Excide working on a stronger car battery to meet the demands of start-stop technology

The proliferation of start-stop technology is expected to put huge demands on car batteries in the near future, and Exide has new technology to make sure their batteries will be ready for it.

Car batteries, not counting those in hybrids or electric cars, haven’t changed much since the introduction of the electric starter. The added strain of more and more electronics has made for incremental yet very slow evolution of the technology. But as more and more mainstream cars are fitted with fuel-saving start-stop technology, the demands placed on batteries are expected to increase exponentially. Start-stop systems, in their current form, will shut down your car’s engine while you’re stopped at a red light and then start it again when you take your foot off the brake pedal. This means the life cycle of the average battery could increase from about 5,000 starts to 50,000 starts easily.

With ever-tighter regulations governing fuel consumption and emissions, this technology will become more and more commonplace, and it would obviously be a lot to ask of our current battery technology to be able to handle this huge increase in use. As WardsAuto reports, battery maker Exide is now working on batteries designed specifically to meet the demands of the new technology. The new battery design is called Advanced Glass Mat, and is an improvement on the traditional flooded lead-acid battery. In a flooded lead-acid battery, a process known as shedding occurs, whereby the positive and negative sides of the battery gradually wear down. With the new design, a polyethylene absorbent glass mat is used between the positive and negative sides. The battery is then also sealed, and the glass mat puts pressure against the positive and negative sides, keeping them apart and preventing wear and tear.

In a flooded lead-acid battery, it usually takes about one minute of driving to recharge a battery after it has been used to start the engine. This takes longer and longer as the battery ages, and this aging would accelerate greatly with a start-stop system, and in as little as a year the recharge time could reach 10 minutes. This would obviously be a problem for start-stop equipped cars, and Exide estimates that most lead-acid batteries on start-stop equipped cars would need replacing after just six months. With the new AGM batteries, aging would be much slower, and batteries would last from three to five years. They are expected to cost about double what regular batteries cost, but this is still much less than the price would be if the technology had necessitated a switch to lithium-ion or some other more exotic material.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Vic Gundotra shares photos taken with the Samsung Nexus 10, 2560×1536 pixel display confirmed in a specs leak

After its quick start guide leaked yesterday, the Samsung Nexus 10 is certainly just a few days away from its official announcement now. However this doesn’t mean that leaks will suddenly stop and we’ll just sit and wait quietly. This time it’s Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering who spilled the beans by sharing a couple of photos taken with the slate.

The photo you see above is reported at a resolution of 2048×1536 (3.1MP) and I have to say it doesn’t look too bad.

Furthermore, we got to learn the Samsung Nexus 10 specs thanks to the GLBenchmark website. Before we get to them, take a look at the second photo Gundotra has taken.

Now about those specs. Happily, the rumors of a high-resolution display are confirmed — the benchmark reports a 10.1-inch display sporting 2560×1536 pixel resolution.

The Nexus 10 is powered by the Exynos 5 chipset, which sports a dual-core Cortex-A15 CPU clocked at 1.7GHz, a Mali-T604 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Internal storage is reported to be 32GB, with a more affordable 16GB model likely to be available, too.

Even though the leaked photos had 3.1MP resolution, the camera has a 5MP sensor. There’s a 2MP front-facing camera as well. More interestingly, the slate is running Android 4.2, which is all but confirmed, considering all the leaks recently.

Overall, if this new info turns out correct (we’ll know for sure on Monday), the Samsung Nexus 10 would be the most exciting Android tablet so far.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Photos of purported Samsung Nexus 10 quick start guide reveal the slate’s design

Alleged photos of the Samsung Nexus 10 quick start guide have popped up giving us a glimpse of the slate’s design and hardware controls layout.

This is by far the most solid evidence of the slate’s existence after a purported photo taken with it appeared on Picasa.

Nexus 10 will be manufactured by Samsung and just like the company’s recent tablets (the Galaxy Note 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 2 10.1) features two speakers at the front. At the back, there’s a prominent Nexus logo and above the display resides a front-facing camera and an ambient light sensor.

The main camera is at the back coupled with LED flash. The rest is really not that surprising — there the usual array of power/lock and volume rocket buttons at the top and Samsung’s proprietary charging port at the bottom.

And here comes the surprising part that got us skeptical. According to the booklet, the Nexus 10 sports a microUSB and microHDMI ports in addition to Samsung’s proprietary charging port at the bottom. This doesn’t seem right, but who knows.

Anyway, the Nexus 10 is expected to be announced at Google’s special event in New York on Monday, October 29. We’ll be there and will bring you all the news as the event progresses.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Apple rumor overload: 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, a curvy iMac and an iPad Mini price list

Monday is off to a flying start with a selection of new Apple rumors, including a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and an iPad Mini price list.

Monday is off to a flying start with several Apple rumors already “confirmed,” including a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display, a curvy iMac and an iPad Mini price list for good measure.

Let’s start with the big one. 9to5mac.com has heard from a “consistently reliable source” that Apple will introduced a Retina display-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro during the iPad Mini’s launch event later this month. It will apparently be thinner and lighter, and offer different combinations of processors and storage options too.

Macrumors.com has found a few potential features for the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro on a Chinese website, which claims the smaller computer will still have two Thunderbolt ports, a USB port, a headphone socket, an HDMI-out and an SD card reader; just like its bigger brother. There’s also talk of an interesting battery design — although it’s not elaborated upon — and the report is accompanied by a couple of pictures that, frankly, could show absolutely anything.

Before we move on, it’s best to clarify that we’re talking about a product that doesn’t exist being launched at an event that hasn’t been announced for another non-existent product. That said, it’s logical for Apple to produce a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, but at the moment we don’t know when that will happen.

The curvy iMac rumors seems to originate from the same Chinese website, where it’s said that the new model will have a curved shell that’s something like “a water droplet,” which sounds more like Samsung’s design philosophy than Apple’s. Naturally, it too is going to arrive at the small “intimate” event apparently set for October 23.

iPad Mini prices

Finally, we’re onto the event’s main attraction, the iPad Mini. A picture supposedly showing a list of iPad Minis that will possibly be stocked by German electronics retailer MediaMarkt has been leaked, complete with prices and basic specs. In addition to the usual 16, 32 and 64GB models, an 8GB iPad Mini appears, each with the choice of a black or white finish, and either Wi-Fi only or “cellular” and Wi-Fi.

The most basic 8GB Wi-Fi iPad Mini is priced at 249 euros, and the top 64GB Wi-Fi with 3G or 4G at 649 euros. A quick currency conversion gives us $322 and $840 respectively, the latter of which will probably have seen wallets everywhere twitch nervously.

Just like all the other iPad Mini rumors, there’s no way to know if this is really a screenshot from MediaMarkt’s computer system, and equally we can’t take those prices as final either, as Apple’s US pricing is often lower than it’s European equivalent.

October 23 is one week away tomorrow, which means that if an event is to take place, Apple will start to send invitations out very soon. We really, really hope it does too; if only to put an end to these infernal iPad Mini rumors.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

A BlackBerry partnership could help Intel battle ARM

Motorola's Razr i is a good start for Intel's attack on the mobile chip market, but it'll need a few more big-name partners if it wants to succeed.

Recently, Motorola announced its first smartphone powered by Intel’s Medfield processor, the Razr i, and it’s an important device for both companies. For Intel, it represents the very first Atom-powered phone to come from a “big-name” manufacturer, and for Motorola it marks a return to Europe, a market it has neglected in recent years. Motorola signed a “multi-year, multi-device” partnership with Intel in early January and so far it has the best end of the deal, as the Razr i is not only good-looking, but it’s capable too.

Intel however, doesn’t seem to be making in-roads into the ARM-controlled mobile chipset market, and thanks to the Razr i’s limited initial release — it’s out in the UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico next month — the only Intel phone that people might actually want to buy may not be available where they live.

What Intel needs is a new best friend — someone who is also trying to break into a market with which it has lost touch. Right now, that company is Research in Motion, which is doing a decent job of talking up BlackBerry 10, but neatly avoiding the subject of the accompanying hardware. Both it and Intel have challenging times ahead and a partnership could be mutually beneficial.

A huge mountain to climb

One could argue that it’s still early days for Intel, but is it? Intel shouldn’t have missed the smartphone boat. We’re talking about the best known PC chip manufacturer on the planet, with decades of experience here. Medfield wasn’t announced yesterday either. Intel has been chatting about its Lenovo and Motorola partnership as far back as CES in January and MWC in February.

If Intel wants its processors to challenge the dominant ARM mobile chips, then it needs to get its act together, because the mountain it needs to climb is huge. ARM controls 95-percent of the mobile market and more than 270 companies are licensed to use its architecture. Its performance reflects this, and its 2011 revenue climbed 24-percent over 2010 to $785 million, exceeding expectations.

To make matters worse for Intel, ARM is slowly but surely pushing its way into the PC market too, thanks in no small part to Microsoft’s decision to support ARM architecture with Windows 8 RT. ARM’s CEO has stated he wants to own between 10 and 20-percent of the notebook market by 2015.

Unsurprisingly, ARM has played down Intel’s move into its primary business, saying it expects the company to take only about 5 to 10-percent of the smartphone market share “within a few years.” Intel has remained tight-lipped concerning its own expectations, but as forecasters are predicting a downturn in its PC business over the coming years, mobile is only going to become more important.

Intel dominates the PC processor market in the same way ARM does with mobile, with estimates putting Intel’s share at around 80 percent; however, analysts are predicting tough times ahead, with an Endpoint Technologies researcher quoted as saying “the outlook looks grim right now through the new year.” Smartphone and tablets though, are experiencing considerable growth.

So, it’s clear that one device from one manufacturer, plus a few others scattered around the globe, probably won’t bring the success Intel desires. Motorola is a great partner to have, especially because of its new owner, but Intel needs to split the Atom between a few other big companies too.

Samsung and LG were linked with Intel last year, but nothing has come of it, and HTC has remained quiet as well. Research in Motion has always used a variety of processor manufacturers, so why not Intel? After all, it needs all the help it can get right now.

Could Intel save RIM, and vice versa?

Research in Motion is nervously treading water ahead of BlackBerry 10’s eventual release. If it’s not in talks with Intel, or at the very least considering a switch, then it should be.

A long time ago, RIM used Intel 386 chips in its early BlackBerry 950 and 957 handsets, then in 2005 trumpeted another deal with Intel, where it would use its XScale architecture (which is ARM-based anyway) and “Herman” chips in future BlackBerry devices. BlackBerry 10 phones are expected to use ARM architecture and chips from Texas Instruments or Qualcomm, but imagine for a moment the impact of the news that RIM had switched to Intel.

The relationship is there, it just needs to be reinvigorated. The mobile industry thrives on partnerships, from Sony and Ericsson to Microsoft and Nokia. Right now, a new friend would go a long way to helping Research in Motion overcome public perception, and Intel to add another big name to its list.

It makes good sense for Intel too, as RIM is placed third — and rising — in terms of market share in India — an important emerging market — behind Nokia and Samsung. It also made it very clear during BlackBerry 10 Jam that emerging markets were high on its list of priorities, and as Intel has already partnered with Lava to produce the Xolo Android phone in India, we’re assuming it is for Intel too. The combination of both Atom-powered BlackBerrys and Android phones could see them on their way to a significant slice of the market.

RIM on the other hand, needs a differentiator, something to make its BlackBerry 10 phones standout in amongst iPhone 5s, Jelly Beans and Windows Phone 8. Packing in a 2GHz Atom chip could do exactly that. Plus, with Texas Instruments taking a step back from the mobile market, a gap has opened up at RIM into which Intel could neatly slip.

Yes it would be a risk for both parties, and would require plenty of adjustment on RIM’s side, but that could be exactly what’s needed to push forward in today’s fiercely competitive mobile market.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com