As you can read below, new BB (BlackBerry) devices are exciting, something we didn’t see coming from Canadian company for some time. As previously proud owner of several BB devices, I am glad to see that tech specs are on the par with top competing products of today. It is not that they didn’t work well enough on midrange hardware; they were just not as appealing as iPhone or Android offerings with their flagship devices. To be fair, earlier BB smartphones didn’t have latest SOC (System on Chip) which was one of the reasons of their failure to keep the leading position in the mobile world. OS and apps, while in many cases good enough, were playing late catch up with competing platforms. On the other hand, build quality was always superb, and I expect nothing less from freshly introduced Q10 and Z10 models. They are fast, thin, great looking, with screens that put even iPhone Retina displays to shame. Q10 even have physical keypad, a great offering to millions of active BB users out there.

December 2012 was the first time we encountered an Android-based phone with Intel’s hardware inside. The model in question was ZTE’s Grand X In, but that isn’t the only smartphone on offer based on an x86 chip. Depending on the region, a few other partners of Intel’s presented their own models, such as Motorola’s RAZR I for Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico and the UK, as well as MT788 for sale in China. Under its own brande, the French mobile operator launched Orange San Diego in the UK and France, while Russia’s MegaFon has Mint. Lenovo’s K800, already familiar to our readers, was launched to the Chinese market, the less-known Lava sells their Xolo phone in India, while ZTE have decided to use an x86 CPU in their Grand X In for certain markets in Europe, such as Austria and Serbia.

We first saw the famed iPad back in 2010, when it debuted at Apple retail stores. Ever since, the iPad has been a hot topic, and like most any Apple product, several versions have been researched and painstakingly developed by Apple techs.

What was unique about the iPad though was the fact that the device appeared as though it needed no advertising, promoting, or marketing of any kind. Although that should not come off as too much of a surprise due to the fact that there was an immense amount of buzz leading up to the landmark premiere of the tablet phenomenon. The media was set ablaze amidst the hype of the debut, and that event, coupled with events at the trial between Apple and Samsung, indirectly fused into the marketing plan Apple was utilizing.

Christmas is behind us, new year is almost a week old and resolutions are already broken. We are back in our daily routine which is usually not much fun. Why don’t we take another brake, a last breather of fresh air before we dive deeper in 2013? Let me tell you what I wish for in a New Year.

First of all, this is not an analysis of market and industry trends, nor is attempt to predict what will happen this year. This is just a list of things I wish for this year. I know you are not supposed to say your wishes out loud if you want them fulfilled, so please keep this text to yourself, or at least read it without moving your lips. 

 If we have a look at lighting systems across various objects, even our own homes, it’s easy to deduce that the typical light bulb concept is still very dominant. Besides, when someone says “light bulb”, you’ll still imagine the standard bulb with a filament wire. This particular design is usually attributed to Thomas Edison, with the first commercial design pulling off a 14-hour test back in 1879. As already stated, we still use this design to date, and since the original concept was improved upon very little, one could propose that it’s well beyond its due date. Truth be told, the incandescent light bulb is still the simplest and cheapest way to create light, at least in primitive conditions, so it still sees much use. Yet ultimately, it’s far from an efficient solution, both energy- and cost-wise.

ATi surprised us with 4870 and 4850 graphics card and after that ATi did it again with 4870X2. This product was available to all users from the day it was officially launched and it reached the goal as number one by performances and by price range, as it was promised by ATi. This sudden success urged us on some thinking about new accepted ATi’s philosophy about multiGPU cards. If we look back in time, we could remember Rage Furry Maxx card as antic example and nVIDIA 9800GTX2 and ATi 3870X2 graphics cards from newer history and all of them were examples of fastest products in their own time.

If you are TV fan and you have wireless network and notebook, than you probably at some point thought how it would be nice to take your notebook and simply move to other room, go on balcony or backyard and with no interruptions from other householders watch your favorite show or some sport event. Still, TV tuner demands antenna and cable and that’s when you realize that even though your notebook is portable, after all, you won’t watch TV as you would like to.