Some Amazing VGA games for Windows Mobile – list

There are many games for the Windows Mobile platform, both freeware or paid-ones. There are few games that offer 3D racing game experience. It is harder to find ones that will work on VGA screens (640×480). Even then, those games have a long way to go when compared to other operating systems. This review/guide is intended to show the games that offer 3D-experience and how they perform on devices that come with VGA display. Although there are few ported games like “Doom” or “Call of Duty”, I will focus on some newer ones.

Flux Challenge

Flux challenge is made by PDAmill. This game is a racing game where you fly in a ship against other ships. In short, you have to go through 24 races and in those races, you get to glide, skid dive in what appears to be underground sewer pipes. Different tracks provide different obstacles. In the end, you get to choose between 6 ships.  You can use either the D-Pad or the screen to move around. To move around on the screen, you just use your stylus or finger and tap the direction you want to go in. The graphics are pretty fluid. There was little stuttering here and there. I tried the game using the game on a Sprint Touch Pro which has the QUALCOMM chip that is known to have issues with graphics. All in all, the game is well worth the $3.00 PDAmill is asking.

Need for speed: Undercover

Need for speed: undercover is made EA games. This is another racing game.  There are 11 cars you get to chose from, where the cars range between Porsche, Nissan. The game is about scoring points. You do this by evading cops; going through the street looking for curves to drift on as well as winning races.  The game can be controlled by either your touch screen or the hardware buttons. The graphics are fluid and run nice and smooth. There is a bit of trick in doing the drift. The game is kind of pricey compared to the others. This came will set you back 10 dollars. But if you’re a racing fan, it’s a must buy.

Asphalt 4: Elite racing

This is just another street racing game. In this game, you get to chose between 10 elite cars ranging between Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari F430 Spider and Nissan GT-R. You also get the chance to race in 6 cities threw out the world each with their own stunning graphics cities include Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, Shanghai, NYC, Dubai, Paris.  This game also allows you to use either your D-Pad or screen to move around other cars. This game is my favorite one. The graphics are really nice for a windows mobile device. I had no issue while playing the game. There was no stuttering all my turns and nitro boost looked smooth. I also found that using the screen to move around had no lag like the lag experienced in Need 4 speed.

Xtrakt

This game, although not official or even beta provides another type of racing game. The game is pulled from Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. The game had to be modded to make it work on VGA devices as it was designed for WVGA only. The Xperia sports a larger screen with higher resolution (800×400). In this game, you are a girl (maybe) and you have to go through a futuristic city fighting off the robots who are trying to knock you off from your motor bike. With you kill a robot, you earn points as-well-as a diamond. I only managed to get to level 3 so far. Due to that reason, I don’t know how many levels are there in the game. The game recommends that you use a stylus for the game but I had no problem using my finger. Overall, the graphics are impressive and the game play is very fluid and addictive. This game is going to be hit, once it’s officially released. At this point, there is no price or official release date. There is no word, if it would be released for other devices (other than the Xperia).

Like I said in the opening that this wasn’t an attempt to go into extreme detail, but enlist the games that are suitable for the VGA devices. There is a lot of rumbling that iPhone OS has so many great games, but people don’t realize that similar games can also be made for the Windows Mobile Platform.

LINKS:

Flux Challenge

Asphalt 4

NFS undercover (handmark link)

Even cheap mobile phones play games, so don’t think you need to get the most expensive phone.

Samsung NC20 VIA powered netbook now available

If you still consider a 12-inch notebook-size netbook portable, then you will find this one interesting. Samsung NC20, powered by VIA Nano processor is now available at newegg at $549.

It comes with Windows XP home edition, 1GB RAM and 160 GB HDD. The VIA Nano processor is clocked to run at 1.3GHz. It runs at notebook-ish resolution (1280 x 800) and comes with a 6-cell li-ion battery.

[newegg link for SAMSUNG NC20] [via GBM]

Acer to ship a million Acer Aspire One D150 netbooks in a month?!

Acer Chairman, J.T. Wang is pretty sure that Q1 will be better than the Q2 and that the waiting period for some components has already increased, which is an indication that demand is indeed growing. Acer is pretty sure to ship nearly a million of the Aspire One D150 netbooks every month from now.

Looks like, their forecast about shipping 12-15 million netbooks in the year 2009 was pretty true.

read Acer Aspire D150 review

[via fudzilla]

Asus, Acer and BenQ occupy 55% share of Chinese netbook market

All the three Taiwanese netbook manufacturers: ASUS, ACER and BENQ occupy nearly 55% of the total netbooks market share in China. ASUS has 30% followed by ACER at 16% and then Benq at 9%. Although, I’m not surprised to see ASUS and ACER at the top of the list, but I did not expected BENQ to be selling that well.

Although Samsung and HP are also selling their netbooks in the market, but they are not selling like hot cakes and thus have much lower market shares.

[via digitimes]

Netbooks destroying Notebook market?

Everyday, we hear about netbook manufactures adding more and more features in their netbooks, which is now putting them in the category of low-end notebooks. According to the President of The Information Network, Intel is earning not much from the Atom chips and so is Microsoft. We all already know that the Microsoft sells XP licenses to the netbook manufactures for cheap prices.

Anyway, remember the original concept of netbook? The netbooks were supposed to be:

  • cheap
  • small
  • easy to use

With the numerous addons that the netbook manufactures have started including like bigger displays; bigger keyboards and even DVD burners(!), the word cheap is now out of equation. In fact, some of the top-end netbooks cost more than the entry level notebooks.

In netbooks’ infancy stage, end-users did not see netbooks as media players and full fledge laptops. Now, they do. Why? The reason is simple: people wanted to do much more on these little devices, which the netbooks manucatures like ASUS did not expect to happen. People wanted to see HD video on their netbooks and yearned for bigger screens. This ultimately gave birth to netbooks equipped with bigger screens and huge HDDs. It also made it clear that people want to store a lot on their devices. This decreased the demand for the SSDs as it offered much less storage compared to the HDDs at the same price.

The processing power of the netbooks is now enough to let you see HD content (720p videos can be played easily on almost any netbook). It is only a matter of time that there will be a little difference between the processing power of netbooks and atleast entry level notebooks.

Only few of us had expected that the lines between netbooks and notebooks would get blurred so soon. Consumers want their netbooks to everything and the netbook manufactures are doing everything they can to make the netbook do more and more.

Conclusion: Future looks very bright for the netbook manfactures, but same cannot be said for the only notebook manufactures.

Sandisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive review – perfect way to backup your data [netbook and notebooks]

Netbooks have become very personal devices now. We carry them with us everywhere we go. This makes backing up data extremely important. Sandisk provides an excellent solution to this problem. From outside, it may look like a normal flash drive, but what makes it different from the rest of the flash drives is its easy-to-use backup feature. Its massive capacity of upto 64GB makes it ideal for storing huge consumer files too. Do we recommend it? Read the review and find it out yourself. 

Sandisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive review

Continue reading “Sandisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive review – perfect way to backup your data [netbook and notebooks]”

ASUS giving away four EEE PCs for free

Who does not like free stuff? ASUS is giving away 4 mystery EEE PCs for free. Winning is simple. Simple visit EEE PC group in Facebook and leave a valuable feedback on the four products. To know about these four products, you will have to visit their YouTube channel, Facebook profile and Myspace page. The products will continue to appear till April 10, 2009.

Please note that this contest is open for only those who are living in the US.

[via]

Companies preparing to introduce Multi-Touch technology in netbooks and UMPCs

Plethora of Taiwanese LCD manufactures are readying themselves for the Windows 7’s multi-touch feature. Young Fast Optoelectronics, a Taiwanese company has already started manufacturing capacitive screens for the notebooks and will soon start manufacturing for the netbooks. Resistive touch screen makers like Mildex Optical will also start production to give some competition to the capacitive screen manufactures.

Windows 7 will probably be launched later this year (or early next year) and most of the netbook manufactures will FINALLY make switch from Windows XP to Windows 7. The reason is simple: Windows 7 offers some great multi-touch features which can change the way we use our devices and it will result in bump in demand of touch panels in netbooks/UMPCs.

[via fudzilla]

HTC and EA games shake hands to produce amazing games for Windows Mobile – take that iPhone!

HTC TOUCH HD sports a huge 3.8-inch WVGA screen which is simply amazing to look at. Now, HTC and EA are bringing together Need For Speed Undercover for the racing enthusiasts. The gamer will be able to change the directions of the car with the G-Sensor of the Touch HD.

Also, Monopoly will be coming to windows mobile. Wait. Windows Mobile already has monopoly (made by handmark). But need for speed finally coming to Windows Mobile is a great news. I hope the HTC cooperates with Qualcomm to make the video drivers availble to the NFS team so that they can use the unused hardware acceleration present in Touch HD.

Here is the official press release:

Double Bonanza for Gamers! ! !

EA Mobile’s Need for Speed Undercover

and MONOPOLY HERE & NOW on HTC Touch HD

Fancy going undercover in the world of street racing or building a real estate empire on your mobile phone? Look no further to engage these gaming actions with EA Mobile’s Need For Speed Undercover and MONOPOLY HERE AND NOW* that NOW come bundled together for the first time on the Windows Mobile platform in Asia on the HTC Touch HD.

Get into your racing gear and rule the streets with the number 1 car racing franchise, Need For Speed Undercover. Racing enthusiasts get to experience gaming like never before with the vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface on the HTC Touch HD while they race against ruthless gangs running an international crime ring and test their racing skills in bounty challenges. What’s more, the G-Sensor on HTC Touch HD will auto-detect your movement of directions and even change into the landscape mode to provide a wider view when drifting through every tight corner of the streets.

With MONOPOLY HERE AND NOW, aspiring property moguls can buy and sell assets around the world. With unique player icons, sound effects, graphics and easy-to-use controls, the modern makeover of the world’s most popular board game will be more enjoyable with the HTC Touch HD, which comes with a pixel-packed 3.8” WVGA.

There is no better time to get started on your gaming adventures with such irresistible double bonanza on gaming treats, all packed into the HTC Touch HD!

OCZ DIY Neutrino Netbook gets official

OCZ has made the DIY Neutrino netbook official. This is not just another netbook. OCZ believes that the customer should be allowed to choose the memory, storage and the choice of OS that they want on their netbook. Every DIY netbook comes with:

  • 10.1-inch screen
  • Intel Atom processor (N270 @ 1.6GHz)
  • Intel® 945GSE + ICH7M
  • PCI express mini-card
  • Webcam
  • Multi-card reader
  • 4-cell li-ion 2200mAh battery
  • 1 year warranty

The user has the choice to configure their DIY netbook with upto 2GB RAM and upto 250GB HDD/SSD. I hope they make the battery also configurable as it is not much when compared to the competitors.

This is a good move by OCZ as this will allow them to get the netbooks according to the configuration they desire. The name is also apt. DIY = DO IT YOURSELF. Should not it be CIY = CONFIGURE IT YOURSELF?

[OCZ DIY Netutrino product page]