Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile tech trade show held in Barcelona , is fast approaching. All manner of mobile tech companies will be debuting new products, and Asus has been releasing brief teasers of their upcoming announcements. Their latest teaser suggests that Asus may beat Apple to the market with a high-resolution tablet. Yesterday’s teaser showed three nesting (aka Matryoshka) dolls with the tagline “Divided we stand. Together we rock.” Many are (probably rightly) attributing this to the forthcoming Asus Padfone which is a phone that can dock into a tablet which can […]

The Wall Street Journal have had some time with what appears to be the retail version of the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook. While it’s nice to get some feedback on the product, we don’t suggest you use this ‘review’ as part of your buying research because it’s pathetic. The reviewer, highlights good build quality and a smaller footprint than the MacBook Air. There’s a “good, backlit keyboard” and he gives a tip that Dell will increase the resolution of the XPS 13 later in the year. That’s at least an […]

Notebookitalia have just reported on a 2012-2013 roadmap from Malata, a brand of the Wanlida Group in China. It includes a bunch of mobile products but interestingly it mentions ultrathin products in 13.3”, 11.6” and a 10” screen size. More interesting is that the company appears to merge the Ultrabook and netbook category by offering an Intel Atom Cedar Trail option as a CPU.

We spent a lot of time with the Series 5 Ultrabooks at CES, did a good series of tests and, given the competitive price, we’re quite impressed. [List of previous Series 5 articles here.] The 13.3” Series  5 is already shipping in Germany so expect full reviews from that part of the world within days but there’s already a nice detailed review up at 3DNews, a Russian website, who also appear to be happy with the Ultrabook. They’ve got some ‘naked’ pictures too!

In addition to the expected smartphone, tablet and AppUp announcements at Mobile World Congress, Intel’s European teams will be holding a ‘Platform of Choice’ event on the 28th Feb which will offer you a update on Intel’s activities in various sectors, including Ultrabooks. There will be both global and European focus at the event. I’ll be attending and I hope to see you there too.

Reported on ITC.ua and tipped to us by a reader today is information that ASUS maybe getting ready to update the UX21 and UX31 with some exciting new specs that include full HD displays; never before seen on an 11.6” laptop.

The Z830 was my favourite Ultrabook of ‘phase 1’ in 2011 and I got very close to buying one. The problem was fan noise. A recent BIOS update may have fixed the issue. Update: I tested the BIOS update. It works. Info here. In common environments like offices and silent environments (library, home office) the noise, a mechanical buzz rather than air noise, was unnoticeable. In a quiet environment, it’s another story. Here’s what we said in the Z830 review

LG has announced the Optimus Vu a week ahead of the upcoming Mobile World Congress convention where they plan to show off the new phone. The Optimus Vu is a massive 5″ phone with a 4:3 aspect ratio — significantly more square than your typical 16:9 Android smartphone. This leaves it with a curious 1024×768 resolution. Exactly how Android applications will take to this non-standard resolution is unclear — though I was impressed with how well Android managed to scale applications to the likes of the HTC Status which has an […]