Men Free Blog

Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun reads the present afternoon the present Sony plans to turn over its 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV in Europe in 2009. That dovetails nicely amid a two-week old statement by a Sony representative who said, “I’d be really surprised if their hasn’t arrived in the UK by 2009.” Us too, in the wake of all, it is carried on on be purchased in Japan from the time December of 2007 and was just recently caught slumming the big box outlets in the US. It just turns out expected then, the current Sony can ramp generation to the rate which by 2009 properties would balance the minimal, European clamor for a $2,500-ish TV measuring clearly 11-inches — million:1 contrast or not. Still, it is all a bit late if you ask us (you did right?) seeing as how Sony plans to be giving medium to extensive OLED panels as the beginning of as April 2009.

It’s second for additional Dell E-series netbook rumors, you ready? According to DigiTimes and its business sources, Compal Electronics is slapping up both 8.9-inch and 10-inch E-series netbooks for Dell. Previously, we have alone heard talk about of an 8.9-inch E and 12.1-inch E Slim. The 10-inch E is scheduled for an October product launch additonally the 8.9-incher was earlier mythical for August. Interestingly, Dell expects the 10-incher to suffer close to twice the necessity of the 8.9-inch example (assuming a sole-source manufacturing deal) rooted on Compal’s monthly creation predictions of 400k-450k and 250k units, respectively. There’s a Dell drive occurence later on on today at which we will just now bid all such Dell netbook common thought to rest. Stay tuned, as properties say.

We started to waste track of games featuring Capcom’s iconic purple bomber when properties initiated inserting arbitrary letters and expressions to every sequel — that is why we got overjoyed to hear who Capcom just recently registered Mega Man 9 investing in the Office of Film and Literature Classification (Australia’s ESRB). That’s right, just now Mega Man 9 — not Mega Man Zero 9, Mega Man X9, Mega Man 9 ZX, or Mega Man 9 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The OFLC entry has the game slated for a multiplatform release, while the several insubstantial of popular credence clue the Rockman’s new adventure can take place on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. We by and large scoff at unattributed gossip, but surrounded by vivid visions of online multi-man robot slaying dancing during our heads, our powerful scoffin’ muscles feel a tad bit atrophied.

While not quite as exciting as March’s week of Latitude scoops, we’ve got ourselves some infos on what look to be Dell’s upcoming Inspiron 1435, 1535 and 1735 consumer laptops. Seems they’ll all be sharing the same basic design language, pictured above, and will be privy to some rather expansive aesthetic customization options if you’re into that type of thing. Specs are the typical Dell smorgasbord of options, but all three laptops start at around 1-inch thick and taper up to 1.5 inches thick. All three also sport slot-loading drives, with a Blu-ray option, and processors ramp up to Core 2 Duo T5850 2.16GHz chips. 3G options are also available across the lineup, and just about anything else you might find useful in a mid-range laptop. Apparently the 1435 isn’t due until October, but the 1735 is coming on June 9 and the 1535 on the 26th of this month.

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Yeah, mobile phones have been status symbols and fashion accessories for some time now, but the concept of a designer’s name taking top billing in the product name is a fairly recent development. If Gucci really does have a handset baking in the oven, we’re guessing the Italian icon isn’t doing the heavy lifting of the development all by its lonesome, though we haven’t an inkling who might be involved. Heck, we can’t even really make out what kind of form factor we have going on here, and all we’ve got is this one lonely pic up on flickr to go by. Of course, LG and Prada have set the bar pretty high in this arena, so if this is legit, Gucci had best come out with guns blazing.

[Thanks, Jack]

For those that need to be in the know about the very latest supposedly-leaked 3G iPhone shots that hit the web this week, we’ve got you covered — but we’re not convinced, especially of the device on the right. The shots on the left do at least seem to be crafted around those supposed size and shape leaks we saw the other day though, so bonus points there for playing into another current rumor to rack up a small bit of credibility. Still, in our best Rick James voice, Photoshop’s a hell of a tool.

Read - Left four shots appear on Chinese phone forum
Read - Shot on the right from AppleInsider

We’ve definitely heard this one before, but the buzz around a proposed $12B WiMAX partnership between Sprint, Clearwire, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Intel, and Google is deafening right now, all based on a report in the Wall Street Journal. The plan is for Sprint to merge its XOHM wireless broadband division with Clearwire, and then take a total of $3.2B in investments from a host of other players: $1.05B from Comcast, $1B from Intel, $550M from Time Warner Cable, $500M from Google, and $100M from Bright House. The resulting company will be worth some $12B, and the WSJ says investors have given their final approval for the deal — a rumor we’ve already heard with no meaningful result, so take it with a grain of salt. Or a whole salt lick, actually. We’re not certain why Big Cable is so eager to dump money on Sprint after two previous ventures both folded recently, but if this goes down, it’s a pretty big boost for WiMAX, which was looking pretty sickly lately. Still, asking consumers to have faith in Sprint and Comcast and Time Warner Cable is pretty ballsy — between the three of them, they’ve probably burned everyone in America. We’ll see where this goes — we should have something official pretty soon, according to the Journal.

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A friendly neighborhood AT&T employee forwarded us a purported memo for AT&T retail store employees that could provide a rather telling clue about the next-gen iPhone’s release date this summer if it proves true. A similar memo went out last year around this time requesting that employees not take any vacations between June 15 and July 15, and this year those dates are June 15 and July 12 — which seems suspiciously early, but that’s what the man says. The memo cites “an exciting Summer Promotional Launch,” which we’re guessing doesn’t refer to some new Motorola flip phone. Also telling is the fact that employees might be able to take some vacations later within that window when things die down a bit, which seems to imply that Apple could be aiming for a launch date right around the iPhone’s one year anniversary of June 29th. How romantic.

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We already got a somewhat vague peek at the 3G-less Blackberry 9000, but it looks like there are actually two upcoming models of RIM’s new hotness on the board — the EDGE version we know about, codenamed Niagara, and an EV-DO edition codenamed Javelin, slated for Verizon. Boy Genius managed to unearth quite a bit more information on these two, and unsurprisingly, they’re basically the same as the 9000 we’ve already seen. Both have a 480 x 320 half-VGA screen, GPS functionality and 3.2 megapixel camera, but only the EDGE-based Niagara gets Wi-Fi. Of course, there aren’t any ship dates or prices in the offing yet, but hopefully we’ll know more soon.

We like to rag on the SMT5700 every so often — not because it’s low-end, not because it lacks 3G, not because it’s not the prettiest smartphone we’ve ever seen. No, we give the SMT5700 a well-earned dose of crap because it earned FCC approval over a year ago. That’s pretty insane even by US carrier standards, and new intel over at Boy Genius Reports indicates that AT&T may finally be ramping up to sell this thing. As we mentioned, it’ll be pretty low-end on account of its EDGE data and 2 megapixel cam, but hey — in the year 2008, there’s no good reason folks shouldn’t be able to get a capable smartphone for next to nothing on any major carrier, in our humblest of opinions. The site doesn’t seem to know when exactly it’ll launch, but they’ve posted a few puzzle piece-like press shots of the phone to whet our appetite (or get us to gag, depending on your disposition toward these kinds of phones).

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