Author: Swadesh Parasher

  • LG G Flex 2 launched in Singapore, Pre-orders commence February 27

    LG G Flex 2 launched in Singapore, Pre-orders commence February 27

    The south Korea Company launched the second iteration of its self-healing curved smartphone in Singapore today. This makes Singapore second country in the world to receive LG G Flex 2 outside China after it was released in South Korea last month.

    The pre-orders will commence on 27th February 2015 while the retail launch is planned for 14th March 2015. Pricing of the G Flex 2 is S$998, which comes out to the equivalent of $800.

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    LG G Flex 2 sports a smaller display than the G Flex (5.5-inch compared to 6-inch), but this time around it comes with a higher full-HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels). This means the phone has a higher pixel density as well, coming in at 403ppi.

    Other improvements include a stronger front glass display and a “self-healing” back cover that LG says will recover from scratches and scuffs within seconds.z 00034

    At this stage, there’s no official word on when the G Flex 2 will be made available in the US, but it has been confirmed that AT&T, Sprint and US Cellular will offer the device in the country. In the UK, Vodafone has announced that it will be exclusively carrying the device for the first six weeks, with Carphone Warehouse commencing pre-orders on February 28.

    The device itself will go on sale in the UK from March 19. In Singapore, the G Flex 2 will be offered in Platinum Silver and Flamenco Red color variants.

  • CyberPower’s Fang Trinity Gaming PC is insanely powerful yet beautiful!

    CyberPower’s Fang Trinity Gaming PC is insanely powerful yet beautiful!

    CyberPower’s new PC packs a liquid cooled 4GHz Intel Core i7 4790K processor, Gigabyte Z97 Mini-ITX motherboard, five SSDs, one 2.5-inch har drive, a Blu-ray drive, a full-size 500-watt power supply, and a full-size GTX 890 graphics card… but that’s not what makes it stand out of the crowd. — You would certainly ask if this powerful spec is not something that would make you buy this powerhouse than what makes it so special? Well, it’s the sheer beauty that lies within the intelligently designed PC.

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    Cyberpower’s Fang Trinity Gaming PC has a unique design that we never saw before. It looks more like a futuristic space pod than a computer, but make no mistake, this is real PC.z 00011

    The ingenious design packs these power components in three segments, which is connected through the central trunk. One pod contains the motherboard, CPU and cooler, another the PSU and most of the storage drives, and the final pod holds a full-size video card with three SSDs behind it. The segmented structure promotes modular design, which also allows it to be individually assembled by the user.z 00013

    The shell is made using thick and heavy metal. Each pod cover actually weighs about 8 lbs.

    Build quality, design, and execution are good. I’m concerned about the 90mm fan’s abilities and noise, rotating a hard drive on a 120* angle, and the general size and post-build accessibility. You won’t really be moving this around. The price is too high for most builders, but the same people who can afford a D-Frame would likely be interested purveyors of the Trinity. I am legitimately impressed by the vision for the Trinity and found its tooling to be well thought-out, despite the obvious price and mobility obstacles that limit the audience. Builders with a massive budget and an eye for the unique should be paying attention to the Trinity, especially with DeepCool backing it.z 00012

    That being said, let’s watch this awesome design and how things are packed inside it:

     

  • Gnome Multiwriter – Write iso image file to multiple USB drives simultaneously

    Gnome Multiwriter – Write iso image file to multiple USB drives simultaneously

    Sometimes your usb won’t boot, sometimes it will but with grub errors, sometimes it freezes before finishing writing the image, sometimes it exits with no error feedback… It’s bit of a mess! — If you want to write same ISO image to multiple USB drives, than it is a real pain. 

    Yes, it’s true that code savvy folks would simply write a little bash script to automate the process, but large number of users would only be comfortable with a GUI tool. This is where ‘Gnome MultiWriter’ stepped right in.z 00007The developer, Richard Hughes faced a similar issue when he was looking for a way to create a number of USB rives pre-loaded with an OS. An idea popped into his mind to create a tool which is simple enough, so that even his dad could use it.

    He developed ‘Gnome MultiWriter’ as a solution, which can write an ISO/IMG image file to 20 USB drives simultaneously, each being between 1GB and 32GB in size.

    z 00008This simple and minimalist tool nixes the need to customize or create a command line script and relinquishes the need to waste an afternoon performing an identical set of action. All you need is this app, an ISO, some thumb-rives and lots of empty USB ports.

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    Seems so exciting? Although the developer wanted this app to be simple enough so that it could fulfill requirements of common Linux users but it is still at beta stage (unstable to use) and thus simple repository installation is missing – there are no pre-built binaries to install or a PPA to add to your software sources.

    If you know your way around the usual configure/make process you can get it up and running in no time. On Ubuntu 14.10 you may also need to install the following packages first:

    sudo apt-get install gnome-common yelp-tools libcanberra-gtk3-dev libudisks2-dev gobject-introspection

    If you get it up and running, give it a whirl and let us know what you think!

    Bugs and pull requests can be longed on the GitHub page for the project, which is where you’ll also found tarball downloads for manual installation.

  • D-Link’s new WiFi Routers looks like an alien spaceship

    D-Link’s new WiFi Routers looks like an alien spaceship

    Gone are the days when a cheap WiFi router were suffice for home usage to connect a laptop for internet access, occasionally to check e-mails and google something you find important — which cannot be replicated today. Modern internet usage over WiFi includes Laptops, smartphones/tablets, Smart TV, Gaming consoles and many other gadgets simultaneously.

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    Taking the increased bandwidth consumption into consideration, it makes sense to splurge on your hardware. And D-Link’s new 11AC Ultra Performance Series routers promise speeds of up to 5.6 Gbps optimized for a myriad of different devices.

    These Hot Ferrari Red WiFi routers looks like a reverse engineered alien technology – of course in a good way.

    z 00002Three versions of the Ultra Performance Series wireless routers will be available, with the top-of-the-line DIR-895L/R model boasting up to 2,260 Mbps on the 5GHz bands and up to 1,024 Mbps on the 2.4GHz band. It also comes with the most high-power antennas, eight in total, as well as multi-user MIMO technology which serves to keep your Wi-Fi network running as fast as possible with multiple devices connected at once.

    Pricing hasn’t been announced just yet, but the new routers (with their Ferrari-like bright red finishes) will be available sometime in the second quarter of 2015.

  • Samsung announced a new version of Galaxy Note 4 with Snapdragon 810 processor and Advanced LTE-band

    Samsung announced a new version of Galaxy Note 4 with Snapdragon 810 processor and Advanced LTE-band

    Samsung announced a new version of it’s Phablet ‘Samsung Galaxy Note 4’ which promises some awesome power churned into the rectangular box. According to the company, Galaxy Note 4 (2nd version) will have superior LTE radios as well as Snapdragon 810 processor, which certainly makes us want it to be there in the original version released earlier this year.

    The new Advanced LTE radios doubles the bandwidth, extending the data transfer rates from 150 Megabits per second to whopping 300 Megabits per second. This is pretty significant, a step into the better and more reliable network performance for smartphones in a whole where spectrum and radio hands-offs don’t always go smoothly.

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    What is the most amazing part of the new version of Note 4 is the new Qualcomm’s processor, which is not being featured in any smartphone available right now. The Snapdragon 810 is a 64-bit octa-core chipset that fully supports ARM’s big.LITTLE configuration. It’s loaded up with quad-core Cortex-A57 and quad-core Cortex-A53 cores and an Adreno 430 GPU that’s 30% faster than its predecessor.

    Unfortunately Samsung didn’t have any hard details to share about availability, though history tells us that we can at least expect a South Korean launch to kick things off.