HP's latest Pocket PC, the iPAQ hw6940, is now being sold at the HP website. The device costs $599 and is available with several carriers. Apparently Cingular will also sell it in their official store soon. Some of the pictures we've seen over the couple past months actually showed the Cingular logo, so you decide.

The store has the following information: "The HP iPAQ hw6900 Mobile Messenger provides all the essentials to keep your business running even when you're away from the office -- phone, e-mail, and more secure access to business-critical information. At the same time, let your HP iPAQ keep life fun using GPS Navigation, the HP Photosmart Camera, and Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Mobile to play your digital music and videos."

You might recall that this created a hype before, so we'll see how this turns out. No word on releases in other territories yet either. But don't worry, we'll keep you informed, so just check QJ regularly for your daily dose of Pocket PC info.

Two weeks ago, CPU manufacturer AMD bought GPU-maker ATI for a couple of billion dollars, but it seems like it wasn't for the latter's brand recognition at all. They're dropping the ATi brand, so no more ATI Radeons but perhaps AMD Radeons.

A publication called PCPro asked AMD-employee Richard Baker if the popular product is on the verge of biting the dust (Radeon). He said answered "we haven't made any final decisions yet, but I'd personally be very surprised if we dropped any of those product names. The ATI company name is definitely going, though."

Baker surprisingly said that the buyout will not really be a merger but more of a takeover, which basically means that AMD is boss. He said the name ATi should go, as AMD owns that brand and company now. "The company is being bought, so it's fairly standard that the name should go, as it's becoming a part of AMD."

A worker from ATI (well, it's AMD now), Chris Hook, said he doesn't have any attachment to the ATI brand anyway, but it's more about the products themselves. He said they're still discussing this though. More about this as we get it.

In an interview. the CEO of AOL Germany, Charles Fränkl, said that the company is going to launch a mobile phone service in Germany sometime this year.

With the new service, the company's aiming for an extension of AOL's internet platform. Users of the AOL service are going to have access to AIM (instant messenger), photo albums, blogs and several other features. As reported earlier, Helio did a similar thing in the US this month. Helio's services lets subscribers access mySpace features and other internet related things.

As of the moment, there is no announcement on a similar AOL service coming to the US. Maybe they're trying it out on a smaller scale first? We'll see.

According to several industry insiders, chip manufacturer AMD is aiming for a 15% share of the global notebook market. This means that they want 12 million notebooks to use their CPU this year. For years, their well-known rival Intel dominated the notebook market, leaving AMD behind with just 10% of the market.

With the recently released Turion 64x2 processors adding up to their catalog, AMD now has a good chance of boosting up their market share. Half of Hewlett Packard's notebooks, which are mainly focused on the American and European market, use an AMD processor. Acer uses AMD in 35% of their notebooks.

On a last note, the industry sources said that the major notebook manufacturers are expecting 80 million worldwide shipments this year.

  
 

Today Glu Mobile's latest game, Chu Chu Rocket!, has been released in Europe on most major network providers. The mobile version of Chu Chu Rocket! was originally created by the Sonic team at SEGA for the Dreamcast and was later developed for the Game Boy Advance. The games have always been puzzle oriented and this one won't be an exception.

In the game you're ordered to lead space mice (ChuChus) through space ports swarmed with preying cats (KapuKapus), using all your rescue skills to avoid peril by leading your ChuChus to the safety of escape rockets.

The game has about 100 levels, and several modes:

· Run Away - avoid the cat and get to the goal.
· Get Mice - lead all the mice to the goal
· Lunchtime - lead the mice to the cats
· 100 Mice - collect 100 mice within a time limit and avoid collecting cats!
· Cat Soccer - Lead cats to your opponent's rockets

"Glu has proved to be incredibly successful in the translation of SEGA's original console games onto the mobile platform," stated Darren Newnham, Business Development Manager, SEGA Europe.

I just got Samsung's latest slider phone, the Samsung SGH-D520 (D520 from now on). It's not out for you guys in North America yet, but it launched in Asia and Europe at the start of this month, so that's a good excuse to review it. I'll be quick here - the D520 has camera, video (recording too), music, Bluetooth and USB support.

Let me tell you a bit about slider phones first. Basically, you just slide the front of the phone to the top and the buttons appear, giving the manufacturers more space to put stuff into. When sliding the phone open you can set it to accept calls or resume whatever you were doing when you closed it, which is another advantage.

On to the phone in question, the D520. Don't be confused by the numbers; the versions count down - first came 800, then 600 and now 520, and so on. This model is actually a trimmed version of the popular D600 cell phone, which has been out for a while now. Although it doesn't look similar at all, it has the same features. It doesn't look the same because my lovely new phone is actually incredibly slim. It's almost two times thinner than the D600, and that model isn't that 'fat' at all. The D520 comes in one colour so far: black. Well actually, they say it's black but it has a dark green/blue tint around the edges. But that looks cool, so no problem.

The interface is standard, nothing special. It's similar to most Samsung phones and works well. If it ain't broken don't fix it right? The colors are bright and shiny. Makes me feel good. Yeah.

The sliding effect is really smooth compared to the previous slide versions from Samsung (and most other brands); the grip is really good even though the phone is so small, and because it's so small (sizes are 101 x 46 x 15.9mm to be exact) it slides away into your pocket smoothly too. Oh, and it's light too; only 93g.

The D520 camera is a step backwards - it's 1.3MP (mega pixels) and not 2.0, like most phones nowadays (even the D600). I didn't really see the difference when I uploaded them to my PC, but I do wonder why it's not 2.0, since it can't take up too much extra space really. Here's a picture I took (all settings at highest):

The video recording is smooth, but strangely seems to be performing better when it's darker. When its daylight, the vision becomes blurry when moving a bit quicker, like Project Gotham Racing 3 (but worse, and uglier). Video playback (downloaded from PC or sent through Bluetooth) is another thing, more about that below. At about 640x480 or so it looks smooth but any higher than that and it gets nasty. So it's suitable for recording yet another high school brawl.

This is 'below'. Yeah, we're at the important part: storage. Unfortunately, the D520 only has 80MB of storage space. With the D600 this was no problem at all because you had the option of inserting a 1GB memory stick - but the D520 does not have a slot for that. In other words, you can only store like 10 songs or one fifth of a Lost episode. So just to make it clear... music playback and video playback is pretty much useless. It is decent quality though (especially the music playback), but if you really want to use it as an MP3 player you might as well bring your iPod too. The USB 1.1 support doesn't make it better at all - only one fifth of an episode and it also takes ten minutes to upload it.

We've now covered everything except what a phone is really about: calling. The sound is really good quality (bright and no noise), but sometimes you don't instantly know when a call is ended because you don't hear a sound. No biggie, but it can be annoying at times.

If you're too lazy to read all of the above, or you've come here just for the rating, you're either lucky or unlucky. Because here are the specifications:

• Tri-Band (GSM 900, 1,800, 1,900 MHz, GPRS)
• 1.3 Megapixel Camera / Flash
• Display: 262k Color TFT Screen (176x220)
• Video Recording (MPEG4) & Messaging
• Music Player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/e-AAC+/WMA)
• Document Viewer
• Mobile Printing (via Bluetooth)
• Bluetooth 1.2 / USB 1.1
• E-mail / MMS / WAP 2.0
• User Memory: Max 80 MB
• Size: 101 x 46 x 15.9 mm
• Weight: 93 grams.

And I'm not giving it a 'score', so you might as well read it anyway.

The very first working prototype of MIT's $100 laptop has been unveiled today at Seven Countries Task Force Meeting. It's a prototype of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. It's going to have a Linux-based OS, with a dual-mode display, 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory (no hard drive). It'll also have four USB ports and wireless broadband.

"...each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network."

Additionally, as you can see from the pictures below, the laptop will use wind-up technology to generate power. Anyway, enough with the talking - take a look at the pictures:
 

 

 

Dell's new laptop, the XPS M1210 (shown above), is now available through both the European and Japanese Dell websites. At the beginning of this month there have been rumors about the looks and specs of this fresh piece of hardware, and they appear to be true. As of writing, the product has not been listed on the US (or Canadian) website yet, but expect something around the end of this month or the beginning of June.

Although the M1210 has been listed on the European Dell sites, it says "availability is indicated as being May 30." Here are the specs:

- Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz
- GeForce 7400 256MB RAM
- 12.1" WXGA screen
- 1GB RAM
- 100GB hard drive
- Built-in rotating webcam
- 4 USB 2.0 ports
- FireWire
- Two headphone jacks
- Windows XP Home

The Japanese listing has some additional options for now, like a faster hard drive or XP Pro instead of Home.

Due to recent reports that providers Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth turned over millions of US phone records to the National Secutiry Agency (NSA) starting in 2004, two New Jersey public interest lawyers Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer filed a huge lawsuit against the former citing that they breached several privacy laws. If the court goes with Afran and Mayer it would not only cost Verizon but the other two companies billions of dollars - five billion to be exact.

The lawsuit asks the court to stop Verizon and the rest from turning over any more records to the NSA without a warrant or consent of the subscriber. All three companies confirm nor deny their actions, saying it's secret federal information. Mr. Afran said: "this is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we've ever seen in the United States."

Verizon had the following to say about the recent reports: "Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition."

Additionally, a recent poll tells us that 53% of all Americans were against the companies handing over the records, and agree it's a major privacy breach.

It has just been announced by Glu Mobile (mobile game publisher and developer) that they've made an alliance with Microsoft to develop and publish the mobile version of Project Gotham Racing, the hit-series you might know from the Xbox and Xbox 360. As of yet it's unknown which phones are supported (although you can count on those with the Windows OS), and there haven't been any screenshots released either.

"The PGR franchise revolutionized the racing genre by rewarding gamers for driving with speed, style and daring," said Greg Ballard, chief executive officer, Glu Mobile. "Glu will create the definitive mobile racing experience by delivering this same exciting challenge optimized for the mobile platform."

"The Project Gotham Racing franchise is loved by millions worldwide, and we're excited to partner with Glu Mobile to give gamers a new platform to enjoy it on in the near future," said Edward Ventura, director of franchise development, Microsoft.

Expect to see a worldwide release somewhere in early 2007.