ASUS PadFone Infinity - First Look

Image credit: ASUS

The new ASUS PadFone™ Infinity.  Featuring a 5-inch Android 4.1 Smartphone that can be coupled to a 10.1-inch full HD tablet display. It's designed for those looking for the abilities of both a tablet and Smartphone without having two entirely separate devices.

Overall specs of the phone places it in the high end range, with a Qualcomm® Snapdragon 600 quad-core (1.7GHz) processor with an Adreno 320 GPU.  2GB of ram, and 32-64GB of eMMc Flash storage.  With its 5-inch Smartphone display featuring a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels giving you full HD on the capacitive multi touch panel. Featuring both 3G and 4G LTE capability with up to 19hours talk time on the 2400mAh Li-Polymer battery(pushed up to 40hrs when docked with the tablet).  It has a sleek aluminum alloy unibody design with a brushed metal finish. 

The tablet side of this offers a 10.1-inch Full HD 1920x1080 pixel Capacitive Multi touch display.  An additional 19Whr battery which extends battery life up to three-times longer.  And an additional front facing camera.

Overall a great idea, and my only qualms about it is they may have pushed the phone screen size just a little too much.

Check it out at the link below:
http://www.asus.com/Tablets_Mobile/PadFone_Infinity#overview

The ASUS Transformer AiO, Blurring the Lines Between Tablet and PC

Image credit: ASUS

In an attempt to blur the lines between Tablet and PC, ASUS recently announced it's dual OS Transformer AiO.   Featuring the ability to seamlessly switch between Windows 8 and Android 4.1, this machine is a bit of a beast, but has some great potential.

The machine has a somewhat unique dual processor design, with a NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 Quad-core CPU in the tablet and an additional 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor in the desktop PC station, giving it plenty of processing power.  It's 18.4-inch screen features a resolution of 1920x1080, giving you full HD and appears to be higher than most desktop monitors of it's size.

Additional features in it's dock include 8GB of memory, a 1-2TB hard drive, Nvidia GeForce GT 730M discrete graphics, 4 USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, DVD burner, HDMI out and a 1MP front-facing camera.

The tablet side of the ASUS Transformer AiO features the 18.4-inch 10 finger multi touch display, 32GB eMMc Flash, 802.11 a/b/g/n Bluetooth V3.0 EDR, 2 x 1.5W speakers, MicroSD card reader, and much more.

The tablet can function as a remote virtual desktop connecting wirelessly to the dock giving you the ability to run Windows 8 and associated apps.  According to ASUS the Transformer AiO has the ability to seamlessly switch between operating systems with one button push.

Overall due to its 18.4" and 5.3 lbs size, it's not the most backpack friendly tablet, but its abilities would be well suited for an office or home environment where a fixed location PC just doesn't always work.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is here.

Courtesy of Samsung

Described as "Mindblowingly thin," by Samsungs director of product marketing Ryan Bidan, the Galaxy S4 handset takes almost every spec to the extreme.

• 5inch Super AMOLED display thats 1920x1080, pushing pixels per inch to a whopping 441.
• 1.9 GHz Quad-Core Processor / 1.6 GHz Octa-Core Processor The selection of AP will be differed by markets.
• Runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, the most up-to-date version of Android you can get right now.
• Ultra sensitive screen that lets you navigate via long fingernails or even gloves.  
• Measures 136.5mm long by 70.6mm wide and weighs only 130 grams.
• It's overall build is a durable plastic, which was selected for several reasons according to Samsung.  Unlike glass the plastic does not smash, its also cheaper and easier to manufacture than aluminum.
• 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash that records 1080p HD video.  
• 2-Megapixel front view camera for high quality video chat.
• 2,600 mAh battery
• 64GB of internal storage with support of another 64GB via the micro SD card slot
• 2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE): 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
  3G (HSPA＋ 42Mbps): 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
  4G (LTE Cat 3 100/50Mbps) : up to 6 different band sets(Dependent on market)
• Wifi a/b/g/n/ac, and IR LED(remote control functionality)

Samsung Galaxy S4 to Be Announced Tonight

Courtesy of Samsung

Samsung is set to make it's big announcement regarding the launch of it's next Galaxy smartphone Thursday evening.  The company has dropped some hints that it's the Galaxy S4.  Here's a few of the spec rumors so far.


Bigger Screen:
Many expect Samsung will follow their trend towards bigger screens, with Bloomberg reporting that the phone will measure 5 inches on the diagonal, vs the 4.8-in Galaxy S III.

Software rumors are a bit hazy:
So far in regards to software it's a bit up in the air.  One of the biggest features on the rumor mill is the eye-scrolling software reported by The New York Times, may not be included in the launch versions of the phone.  The report stated the features may show up in later versions of the phone instead.  However, some eye-tracking is expected, like the ability to pause videos when the user looks away.
Plastic Body:
Rumors seem fairly certain that Samsung is going to stick to the plastic shell used in previous Galaxy phones, rather than upgrade to a more expensive aluminum body.  A bit of a disappointment, but possibly a move to keep the price tag lower.

Researchers can crack Android Security By Freezing you phone

In a rather scary, yet highly surprising way researchers have found a flaw in Android's security.  Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany have discovered a highly unusual method for cracking the security encryption on Android Phones...Sticking them in the freezer. 

According to the team it even works in part on fully encrypted Android devices that have locked bootloaders.  Naturally the name of their toolkit for the exploit is "FROST" for Forensic Recovery Of Scrambled Telephones.

"Scrambled telephones are a nightmare for IT forensics and law enforcement, because once the power of a scrambled device is cut any chance other than brute force is lost to recover data," the FAU team said.

At the end of 2011, Google released version 4.0 of its Android operating system for smartphones. For the first time, Android smartphone owners were supplied with a disk encryption feature that transparently scrambles user partitions, thus protecting sensitive user information against targeted attacks that bypass screen locks.

Problem is, information stored in RAM remains present for much longer at lower temperatures...which means it's possible to access decryption keys in the phone's memory if done quickly enough.

Researchers found that by chilling a well-charged phone down to about minus 10 degrees Celsius, then turning it off and back on again as fast as possible and booting into recovery mode, data like web history, contacts, and photos can be plucked from the device using their custom software. 

If the phone has an unlocked bootloader, the software can even pull encryption keys from ram, allowing full access to internal storage.

My recommendation, make sure you don't have any photos on your phone you don't want your wife to see...