| Maingear introduces Vybe, a 15-inch notebook that's ready to go in 48 hours Aug 6th 2012, 16:00  Need a super-spec gaming notebook in a hurry? Maingear's new Vybe laptops should be right up your street. Once ordered, the pre-built units can leave the company's New Jersey HQ in under 48 hours, packed to the gills with all the options you'd expect from the company. The range is packing Ivy Bridge CPUs, Kepler-running GeForce 650M or 660M with 2GB RAM and a 1080p, LED-backlit matte (matte!) finish display. The four options available are laid out in a table after the break -- but rest that itchy mouse finger a moment more, as while the base "Good" and "Better" systems are available from today, you'll have to wait until August 17th if you're looking for the "Best" or "Ultimate," the latter setting you back $1,999. Continue reading Maingear introduces Vybe, a 15-inch notebook that's ready to go in 48 hours Filed under: Laptops Maingear introduces Vybe, a 15-inch notebook that's ready to go in 48 hours originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | Engadget's back to school 2012 sweepstakes: win one of 15 gadget-filled bags! Aug 6th 2012, 16:00  Ready to pack away the swim trunks and sunscreen and head back to school? If you're a lucky winner of our annual back to school sweepstakes, you'll surely be itching to make the return to campus. With last year's contest deemed an incredible success, we're stepping up the offering for 2012, adding higher-end devices in almost every category. There's an Ultrabook from HP, Sony's new mirrorless camera and a Samsung Galaxy S III, just to name a few. If your name is drawn, we'll be shipping you an overstuffed Engadget-branded Timbuk2 messenger bag, filled with prizes worth more than $3,000 in all. And to increase your chances of winning, we'll be giving away a total of 15 identical bags! That means 15 laptops, 15 cameras, 15 smartphones and 15 very happy Engadget readers. So what are you waiting for? Jump past the break to see the prizes, and be sure to enter in the comments below, and another 14 times on each of our back to school category pages, launching throughout the month.  Continue reading Engadget's back to school 2012 sweepstakes: win one of 15 gadget-filled bags! Filed under: Announcements Engadget's back to school 2012 sweepstakes: win one of 15 gadget-filled bags! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics Aug 6th 2012, 15:00  The current flagship for ARM's mobile graphics technology is undoubtedly the Galaxy S III, which contains a quad-core Mali 400 GPU and delivers some wild benchmark scores. By the end of this year though, we should see a whole new generation of Malis -- not just a Mali 450 for mid-range handsets, but also the quad-core T604 and the eight-core T658, which are based on ARM's Midgard architecture and are taking forever to come to market. Now, to whet our appetites even further, ARM has just added three more variants of the chip to its roster, which can almost be considered the next-next-generation: the quad-core T624, and the T628 and T678, which are both scalable up to eight cores. The trio's headline feature is that they promise to deliver at least 50 percent more performance with the same silicon area and power draw, with the explicit aim of delivering "console-class gaming," 4K and even 8K video workloads, as well as buttery 60fps user interfaces in phones, tablets and smart TVs. The premium T678 is aimed at tablets specifically, and in addition to allowing up to eight cores also doubles the number of math-crunching ALUs per core, which means that its compute performance (measured in gigaflops) is actually quadrupled compared to the T624. However, there's one other, subtler change which could turn out to be equally important -- read on for more. Continue reading ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablet PCs ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments | | HTC Sense 4.1 reportedly leaked with custom ROM, One X owners taste the future Aug 6th 2012, 14:27  It feels like just yesterday that we were getting acquainted with the back-to-basics ways of HTC's Sense 4.0. Well-known HTC phone modder Football doesn't want us to get comfy: he claims to have both obtained a leaked version of Sense 4.1's ROM Upgrade Utility (RUU) and folded it into the 2.2 update to his Maximus firmware for the international One X. While it's no Jelly Bean, the Maximus-tuned version of HTC's Android 4.0 flavor appears to give Sense a shot in the arm, taking care of lag in the launcher and live wallpapers in addition to delivering a healthy overall speed boost. That 0.1 numbering gives a good indication of just how light the visible feature set might be, though -- other than an existing update to substitute the virtual menu button for a long-press of the home key, the interface changes are mostly limited to dedicated buttons for switching browser tabs and between different cameras. It's no surprise that HTC hasn't said a word about its own plans; rumors of new One devices, however, can't help but fuel suspicions that Sense 4.1 is just around the bend. Filed under: Cellphones HTC Sense 4.1 reportedly leaked with custom ROM, One X owners taste the future originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  Geeksaber, Trusted Reviews |  XDA-Developers | Email this | Comments | | Phosphor Touch Time reinvents the digital watch, asks for Kickstarter cash (video) Aug 6th 2012, 14:01  E-Ink watchmaker Phosphor thinks digital watches are a pretty neat idea. So much that it wants to reinvent the '80s staple for the modern era, so it's hired Nike+ designer Stefan Andren to design a touchscreen timepiece that doesn't need a smartphone. Touch Time has a backlit-LED, capacitive display that lets you swipe between faces and control a series of built-in apps. In addition to the usual alarm, stopwatch and world time, you'll get a calendar, reminder, calculator and it'll even track the phases of the moon. Since it doesn't need your smartphone for help, it'll run for a year on a single coin battery and is water resistant up to 30 meters. The first 200 backers can get one for $89, while $115 will buy you the pick of color straps -- and if you're really baller, you can get a recession-baiting $499 version that's dipped in 18-carat gold. Continue reading Phosphor Touch Time reinvents the digital watch, asks for Kickstarter cash (video) Filed under: Wearables Phosphor Touch Time reinvents the digital watch, asks for Kickstarter cash (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Kickstarter | Email this | Comments | |
