Not that long ago at CES 2013 Sony announced they were introducing two new additions to the Vaio T-Series lineup, a touch-enabled T-14 and a new T-15 model, also with a touchscreen and today these two new Ultrabooks are available to order from Sony and Best Buy
Chinese VR-Zone published, back in August, what looks like a roadmap for Haswell which might be worth thinking about if you’re waiting for news of next-gen Ultrabooks. We hadn’t reported on it although we’ve heard various rumors, some of which were pointing to an accelerated roadmap. This item of news aligns with that but doesn’t include the Ultrabook SKUs which are said to come in Q3 2013
Given the current state of Ultrabooks with the Ivy Bridge processor platform well integrated into the segment and a huge choice of new form factors including more mobile and tablet solutions, we though it might be worth highlighting it.
MSI appear to have quietly given the MSI S20 slider an airing. We first saw this back in June in a not-too-professional presentation by themselves but despite that it’s been one that has gained quite a bit of interest. Recent news highlighted a target price (yes, the good old non-committal target price!) of $799-$899.
Engadget and LesNumeriques have news for us…
One in ten of you reading this article are from Germany, a country that leads the world in Ultrabook availability. How do we know this? We know this because we regularly scan retailers in USA, Germany, UK, Canada, France, Italy and Australia for information on pricing and availability for our database and Germany is always out front.
Those of you that think the English-language countries are the place to look for Ultrabook trends, reports, sales numbers need to think again because not only is there a huge availability of Ultrabooks, the cheapest Ultrabook is close to the $600 mark (pre-tax.) 599 Euros buys you the Lenovo U310 today – inclusive of 19% sales tax which most EU businesses will claim back.
Here’s a list of interesting Ultrabooks, including my comments, that you might want to look at if you’re a QWERTZ person. Pass it on to your German friends!
Three new Ultrabooks have appeared at Amazon US in the last week. The Lenovo U310, Lenovo U410 and Acer Aspire S5
Starting with the Acer Aspire S5-391 you can pre-order for $1399.99. [Amazon link] It sounds expensive but as is often the case, the high-end version is being made available first. Core i7-3517U at 1.9-3.0Ghz with 4GB RAM and a healthy 256GB SSD. Be aware though that the screen is 1366×768. At this price it could be a difficult sell don’t you think?
We’ve been hearing about 23rd April availability of Ivy Bridge for a while now but what does that mean and what does it mean for Ultrabooks? What’s clear is that there’s still some time to go before anyone is able to buy a 2nd-gen Ultrabook. Our estimate for the earliest models is now mid-June.
There’s two things to consider. ‘Availability’ in this case means 1st shipping of the Ivy Bridge CPUs. Arrival at manufacturers production facilities comes some days after that and then manufacturers can ramp up their production lines for the first major run. Testing and shipping from the production facility and then testing by distributors and shelf availability will take 2-3 weeks after that, for the first-in-line and ready-to-go manufacturers. We’re estimating mid-May for the first Ivy Bridge laptops. But not Ultrabooks.
Update: Paul Otellini just announced “The first Ivy Bridge chips we’re shipping are quad cores” in the Intel earnings conference call this evening. (via)
We’re hearing that the 2-core, high-end processors used in Ultrabooks won’t start production until mid-May which means you won’t see the first Ultrabooks in the hands until mid-June. At that point availability will still be limited and we expect only one or two manufacturers to be able to hit that availability date. After that, other manufacturer products will start to roll in. Here’s how we think it will pan out from now until the end of the year…
It’s not an Ultrabook (Samsung say it doesn’t hit pricing targets but the truth is that it’s missing a security subsystem and of course, Samsung want to position this away from the Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks) but it’s a hot item and one that many will want, even though the pricing is way up there. $1399 for a 13”-er and $1499 for a 15”-er is not exactly small change. Both the 900X3B (13.3”) and 900X4B (15”) are up for pre-order.
There’s no sign of the Folio hitting European shores any time soon but I see that it’s available in Taiwan and China [Link including images, specs, prices in Chinese] already and orders for the base (Core i5) version at the HP.com site will ship out before the end of the month. With a spec list that closely matches the Toshiba Z830, a competitive price of $899 and a 59Wh battery that should, assuming it’s well-designed, give you about 8 hours of web-working time and 6 hours of average battery life, the HP Folio has to be near the top of your list. Unless you’re concerned about weight and style that is…
Our close blogging friends over at Netbooknews.de (We’ll be working closely at CES in Jan) have what must be the first hands-on report for the LG Xnote Z330 Ultrabook. It’s slim, attractive and comes in Core i5 and Core i7 versions, with a 128GB SSD. It will arrive on European shelves in Jan or Feb (Marketing talk for Feb!) for a reasonable, if not ground-breaking, price of 999 Euros. (Post-tax price.)
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was announced last month by Google and Samsung as the first phone to run the latest version of Android, 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich.
While we knew of the large (4.65″) high resolution (1280×720) Super AMOLED display, the 5MP camera, NFC, Bluetooth 3.0, and most of the other details, Samsung stayed oddly quite about any information regarding the CPU and GPU, giving us nothing more than “1.2GHz dual-core CPU”.
Thanks to the Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo, the beans have been spilled on the Galaxy Nexus’ CPU. The 1.2GHz dual-core CPU is indeed the Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 platform which also includes the PowerVR SGX540 GPU. TI claims that the PowerVR SGX540 has up to 2x better performance than the previous SGX530 GPU. OMAP 4460 also has support for 1080p encoding (capture) and decoding (playback) at 30 FPS. Samsung’s last Nexus phone, the Nexus S [review], didn’t even record 720p video. This time around, Samsung is taking full advantage of the platform’s capabilities.
You can see full official specifications at the Samsung Galaxy Nexus tracking page in our mobile device database.
Samsung UK has confirmed Galaxy Nexus availability for November 17th, but it seems that retailers aren’t so sure about that. Amazon UK has moved the shipping date for the Galaxy Nexus from the 17th of November back to December 2nd. Amazon UK currently lists the 16GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus unlocked for £519.99, which converts to a pricey $837 USD.
Most phones in the US aren’t bought off-contract, so when it comes to typical US pricing, Android Central has shown what appears to be a leaked Costco inventory screen which prices the Samsung Galaxy Nexus at $289. The phone is expected to be available across both AT&T and Verizon in HSPA+ and LTE flavors, respectively.
Toshiba UK, operating independently from West Europe, North America and other regions have had specs, pricing and availability for the Toshiba Z830 available for a few weeks now but, for good measure, (or we suspect, a bit of timely fact regurgitation from The Register) the story is doing the rounds again today.
Toshiba UK already have model names, price and details available (details here) so all you’ll need to do is to wait for the first hands-on and then you can finally make your decision between the 4 Ultrabooks and the Ultrabook alternatives.
Interestingly, one large electronics retailer in Germany is convinced that the Z830 with be available on the 7th November [Conrad]. We’re trying to confirm this and are also looking forward to the Z830 as the first review device here on Ultrabooknews. More details on that in due course.
Via Pocket Lint
Samsung Galaxy Note
The curious case of the Samsung Galaxy Note, and it’s larger sibling, the Galaxy Tab 7.7, is one that we’ve been following closely. These two awesome devices were announced to great enthusiasm a few months back at IFA, but their official launch dates were left unspecified. Although I was put off by the Samsung Galaxy Note inititally, I must say that the idea of a pocketable device with accurate digital ink input is rather appealing, even if it wouldn’t work so well in one hand. The real issue, however, is how do we get our hands on one?
At the moment, the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab 7.7 go completely without mention on Samsung’s US site. Back during IFA, GottaBeMobile reported some dubious news from Samsung — that the company had “no plans” for a US launch of these devices. Some have interpreted this to mean that Samsung didn’t yet have specifics nailed down for the region, and others think Samsung is saying outright that they won’t be launching in the US. Whatever the case, it’s clear that they are taking a regional approach to distribution of the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab 7.7.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
In the US, it doesn’t seem like the Samsung Galaxy Note, or the Galaxy Tab 7.7, will be launching — not immediately anyway. I’ve got a good feeling that Samsung knows that the Galaxy Tab 7.7 would be good in the US, after all, the original Galaxy Tab is considered to be one of the best selling Android tablets to date, and it was widely available in the US. As for the Galaxy Note, it would seem as though Samsung doesn’t want to push it into the region so soon after they made a big deal about the Galaxy S II which has recently become available across all major US carriers. There’s also the Apple patent cases to consider.
While we can’t be sure that it’s any indication of availability, a brief survey of some of Samsung’s regional sites shows that the device is at least sufficiently featured on their Germany, Finland, Netherlands, and Denmark sites.
For those of us in the US, we’ll need to rely on importers until Samsung decides that it’s time to bring the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab 7.7 to the US for an official launch.
Tech importer Expansys has both devices available for pre-order, but neither are likely to be cheap enough for anyone but extreme early-adopters and ultra-niche users. The Galaxy Note is currently listed by Expansys at a steep $945. Expansys has not yet announced a price for the Galaxy Tab 7.7, but is accepting pre-orders.
I’m hoping to see these prices come down some by the time they are actually shipping imported and unlocked units to US customers, but without official sales channels (and thus carrier subsidies), it’s going to be hard to push the prices down on these bits of top-end hardware.
A quick search for some other imports reveals cheaper prices, however, you should always do your research before buying an import!
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