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For any of the 50 million app downloaders who’ve racked their brains or thwapped their thumbs on an iPad or iPhone touch screen full of digital jewels, PopCap Games–or at least its runaway hit, Bejeweled–will ring a bell. The company recently expanded its operations into social gaming with the acquisition of ZipZapGames. Now it’s signed a deal with Amazon to make its first two Android-compatible games in the U.S. market exclusively available through the Amazon Appstore–not the official Google app market or any other Android app clearing house.

Chuzzle will arrive in the appstore for a two-week period exclusivity starting May 17th, and Plants vs. Zombies will be joining it later this month. In an extra boost for PopCap, and one that’ll swing a bright spotlight onto Amazon’s Android code house, the games will be free for the first day of their availability–then $2.99 after that. In its press release, PopCap mentions its senior director of global product Giordano Contestabile’s remarks on using Amazon: “We’ll significantly extend the reach of our top franchises to legions of new mobile customers,” and Amazon’s category leader Aaron Rubenson is noted as saying “PopCap is a brand synonymous with great mobile apps.”

But there’s a far more interesting story here: Amazon is really trying to make its Android app store the one major go-to location for apps on Google’s smartphone platform, with its curated approach that’s highly reminiscent of Apple’s stance on its own path-breaking App Store. In fact, Apple defends against alternative marketplaces popping up for its iOS devices, whereas Google does not–which has opened up the space for Amazon, which neither designs Android code nor sells an Android phone or tablet.

And there you get to the crux of it all. By signing up companies like PopCap with such clever deals, Amazon is building up the powers of its Android appstore and, sure, earning some income. But it could be really all about building a footprint for its rumored up-coming tablet.

Article source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1753671/amazons-android-march-popcap-games-signs-an-exclusive-deal

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Continue reading »]]> Although the Austar deal is yet to be done and dusted, Foxtel is ramping up its Foxtel on Xbox 360 offering nicely with the elimination of data charges for BigPond customers and the free addition of six BigPond TV channels.

With Foxtel under attack from competing pay TV/IPTV services and the spectre of piracy, it’s no surprise to see Australia’s dominant pay television provider having made some pretty significant moves of late.

These have included the ability to download Foxtel programs to PCs via a dedicated Foxtel app, and has also included the delivery of Foxtel programming over non-traditional methods such as via IPTV using Microsoft’s Xbox 360 as the “set-top box” in question.

Now Foxtel is pulling out some more rounds of ammo for its big guns, and has done a deal that many thought should have been done in the first place: no data charges for Telstra BigPond customers who have signed up to the Foxtel on Xbox 360 service.

The deal is a no-brainer when you consider that Telstra is a 50% owner of Foxtel, although I do have a suggestion for both Telstra and Foxtel: it’s bloody well time you made “Mobile Foxtel” available in W-I-D-E-S-C-R-E-E-N, instead of the awful situation where the left and right hand side of the picture is, well, chopped off.

After all, Mobile Foxtel (which is a subscription-based IPTV service) came to life long before Foxtel on Xbox 360 was even a twinkle in Ken Williams’ eye, and it’s a damn shame that the ABC with its app can deliver W-I-D-E-S-C-R-E-E-N video, but Foxtel and Telstra, the supposed masters of their bits of the freakin’ universe, cannot do so, and instead let a semi-government organisation whoop their asses on this one. I expect much, much better from private enterprise.

Oh, and an iPad version of Foxtel wouldn’t go astray either.

That rant over, one which has been delivered almost ad nauseum to Telstra executives with no results as yet, it’s back to the real action of the day: the improvements to the Foxtel on Xbox 360 service.

Foxtel on Xbox 360 means “30 world-leading Foxtel channels”, the six new BigPond channels (which we’ll go into in a moment), Catch Up TV and “hundreds
of new release films, library movies and TV episodes from the FOXTEL on Xbox 360 On Demand service.”

Although some will cheer, I still find it astounding that Foxtel on Xbox 360 does not offer Fox News, a namesake of the Foxtel service – what, was Rupert Murdoch asking too much money? Were you too cheapskate-y?

Article source: http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/entertainment/47475-foxbox-360-unmetered-on-bigpond-new-channels

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Re-Logic’s Terraria is an indie title that exemplifies the values of exploration, adventure, and dungeon crawling in sandbox-style, randomly generated worlds. 

Terarria is often incorrectly referred to by critics and pundits as “2D Minecraft” – there are definitely unavoidable similarities to Notch’s breakthrough title in the resource gathering and building department, but the games diverge heavily in their ideologies after that.

In Terraria, you’ll be using a pick and axe to cut down trees, mine ore, and build tunnels and shelter, but things shift significantly in focus and scope after that.  Rather than being focused on building great wonders and worlds with the available materials, you’re likely going to be building a functional “base” – designed to withstand invasion from a lot more than the zombies of the night.

Terraria places a high value on crafting, but it’s to greatly different ends than Minecraft.  You’ll be creating a wide variety of weapons and armor in order to delve into deeper and deeper layers of the world, darker and darker dungeon tiers that require flaming swords, fantastic flails, and even guns to survive.

Terraria is combat oriented, from defending your collection of NPCs at home base from onslaughts to going through the motions required to summon some of the big bosses that drop a variety of high end goods you’ll need to craft your elite gear sets.

Think of something like a new age Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: – side scrolling combat with boomerangs, grappling hooks, bows, and other equipment that works as more than just weapons.

To really get the five-star experience out of Terraria, you’re going to want to set up a server with some friends.

The game truly shines when you’re tearing through terrifying caves and dungeons with your buddies, and it makes the mining and building aspect of the game go much quicker so you can get right into the “meat” of Terraria – high adventure and advanced crafting.

If you’re looking for a sprite-filled adventure/RPG perfect for playing with a small group of friends, you need to stop reading this and head to Steam now and pick up a four pack.  Priced for the indie/casual set at $9.99, Terraria is worth its weight in gaming gold.

Article source: http://www.examiner.com/online-games-in-national/terraria-review-review

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Continue reading »]]> If you thought that a new handheld device with 3D capabilities would warrant an extra gaming nod from publishers, think again. Capcom has recently announced that it will be scaling back on DS, 3DS and Wii publishing for near future in favor of making games for the Xbox 360 and PS3. And, in its recent investor report, Capcom went one step further citing the PS3 as its lead revenue generating console going forward.

According to the report, Capcom expects Playstation 3 related sales to account for 44% of annual revenue, this includes downloadable content (DLC) and 8 million units across all releases on this console alone.

Scheduled releases include:
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (Xbox 360, PS3)
Resident Evil 4 (Xbox 360, PS3)
Operation: Raccoon City (Xbox 360, PS3)
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD (PSP)
Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (PSP)

A Devil May Cryreboot and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record game are also in the works. Although Street Fighter 3D was one of the lead titles for the 3DS on launch, the system remains marginalized in Capcom’s plans. However, handheld sales as a whole is expected to be less than last year. Capcom expects a 64% decline in PSP sales from 2010, lowering their sales target to 2.2 million units versus 6.2 million in 2010. This could be in large part due to Sony’s plans for the NGP release.

The company did not mention Project Cafe in long term strategy beyond March 31 of 2012.

Article source: http://www.buzzfocus.com/2011/05/25/capcom-backs-off-casual-ds-3ds-and-wii-game-publishing-in-favor-of-ps3-gamers/

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Continue reading »]]> Welcome to the weekly iPhone Quality Index (Qi) games round-up, giving you the LOWdown on the HIGH scorers every Friday on these hallowed pages.

As you may already know, Qi trawls the web for iPhone game reviews from the world’s most respected online and print sources.

Qi then applies its own magic formula to each site (such as 148Apps, Macworld, and No DPad) to establish a single definitive Qi score for each iPhone app and game.

It’s got a great First Touch

Curling and dipping its way towards the top corner of the Quality Index onion bag comes the ferociously driven First Touch Soccer, a football simulation born out of the embers of the excellent X2 franchise.

In little over 90 minutes of playing time on the App Store, X2 Games’s world-class slice of soccer fare has mesmerised four iPhone pundits with its Messi-esque dribbling to score a netbusting 9.2 Qi rating.

Pick from over 250 club sides, 30 competitions, and seven game modes, and take advantage of the new Freedom Control mechanics to lead your Star Player to ultimate glory. Or at least one victory.

Pocket Gamer’s lead commentator for the evening Keith Andrew described the action in First Touch Soccer as, “comparable to any of its bigger brothers on far meatier formats…a consummate football experience, representing a new high water mark for the genre on iPhone.”

A Bug’s Life

Whilst the abovementioned FC Barcelona and Argentina forward goes by the nickname of The Atomic Flea, a similarly talented plague of insects flies onto Qi’s top ten chart this week off the back of a trio of critiques.

Chillingo’s monstrously successful Cut the Rope provides the inspiration for Avallon Alliance’s trajectory-based puzzler Jump Out!, which challenges your slingshot-firing mettle and your star-grabbing potential to the max.

A quicker than lightning update to Jump Out! swelled the number of levels to 75, each of whom – for ‘they’ do possess their own unique character, trust me – is populated by bumpers, nails, electric fences, marbles….

The variation in Jump Out!’s gameplay drew tidy App-lause from AppSpy: “the use of multiple screen-stretching room allows the puzzles to increase in challenge without resorting to gimmicky hair-splitting physics puzzles, though the occasional single-room brain tickler does break things up nicely.”

You can get the up-to-date information about which games are reviewing best over at the Quality Index.

Article source: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Various/Quality+Index/feature.asp?c=29823

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Someone reported of getting ripped off when he chanced upon a nigh affordable Nintendo DS Lite over at eBay. Upon opening the package after a gruelling two week wait, he was grossly disappointed – alarm bells were ringing even before he opened the box since it did not feel as though it was standard Nintendo packaging as the corrugated cardboard box used was a dead giveaway. Upon turning the box to the back, even more visual clues gave the game away, with curiously pixellated English text.

Opening the package confirmed that this was a complete fake, but surprisingly enough, it still ran DS and GBA games in their respective slots. On the surface lay several tiny pockmarks, which fall short Nintendo’s high quality assurance standards. As for the inner bezel across both displays, they seem discolored at the edges, while the rubber pads on the interior of the upper display do not sit flush with the faceplate.

One of the major flaws would be the misaligned silkscreening on the back, sporting a slightly skewed, off-center angle. There are also issues with the Slot 2, as it requires quite a fair bit of coaxing before your GBA cart can fit in there. Never mind if you’ve got bootleg or original titles, they will still boot up properly, and the sight not no dead pixels? That’s a plus point. One of the better fakes around, that’s for sure!

Article source: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/fake-nintendo-ds-lite-purchased-over-ebay/

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The HTC Droid Incredible 2 has arrived and everything suggests that it is a great successor to the original HTC Droid Incredible (check our Droid Incredible Review if you missed it). Some things have changed, like the loss of the AMOLED display (HTC could not procure enough of them), but other things have not: the Incredible 2 still has a great industrial design, solid software and a colorful display.

HTC presents the Incredible 2 as a smartphone for those who “dare to be different”, as a “standout cinematic experience” and a great imaging phone. This sounds great but is that really so? In this review, I’m going to go over the most frequently used features to tell you how the HTC Droid Incredible 2 looks -and behaves- in the real world. Are you ready? Let’s dive…

Context

We all use smartphones in our own way, so it’s important that I tell you where I come from: I typically check my email (a lot!) with Exchange, and I reply moderately because the virtual keyboard is not as productive as a physical one. I browse the web several times a day to check on news sites, but I rarely watch movies or play music. I don’t call much – maybe 10mn a day. On the “apps” side, I have a couple of social networks, but I rarely play games (on Android – what games?). This usage pattern will affect battery life and the perception of what features are useful.

Technical Highlights

Just to set some background information, here are some technical highlights related to the Droid Incredible 2. If you want to look at the full specifications, head to the official specs page at HTC.

Soc: SnapDragon 8655, 1Ghz  (what is an SoC?)
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
HSPA/WCDMA: for Europe/Asia: 900/AWS/2100 MHz
OS: Android 2.2.1 (+HTC Sense)
RAM: 768MB
User Storage: 7GB + MicroSD slot
Camera: 8 Megapixel + 1.3 Megapixel
Sensors: G-sensor, Compass, Proximity sensor, Light sensor
GPS: yes
Local networks: WIFI + Bluetooth
Battery: 1450mAh

Physical Design

Body

I like the design of the Droid Incredible 2, very much. The body has a matte black finish that has a slight “leathery” texture to it which makes it almost immune to fingerprints and increases the grip that your fingers will exert on it, thus reducing the odds of an encounter with concrete… The design in the back resembles the original Droid Incredible: it has a “bump” that houses the camera and battery. When holding the phone, you cannot feel the it with the palm of your hands (phew!). The design makes the phone looks significantly thinner than it really is – but it works. This is a nice object to look at.

The design is clean and consistent. Good job HTC!

The phone doesn’t feel like “plastic” at all, and seems extremely rigid. Some of you will love this, while others might want to have something that is a little bit lighter. Unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways. All the super-light phones have a “plastic” feel. It’s up to you to decide.

The Droid Incredible 2 also has very few physical buttons on its sides: basically “Power” and “Volume”, which is great because the more buttons you have, and the more likely you will press some of them unintentionally. HTC used to make phones with buttons *everywhere*, but this is a better way in my view.

Nice detail : the Android buttons rotate along with the image on screen. Now -that- is “polish”!

The Android buttons rotate with the screen. Nice.

Display

Indoors, the display is great

You might remember that the original Droid Incredible had an AMOLED display. We all agree that AMOLED has superior contrast and saturation, but good LCD displays tend to have more accurate colors and possibly better power consumption with bright content (AMOLED draws more power to display a white screen than a black screen).

Indoors, the screen is very good. The colors are nice, and it is plenty bright for my taste. If you push the brightness, you will lose in contrast, but this is not something that is unusual with LCD displays. I wish that HTC could have used an IPS LCD (like the iPhone 4 or the Optimus 2X) – but this is another story, and I’m not sure that IPS manufacturers can actually supply enough of them anyway.

In a bright environment, the glare from the screen can challenge the user

The only thing that I hold against this display is its shininess: outdoor usage can be challenging at time, especially here in California. The HTC Evo Shift 4G had a similar glare situation, but the Droid Incredible’s LCD seems overall better, except for that.

HTC Sense

HTC sense is a software layer unique to HTC smartphones. Its goal is to add functionalities that makes HTC users lives better. The best example is the copy/paste function (that actually works), but there are many other “add-ons”, like an LED flashlight, and Social Media widgets. If you want to know more about HTC Sense, check their (sparse) product page.

Basics

Dialing: No problem there, dialing a number can be done with the numeric pad, a contact card, or better yet, a “direct dial” shortcut on the phone’s main screen. If you have less than 10 people that you call all the time, the direct dial shortcut will do wonders as you can’t get any faster than that. If not, searching someone with their name should be pretty quick too.

Wireless Reception: The wireless situation has changed very little since last year when we reviewed the Droid Incredible. I have to say that ATT has improved the coverage around our offices, but overall, Verizon remains a more reliable network for data and even voice – especially in big cities like San Francisco or New York. I’ll never say that enough: it doesn’t matter what *my* network conditions are, as yours will be different. Try asking friends and family to see how their network is where you hang out.

Audio Quality: I found the call audio quality of the HTC Droid Incredible 2 to be above-average. It’s not “great” but it’s clear enough and voices aren’t muffled at all. There’s nothing to report on that front. This is your average+ voice quality over a wireless network.

The HTC virtual keyboard offers more functions, but is also visually cluttered

Virtual keyboard: As always, HTC has ditched the default Android keyboard in favor of its own, which has the particularity of showing which special characters will be used if the user leaves a key pressed for a second. Some people love it, others find it visually “busy” – I’ll let you make up your own mind.

I *love* the arrow keys at the bottom as they are very handy to navigate a few characters left and right, which is handy to fix typos. Those keys were not there when I played with the first Droid Incredible. I also like the voice keyboard key (it was there before) because it usually works very well. I’ve been impressed with Google’s voice recognition, especially since it works great, even with my foreign accent.

The copy/paste works beautifully

Copy/Paste: As you may know, there are plenty of Android 2.2 phones that *still* do not have a proper copy/paste. Although Google mostly fixed this in Android 2.3 (codenamed “GingerBread”), the Nexus S is still the only device with that OS. Most of the other phones are still on 2.2.x.

Thanks to HTC Sense, the Incredible 2 has a functional copy/paste that looks like what Android 2.3 has. It seems like a small thing, but when you need to copy/paste a human-unreadable piece of text like a 128-bit WEP key, you’ll thank HTC for this.

Web browsing works great. Flash support is not the fastest.

Web Browsing: It’s been pretty much proven that Android 2.2 has a great mobile web browsing. This is no different, and really it would stink if Google -the largest web company in the world- could not get a great web browser in their mobile OS

In-Browser Flash Support: As I’ve just said, regular HTML pages display just fine. But Flash support is something that more and more among you want, or simply *demand*! The good news is that in-browser Flash support is here. As a test, I went to a few Flash sites, one of which is wechoosethemoon.org. It works perfectly, and most of the plain-vanilla Flash sites (small business, restaurants…) should work just fine.

Flash games are a different story. Some will work fine, but remember that most have been designed for a desktop computer, so they might simply require too much processing power, or memory, to run smoothly on a phone. The Droid Incredible 2 is also not the fastest Flash-friendly Android phone out there, but we’ll get back to that in the Performance section.

Work

The Email app is efficient and has a functional search that many Android phones don’t have

Microsoft Exchange: A lot of professionals care about Exchange, and I do too because we’re using Microsoft’s email system at work. Android has long supported Exchange, even if handset  manufacturers sometime come up with their own email app.

On the HTC Droid 2 Incredible 2, the email app is very good. First, it uses a white background, which makes it much more readable in direct sunlight. Many other Android phones use a black background (users can’t change it!), and I think that it is a mistake. Secondly, HTC’s email app has everything that I need directly on the screen, including flags, batch actions and quick access to calendar invites.

Switching from a list view to a threaded view is quick and easy as well. I don’t use it much, but I do know that many users just love threaded views. In the end, I’m impressed with the email app, and this is one of the best on Android. Did I mention that it has a functional email search too?

GMail: Android being a Google product, it is almost a given that GMail would get a special treatment, and it does: it has its own email application that lets Google users “star” a message or labels use labels to categorize it. GMail also supports push-email, which means that messages arrive practically in real-time without requiring you to hit a “send/receive” button, which is called “pull-email”. Push is also more battery efficient than pull.

Other Email accounts: Most popular web email services are easy to setup, but if you host your email on your own domain, chances are that you have POP3 access. The Droid Incredible 2 can handle those as well obviously, but you would have to forget about push-email. Fortunately, hosted exchange or GMail pro can give you push-email with your own domain.

Google Docs: Back in the days, Google Docs was not editable on smartphone, but Google has fixed this a while back. If you wonder, Google Docs are accessible and editable on this smartphone. By the way, there is a free Google Docs app now. If you want something more MS Office friendly, try looking at DocumentsToGo.

Play

Smartphones have become great entertainment devices, and the Incredible 2 is no exception. Online (via wifi) or local videos can be played smoothly on its colorful display, and the compatibility with existing music and video files is higher than on most smartphones. Even Windows Media files are supported out of the box. The Incredible 2 won’t stream 1080p content to your TV, but the reality is that most people simply don’t do that kind of stuff.

Actually, the main issue with Android today is to find a legitimate source of HD content. Android users really deserve a good solution here. For tech-savvy folks, there’s always PlayOn for Android, but this requires having a PC  media server.

Video content: the HTC Droid Incredible 2 has been able to play all the MP4 files from my PSP collection, and a few that I created myself for reviews on this site. The quality of the playback is impeccable for those files, even for the DVD-quality (800×740, 30fps, 2.4Mbps) file that I had encoded with Nero Vision.

I haven’t tried all MP4 variants, but so far this is looking good. Some Android phones could not play all the files. The phone might be able to play 720p videos, but without an HDMI output I’m not sure what 720p would be used for… Officially supported format (out of the box: 3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv)

Games: I have tested the phone with a 3D racing game called Raging Thunder 2 Lite (free download). The game is smooth, and completely playable – no problem there. Like most 3D games on Android, it doesn’t utilize all the latest graphics feature from OpenGL ES 2.0, but on the other hand, it’s fast.

The overall issue with Android is the lack of cool games in my opinion. I’m not saying that you can’t find anything, but the choice is pretty thin compared to the iPhone. Things have gotten better, but if you haven’t been using Android before, it’s something that you should be aware of.

Music: Music playback is a basic function for any smartphone, and it is rare that one does poorly. With Android, you have the choice between using a web service via an application, or copy MP3 files (without copy-protection) from any other source. Overall, it is usually easy, especially if you don’t have thousands of files to deal with. Officially supported formats: aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9)

The speaker sound is simply not very good

Speaker quality: There’s a small rear speaker in the Droid Incredible 2, but unfortunately, I don’t think that is it very good. The sound is not very loud and gets saturated quickly if you crank it to the max. I’ve definitely heard better speaker sound coming out of a smartphone: the Motorola Atrix, for example, does have an excellent sound quality.

Photos and Videos (Good)

Outdoor photos usually look very good

In broad daylight, the HTC Droid Incredible 2 snaps good photos. They are great for sharing photos over social media networks, and look fantastic on the web, especially when scaled down to 640×480 or something like that. I bet that you could also print that motorbike photo, and get a good 6×4” paper photo as well. If you want to look at the original photo files, go to our Ubergizmo Flickr page. You can also find samples from other smartphones there.

In low-light conditions, things get a little more difficult, especially for the focus. I’ve shot two photos in a shaded area near where we are, and although this is not “low-light” (as in “party/diner”), the auto focus already had a hard time keeping up with the subject.

Low-light is truly the next frontier for smartphones, and to be fair, this is a very difficult thing to pull off. From what I can tell, Sony’s EX-MOR sensor still remains the best low-light hardware that we’ve seen, but to put it in context, the Droid Incredible 2 does a very good job in daylight, and is slightly above average for low-light conditions.

Video capture is very similar, and I tried to shoot a movie with both bright lighting and some areas in the shadows (+transitions). The video is very slightly blurry, but on the other hand, there’s no pixel artifacts popping in high-frequencies areas (windows, trees…). Some handset manufacturer to try artificially crank up the “crispness” of the video, but that can also introduce other image-quality issues. Videos shot with the Droid Incredible 2 should look great on YouTube, and it is impressive to see that smartphones can easily beat my old “720p” camcorder that is 6x the size. (videos are recorded in .3gp format)

Data Sync

Media files: With The HTC Droid Incredible 2, it is easy to connect over USB and browse/copy user files just like you would on a regular USB drive/key. If you don’t have a lot of files to move around, this is actually much easier to deal with than Apple’s iTunes. Want to copy some photos? Connect the phone in “disk mode” and copy from/to. Really, it’s a no-brainer.

If you have tons of media files and music that constantly change, it’s a bit more complicated as this is a typical case where a data management application, like iTunes, is handy. The thing is: people who tend to have large collections of media files are probably savvy enough to figure things out.

These days, you also have the option to upload your content to an online storage and streaming service like Amazon Cloud Music. It works quite efficiently, but requires you to have an Internet connection. Winamp from AOL can also be used to manage large quantities of music files. In the end, you’ll have to poke around and see what works for you, but I think that the large majority of users will do just fine with copying their media files manually over USB.

Contacts, Emails: out of the box, Android is built for synchronizing everything over the Internet. However, some vendors add utilities to synchronize contacts and media files. Desktop email however is not an option (you might be able to find an app for that). Even Microsoft does not provide an email synchronization software with its Windows Phone 7, so in this smartphone world, you’re clearly better off with an online service.

For contacts, HTC provides a software that will sync contacts from Microsoft outlook to your Droid Incredible 2 phone. If you want to know all the little details, here’s the support page on HTC’s website:

Internet Connection

One of the perks of having a Droid Incredible 2 is that you have an Internet connection with you at all times. And fortunately, you can use the Droid Incredible 2 as a mobile hotspot, or a USB modem.

The Mobile Hotspot is -by far- the easiest way to share your phone’s internet with a laptop/tablet

Mobile hotspot: this is the easiest way to share your Internet connection. You simply need to go in the settings, enable the Mobile Hotspot feature, eventually setup a password, and that’s it – you can connect to it from your laptop. This is great if you need to go online in a pinch, but most people definitely can’t replace an Internet home connection with it – unless you have very basic Internet needs. The one downside of the Mobile Hotspot: it depletes the phone’s battery faster (but you can USB charge the phone at the same time).

USB modem: I never use this, but one could argue that it is slightly more secure. You will need to install drivers before using your phone as a modem. It’s a good fallback to have if you don’t have WIFI handy in your computer.

To get these speeds with a single “bar” qualifies as good, right?

Network Speed: in terms of raw speed, it will depend mostly on your location. For example at my desk, I get 1/4 bars and a Speedtest.net test yields a 1Mbps of download speed and 920kbps of upload speed. This is nowhere near the HTC Thunderbolt’s 4G performance, but yet it’s pretty good given the conditions.

Network quality: I have to say that with the Verizon network, I’ve never experienced a network “hang”, especially when I have 3-4 bars of connectivity. I unfortunately can’t say the same for my ATT iPhone 4.

Now, there’s a small catch: you can’t use the data network and the voice network at the same time. It has to do with how the Verizon network (CDMA) is built, but if you’re on the phone and need to check a Google map or something – this can be annoying, but most definitely not a show stopper for me.

System Performance

When talking about performance with a consumer electronics device, I always try to separate the “measured” and “perceived” performance. Measured metrics are obtained by running synthetic (not always life-like) benchmarks to stress specific parts of the system.

On the other hand, “perceived” performance is the user observation of performance. Although they should correlate, I would always place perceived performance as being the most important thing. After all, what is performance good for if you can’t tell?

“Measured performance”

To measure performance, we run a number of tests that show how the HTC Droid Incredible 2 measures against other popular smartphones.

BrowserMark, SunSpider: BrowserMark and SunSpider are two tests that measure the speed of Javascript, a key component for interactivity in websites. To be clear, this does not measure “how fast” pages are loading. Instead this look at how fast scripting code can execute. Javascript is used in modern websites for user interface or even complete applications/games.

The Droid Incredible 2 gets an “average” score, which is not abnormal considering that it is a single-core smartphone. The smartphones that lead this test have two cores (Tegra 2 SoC). Fortunately, few sites are truly javascript intensive, especially sites for mobiles.

GUIMark 2 (Flash): This test measure the Adobe Flash performance. Flash is a widely used multimedia platform and you can find it virtually everywhere as advertisement, video or other forms of interactive web page module.

To put things in context, there are plenty of phones that don’t support Flash at all, so the mere fact that it works is already a good thing. Now, the Droid Incredible 2 scores in the 12-15 frames per second (FPS) ballpark, which is respectable. However, other phones that have hardware acceleration for Flash are almost twice as fast.

Flash performance addresses several needs. The basic needs for it are Flash websites like small businesses, restaurants, art galleries etc… There, you won’t have any problems – they work well. On the other hand, the HTC Incredible 2 performance is probably too low for many Flash-based games, and for higher definition Flash video (if there is such a thing on Mobile…).

CPU Benchmark: This test tries to measure the number-crunching capabilities of the phone. Again, the Droid Incredible 2 gets an average score, but it is not far away from very popular phones like the Google Nexus S or the HTC Thunderbolt.

NeoCore Graphics Benchmark: Neocore is an old polygonal 3D graphics test, but most Android games are still using relatively old graphics techniques, so it is still relevant – hopefully not for long.

As you can see, the smartphones are packed in “clumps”: each basically represents a different generation of graphics processors (GPUs). While the Droid Incredible 2 graphics processor fares reasonably well, it simply cannot match the current generation of Tegra dual-core + Geforce GPUs. In short, if you are a gamer, you might have to choose between slower frame rate with this phone, or another phone. Keep in mind that higher framerate also means faster battery depletion as games will render many more frames…

Note: I have removed the Motorola Atrix from this chart because the test is not adapted to its higher screen resolution. The final FPS score is artificially low, and I have to write a few more paragraphs to explain what’s going on. If you are curious, go check my Motorola Atrix review and jump to the performance section.

“Perceived performance”

All those numbers are great, but the perceived (or “felt”) performance can be a slightly different story. Out of the box, the Droid Incredible 2 feels very responsive and fast. This is something that has been getting consistently better with Android in the past 6 months.

As long as you’re not playing a game, or browsing a Javascript-heavy site, the phone is actually very similar to other recent smartphones, including those with stratospheric graphics or javascript scores.

The only exception to this is web browsing (+Flash). I have to say that on a dual-core phone, web browsing is noticeably faster, even if it is not twice as fast. This is a “clear-cut” improvement from dual-core architectures that I think virtually everyone would benefit from.

Keep it fast: If you want to keep the Incredible 2 zippy, make sure that you don’t have many apps running in the background. Android fanboys will tell you that the OS takes care of everything (blablabla…), but it doesn’t. Just yesterday, some friends played with this phone, left a bunch of apps ON, and after 15mn it was starting to get “warm” which is always a sign of heavy processor activity. Sure enough, the battery was being drained quickly, and the phone started to be sluggish.

Battery Life (good)

I’ve gathered some data that I hope will give you a good hint as of what things “cost” when you use this smartphone. I’ve taken a few frequent cases that everybody will bump into, eventually.

30mn of activity will cost you (50% display, no sound):

• Gaming: 12% of battery life (Raging Thunder 2 lite)
• 3G Web Browsing: 10% of battery life (random popular site browsing, automated)
• WIFI Youtube Video: 10% of battery life (mobile HQ)

Note that I tried this with a battery that was 80% charged. It is possible that battery depletion is not linear (although it often is). Devices that get hot are also bad for battery performance.

I would like to take more time to use the HTC Droid Incredible 2 in “normal” (non-review) conditions so that I can provide you with a more accurate battery life estimate that corresponds to my “context” paragraph at the beginning. I don’t want to hold the whole review for this, so check back in a couple of days, and I should have an answer for you. (thanks!)

Interestingly, the official specifications show that the theoretical talk time over a GSM network is 580 minutes, but only 380 minutes if using a WCDMA network. I’m not quite sure if this is taking into account that GSM networks might be denser, but the difference is huge.

On the other hand, the official standby time for WCDMA is 370 hours, while in GSM, it is only 290 hours. This is something that I’ll try to dig into, but for now, I don’t know the answer.

Conclusion (very good)

The Droid Incredible 2 is a very good phone. Its design, ergonomics and usability more than make up for the relative lack of performance when compared to the fastest handsets out there. For folks who value aesthetics, this phone is up there with the Nexus S and one of the best Android smartphones. And while it might not have the latest “Gingerbread” Android 2.3 (this unit is on 2.2.1), the HTC Sense software does a great job of providing some of the things that are missing.

The ideal user for this phone is someone who wants a nice-looking Android phone with very decent performance and battery life.

Don’t miss these

Those who seek the latest features might want to look at the HTC Thunderbolt for its uber-fast 4G LTE support (amazing, really), and gamers might want to check the Atrix and Optimus 2X smartphones.

Obviously, outside of the Android realm, you have the iPhone 4 – but you should know that the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S, whatever Apple will call it) is on the way… you’ve been warned.

Article source: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/04/droid-incredible-2-review/

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Continue reading »]]> Sony is cutting the price of its PlayStation 2 console by almost 25 percent in both Europe and North America, the company said Tuesday.

The console, which has just begun its tenth year on retail shelves, will cost €100 (US$133) and US$100 from Wednesday. It previously cost €130 and US$130.

Sony has sold more than 136 million of the consoles since it first launched on March 4, 2000, in Japan. It went on sale in Europe and North America in November of the same year.

Despite the launch of the more advanced PlayStation 3 console, the older model has remained equally popular in part due to the large catalog of games and low price. New software for the console continues to be published, and the price cut seems to ensure that its popularity will continue.

The price cut is due to improvements in manufacturing that allow Sony to consolidate components together onto more highly integrated chips and general reductions in the price of technology used in the console, which doubles as a DVD video player.

In its current financial year, which ends Tuesday, Sony expects to sell 8 million of the consoles, which is not far off the 10 million PlayStation 3s it expects to sell in the same period.

As of the first nine months of the year — the period from April to December 2008 — sales stood at 6.5 million PlayStation 2 units. Software sales over the same period were 72.1 million units.

Sony Cuts PlayStation 2 Price by 25 Percent

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Continue reading »]]> As the rest of the tech world scrambles to assess the implications of the recently announced 5,000 layoffs at software giant Microsoft, news has come in that might potentially spell the end of the company’s nearly 30-year-old Flight Simulator series.

Microsoft confirmed Friday that the software giant has shuttered ACES Studios, the developer of the Flight Simulator series of games, whose latest incarnation is Flight Simulator X. The simulation is considered Microsoft’s oldest product, whose original version first shipped in 1982.

However, a Microsoft spokeswoman said that while the studio has been closed, the software company remains committed to the Flight Simulator franchise, without explaining how future products can be launched without a dedicated software development team backing them.

“We can confirm the closing of ACES Studios, which was responsible for the Flight Simulator franchise,” Microsoft spokeswoman Kelda Rericha told Appscout. “Following our annual strategy review process, IEB [Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business unit] is making adjustments within our business to align our people against our highest priorities. The closure of ACES Studios was one of those specific changes.”

Rericha refused to disclose any further details regarding the future of the company. She did, however, suggest that the Flight Simulator series is likely to stick around in some form or another. “We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise, which has proven to be a successful PC-based game for the last 27 years,” Rericha added. “You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great Live experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time.”

Of course, the Flight Simulator franchise is a fairly broad one, and anything falling under the largely online Live umbrella would likely be fairly different than the game’s traditionally resource-intensive online incarnation.

“It’s definitely confusing; I wish I had more clarification on that that we could provide, Rericha added. “At this point, they’re just not talking about it yet – how the product will, and if the product will, live within Microsoft.”

Microsoft does not have a time frame on when it will provide additional information, Rericha added.

The most likely scenario seems that, like the rest of us, Microsoft is still attempting to assess exactly how such a large number of redundancies will affect its business strategy. Projects like Flight Simulator have likely been given a lower priority than, say, Windows or Office, and therefore their fates are still not entirely certain even in Redmond.

Numerous contractors also confirmed that they’d been let go in the ACES layoffs, including independent coders who were also fans of the series.

“One thing that every person at ACES will tell you is that the community and each of you in it mean the world to us for sharing our passion of flight, and so it really hurts that Gib and I can’t tell you more,” “PlaneEater, one of the affected contractors, wrote in a thread on SimOuthouse.com. “I was a FS fan before I joined the FS team, and being able to work on the sim we all love so much was a dream come true. I just want to thank everyone here for the time and passion they’ve poured into Flight Sim for so many years, and to let you all know that every person at ACES is in awe of how much the community cares about what we build.”

It seems unlikely that Flight Simulator will go away entirely, even if it means branding a Live game with the name, fans speculated.

Microsoft Shuts Down ‘Flight Simulator’ Game Studio – News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Continue reading »]]> In the midst of a debate over whether they are good for kids, a new study has suggested that video games could be used for education.

An international team has carried out the study and found that online computer games could be used as a powerful teaching tool for children because they are not only popular but engaging as well.

According to researchers, interactive games could be adapted so that children learn skills from them that could be transferred to real life -�in fact, the”immersive” aspect in which the player suspends his belief means that the brain is particularly engaged and can absorb complex issues.

What’s more is that the games, which they say are more active than passive traditional learning, could be most useful for science subjects with students able to carry out imaginary experiments and improve their ability to”learn to learn”, the study has found.

” Compared with a similar, paper-based curriculum that included laboratory experiences, students overall were more engaged in the immersive interface and learned as much or more,” team leader Prof Chris Dede of Harvard University was quoted by’The Daily Telegraph’ as saying.

According to the scientists, interactive games such as’ World of Warcraft’ and’ Second Life’as well as’Whyville’ and’ River City’are good for kids.

Agreed Dr Merrilea Mayo, Director of Future Learning Systems at the Kaufman Foundation:” Unlike lectures, games can be adapted to the pace of the user. Games also simultaneously present information in multiple visual and auditory modes that capitalises on different learning styles.”

” Although the field is still in its embryonic stages, game-based learning has the potential to deliver science and maths education to millions of users simultaneously. Unlike other mass-media experiments in education, games are a highly interactive.”

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