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TAIWANESE GADGET MAKER Asus’ next generation Transformer tablet has been leaked by the Thai web site NCCC.

The leaked images include a document from Quietek specifying the device as the TF300T. This sounds like it will be the next model following the original Transformer TF101 and the Transformer Prime TF201.

The next generation Transformer looks like a cross between the first two models. It has the thin and rounded design of the Transformer Prime but the rear panel looks more like the original.

It will have the same 10.1in screen but no other specifications have been revealed. It’s possible the tablet will be a budget version of the Transformer Prime for those who can’t stump up the high price tag.

We assume it will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich like the Transformer Prime and come with a keyboard dock. The change in the rear panel is likely to be due to the WiFi and GPS problems that the Transformer Prime reportedly has suffered recently.

Asus said the metallic casing could affect the GPS signal and removed the GPS from the tablet’s specification sheet. Yesterday Asus again denied that there are hardware problems with the hybrid tablet.

There are a lot of unknowns, including whether the firm will announce the tablet at this month’s Mobile World Congress. µ

Micron's long time CEO, Steve Appleton, has died in a plane crash at the age of 51 at the Boise Airport on Friday morning. He was reportedly flying a single-engine Lancair plane, which stalled and then nosedived shortly after take-off. Appleton was the only person onboard and died immediately upon impact.

Appleton started working at Micron in 1983 and became the CEO eleven years later in 1994. Micron is most known for storage solutions, such as NAND flash. Intel's and Micron's joint NAND venture, IMFT, is one of the leading NAND manufacturers, and consumers may also be familiar with Micron's subdiary Crucial, a well known SSD and RAM brand. Flying was always Appleton's passion and he owned over 20 airplanes. He leaves behind a wife and four children.

R.I.P. Steve Appleton, 1960-2012

Product Asus Zenbook UX21E ultrabook
Website http://uk.asus.com/
Specifications 11.6in LED backlit 1366×768 HD display, Intel Core i5 2467M dual-core 1.6GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 128GB SSD, headphone out, audio out, 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 1.1kg.
Price £850

TAIWANESE LAPTOP MAKER Asus is the latest vendor to release a Windows equivalent of the 11in Apple Macbook Air, which was a surprise hit in The INQUIRER office.

Despite a valiant effort, the firm’s latest offering isn’t quite a MacBook killer. The UX21E Zenbook is a smaller version of the Asus UX31E Zenbook in design, performance and build quality. For the most part this is a positive, but it also means that the UX21E Zenbook has the same flaws as the larger model, especially in terms of the usability of its keyboard and trackpad.

Thin and light design
Of course the first thing that you’ll notice is the shiny aluminium finish, which helps the device to stand out when showcased against rival machines, even Apple’s Macbook Air range. The V-shaped design of the chassis means that the thickness of the device varies. The front-edge has a thickness of 3mm and gets increasingly thicker as you approach the rear, maxing out at 9mm. The device weighs 1.1kg, making it 200g lighter than the 13in ultrabook and just a tad heavier than the equivalent Macbook Air at 1.08kg. It’s easy to carry around and comes with a handy little sleeve.

A common trend among manufacturers has been to seal the back cover, which stops users from swapping batteries on the move and also makes it impossible to install any upgrades such as adding RAM without taking the device to a specialist. The UX21E Zenbook will not be the last laptop to have this design feature, and although it is very annoying it looks like something users are just going to have to get used to.

TOY MAKER FOR THE WELL HEELED Apple will launch its Ipad 3 at an event in March, according to recent reports.

According to 9to5 Mac, Apple will announce its next generation tablet at a media event held in March, ahead of the actual launch of the device.

It was previously thought that the event to announce the new Ipad was due in February, and apparently there will be an event in February too, it just won’t be a product launch.

However, some reports have disputed this, saying that Apple will not hold an event in February, so who knows what to believe?

It is generally agreed that the Ipad 3 will have an ultra high-resolution display, a quad-core processor and LTE communications capability.

Apple always keeps its cards pretty close to its chest, so between now and March there will be a lot more rumours flying about. We’ll believe none of them until Apple shows its hand. µ

While we don't usually cover every software update on every platform, I thought it worth noting something special about the new update which will begin going out shortly to the Motorola Droid RAZR and RAZR MAXX. Among the features included in "6.12.173.XT912.Verizon.en.US" is a new feature that isn't directly advertised in the changelog – it's the inclusion of Connected Discontinuous Reception, or CDRX for Motorola/TI's codename Wrigley 4G LTE baseband. The short of it is improved battery life on 4G LTE.

Discontinuous Reception (DRX) is nothing new for UMTS based networks, and is a power reduction feature. The aim is simple – during idle periods, the cellular network tells the handset that it doesn't need to expect any traffic, and thus the handset can shut down the RF frontend and other power draining bits. The phone can then wake up the parts required to receive and listen to a paging channel when the discontinuous cycle ends. 

The above is the way things work in UMTS, in 4G LTE things change a bit, but the concept is the same. However a new feature is the somewhat strangely-named connected DRX mode. The "connected" part comes from the fact that DRX now can work while the user equipment is in an RRC_Connected state, in addition to RRC_Idle. The result is that the handset can now shut down parts required to listen with much finer frequency, for example during the idle periods when a webpage is loading, as opposed to the longer idle periods when the phone is locked and in a pocket. 

I'm told that CDRX is now enabled on about half of Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE network, specifically in markets where Ericsson is the radio network equipment supplier. The other Alcatel-Lucent markets will be upgraded as well in due time. Unfortunately my markets in Tucson and Phoenix AZ are Alcatel-Lucent (to the best of my knowledge, from seeing many empty Alcatel-Lucent boxes and trucks around new LTE eNodeBs), so I'll have to wait to see just how big of a difference this makes in real-world testing.

Source: Verizon Software Update (PDF)

JAPANESE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS GIANT Panasonic announced a revenue decline of 14 per cent in its fiscal 2012 third quarter, blaming the economic situation and the flooding in Thailand.

Panasonic’s third quarter financial figures made for painful reading, with the firm announcing revenue of £16.2bn, a 14 per cent decline from the same quarter a year previously. That led to Panasonic suffering an operating loss of £1.6bn.

Panasonic joined other electronics firms by blaming its recent woes on the devastating floods in Thailand. Once again weaker than expected demand for flat-panel televisions was cited, though the firm said that its PC business held up well.

Panasonic is not expecting things to get better soon, with the firm announcing a downward revision of its revenue estimate for its full year 2012 to eight trillion Yen, blaming “significant sales declines in mainly digital products”. With production starting to resume in Thailand it couldn’t lay all of the blame on its fragile supply chain, instead blaming the European economic crisis.

The news of Panasonic’s downward revision of forecasts was greeted in such a negative manner that the company was forced to quickly release a statement in which it clarified that its eight trillion Yen figure was simply a forecast and not an official announcement. Panasonic, like Sony, is seen as a symbol of wider market trends in Japan, and with both companies posting what can only be described as poor financial results and gloomy forecasts, the future doesn’t look particularly good for the Japanese consumer electronics industry. µ

THE SMARTPHONE MARKET in the US was dominated by Google’s Android operating system (OS) last year, which took nearly half of the mobile OS market share in the last quarter.

According to Comscore data 97.9 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ended in December, representing 40 per cent of all mobile subscribers. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone OS with 47.3 per cent market share, up 2.5 percentage points from September.

Meanwhile, Apple maintained its number two position, growing 2.2 percentage points to 29.6 per cent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with a 16 per cent share, followed by Microsoft with 4.7 per cent and Symbian with 1.4 per cent.

The study found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.3 per cent market share.

It was followed by LG with 20 per cent market share and Motorola with a 13.3 per cent share. Apple took a 12.4 per cent share of total mobile subscribers, up 2.2 percentage points, while RIM just made it into the top five with a 6.7 per cent share. µ

A theme of the new AMD is modularity. We've of course heard this before as it has always been a goal of AMD's to bring to market more modular, configurable designs, however this time the rhetoric is a lot more serious. In our earlier coverage we talked about future AMD SoCs allowing for a combination of AMD x86 CPU, GPU and 3rd party IP blocks. What AMD didn't mention during its Financial Analyst Day presentations however was how it would enable this pick-and-choose modular design. The secret, as it turns out, is in a new modular fabric that AMD is designing. 

It will take AMD until 2014 – 2015 to actually have the first, fully functional modular fabric in an SoC, but that's the goal. Being able to design a foundation that can interface with multiple buses (e.g. PCIe, HT, AMBA for ARM, etc…) will enable AMD to build more modular SoCs. 

With the fabric created, AMD can also change the way it does chip design. Today APU designs are seen from start to finish. Teams work on the various components of the design, but those components are viewed as a part of the whole, not as independents. E.g. the GPU portion of Trinity is worked on as Trinity's GPU, not a GPU block that will be re-used in other chips. Under the new AMD, teams will work on designing modular IP blocks without much focus on where they end up. You'll have teams that will work on a GPU block and simply move onto another GPU project after they're done. Assuming AMD's new scalable SoC fabric is flexible enough, theoretically an APU designer could pick and choose from the various IP blocks and deliver a customized design that's decoupled from the individual blocks themselves. Similar to how you'll see an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 540 in a variety of SoCs, AMD could build a GCN GPU block and use it in a variety of SoCs that address different markets. You can view AMD as having a broad portfolio of x86 and GPU cores and with this new SoC fabric it can mix and match those blocks as it sees fit. Furthermore, if the need arises, AMD could add in 3rd party IP where appropriate. 

We've actually heard of similar approaches to design from other companies in the SoC space, including Intel. With Atom Intel introduced a sea-of-FUBs (functional unit blocks) design methodology that leveraged more synthesized logic and modular blocks to reduce time to market and reduce feature creep. Atom also uses a fair amount of 3rd party IP (GPU, video encode/decode).

AMD's strategy makes a lot of sense, there's still a lot of execution that needs to happen before we get to the point where we can take modularity for granted but the direction is sound.

INTERNET DOMAIN NAME AUTHORITY Verisign has been hacked multiple times by outsiders who stole undisclosed information.

According to Reuters, the previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the US based company. The attacks were revealed in a quarterly US Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October, which followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors.

The firm said that its managers “do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System network,” which ensures people land at the right numeric IP address when they type in a web address. However, it did not rule anything out.

Verisign would have sensitive information on customers, and its registry services that dispense web site addresses would also be a natural target, Reuters said.

Verisign has ultimate responsibility for web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov. µ

TAIWANESE GADGET MAKER Asus has again denied that there are hardware problems with its Transformer Prime hybrid tablet.

The firm has said this in response to online retailer Clove pulling the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet from its web site. Clove said yesterday that it found problems with the WiFi and GPS, so it wasn’t happy to send the device out to customers who had pre-ordered.

Clove said, “We did some random testing on the stock and yes the main factors taken into consideration were WiFi and GPS.”

Asus has already admitted the metallic casing might affect the GPS signal, so it removed that from the specifications sheet. It then told us that the Transformer Prime had no problems with its WiFi, but unhappy customers could get a full refund.

In response to Clove’s findings, Asus said, “We are not aware of any quality issues with the Transformer Prime. We have conducted extensive testing on the Transformer Prime in laboratory conditions and the device is performing as expected in all areas and to all of our required parameters.”

It added, “Asus prides itself on the rigorous testing of all products to ensure the highest quality possible. We refute any and all claims from third parties regarding the quality of our products.”

Clove has had to wait a long time for stock of the Apple Ipad 2 rival to arrive. Asus said that stock shortages have been down to “massive demand” for its second generation hybrid tablet. µ