Samsung BD-C5500 is an entry level Blu-ray player without Wi-Fi but you buy a dongle for it separately for $80. The image quality is excellent and there is just one reason why I am hesitating to recommend you this player – the sluggish speed. The slow speed might not bother you but it will certainly frustrate people who lack patience. The remote has been redesigned by the manufacturer here, it now has flatter and wider shape and there is no glossy surface. The layout of the clicker is much better than the predecessor and the important buttons like playback controls and directional pad are now located directly under the thumb. I found that the number pad was too oversized for my tastes but that it not a problem since no one uses the number pad frequently. Eject button could have been more prominent here but this too is a minor problem. You can use this clicker for controlling a TV. The user interface on the Samsung BD-C5500 has been  [...]

Blockbuster has finally got a buyer. Dish network recently announced that they will be buying this movie rental chain for a price of $228 million. Blockbuster had setup a bankruptcy court option and Dish Network participated in it. The two companies agreed on a price after making adjustments with inventory and cash. Life has been hard for Blockbuster as they have failed to see the changing times and have allowed Netflix’s DVD-By-Mail service to grow strongly and Blockbuster has suffered a shortage of rental space because of it. There were attempts made for purchasing Circuit City for a billion dollars in 2009 and Blockbuster closed about 1,000 of their 7,000 stores. This was done in an attempt to improve profits but it was a bitter failure. The company got delisted from New York Stock Exchange due to low price of  [...]

QWERTY format for the keyboard is now popular in all business handsets and these cellphones are mostly bought by business professionals. It gives good support for messaging and along with that, you have quick access to e-mails too. I got the Nokia X2-01 cell phone in my labs for review and I found that it has got good performance, features and design. This phone improves on the previous Nokia E71. There is a 2.4 inches QVGA screen, microSD card slot, FM radio, and dedicated buttons for music and camera. The full QWERTY layout makes it easy to type messages and e-mails. This is a GSM phone and it runs on the Series 40 Symbian OS. The weight of this phone is about 108 grams and there is also a VGA camera which can record videos at a speed of 15 frames per second or fps. Nokia X2-01 has support for EDGE/GPRS with internet access and if you are an entertainment centric user, this phone comes with a music player which supports  [...]

Facebook had previously promised this and they have finally delivered the goods. They have come up with an iPhone app which lets you check on to the events. The app was released on Monday and it includes map view for the Places and you can also unfriend Facebook people from it. The news feed system has been improved and you can refresh the interface to update notifications. But the big inclusion is the ‘Unfriend’ button that you get while viewing profile of a friend in the app. This button is easy to notice due to its big red shape. Users can also view any upcoming events of friends and tag their pals if they want to. The overall experience of the application has been enhanced due to these new improvements and it is good to see that Facebook is giving mobile phones their due importance. Facebook announced last week that about 250 million people are online on the site through mobile devices every month. There is also a new mobile website  [...]

Nokia X2 is an entry level messaging phone have a full QWERTY keyboard and I am hesitating it to recommend this gadget to business professionals because it doesn’t have any high end features. The phone has a basic camera and it can take photos in two different resolutions of 320x240 pixels and 640x480 pixels. This is minimal for a VGA shooter and you won’t find tons of editing options. You still get self-timer, 4x digital zoom, 2 options for white balance and 3 color effects. The quality of photo is pretty decent and you can take some quick shots with it. Nokia X2 camera can also record video and I was glad to see this since it is not expected in such entry level phones. There are two different options for the resolutions – 176x144 pixels and 320x240 pixels. The editing options are the same as that for the camera. The multimedia message clips are capped at six seconds but you can shoot for a longer time in the standard mode. For storing all this data, there is  [...]

Apple has run out of stock of the 16 GB Wi-Fi original first generation iPads even though iPad 2 is selling like hot cakes. There are just 3G iPads selling now and they are priced at $729, $629, and $529 for the 64GB, 32GB, and 16GB models respectively. The refurbished models of 64GB and 32GB Wi-Fi iPads cost $529 and $429 respectively and the refurbished Apple iPad 3Gs are selling for $659, $559, and $479. Apple started offering the original iPad for a discount when it announced the new iPad 2. The original unopened iPads are sold for a discount of $100 and the refurbished models are sold for a discount of $170 on the original price. Apple is also offering either a refund or $100 discount to the customers who bought  [...]

Kansas City in Kansas will soon be getting fiber optic cables for connecting to net and Google says they will be giving one gigabit per second net connections which is about 100 times faster than a standard ten mbps line. With such a fast connection, you will be able to download an entire movie from iTunes in couple of seconds. There are about 1,100 towns and cities in the US tested and reports say that the condition of broadband connection is really dismal. This announcement was made on Tuesday after a change in leadership and more than one year of deliberations. Google says that it will be putting fiber optical cables with help from the vendors and service will be started from next year. The price won’t to be too high, it will be competitive and close to what people are paying for a slower line right now. This announcement comes in the lines of AT&T, which is the largest DSL provider in the nation, announced that they would be metering the  [...]

Aston Martin has paired up with Mobiado, a luxury phone maker from Canada for a sexy looking high tech Android cell phone. It will be debuting at the BaselWorld which is a big jewellery and watch show and the device is called CPT002 Aston Martin Concept Phone. Made for the fans of Aston Martin, this gadget is expected to go on sale from May this year. The biggest attraction of this phone is that it has a transparent capacitive touch screen. It is made from solid sapphire crystal and displays the standard Android icons when you are using it. When you are not using it, the phone will be completely see through. The electronics, SIM card and the battery of the phone are located in platinum sides. Mobiado says that this phone will easily integrate with the different functions on Aston Martin car from power door locks and GPS navigation system to safety hardware. CPT002 is made for providing wireless connectivity in the vehicle to plenty of  [...]

Apple has debuted their iPhones traditionally at their conference of annual software developers but the event for this year, in June will be all software related news, says a report. According to our sources, there will be no iPad, Mac hardware or iPhone announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at San Francisco on June 6. Apple also gave a press release but didn’t reveal much details about any new hardware announcements. Apple's senior vice president for Worldwide Product Marketing, Philip Schiller said that they are going to unveil future of Mac OS and iOS. He also added that the event should not be missed by any Mac OS X or iOS software developer. It is believed that Apple will be giving details about the next generation Mac operating system which is OS X Lion and next version of the mobile OS which is iOS 5. We also believe that Apple  [...]

A lot of phones, especially the ones from Sony Ericsson have quirky software nick-nacks which I usually don’t mention in my reviews. Sony Ericsson W760i is not an exception to this but the funky apps on board look really cool and I cannot resist talking about them. There is an orientation sensor along with a bunch of toys/games which you can play around with. Something called bobble-head Elvis swings and rocks when you move the phone around. There is also music app here called ‘Music Mate’ and it comes along with drum kit that you can play by tilting the handset in different directions. When we tested the Sony Ericsson W760i, it was hard to find any faults because the performance was pretty good. The messaging and calling on the phone is excellent and the data speeds too are pretty fast on Next G network of Telstra. I also loved the Walkman music player on board. I then watched Foxtel on Sony Ericsson W760i and found that the media streaming  [...]