Jolla smartphone with Sailfish OS!

The "Jolla smartphone", if you've never heard of it, a company formed by a group of former Nokia employees that refused to let go of MeeGo after the Finnish mobile manufacturer abandoned it, has announced the launch of the first smartphone based on the new Sailfish operating system, called Jolla. It will be launched on November 27 by Jolla in partnership with Finnish telecom operator DNA.

Jolla's website notes that the Jolla smartphone is priced at Euros 399. The company plans to handover 450 pre-booked Jolla phones on November 27 and the rest would be available at DNA Kauppa outlets in early December, the statement said.

Inside is a 1.4GHz dual-core processor made by Qualcomm and 1GB of RAM. There's 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot underneath the rear cover for adding more. A 2100mAh battery is removable, includes a 4.5-inch (540x960 pixels) display, the Jolla smartphone will sport an 8-megapixel autofocus rear camera alongside an LED flash, while there is a 2-megapixel front-facing camera as well. It also features changeable smart covers.

The Sailfish OS

Sailfish is closest in likeness to BlackBerry 10 OS. It's got no navigation buttons to speak of and is therefore gesture based.

Everything is about swiping, so apart from swiping up and down between the three aforementioned sections, there are three main things you can do. Swiping from the left or right edge of the screen will take you from an open app back to the homescreen, swiping from the top of the screen closes the app and swiping from the bottom displays your notifications.

The homescreen displays apps in a very similar way to BlackBerry 10, as you open more apps they get smaller to fit on the screen. However, if you have more than nine open, you can only see your most recent. The app tray at the bottom of the homescreen can be customised to your favourite apps.

From this initial hands-on we came away with the impression that Sailfish OS has a great deal of potential. It has a huge leg up from the core work already done by Intel and Nokia and its UI is genuinely innovative while taking a mixture of the best aspects from other platforms. On the hardware side whether the ‘Other half’ functionality of covers can be a genuine differentiator is less clear cut, but we can see it being popular in younger age groups. 

That said where the real battle lies for Sailfish is not in convincing people it is a viable platform, but that it is preferable to the existing heavyweights. Our feeling is Jolla will have to reduce its handset price to achieve that, provide tight Android app integration from the outset and pick its markets carefully.

Aside from this the other battle is with three more newcomers: the Samsung/Intel funded Tizen, Firefox OS and Ubuntu. The first two will also have phones out in 2013 with the latter expecting to debut in early 2014. 

Refreshed Apple MacBook Pros

Credit : Cnet

Apple's MacBook Pro line has now gotten an entirely expected upgrade to current-generation Intel CPUs, just in time for the holiday shopping season. These new 13-inch and 15-inch models look and feel just like the previous generation, but the promise of longer battery life, somewhat improved performance, faster Wi-Fi, and lower starting prices is enough to make this a significant overall update.

The high-end, high-price Retina Display versions of the MacBook Pro had previously been stuck in an unusual position. While other systems, from budget laptops to premium hybrids, had all moved onto Intel's latest CPU platform, known as either the fourth-generation Core i-series or by the code name Haswell, the MacBook Pro still used last year's processors.

Credit : The Verge

The flagship MacBook Pro with Retina Display retains its very high screen resolution, which results in crisper text and clearer photos (2,560x1,600 pixels for the 13-inch model, 2,880x1,800 for the 15-inch model). Unlike some Windows PCs with higher-res screens, OS X is more interested in scaling your onscreen content to look its best (or what Apple thinks will look best), rather than giving you full unfettered access to that very, very high resolution. The tile interface in Windows 8 does something similar with the handful of higher-res PCs now available.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro starts with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, while the 15-inch version defaults to 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD (which Apple described as a "quarter terabyte"). Our review configuration of the 15-inch MacBook Pro is the step-up model (and it's a big step) for $2,599, with a faster 2.3GHZ Core i7, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and the Nvidia GeForce 750M GPU.

Credit : Cnet

The keyboard and trackpad remain essentially the same as seen on the last several generations of MacBook. Other laptops have matched, but not surpassed, the backlit Apple keyboard. And the trackpad, with its multifinger gestures, remains the industry leader, even as Windows laptops move to more touch-screen controls, at least partially to compensate for the hassle of using a touch pad with Windows 8.

The Retina Display remains a main selling point, and crosses over between the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. Some new and upcoming Windows laptops go for even higher resolutions, and it's not unreasonable to ask when we'll see this trickle down to the MacBook Air line. The Retina screen is at its best when displaying text or professional photography. Videos rarely go past 1080p and most Mac games can't display higher resolutions to begin with.

Credit : The Verge

If you like the idea of investing in a higher-resolution laptop, and can live without an optical drive (a concession that seems more reasonable every day), the updated 2013 version of the Retina MacBook Pro, especially in its 15-inch incarnation, remains an irresistibly powerful yet comfortably portable laptop.