There’s also a 1.5GHz single core processor inside, 512MB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage and a 3000 mAh battery on board. As far as connectivity goes, there’s WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n and the option to connect to a 3G network via USB dongle. The A7 looks like a decent tablet and it’s priced at around $110.13 at Focalprice.com. With these specs and this price, it would be a pity not to buy one, although I’m wondering if this isn’t one of those tablets that breaks down after its warranty expires.

As far as the design goes, I can see it has stereo speakers, a pretty big virtual keyboard, it plays Fruit Ninja and it looks very much like an e-reader.

The notebook will be powered by Intel’s newest Core processors and will also include Intel Rapid Start Technology, which provides ultra-low power consumption when not in use and a fast resume time, when needed – saving time, while extending battery life and stand-by time. You also get a backlit keyboard for mobile users who work in low-light conditions. A full array of ports, including RJ-45 and USB 3.0, allow users flexibility, while the solid state drive (SSD) with 128GB of storage provides fast response times and increased reliability.

The Ultrabook also comes with some of their own features, like HP CoolSense technology, which uses advanced hardware and intelligent software for a noticeably cooler notebook. The notebook also includes an HP Imagepad for accurate advanced multi-touch gesture support. Additional features include an HP TrueVision HD webcam for brighter, cleaner HD images, and Dolby Advanced Audio. The HP Folio 13 also can be configured with a range of Microsoft Windows 7 operating systems, including Windows 7 Professional. Finally, a three-year limited warranty is also available through an optional HP Care Pack.

Users who need a desktop-like environment or additional audio, video, network and USB connectivity can connect the HP Folio 13 to the HP USB 2.0 dock that’s sold separately.

“Design is consistently the top or second most important factor for customers when choosing a mobile phone,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. “With smartphones, we sometimes took a more functional approach to design but with L-Style we’re going back to our roots as a company focused on how our products fit into the lifestyle of our customers.”

The three new smartphones that are to be unveiled at MWC will feature the L-Style look. The Optimus L3, with a 3.2-inch display will first launch in Europe, this March. This smartphone will be followed by two other devices in the first half of the year running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich: Optimus L5 with a 4.0-inch display and Optimus L7 featuring a 4.3-inch screen.

Market availability and additional hardware specifications of all three models will be announced at a future date. From what has been divulged, the Optimus L3 looks like the affordable handset with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and a 3 megapixel rear camera. As reported by Phone Arena, the Optimus L5 features in the mid range budget section with a nice large screen and ICS goodness. The last one, the L7 will be their top tier handset to compete against the current high-end smartphones.

In the recent past, LG had been kicking up a lot of dust with their smartphones, but the company hasn’t had as much success with its phones, as the other manufacturers. With the arrival of their L series, they do have some hope of reclaiming some lost ground from rivals. We’ll just have to wait and watch as to how this turns out to be for LG.

The ViewPad G70 is coming to Mobile World Congress 2012, according to a source quoted by Pocket-lint.com. The device supports a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels, has a pixel density of 169 ppi, the same as the ViewPad 7x spotted back in August 2011. No live pics are available for the slate, aside from the render above, but that’s a work in progress, according to Pocket Lint. The tablet will use the ViewScene interface, as do all new ViewSonic devices, but this is still a Google certified unit, with all the normal Google services and Android Market on board.

The new ViewSonic tablet is expected to be ultra-light, but that’s where the details stop when it comes to design. The G70 will also bring a mini HDMI port, microUSB and mini USB, plus two cameras (one 2MP, one probably VGA), a microSD card slot, 4GB of internal memory and 1GB of RAM. The dual core CPU on board is a mystery, although I have a feeling it will be an Nvidia one. It appears that the slate will also offer 3G connectivity and online listings point towards a price of around $350, so it’s a pretty good deal for these specs.

Reason? It hasn’t received the payment from IIT-Rajasthan for the tablets, which it had earlier supplied. Reportedly, so far, Datawind supplied some 10,000 units of the Aakash tablet to IIT-Rajasthan, at the cost of Rs.2,276 per tablet. The Letter of Credit issued to complete the bulk supplies ends on March 31st, but as it now stands, the supplies have been cut, following non-payment.

Quoting Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind, the report further adds, “There is no question of supplying more tablets unless we get the payments for the previously supplied tablets.” Meanwhile, officials from the HRD ministry are refusing to acknowledge the exclusion of Datawind from the Aakash 2 tender. The report quoted the officials as stating, “It’s purely a commercial dispute between two parties. But we have not come across any process to evict a particular vendor from its participation“, while adding that the news of Datawind’s exclusion is plain “misquoting and misrepresentation” as “no such process” is in progress.

“For Aakash 2, agencies such as C-DAC and ITI will just be tender handling bodies. But they can’t take the project forward without engaging private hardware companies,” the official added. When questioned Datawind, themselves about it, a report in The Economic Times quoted them as replying, “Datawind would like to state that we have not been informed officially or unofficially by the Ministry of HRD of anything restricting us to participate in the next tender.“

Steve Kondik announced this evolution and said that an official CyanogenMod 9 pre-alpha version is available for users to flash. The usual problems are encountered here: camera isn’t working and I guess that some connectivity issues are bound to happen. The reason for not being able to work the camera is the fact that the code hasn’t yet been released by Samsung. If you want to try this install, you need to flash the recovery.img with fastboot and flash the ROM in the recovery, according to people in the know.

Right now only 3 tablets run Android 4.0 officially: Motorola Xoom, ASUS Transformer Prime and Acer Iconia Tab A200. Many more, especially from Samsung expect the famous update, but Sammy likes to keep people waiting, while they announce even more tablets, with Android 4.0 installed, like the Galaxy Tab 2. It’s a shamed we gave in to marketing so easily…

The PF200 is the higher end offering and will either have a 1.2GHz or a 1.5GHz processor, most likely dual-core. It will also have a 4.3-inch QHD screen, have an 8MP camera capable of 1080p video recording as well as a front facing camera. It will support LTE and all the main spectrums from UMTS and GSM as well. Other features, include Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, digital living network alliance (DLNA) compatibility, mobile high-definition link (MHL) for connecting to home audio and video devices, and near field communications (NFC) capability. There’s no telling if ZTE will be adding their own skin to the phone, but at least from the image, it appears they are using their own custom icon pack.

The second phone is the N910, which will feature the same connectivity options, but will have a smaller screen with an 800 x 480 resolution. The camera has also been downscaled to a 5MP shooter, but it will still do 1080p recording. “These LTE devices are the fore-runners of a wide range of LTE devices ZTE will bring to the market in the coming months, and as more and more LTE networks come on stream,” said Mr. He Shiyou, Executive Vice President and Head of the Terminal Division of ZTE. We’ll get a better look at these phones come MWC, so see you next week for more coverage on these two handsets.

The slate uses a large capacity battery, a 6300 mAh unit actually. The device measures 10.8mm in thickness, runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread on top of a 1GHz Rockchip processor and also incorporates a 2 megapixel camera. It’s got 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal memory, a microSD card slot, HDMI and WiFi. I said above that the company making this will have problems with Google, since the search engine giant has yet to launch a flagship tablet, like it has done with the Nexus handsets.

We never know if they’ll actually launch such a tablet, but rumors say they will and that Motorola will be the maker of choice. Will we see a lawsuit?

The Galaxy Ace 2 comes with the following specs:

• 3.8-inch WVGA PLS TFT capacitive touchscreen with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution
• 800 MHz dual core processor, 768 MB of RAM
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread
• 4GB internal storage
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct
• GPS with A-GPS support and GLONASS
• Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, USB 2.0
• NFC (only in select countries/ optional)
• 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, 720p video recording
• VGA front camera
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Memory expandable up to 32 GB via microSD card
• 3.5 mm handsfree socket
• 1500 mAh Lithuim – ion battery

The other device, the Galaxy Mini 2 has the following specifications:

• 3.27-inch HVGA TFT capacitive touchscreen with a 320 x 480 pixel resolution
• 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread
• 4GB internal storage
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi, DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, USB 2.0
• NFC (only in select countries/ optional)
• 3 megapixel fixed focus camera, VGA recording @25fps
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Memory expandable up to 32 GB via microSD card
• 3.5 mm handsfree socket
• 1300 mAh Lithuim – ion battery

To be honest, we’ve lost count of the number of smartphones that Samsung has announced in the recent past and we might just have to include new categories for these phones besides the usual mid and low budget, with mid-low budget, low-mid budget, mid-high budget and so on. The Galaxy Ace 2 seems like the higher end phone with a dual core processor, et al. The Mini 2 seems like a budget Android. The pricing or availability for India hasn’t been revealed as of now, which makes us ask, what price would you buy the Galaxy Ace 2 and the Mini 2 at?

Apple, in a parallel update has threatened Proview Technology with a defamation lawsuit, while Proview Technology has threatened Apple with a $2 billion lawsuit, which it plans to file in U.S courts, in a manner similar to the one currently filed at a court in China.

There, however seems to be some ambiguity on the matter. Cupertino-based, Apple Inc. is of the opinion that they’ve had a deal with Proview Technology, earlier, wherein the specifics of the iPad trademark were sorted. Proview Technology, however, according to Apple is refusing to accept this. Quoting an Apple representative, the report stated, “We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago.

Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter.” Proview, on their part have, according to this report, “…claimed that one of its subsidiaries sold the name to Apple years ago but didn’t have the authority to do so. Proview has reportedly been looking to settle out of court over the issue but says that Apple has so far failed to respond to its requests.”

China-based, Proview Technology and Cupertino-based, Apple Inc. have been embroiled in a bitter tangle over the ownership of the iPad trademark in China. While Apple claims to be the rightful owner of the global trademark name, iPad, including in China; Proview claims that when Apple had gone about securing the rights to the trademark name, globally, Proview had retained ownership to theirs and it has remained so, ever since.

Now, having expressed displeasure over Apple carrying out the sales of the tablet in the country, the battle has been escalating. The China-based company had, on the grounds of temporary impoundment had asked authorities to seize several units of the iPad tablet, which retailers had put up for sales. Proview, however have admitted that Apple’s burgeoning fan base in the country is making the task a little difficult for them.