Amazon's Kindle Fire HD joins 'Retina' ranks

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD will bump up against the iPad Retina in the very exclusive ultra-high-resolution tablet club.

That club is made up of pretty much one product right now: Apple's third-generation iPad Retina. Its 9.7-inch display boasts a 2,048-by-1,536 pixel density, which yields 264 pixels per inch (PPI).

Amazon's just-announced 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD almost matches that, with a 1,920x1,200 resolution, giving it a PPI of 254.

Apple describes a Retina display as a pixel density that "is so high your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels." … Read more

Analyst sees sharp decline in Intel, Microsoft influence

Microsoft and Intel dominance will see serious erosion over the next few years in the era of the tablet and smartphone, market researcher IHS iSuppli said.

The Microsoft-Intel "Wintel" alliance will get slammed by the rise of the "new computer market," a category made up of PCs, smartphones, and media tablet segments, Craig Stice, an analyst at iSuppli, said in a research note today.

Waning Wintel influence is a common theme among analysts these days, as PC growth flattens and the popularity of PC proxies, like the iPad, surges.

Microsoft's share of the operating system … Read more

Intel 4th gen Core chips to slash power consumption

Intel will disclose a new series of ultra-power-efficient chips aimed at tablets and convertibles at the Intel Developer Forum next week.

The Intel 4th Generation Core chips, codenamed "Haswell," will come close to cutting the power consumption in half compared with the most power-efficient mainstream 3rd Generation Core "Ivy Bridge" chips today.

Ivy Bridge chips used today in the skinniest, lightest laptops like the MacBook Air and Hewlett-Packard's Envy Spectre XT are rated at 17 watts.

The new chips, due in the second half of 2013, will be rated initially at 10 watts -- that … Read more

How the PC market is being reborn

BERLIN -- The personal computer industry has torn up the rulebook.

Intellectually, I knew it was happening, but it was only after three days of intensive technology immersion at the IFA consumer electronics show that the magnitude of today's changes in personal computing really hit me. Here's some of the evidence that jumped out at me while at the conference:

Risky new designs are commonplace as new ideas about portability and multitouch percolate through hardware engineering circles. PC makers are betting on novelties including detachable keyboards, touch screens, and laptop-tablet hybrids. Microsoft has transformed from a complacent laggard … Read more

iPhone 5 aside, what is NFC? (FAQ)

Though it's increasingly less certain that near field communication (NFC) will appear in the iPhone 5, it's a technology that's built into a lot of high-profile products already. So, what is it exactly? And how relevant is it today?

What is NFC? NFC is a short-range wireless connectivity technology that uses magnetic-field induction to enable communication between electronic devices in close proximity. (Faraday's law: any change in the magnetic environment of a coil of wire will cause a voltage to be induced in the coil.)

NFC can operate in three modes, according to an NFC whitepaper: … Read more

Intel quad-core 'ValleyView' system-on-a-chip coming

Intel's system-on-a-chip design for small devices is slated to go quad core.

Leaked Intel documents dated August 15 have appeared on a Chinese-language Web site that indicate Intel's next-generation system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be offered in configurations that include quad-core, a first for Intel's Atom chip design, according to a report at CPU World.

At the risk of wading too deeply into a codename quagmire, the Atom 22-nanometer architecture is dubbed "Silvermont" and the SoCs are referred to as "ValleyView."

The chips will also get punched-up graphics. ValleyView SoCs will integrate a graphics processing … Read more

PC growth slowing, and Windows 8 won't fix that soon, says IDC

The traditional PC market is in dire need of some hot new products to drive growth. Too bad that's probably not going to happen soon, according to market researcher IDC.

The worldwide PC market has basically slowed to a crawl this year, IDC says in a report released today. It expects just 0.9 percent growth this year, the second consecutive year of growth below two percent.

While citing the usual macroeconomic culprits -- slowness in Asia and mature markets -- the report said consumers are "considering spending on other products like media tablets and smartphones" while … Read more

Video shows purported iPhone 5 internals, front plate

So much for post-product-release teardowns. The iPhone 5 is being torn down piece by piece already.

Just after alleged photos of the iPhone 5's main circuit board appeared, we now have a video of not only the front plate but items as small as the "flex cable," replete with the sleep-wake button and volume switch, according to SmartPhone Medic, a smartphone repair service based in Columbia, S.C.

"We just got some new iPhone 5 parts in," the video begins. The SmartPhone Medic guy then goes to show the alleged iPhone 5's front plate … Read more

Samsung to invest up to $4 billion in Texas plant

Samsung is investing billions of dollars into a plant in Austin, Texas, that's known to produce Apple's mobile processors.

The company said yesterday that it'll spend between $3 billion and $4 billion retrofitting its facility to improve production of more-advanced mobile processors, the local newspaper, Austin Statesman, is reporting. About half of the facility will be updated.

According to the Statesman, the work should be completed during the second half of 2013, allowing the entire facility to focus efforts on system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors for smartphones and tablets.

Last year, reports surfaced saying Samsung was producing Apple's A5 processor for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S … Read more