course since then Google has released Honeycomb, its tablet-focussed version of Android, and Samsung has released some pretty great Android Honeycomb tablets, primarily focussing on a iPad-matching 10 inch screen (See Albert’s review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 here). But what if those 10 inch tablets are perhaps a bit unwieldy? Luckily Samsung has now released that great 7 inch form factor of the first Galaxy Tab with the tablet – dedicated power of Android 3.2 Honeycomb.

The new Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus runs a dual core 1.2 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16 or 32 GB storage. That smaller seven inch screen still packs in a resolution of 1024 x 600, so it will be interesting to see how Honeycomb scales to this resolution. You will also find a 720p video recording capable 3 megapixel camera, and a 2MP camera on the front. In terms of connectivity you are looking at 21Mbps HSPA, Bluetooth, and dual band Wifi as well.

No pricing is yet available, and international rollout is only expected in November. Also, will this tablet get Ice Cream Sandwich?