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HTC Desire HD: Rumours of a review are greatly exaggerated
Samsung Galaxy Tab vs Advent Vega: clash of the Android tablets!
Fallout: New Vegas sweeps our Best games Top 5 lists
Steve Jobs Android attack: Google boss responds with gibberish
Samsung Galaxy Tab: super speedy visual seach for music downloads
Confirmed: webOS 2.0 coming to UK Palm phones
Palm Pre 2 unveiled: official photos!
Fallout: New Vegas review
Toshiba Folio 100: official release date revealed!
Autonomous iPad taxi: safer than a minicab?

HTC Desire HD: Rumours of a review are greatly exaggerated

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 09:18 AM PDT

The HTC Desire HD we got yesterday straight from HTC itself and unboxed certainly looked the part. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the software wasn’t final, so we’ve had to return it while we wait for the finished software due later this week. Apologies for the delay, folks! Fortunately, that gives you more time to tell us what you want to know for our HTC Desire HD review instead.

Our suspicions were first aroused when some of HTC’s own apps, like the Connected Media streaming app, started crashing and stuttering. This isn’t what we expect from HTC these days, and sure enough, before we could even pick up the phone, HTC contacted us to say that we were running non-final software. Spooky!

HTC Desire HD fans can relax though, as we’ve seen huge bug fixes take place just before release of smartphones and gadgets plenty of times before – we’ll be bringing you the full, fair and complete HTC Desire HD review just as soon as we can, so fingers crossed any problems are resolved.

Got a question for our HTC Desire HD review? Drop them here in the comments or head over to our HTC Desire HD Facebook page and talk about the phone there too. In the meantime, enjoy the unboxing video below!

Out October | £varies | HTC

Samsung Galaxy Tab vs Advent Vega: clash of the Android tablets!

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 08:50 AM PDT

At Electricpig towers we've been watching the great wave of Android tablets begin in earnest. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is one of the most talked about, firstly because of its form factor, and more recently because of the sky high prices announced. In contrast we're seeing more budget options, and while tablets from the likes of Next don't hold much promise, the Advent Vega looks like an absolute bargain, sitting at £250 for a 10.1" Android powered tablet. So how do the two stack up? Is the Tab worth the extra couple of hundred quid you'll have to shell out?

Price
The Advent Vega is £250, and currently only comes in a Wi-fi only version, although there will be a 3G version heading this way in the first half of next year. The Galaxy Tab on the other hand, whilst we haven't had an official price handed down from Samsung yet, has been priced at upwards of £530 unlocked, which prices it the same as the 16GB Wi-fi and 3G iPad. News of these prices have baffled everyone, not least because Samsung assured us that the Galaxy Tab would be more affordable than the iPad.

Functionality
Despite the steep price tag on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, it does have rich functionality, and when we tried it out, was a dream to use. It functions as a phone as well, whereas the Advent Vega has stripped all the phone functionality out of Android Froyo 2.2. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has the Samsung UI over the top, which gives it multiple home screens and some extra widgets. In comparison, the Advent Vega has been pared down to what’s necessary. While most people can't envisage themselves holding the 7" tablet up to their faces to call, it does mean that you do only need one device. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is far more feature rich than the Advent Vega tablet. Question is, do people want a tablet that’s a phone as well?

Connectivity and Apps
The big difference between the two devices, aside from the form factor, is connectivity. The Advent Vega, until next year, will only have Wi-fi, which is fine for sitting on the sofa, but might not be so handy elsewhere. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has 3G and Wi-fi, and is geared much more towards being on the go. This connectivity means that the Samsung Galaxy Tab has the Android Marketplace, whereas the Advent Vega will have the AppsLib marketplace from launch, which has 5,000 apps available, in comparison to the 80,000 Android has.

Size and weight
The Samsung Galaxy Tab occupies a strange form factor. Its 7″ screen is just about small enough to fit in one hand, although it does feel silly to put it up to your ear to make a phone call. The Advent Tablet different, a standard 10.1″ tablet. As such, in lots of ways the two are pitched at different needs. The Advent Vega wants to be the tablet you keep on the sofa, whereas the Galaxy Tab is your multifunction, all in one device, encompassing a phone, tablet, and e-reader. The Advent Vega tablet weighs double the 380g the Samsung Galaxy Tab clocks in at. The Advent Vega is 275 x 178 x 13.6 mm, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab is 190 x 120.4 x 12 mm. That puts the Vega almost 10cm taller than the Tab, 6cm wider and a little deeper.

Before you skip to the conclusion, check out the Advent Vega tablet below, if you haven’t seen it already…

Conclusion
There’s lots of areas where these Android tablets fall in line though. Both have a 1GHz processor, and have similar claims to battery life, and essentially, they are different form factors. The major differentiator here is the price. You get richer functions at a higher cost with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but the Advent Vega is a bargain stripped-back tablet for the sofa, which browse, watch movies, and hook up to social networking. We’ve yet to have some decent one on time time with both of these tablets, so it’s impossible to get into minute details. Stay tuned though, because we’re set to give both of these a full Electricpig shakedown in the near future.

What do you think? Would you rather shell out the extra cash for the Samsung Galaxy Tab or go budget, losing the phone functionality and Android Marketplace? Drop us a line in the comments and tell us what you think!

Fallout: New Vegas sweeps our Best games Top 5 lists

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 08:36 AM PDT

Peeped our Fallout: New Vegas review yet? If not, you should know, you’re in for a treat, whether you’re an Xbox, PS3 or PC gamer. Just as Fallout 3 earned a place on all three of our Best Xbox games, Best PC games and Best PS3 games Top 5 lists, so has Fallout: New Vegas. This time though, its’s claimed a few crowns as well.

Cast your eyes over to the right, and you’ll see that Fallout: New Vegas has earned the top spot on our Best Xbox games Top 5 list. We feel that its incredible open ended gameplay and humour as black as night in the Nevada desert are worthy of the title – and the only reason it hasn’t nabbed the same title on the PS3 is, well, Metal Gear Solid 4.

Fallout: New Vegas is out on Friday: give that Read More button a tap for our review, and if you’re sold, you can pre-order through Amazonwith a click of the Buy It icon.

Are you looking forward to Fallout: New Vegas? Hated Fallout 3? Too addicted to Halo to care? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Steve Jobs Android attack: Google boss responds with gibberish

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 08:01 AM PDT

That Steve Jobs Android slam from Apple's earnings call. Well, Google has swung into action with…a tweet. Andy Rubin, Google's Android chief has put his dormant Twitter account into action to send his first tweet. So what brutal putdown did he offer to Steve Jobs, master of communication? ??Well to the untrained eye, a load of gibberish…

Rubin's tweet read: "The definition of open: 'mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make.'" Translated into human, that's the code you need to use Android in its open source form. It's a clever geeky repost but won't get the attention Steve Jobs' volley of verbal punches will pick up.

The response from Rubin sums up the gulf in terms of PR approach between Google and Apple. While Google pleases developers with lots of juicy geeky announcements at Google I/O, Steve Jobs presides over regular tech rallies that dominate the news agenda. Android is 'open' but explaining it with a chunk of Java code won't get to the mass of consumers confused by too many Android phones and versions of the OS.

How do you think Google should fight it's battle with Apple? Give them some free advice in the comments now…

Out now | £varies | Google (via Twitter)

Samsung Galaxy Tab: super speedy visual seach for music downloads

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 07:46 AM PDT

Along with its native music hub for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, 7digital also announced today that it has developed an image recognition app for Android, which uses the camera on the Samsung Galaxy Tab to take a picture of album artwork or promotional material, analyses it and zips straight through to the 7digital store. Sounds familiar? That’s because it’s not completely new. This one we’ve seen today though, is super-fast, and very clever. Click through to see it in action…

Zavvi have an app that use this technology and Google has used it too, among others. What you can see this Samsung Galaxy Tab app doing though, is scanning not just album covers, but promotional materials like posters on buses and in magazines. The app can scan these promotional materials and recognise fragments of the artwork. Today, we got a demo of the new app, and boy is it speedy, and that’s not because the app is caching anything either.

Here’s the full video. Watch how quickly the app works…

Confirmed: webOS 2.0 coming to UK Palm phones

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 07:37 AM PDT

Like the sound of webOS 2.0 on the tasty new Palm Pre 2? Don’t get too down about the cheese eating surrender monkeys across the Channel getting it first. We’ve confirmed with Palm UK that webOS 2.0 will be coming to the Palm Pre, Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus in the UK “in the coming months”.

Pre owners are set for the full works, but Pixi Plus owners won’t get Flash 10.1 video support – that’s not so surprising considering how low power the Pixi is. An exact rollout date is promised nearer the time, so stay tuned and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s confirmed.

Palm Pre 2 unveiled: official photos!

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 07:27 AM PDT

The Palm Pre 2 just got official, complete with webOS 2.0 and a more refined design. Come check it out here in our gallery as we run through everything it’s packing.

If you were hoping for a full touch HP/Palm webOS smartphone, the Palm Pre 2 is not it. But that’s by no means a bad thing: we loved the original Pre, and a more polished, powerful update is fine by us. This time round it’s sporting a five megapixel camera and 1GHz CPU, though the screen stays at a now slightly dated 3.1-inch 480×320 resolution. The slide out portrait QWERTY remains in place.

But the Palm Pre 2’s software is the star of the show here. It’s running the all new webOS 2.0 we heard whispers about a few weeks ago, and it sounds very promising indeed. Just Type is the new name of universal search through the Palm Pre 2’s keyboard, and developers can plug into this so you can search through apps too.

Multitasking now puts related cards up together, so all your websites are in a stack in card view, while developers can have Synergy accounts plug data into their own apps. The biggy on the front end though is that webOS 2.0 on the Palm Pre 2 brings Flash 10.1 support for streaming video, just like Android 2.2.

We can’t wait to try it out, but there is one hitch. The Palm Pre 2 is only out in France on 22 October, with a North America launch in the next few months. When contacted, a spokesperson for Palm UK wouldn’t comment on whether it would be released here. Fingers crossed we don’t have a protracted wait for the Palm Pre 2 like we did the first one.

Out TBC | £TBC | Palm

Fallout: New Vegas review

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 07:00 AM PDT

Fallout: New Vegas faces a challenge tougher than a Super Mutant on the powder. Previous post-apocalyptic installment Fallout 3 scooped awards across the board on release two years ago, and had fans’ hair falling out, not through radiation sickness, but simply because they played into old age. In the hands of a different developer, can the series continue its streak? We’ve been roaming the Mojave wastelands for the last fortnight to bring you our verdict: find out what we made of it in our full Fallout: New Vegas review.

Look, we’ll just say it. Fallout: New Vegas is a triumph. It’s every bit as dark, demented, bold, broad and funny as its predecessor, and we’ve no doubt it’ll garner just as many award – and in year when we’ve seen so many incredible games with solid multiplayer as well, to ignore this completely and still come out on top is phenomenal.

As you might have guessed from the name, the setting for Fallout: New Vegas is the wastelands of the Nevada desert, rather than the (comparatively) fertile plains around Washington DC you trundled across in Fallout 3. But really, if you’ve played the previous game, you’ll be right at home here: bar a few tweaks, combat and gameplay is still very much the same. Don’t fix what ain’t broke right?

There are some more comedy melee attacks thrown in, and new targeting for some weapons, but otherwise, the VATS system remains in place. Hold down R2 in a fight, and you’ll pause the game, letting you target an enemy’s limbs or other protrusions – which leads to greater accuracy and more gory headshots, but also uses up valuable AP. Fail to kill an enemy before you use it all and you’ll have to start shooting on your own, or hotfoot it away until it’s restored, by which point somebody else may well have decapitated you for giggles.

What is new though, alongside the terrain of Fallout: New Vegas (vast and hauntingly beautiful – it’s testament to the scale of the game that you won’t make it to the New Vegas strip for hours and hours) is the faction system. For the first time, you don’t start off inside an underground vault, but pulled out of a ditch after being unceremoniously shot in the head by a rival gangster. Nursed back to health, you then start exploring the Mojave wasteland, taking on missions in a bid to track down your would-be murderer.

This time though, it’s not the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel battling for supremacy (though you might just find the latter tribe tucked away somewhere), but the pseudo-democratic New California Republic, the bloodthirsty Legions of Caesar, and a horde of smaller gangs, from the crews running the shining casinos in the middle of dilapidated New Vegas, to cannibals and gangs armed with rocket launchers.

How you react, dress, and behave towards each group directly affects what missions are open to you, how people talk to you, and whether people open fire or not, only adding to the legendary open-end gameplay of the series. An example: a few hours into the game, we were left in an awkward situation. An elderly woman, living on her own in a cabin up in the cliffs, was withholding vital information in exchange for bottle caps – the currency of our devastated future – that we simply didn’t have.

Now you could sweet talk her into confessing, or pickpocket her for the key to her cupboard. But because we’d created a character that was all brawn and no brains, we had to pull out a lead pipe, and beat her to death. Then shoot her dogs when they turned on us. So it goes. As ever, Fallout’s ability to let you play the game in so many ways impresses, and should you ever get tired of exploring, there’s still replay value in starting over as an eloquent computer geek rather than a grunt that’s good with guns and explosives.

The difficulty level of Fallout: New Vegas does appear to have dropped a bit – there are noticeably fewer animals roaming the plains on the same setting as in Fallout 3, and if you played the former on Easy, you can play this one on Normal.

But to make up for this, Fallout: New Vegas also offers a ludicrously tricky Hardcore mode, which is tougher than beating a chess Grandmaster made entirely of diamond. Health packs don’t work immediately, if you’re crippled, you stay crippled until you see a doctor, and you’ll constantly need to keep an eye on your food, hydration and sleep deprivation levels so that you don’t just keel over. It’s one for veterans only, and developer Obsidian promises a secret reward if you make it all the way through the game with it turned on. Good luck with that.

We said it will win awards, but what Fallout: New Vegas might not do, however, is win over those who felt let down by Bethesda’s entry in the series.

To give you a little history lesson: the first two Fallout games back in the 1990s were isometric third person RPGs, created by the famous Black Isle Studios. The developer originally worked on a Fallout 3 game, but when publisher Interplay went under, the IP for the series was sold to Bethesda, the name behind the massively successful Elder Scrolls series – and its Fallout 3, while critically acclaimed, was as much first person shooter as it was powered by 20 sided dice.

Check out our Best Xbox games Top 5 now

But with much of Black Isle’s creative team now at developer Obsidian, Fallout: New Vegas should seem like something of a homecoming. And indeed, for fans of the setting and the series’ dark humour, it is – if all the explosions and blood seem too serious, we strongly suggest you take a stroll through the museum at REPCONN headquarters south of Las Vegas. We never once imagined that we’d find looking at virtual exhibits in a game captivating, but Obsidian’s dappy attention to detail has launched pigs like nukes.

But Obsidian doesn’t bring back the point and click, turn based gameplay of yore, if that was what you were hoping for. Should you run out of action points for VATS targeting, you’ll still rely heavily on your freehand targeting skills with a gun. The developer, famed for working on the classic Baldur’s Gate RPG, has cribbed more from Fallout 3 when it comes to controls and structure than we expected.

Still, we think that only a minority will mind when Bethesda’s influence on Fallout: New Vegas is so benign. If there are any flaws, it’s the bugs you might expect from a game so vast: clipping and the occasional trapped player. We also encountered a couple of game hangs on the PS3 version, which required a restart. But so long as you save regularly, this is unlikely to put anyone off. If anything will, it’s the radio stations of Nevada – apparently only about four songs survived the war. But you don’t have to listen to them, and the background music is mesmerising.

It’s not quite time to dish out definitive Game Of The Year proclamations just yet. With two months to go, we could still see Fable 3, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Call of Duty Black Ops, or hell, even a Kinect game steal the show. But they’ll have to be pretty damn magical if they’re going to sit in the same category as Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout: New Vegas has topped our Top 5 lists of best Xbox games and best PC games, and made number two in our Best PS3 games Top 5, which is why we've given it our Recommended rosette. Check out more Top 5s here and find out more about how they work with our Top 5 guarantee.

Toshiba Folio 100: official release date revealed!

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 06:47 AM PDT

The Toshiba Folio 100 we got our mitts on at IFA will be arriving in just a couple of weeks, Graeme Simons, the Business Manager for Toshiba Europe, has told Electricpig. The Toshiba Folio 100, a Froyo powered tablet, will be shipping in the second week of November. The Toshiba Folio 100 won’t break the bank either, and is priced at £330. For the moment it’s just Wi-fi and Bluetooth, but a 3G version will be arriving in Q1 2011, so sometime after new year, which will be £40-£50 more expensive.

For the first three weeks after launch the Toshiba Folio 100 will be an exclusive to Dixons in the UK, after which it will be stocked by Tesco, Staples and John Lewis. Simons said that the reason for choosing these retailers was because Toshiba wanted consumers to be able to see the product and try it out, so Toshiba chose stores that could give demos and have demo copies out on the floor.

Do you want a Toshiba Folio 100? Is a Froyo-powered Toshiba tablet too good a deal to miss, priced at £330? Drop us a line in the comments and let us know!

Autonomous iPad taxi: safer than a minicab?

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 06:22 AM PDT

iPad taxi anyone? We've just seen the Google robot cars, now German researchers have kicked it up a level with a driverless taxi that can be hailed with your iPad. That's got to be safer than most minicabs, right? Read on for full details of the autonomous iPad taxi research and some deeper details on the tech inside…

German researchers at AutoNOMOS Labs (part of Berlin's Free University) have pulled the covers of their autonomous car. Called Made In Germany (MIG), it's an autonomous VW Passat cab which you can hail using an iPad app. We have a feeling London cabbies are not going to be happy. A robot taxi and it's German? I blame that Ken Livingstone/Boris (delete where applicable).

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The MIG iPad taxi packs GPS navigation, multiple video cameras, laser scanners, sensor and radars into the Passat's shell. It uses that combination of sensors to create a 3D map of its surrounding and detect pedestrians and vehicles. To hail MIG, passengers need a Wi-Fi + 3G iPad to transmit its GPS location to the vehicle. The passengers can then track the iPad taxi's route as they travel.

Take a look at the autonomous iPad taxi video below and let us know: would you be brave enough to take a ride?