iPhone 6

The iPhone 6 Plus, were born to keep Apple at the sharp end of a market that was starting to lust after powerful, big screen smartphones with clever and premium design.
The iPhone 6 certainly addresses a number of the problems Apple had developed, coming with a much larger screen (although not dramatically increasing the size of the phone) a boosted processor, better camera, improved battery and crucially: overhauled design.

The other important design change here is the camera now protrudes slightly on the rear of the phone. It's good to see that happening, as it shows that Apple isn't willing to compromise on camera quality in order to just whack in a thinner phone.

The protrusion is a little worrying in that laying the Apple iPhone 6 down flat on a table could see scratches appearing, but the sapphire glass that covers the lens should see that's pretty safe.

The rest of the iPhone 6 is very similar to the iPhone 5S, with the speakers at the bottom flanking the Lightning port.

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New Samsung Galaxy Tab And Galaxy Note Tablets In The Works

We are expecting to see a number of new devices from Samsung at Mobile World Congress next month, including the new Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones, and now it would appear that we may also see some new tablets.

Some details have been revealed of a new range of Samsung Galaxy Tab and Samsung Galaxy Note tablets, and there is a possibility that these devices could be announced next month.

The guys from Sammobile have discovered a number of new model numbers for some new Galaxy Note devices and also some Galaxy Tab devices.

Some of the new devices which have been discovered include the Samsung Galaxy Tab AS which could be a new version of the Galaxy Tab 7.0.

There is also the Galaxy Tab AL which is expected to be the replacement tablet for the Galaxy Tab 10.1. As soon as we get some more details, including some photos and specifications, we will let you guys know.

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Acer Chromebook 15

Announced over the weekend, the Acer Chromebook 15 is not just Acer’s first 15.6-inch laptop running Google Chrome OS, but it’s also the first to use the newest, fifth-generation Intel processors, which officially debuted yesterday.

Indeed, the Acer model I found uses a Broadwell-based Core i3 chip. Essentially, there should be a slight overall performance boost over Intel‘s older Haswell chips found in the Acer C720 Chromebooks — mostly in the graphics department — but longer battery life. Intel said a laptop with its new Core i7, for example, should last 1.5 hours longer than the prior model.

Acer still hasn’t said what kind of battery life to expect with the new Chromebook 15; you’ll surely see more with the less expensive Intel Celeron processor over the Core i3 that I used briefly. My guess would be in the 11 to 12 hour range for the Celeron model and 8 to 9 for the Core i3. Once I get a review unit, I’ll be able to confirm that, of course.

But I can’t emphasize enough how big this new Chromebook is. Not only does it have a large 15.6-inch display, but there’s a rather thick bezel around it, making for a huge, nearly 5-pound laptop.


That gives more room for a keyboard, mousepad and speakers; these sounded OK in my brief time with the computer but on the loud CES show floor, it’s really hard to make a good, early judgement. Regardless, this is not a computer I’d want to carry around for any length of time: This seems more suited to sitting on a desk with occasional mobility.

If you’ve used an Acer Chromebook before, the overall build quality and materials will be familiar: Lots of plastic, a solid but not superb trackpad, and decent keyboard. The 1920 x 1080 display here is improved though: No, this isn’t a high-end IPS panel but it’s quite nice to look at, even from wide angles.

Browsing the web and using a few Chrome apps showed good performance, which I expected since this is the more powerful Core i3 model. As a general test, I ran the Google Octane benchmark and the computer returned a strong, high score over 18,000. (Note: I’d only consider this a first pass test as it’s on a heavily used demo unit.

That’s easily more than double the score of an ARM-based Chromebook and a nice improvement over last year’s Intel-powered devices as well. It’s not quite Chromebook Pixel performance, however, it’s reasonably close and can be had for about one-fourth the price.

I’m not in the market for big Chromebook but if I were, I’d take a long look at this laptop in either chip configuration. Yes you’ll take a performance hit by stepping down to the Celeron model but you’ll gain in battery life. Hopefully, I can get a closer look at that version because I’m interested in how well Intel’s new Celeron performs in the Acer Chromebook 15.

The new Acer Chromebook 15 starts at $249.99 but that’s with a 1366 x 768 display. Even though I haven’t seen that model, I’d recommend upgrading to the full HD model if your budget allows, mainly because of that large screen: It’s going to look better with more pixels.

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