Intel’s Architecture Group vice president Rani Borkar said earlier today laptops would be able to squeeze 50 percent more battery while running if they use the company’s Haswell chip, and today, we’re hearing of one of the first computers to incorporate Intel’s new chip.

Asus is announcing its new VivoBook V551 ultrabook that features and Intel Core i7-4500U Haswell CPU, a 15.6-inch display and an NVIDIA GeForce GT740M graphics card. The VivoBook V551 seems to have a nice-sized battery on it as it’s a 3-cell Li-Ion 65 Whr 4500mAh battery. It also comes with a DVD burner, which you don’t see many ultrabooks feature these days, although we’re curious how well its battery will perform with a DVD drive connected to it.

The Asus VivoBook’s resolution isn’t particularly high as its able to produce a 1366 x 768 resolution, which may look a bit underwhelming on its large 15.6-inch display. Its weight is also somewhat heavy coming in at 5.3lbs, although it’s understandable considering its screen, disc drive and additional components like its graphics card.

The VivoBook V551 is already available for order on a number of retailers, costing a little over $1,000, but at this point, there’s no word on when it’ll be made available.

At CTIA, MoGo has announced its second generation of modular sleeves that can turn a $200 device into a touch, enterprise ready tablet with extra battery capacity, optional laser bar code reader and many more options. Basically, if the order is large enough, MoGo will even design and build it for the customer.
Read full post →Mobelisk Turns Ordinary Tablets Into Enterprise Devices

Earlier today , we reported on a story where rumor has it, sales from used game purchases will be profiting both Microsoft and the game’s publisher. Retailers were recently briefed by Microsoft to help educate how exactly this would work as it was believed customers would be the ones footing the bill when they purchase a used game from a retailer. That is sort of true, according to a new claim published by Eurogamer.

According to Eurogamer, who is sourcing a “high-ranking UK industry source,” said customers won’t be footing the bill when it comes to paying an activation fee for used Xbox One games. Instead, the retailer will be responsible, which will then influence the price they sell their used games, thus having the customer free of any charges outside of their transition with the retailer.
Read full post →Xbox One Used Game Fees Will Charge Retailers, Not Customers [Rumor]

We’ve seen a number of iOS 7 concepts over the past few months that offer some interesting ideas into what the upcoming operating system can look like. Widgets, contacts, and a new lock screen have all been conceptualized in the past, but Jony Ive has been rumored to be planning to introduce a drastic overhaul of iOS 7 when it’s announced later this year.

A number of new features and design elements Ive is planning for iOS 7 has recently been revealed to 9to5Mac, the first of which will do away with the “heavy textures” which is found across iOS in favor for a unified scheme that features a more simple black-and-white tone. Some icon applications will be mostly white, but will have its own unique color scheme.

Some other areas of iOS 7′s redesign were also detailed such as the lock screen doing away with its glossy, reflective “slide to unlock” bar to make way for a more muted, black interface along with a redesign of the numerical pad when entering your lock code. There were many more examples over at 9to5Mac, but ultimately, what you should take away from this story is the rumors of a completely redesigned iOS 7 are pretty strong at this point, and the redesign will make iOS 7 look less flashy.

NVIDIA Has introduced its new high-end consumer graphics card, and it’s a monster. In fact, the new GeForce GTX 780 is very close to the company’s “professional” top of the line GeForce Titan, a Monolithic single-GPU card that contains 2688 stream processors that work on pixels in parallel. The GTX 780 has a slightly more modest count of 2304 such processors, but if you compare that to the previous GTX 680 (1536 processors) and GTX 580 (512 processors) we are talking about a big leap in raw horsepower.
Read full post →GeForce GTX 780 Quick Review

Ever since Google announced it would be shutting down its Google Reader service starting on July 1, a number of tech companies have attempted to step in to offer their own version of the popular RSS feed reader. One of the most notable companies to announce their own RSS feed reader is Digg, and today, they announced their upcoming product will simply be named Digg Reader.

Digg Reader won’t come as a standalone application as users will “have one download, which is Digg, and the current Digg will have added onto it reader capabilities.” So, in a way, Digg will act as a trojan horse in a way by giving its users the ability to use Digg Reader, so long as they’re comfortable with using Digg as well.

Digg CEO Andrew McLaughlin says the company is aiming to build something that’s very clean, simple and fast saying Digg Reader will be a “production too” which will allow its users to sort and rank content, instead of the old method of having stories arranged chronologically. This could certainly help users keep tabs on stories they really enjoyed to possibly reference, share or read again in the future.

We’ve been keeping tabs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean for some time now, which we expected to be announced during Google I/O last week. Even though we didn’t see Android 4.3 Jelly Bean at Google I/O, someone did get to spot it running on a Nexus 4 recently.

A user of XDA posted some pictures of a Nexus 4 which was seen at a mobile expo in Thailand. Seeing a Nexus 4 probably wouldn’t be a big deal to most people, but this Nexus 4 was a tad more special than most. This Nexus 4 was spotted running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean under a new build number, JWR45B.
Read full post →Android 4.3 Jelly Bean Spotted Running On Nexus 4 In Thailand

We recently featured a german mechanic who built a motorcycle with the engine from an airplane, but this next cyclist certainly pushes the envelope as he rode a bicycle with a rocket.

French bicyclist François Gissy rode a hydrogen-powered rocket bike, reaching speeds of up to 263km/h, or around 163mph, at an abandoned runway located in Alsace, France. His top speed beat the previous rocket-powered bicycle world record speed of 242.6km/h, which was originally set in 2002. Unfortunately, his top speed did not beat the fastest cycling record of all time as Dutch cyclist Fred Rompelberg was able to reach a top speed of 268.8km/h.

We’re not sure which exactly is more impressive, a rocket-propelled bicycle or a motorcycle equipped with an airplane’s engine. What we do know is that these two men probably get bored very easily whenever they’re riding regular bicycles and motorcycles. We’re sure anybody would if they’re able to achieve the kind of speeds Gissy did on his hydrogen-powered rocket bike.

As we reported yesterday, the Sony Xperia S has been rumored to possibly receive Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and it looks like that rumor has now become a reality as Sony has announced they will start rolling out an official Android Jelly Bean update for the device.

As of now, only Sony France has confirmed the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update, but we’re sure other countries will be making their announcements soon enough. Whether or not Sony decides other Android-powered smartphones it has manufactured are ready for an update to Jelly Bean, like its Xperia Ion, is yet to be seen, but its update of the Xperia S is certainly a step in the right direction.

If you happen to be a Sony Xperia S user in France, then you should be receiving an update notification soon as you can initiate the update either through the Sony PC Companion or over-the-air. For the rest of you outside of France, the rollout of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean shouldn’t take to hit your devices.

We’ve seen Google roll out some new features to Gmail over the past few weeks including quick action buttons and allowing users to search their calendar and Drive accounts directly in Gmail. It looks those weren’t the only improvements Google had planned for Gmail as a redesign was leaked during I/O.

During a Google I/O session called “Structure in Android App Design,” an image of new design for Gmail leaked. The leaked image shows the new Gmail will have a revamped navigation drawer and will possibly lack an action bar on the bottom of the screen. Those actions that are normally located at the bottom of the screen have been moved up to streamline the inbox’s vertical structure.

The new navigation drawer makes looks to make it easier to access your Gmail account’s priority inbox and individual labels without having to open an additional screen, which is how you would access them in the current Gmail app. When exactly Google is planning to roll out the redesign for its Gmail app is yet unknown, but hopefully it’ll be soon now that it’s officially been leaked.