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Today ZTE officially unveiled the new Nubia Z5S and Nubia Z5S Mini. But those aren’t the only new Nubia-branded devices that the Chinese company has been working on for the past few months.

See, there’s also an upcoming ZTE Nubia Z7. As the name sort of implies, it will be bigger than the other two – a phablet, in fact. ZTE hasn’t done a lot of those (if any), so this is interesting. The Nubia Z7 can be seen below in a hands-on, ears-on type image that leaked in China.

The first Nubia phablet has a gigantic 6.44-inch touchscreen, similar to the one employed by the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. This makes it bigger than the Huawei Ascend Mate, the largest phablet from ZTE’s most important competitor in China.

Aside from the huge display, the Nubia Z7 is slated by “inside sources” to come with the now-obligatory quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, this time in the MSM8974AB iteration (with faster graphics than the non-AB designated model). There’s also 3 GB of RAM, 128 GB of internal storage, a 13 MP f/2.0 BSI rear camera with optical image stabilization and LED flash, support for both 3G and 4G LTE networks, and running the show will apparently be Android 4.4 KitKat.

That seems surprising (especially considering that the Nubia Z5S and Z5S Mini announced today both run version 4.2 of the OS), but perhaps not so much once you realize that the ZTE Nubia Z7 will only be released next year. We assume the Chinese company will be showcasing it either at CES in January or Mobile World Congress in February.

Via mobile.3g.cn

ZTE has officially announced the Nubia Z5S and the Nubia Z5S Mini smartphones. With the new additions, ZTE will be looking to strengthen its position in the world's largest smartphone market. ZTE Nubia Z5S is the company's latest flagship smartphone, which sports a 1080p Sharp IGZO display. The smartphone packs a punch with its 2.3 GHz Krait 400 CPU on along with 2 GB of RAM on a Snapdragon...

Origin PC announced customized versions of Razer’s BlackWidow keyboard, Taipan mouse and Goliathus mouse surface that feature an exclusive red and black backlit color scheme. Origin PC is collaborating with Razer to launch customized versions of its products. The products that will be initially offered are Razer’s BlackWidow keyboard, Taipan mouse and Goliathus mouse surface. [...]

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Our other piece of significant NVIDIA news to coincide with the start of SC13 comes via a joint announcement from NVIDIA and IBM. Together the two are announcing a fairly broad partnership that will see GPUs and GPU acceleration coming to both IBM’s data analytic software and to the IBM Power supercomputers running some of those applications.

First and foremost, on the software side of matters IBM and NVIDIA are announcing that the two are collaborating on adding GPU acceleration to IBM’s various enterprise software packages, most notably IBM’s data analytic packages (InfoSphere, etc). Though generally not categorized as a supercomputer scale project, data analytics can be at times a significantly compute bound task, making it a potential growth market for NVIDIA’s Tesla business.

NVIDIA has already landed somewhat similar deals for data analysis in the past, but any potential deal with IBM would represent a significant step up for the Tesla business given the vast scale of IBM’s own business dealings. NVIDIA is still in the phase of business development where they’re looking to vastly grow their customer base, and IBM in turn has no shortage of potential customers. But with that said this is an early announcement of collaboration, and while we’d expect IBM and NVIDIA to find some ways to improve their performance via GPUs – primarily on a power efficiency basis – it’s far too early for either party to be talking about performance numbers.

Of course IBM is very much a vertically integrated company, offering mixes of software, hardware, and services to their customers. So any announcement of GPU acceleration for IBM’s software would go hand in hand with a hardware announcement, and that’s what’s occurring today.

So along with IBM and NVIDIA’s software collaboration, the two are announcing that IBM will begin building Tesla equipped Power computers in 2014. IBM announced POWER8 back at Hot Chips 2013, and along with a suite of architectural improvements to the processor itself, it’s the first Power chip to be specifically designed for use with external processors via its CAPI port, and as such it’s the first POWER chip well suited for being used alongside a Tesla card.

At this point NVIDIA and IBM are primarily talking about their hardware partnership as a way to provide hardware for the aforementioned software collaboration for use in data centers and the like, itself a new market for Tesla. But of course there are longer term implications for the supercomputer market. Power CPUs on their own have been enough to hold high spots on the Top500 list for years – BlueGene/Q systems being the most recent example – so the combination of POWER CPUs and Tesla GPUs could be a very potent combination in the right hands. As well as the x86 market treats NVIDIA, there are a number of users of Power and other less common architectures that NVIDIA cannot currently reach, so being able to get their GPUs inside of an IBM supercomputer is a huge achievement for the company in that respect. And if nothing else, this announcement gets NVIDIA a close CPU partner in the server/supercomputer market, which is something they didn't have before.

On a final note, it’s worth pointing out that all of this comes only a few months after IBM formed the OpenPOWER Consortium, of which NVIDIA is also a member. For the moment we’re just seeing the barest levels of integration between NVIDIA’s GPUs and IBM’s POWER CPUs, but a successful collaboration between the two would leave the door open to closer works between the two in the future. Both companies offer licensing of their respective core IP, so if NVIDIA and IBM wanted to make a run at the server/compute market with a fully integrated APU, this would be the first step towards accomplishing that.

Recent teardowns of Sony's newly released next-gen console have confirmed the PS4's secondary processor and an extra 2 Gigabits of GDDR3 SDRAM.

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AMD had a busy week, unveiling the CPUs it prepared for 2014′s mobile devices, such as tablets and ultrabooks. Now it’s showing off a gaming tablet, or better said it’s teasing one, that will be showcased at CES 2014 in January.

The initiative is called Project Discovery and the device packs AMD’s next gen Mullins processor, a low power chip that’s destined for fanless tablets and ultrathin notebooks. It will also arrive on 2 in 1 devices and this 28 nm CPU will use as little as 2 watts of energy. This is only the start of AMD’s offering in the tablet area and while their first approach may be timid at first, it should be enough to scare the likes of Nvidia a little bit.

It’s interesting to see that chip makers are the ones building gaming tablets these days, instead of big brands like Samsung, LG or Lenovo… Nvidia has the Shield thing and also partners with hardware makers to deliver the Tegra Note, while AMD has the Project Discovery. Imagine if Qualcomm made a gaming slate…

While folks were waiting around to get their PlayStation 4 delivered to their doorsteps, someone with an early unit was busy shooting it, literally, with a sniper rifle.  The folks over at RatedRR, who have a penchant for ripping apart new tech with one of the many weapons in their arsenal, managed to grab a [...]

The post PlayStation 4 gets hit with a 50 caliber bullet, recorded in super slow motion appeared first on VR-Zone.

We’ve already told you that the upcoming BlackBerry OS 10.2.1 will bring a number of UI changes. The most important change, however, will be under the hood where a new Android Runtime will be running, all with support for Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

According to BlackBerry, increased compatibility improvements will include:

• Android Native Support – for Android apps that use shared libraries written in native-code, such as C and C++. Support is limited to the recommended system headers and APIs as documented by Google.
• Bluetooth – so that Android apps can use / connect to Bluetooth peripherals. Unfortunately, Bluetooth LE only got supported in Android 4.3.
• MapView v1 – added support using OpenStreetMaps. Support for MapView v2 API is being planned for a future release.
• Share Framework
• Spellcheck – support for spell checking and correction, as well as the ability to add words to the BlackBerry 10 dictionary.

The BlackBerry 10.2.1 SDK will be arriving soon when developers will be able to test and submit their apps to BlackBerry World. We’ve no idea when BlackBerry smartphones will get the updated platform, though.

The post Improved Android Runtime coming to BlackBerry 10.2.1 appeared first on IntoMobile.

Improved Android Runtime coming to BlackBerry 10.2.1 originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2013-11-18T08:15:59Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j

With so many questions day by day about viewers still considering an iPad Air or a Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 2, we know the ropes are complicated this holiday season if you’re out to get yourself a new tablet. 2013 has shown just how great technology can evolve in the mobile space, and there’s a lot to choose from. Some may agree that tablets have stagnated in their innovation, while others feel that you can only invent the wheel so many times. Watch today’s Top 5 as we talk about our top picks for your next tablet during Fall 2013. It’s been a very innovative year for some ...

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Intel is focusing on reducing power draw, boosting performance and improving API support with the GPU on the 14nm follow-up to Bay Trail. The GPU for Cherry Trail will feature a collection of piecemeal upgrades over Bay Trail, with a focus on efforts to extend battery life by lowering power consumption, based on new information [...]

The post First look at new features on Cherry Trail’s GPU appeared first on VR-Zone.

Bitcoin is on the rise as a payment platform, but banks in the U.S. are wary of entrepreneurs dealing with Bitcoin as an exchange or as a payment method. Will this spell trouble for the new decentralized currency? Bitcoin is gaining popularity as a payment platform, and in its dollar value itself is rising. As [...]

The post Bitcoin businesses getting banned from banks in the US? appeared first on VR-Zone.

Get ready to help Bitcoin inflation with ASRock’s latest motherboards that have more PCIe slots than you could possibly want. ASRock is the first mainstream manufacturer to join in on the Bitcoin frenzy, and has released two new motherboards that are designed for mining Bitcoin. Both boards come with a total of six PCIe slots, [...]

The post ASRock announces two new motherboards geared for Bitcoin miners appeared first on VR-Zone.

Philips is a brand usually known in the mobile world for the big batteries on its handsets, but now it’s also getting into the tablet game with an interesting model, dubbed Philips Amio.

This is a budget friendly device, that’s pictured above and apparently it will retail for around 100 euros, when it comes to Europe later this month. The device’s design makes me think of one of those kids tablets, with that big plasticky edge that would be meant for protection on a kid’s slate. Specs include a 7 inch 1024 x 600 pixel LCD display, a dual core 1.5 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage.

There’s also a microSD card slot here, a microUSB port, a micro HDMI as well, plus an audio jack. Philips implemented a 3000 mAh battery inside, that should give the slate about a day of usage. The OS is Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and I have to say this is a pretty appealing product.