June 17, 2010
Sony Ericsson gets official with Xperia X8 smartphone
ZD Net
Rachel King highlights some of the features of Sony’s new Xperia X8 smartphone device.
“The Xperia X8 is an aesthetically pleasing device, albeit a rather simple smartphone. Powered by a 600MHz processor, the new Sony Ericsson handheld will either be initially launched with Android 2.1, or Android 1.6 with an upgrade promised a few weeks later with the rest of the Xperia collection. Naturally, being an Android device, the Google Apps suite will be pre-loaded, including Gmail, YouTube and Maps with Street View. While the camera isn’t the best with 3.2-megapixel image sensor, it does allow for video recording and geo-tagging.”
New SQL Azure pricing: more scalable, more predictable
Ars Technica
Peter Bright writes about changes to Microsoft’s SQL Azure cloud database service.
“Previously, SQL Azure databases were limited to either 1GB (for ‘Web edition’) or 10GB (for ‘business edition’), at $9.99 and $99.99 per month, respectively. Web edition databases are now offered in a 5GB size (for $49.95/month), and business edition databases can grow to 50GB-in 10GB, $99.99/month increments. In other words, the price per gigabyte-month is the same, but the maximum size has grown.”
<font color=red RIM rumored to be testing new touchscreen phone, tablet
Ars Technica
Jacqui Cheng writes that according to the Wall Street Journal, RIM may have a new touchscreen phone in the works.
According to Wall Street Journal’s usual ‘people familiar’ with the matter, the smartphone maker’s new touchscreen phone will have a slide-out keyboard-an unusual break from the typical BlackBerry silhouette. On top of the rumored new smartphone, RIM is also supposedly testing a new tablet-like device ‘to serve as a larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone.’ Like the BlackBerry (and the iPad 3G), the rumoured tablet is expected to connect to cellular networks for data and may be available toward the end of 2010.”