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!
Excellent news! I was worried that the entry level Toshiba Z830 would be above €1000 but it’s not. The Toshiba Satellite Z830 Ultrabook is available for pre-order in Europe (or at least in Germany and UK) for €999. Even Amazon Germany are listing it. [Z830 At Amazon – Aff.]
Update: Toshiba UK are now listing a range of models.
The model we’ve found at at least four retailers is the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J (4GB, Core i5 2467 @1.6Ghz, 128GB SSD and delivery estimates range through November.
The Lenovo Ideapad U300s matches the ASUS UX31 almost spec-for-spec and both appear to be ready to go. Pre-order pages are up (see our information page for the Amazon affiliate links that are available) and at least one website has one for testing. The first statement from James Kendrick, the reviewer for ZDNet was that the Lenovo U300s is “already the best Windows laptop I have ever tested.” Let’s hope there’s no showstoppers as the testing progresses.
While the U300s only has a 1366×768 resolution screen against the UX31’s 1600×900 screen, there are other differences deeper in the specifications. Customers are going to have a hard time deciding between the two…
Keeping close to the pre-tax Euro figures, the Amazon.com pre-order page shows that the Acer Aspire S3-951 will be available on the 16th October for a very competitive $899.
The price includes the Core i5 processing platform and, unique among Ultrabooks so far, a 320GB hybrid hard drive which includes a 20GB SSD partition that we assume is used by the fast-start process. There’s no USB 3.0, no Ethernet port and no VGA port though so although you’re getting a fast laptop for a low price, you’re sacrificing ports. You’re also looking at a little bit more weight than some of the more expensive options.
See our previous articles on the Acer Aspire S3 for an overview and some more thoughts on the package.
Via This is my Next
The Ultrabook timeline is padding out nicely now. The latest date is from Acer India who will have the Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook in Croma stores from October 15th.
This is the first time we’ve heard official news of availability so we can now expect global activities starting from the 10th (Asus in New York) through the following week or two to follow with availability very soon after. I’ve been invited to visit Toshiba Europe on the 11th so hopefuly they’ll have something solid to say about availability and there’s also an Intel awareness campaign going on globally too this week with Taiwan getting some attention today, I hear.
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