Rolex Explorer 2 Watch For 2011

For 2011 Rolex offers a new Explorer 2 to follow up last year's new Explorer. While the Explorer was bumped up to 39mm last year, the Explorer 2 is the Rolex sport watch with a modern size of 42mm in width. That is 2mm larger than the Submariner, and it likely wears better than the 43mm wide Submariner Deep Sea. Also new is the return of the orange GMT hand in addition to the Maxi-dial like size of the hands and hour indicators.

In a 42mm wide case, the Explorer 2 is in 904L steel with a mix of polished and brushed surfaces. While known for its white dial, the Explorer 2 now comes with a black dialed version as is traditional for the line - both in lacquer. Contrast on the dial on both models remains excellent, with the signature large orange GMT hand remaining on the dial. Both dials feature "Chromalight" luminant. The hands are all in white gold. I have had arguments with people about Rolex hands being in white gold. While not all of them are, many of the newer Rolex models have white gold hands. Says it right here in the Rolex material!

Citizen Automatic Autozilla 1000m

The AutoZilla has been described as a grail of a diver; it's a stunning looking professional diver’s watch that can be used for saturation diving. The body is duratect Titanium which means it is really strong and at the same time light and comfortable on the wrist. The crystal is thick (about 6mm) anti-reflective sapphire. A great feature of this watch is that you can easily remove the bezel for cleaning and put it back on. It has an automatic movement and the hands are super bright once the lights go down.

iPhone 5 launching 5 September in the US

The iPhone 5 was a no-show at the WWDC in June, but a new report claims that it will launch on 5 September. Coming from a senior Swisscom executive, this is reportedly reliable info, but as you might have guessed, there's no official info from Apple.

How to spot fake Rolex Submariner

1. Rolex watches are fitted with a sapphire crystal (the glass face
of the watch) that can only be scratched with a diamond.

2. The ‘cyclops’ date window in a real version is dead centred above the number.

3. The quality of the printing on the dial should be perfect, with indicators and type evenly spaced and no fuzzy edges.

4. The genuine Rolex movement sweeps smoothly round at about 28,800 revs per hour – each second is broken down into eight steps. Even when a fake uses a Swiss-made movement, the second hand’s ticking is usually visibly jerky.

5. Over where ‘Swiss made’ appears, the brand’s logo is
laser-etched into the crystal. In a genuine Rolex, this is made
up of hundreds of dots set at different heights throughout the crystal
(so it doesn’t create a weakness in the glass) and as such is barely visible – to see it clearly you have to look through a loupe (the small magnifying glass used by jewellers and watchmakers).

6. If you remove a Rolex bracelet you should find the watch’s case number and model number engraved on the side at six o’clock and 12 o’clock .

Samsung plans on selling 300M phones in 2011

In an interview with the S. Korean Yonhap news agency Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung's mobile communications and digital imaging, laid out Samsung Mobile's big plans for 2011. This year the company is aiming (and expects) to surpass its last year's shipments - 25 million smartphones out of a total of 280 million sold with the staggering 60 million smartphones and a total of 300 million phone shipments. That's close to 1 million devices sold a day.

The expected growth in the smartphone segment is quite bold but it seems well backed up by the current success of the Galaxy S II smartphone, which is doing very well in its home country Korea, in Japan, Europe and elsewhere. Also Samsung is aiming to push it even further with the planned announcement of new "noteworthy" Bada smartphones at this year's IFA in September. Also keep in mind that Samsung is in the business with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and is rumored to be working on a WP7 version of the Galaxy S II.

Finally, Samsung is rumored to release yet another Galaxy device at this year's IFA expo at Berlin in September. This new Galaxy Q is thought to have a whopping 5.3-inch display and possibly LTE connectivity. No other details have been given but it could feature a SuperAMOLED (Plus or the normal variety) display. We'll have to wait it out and see, but from where we're standing it looks like September could turn out to be an exciting month for tech geeks.

Galaxy S II vs. Galaxy S Plus

Are you ready for more heavyweight droid action, with superclocked punches thrown around and more blood on the floor? It’s time for round two of our dual-core battle of the flagships. The Samsung Galaxy S II and the LG Optimus 2X are fully updated and ready to show their best. We’ve also thrown the Samsung Galaxy S Plus in the ring to see if one, faster core is better than two slower ones.

At pre-release Galaxy S II on a 1GHz dual-core CPU and the Optimus 2X has since received a few firmware updates up to stock V10B, which made it noticeably zippier.

Not only that, but we also got the latest 1.2GHz Galaxy S II, we felt obligated to redo the tests now that we’ve got a final Galaxy S II with a 1.2GHz processor (updated to the I9100XWKE7 firmware). A Galaxy S Plus with a faster than usual single-core processor makes it a three-cornered fight.

Now, our Galaxy S Plus unit runs at just 1.2GHz instead of the 1.4GHz planned for the final version. Stil, we can’t wait to see if 2 x 1GHz is better than 1 x 1.2GHz – a 20% increase in clock speed should bring a big improvement in single-threaded tasks of which there are many, considering we’ve only recently entered the world of dual-core phones.

Now, the Plus version could breathe new life into the old Galaxy S but it’s still using the old 5MP camera with “just” 720p video recording and the old PenTile SuperAMOLED screen.

The Samsung and LG flagships on the other hand boast 8MP cameras with 1080p video capture. And in the case of the Galaxy S II, the screen is a massive improvement

So, here’s what we’ll cover in this repeat head to head comparison.

For starters, we’ll look at the screens again but having seen the Galaxy S, S II and Optimus 2X last time there’s nothing really new to say here – the screens of the phones are exactly as before.

After that we’ll test the 8MP sharpshooters (the Galaxy S Plus need not apply) and see if the firmware changes affected the camera. Maybe improved bitrate for the video recording has allowed finer detail in the videos, we’ll have to check.

Then, we’ll be testing the processor and graphics performance – cutting edge CPUs and GPUs simply beg to be benchmarked. Browser performance is another topic we plan to cover – it’s taxing on the system (especially with Flash) and is used almost daily.

What else? Some real-life games, of course, we shouldn’t put too much trust in benchmarks. We’ll also want to try out the GPS capabilities of the phones – it’s got nothing to do with fast processors but flagships should be good at everything, right?

Well, let the tests begin. It’s about which one’s the best if money is no object and what the latest and greatest phones can deliver.

HTC Wildfire S

Mini phones are hot and HTC don’t want you take Sony Ericsson’s word on that. What started as a small niche is now a segment that keeps growing – and one that no manufacturer can afford to ignore. Sony Ericsson have just announced their updated mini lineup while Samsung and LG routinely have more than one thing going on in the midrange.

HTC know they can’t afford to stop right in the middle of what they’ve been doing with the Wildfire, the Aria and the Gratia. Going all the way back to the Tattoo, which first put Android on the radar for budget shoppers.

There’s plenty of choice already for those who like their droid in a small package. The HTC Wildfire S seems to be aware of that and does well to make itself seen. The lively paintjobs and friendly compact size are the right features to show to potential buyers. The Wildfire S has found a way to further reduce size while keeping the same 3.2” screen.

One thing we should keep in mind though. HTC seem to be in power-saving mode currently with all their recent releases but facelifts offering minor improvements over predecessors. That holds true for the Wildfire S too, though this is not to say that it shouldn’t be on your list if you’re looking for the next hot mini. HTC seem to have worked exactly on the things that most needed improvement. Display is key here, HVGA finally bringing it to acceptable levels. CIF video-capture was upped to VGA and the phone runs the latest Android Gingerbread.

These things should give it enough value as an upgrade. The Wildfire S is well-designed and well-built – a colorful little droid to offer good bang for buck. Let’s look at what else the S stands for.

There’s plenty of choice already for those who like their droid in a small package. The HTC Wildfire S seems to be aware of that and does well to make itself seen. The lively paintjobs and friendly compact size are the right features to show to potential buyers. The Wildfire S has found a way to further reduce size while keeping the same 3.2” screen.

One thing we should keep in mind though. HTC seem to be in power-saving mode currently with all their recent releases but facelifts offering minor improvements over predecessors. That holds true for the Wildfire S too, though this is not to say that it shouldn’t be on your list if you’re looking for the next hot mini. HTC seem to have worked exactly on the things that most needed improvement. Display is key here, HVGA finally bringing it to acceptable levels. CIF video-capture was upped to VGA and the phone runs the latest Android Gingerbread.

These things should give it enough value as an upgrade. The Wildfire S is well-designed and well-built – a colorful little droid to offer good bang for buck. Let’s look at what else the S stands for.
Key features

* Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
* 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, 384 Kbps HSUPA support
* 3.2" 256K-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of HVGA (320 x 480 pixels) resolution
* 600MHz Snapdragon MSM7227 CPU, Adreno 200 GPU; 418MB of user-available RAM
* Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) with HTC Sense 2.1 UI
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n with hotspot functionality
* GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
* 5 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geotagging and face-detection
* VGA video @ 24fps
* microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
* microSD slot (up to 32GB, 2GB in box)
* Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
* Accelerometer, proximity sensor
* Gorilla Glass display
* Stereo FM radio with RDS
* Light and compact
* Turn-to-mute, lift-to-tone-down, flip for speakerphone
* Smart dialing
* XviD video support
* HTCSense.com integration
* HTC Portable Hotspot
* Ultra-fast boot times (if you don’t remove battery)

Main disadvantages

* Poor camera performance
* No HD 720p video recording
* No shutter key for the camera
* No Adobe Flash player, Flash Lite only
* No Document viewer
* No secondary videocall camera

The Wildfire S is the usual all-round smartphone – with the latest Android inside at that – but now in an even friendlier shape. All work and no play wouldn’t do for the Wildfire S and HTC have added some twists to the old recipe to make it 2011-ready.