T-Mobile has announced a partnership with MLB for the coming years, and it looks like there’s a pattern starting to emerge between carriers and pro sports teams

T-Mobile’s CES 2013 keynote wrapped up earlier today, and while all eyes are on the new “Uncarrier” philosophy, the carrier is toting, another big announcement: a new marketing deal with MLB. That makes T-Mobile the third major carrier to make a new sports-related deal; are we starting to see a pattern here?

While Sprint and Verizon have had iron-tight relationships between NASCAR and the NFL respectively, both took the liberty of showing a tighter relationship at work for 2013 during CES. Sprint showed off its buddy-buddy relationship through some heavily-branded Qualcomm enhancements at its keynote. Verizon, meanwhile, took the liberty of reaffirming its relationship with the NFL, and promised to broadcast the 2014 Superbowl all over the US through 4G LTE. Sprint’s new relationship was seen through Qualcomm’s new tech, which allows a HUD and detailed look at the cars as they race from your tablet. It’s already is on top of new branding rights for the renamed Sprint Unlimited exhibition.

T-Mobile claims that the new tech should allow fans to get a closer look than ever at the dugout, and give you a better way to view the games and interact with the experience. It’s just another example of the social media element, and how it has grown to bond with long-standing traditions like professional sports. While an MLB At Bat app already exists for each season, we’re guessing T-Mobile will have something cooked for its customers in the near future.

But, there’s another thought is on our minds: Where’s AT&T? Is it going to grab the NHL, or the NBA?

T-Mobile made some major announcements during CES 2013. The first was a partnership with Major League Baseball, the sport’s first such deal in 15 years. The second is will bring HD Voice to the bullpens at MLB stadiums and 4G enabled smartphones.

Verizon may have brought out the NFL’s commissioner Roger Goodell, but T-Mobile had a counter to that with a sports partnership of it’s own. Today T-Mobile announced a 3 year sponsorship deal with Major League Baseball, giving the sport it’s first telecom deal in nearly 15 years. Joe Torre, Tim Brosnan, and Noah Garden all took to the stage as ambassadors of the MLB to talk about the partnership. The plan will also include providing communication between the dugout and bullpen in MLB ballparks. If nothing else, this will provide relief pitchers some extra “any time minutes” to chat during all that down time they have.

The cornerstone of the T-Mobile and MLB partnership includes a feature the phone maker seems particularly excited for: HD Voice. It’s a concept that has been bandied about by carriers for a bit, but will be instituted for the first time by T-Mobile. HD Voice is said to dramatically improve the quality of voice calls, providing a more “natural sound” that will supposedly make it sound as if you’re in the same room as the person you’re speaking with. Handsets capable of HD voice include: the HTC One S, Nokia Astound, and Samsung Galaxy S III.

The HD Voice feature will power the calls in MLB stadiums, so expect a lot of promo spots during calls to the bullpen. The feature is currently only available on T-Mobile’s 4G smartphones.

[Image courtesy of TMONews]

The Keynote from Verizon ended with a promise by CEO & Chairman Lowell McAdam for LTE Broadcasting of the 2014 Superbowl.

The Verizon Keynote has just ended, and while not much was pursed from the lips of CEO and Chairman Lowell McAdam, Verizon did give an interesting fun fact about their LTE coverage: it plans to broadcast the 2014 Superbowl via LTE broadcast channels.

The announcement came after McAdam invited Roger Goodell, Chairman of the NFL, onto the stage to join him for a short Q&A and video clip. While they talked about the playoffs and upcoming 2013 Superbowl, McAdam also talked extensively about Verizon’s continual rollout of LTE in America and plans to bring it to nearly 100-percent of customers by 2014.  Along with that, McAdam promised to ensure that the 2014 Superbowl at the Meadlowands in New Jersey, will be broadcast on Verizon’s LTE technology.

While this news was broken as a mere footnote for the entire Keynote, it’s interesting given the combination of Verizon’s growing LTE footprint, and continual commitment to NFL via The Red Zone and other initiatives. We’re not sure just how Verizon plans on doing it, but a good guess is that they won’t simply stream it  through data, but utilize an LTE broadcast platform to maximize all that bandwidth goodness and keep the feed nice and open for the big game.

Nonetheless, NFL fans and geeks alike will probably love it – at least until Verizon announces pricing.

Lenovo has announced the K900, a smartphone/tablet hybrid with a 1080p, 5.5-inch screen and Intel Atom power, but sadly it’s not currently expected to come to the U.S. or Europe.

Samsung’s reign at the top of the smartphone-tablet hybrid market could end this year, as many major manufacturers are expected to release their own big-screen devices to challenge the Galaxy Note 2’s supremacy. Once such company is Lenovo, which will be bringing the exciting Ideaphone K900 to select markets very soon.

Like the Galaxy Note 2, the K900 has a big 5.5-inch touchscreen, however instead of a 720p resolution, Lenovo claims it’s the first in the world to bestow such a display with 1920×1080 pixels; providing a 1080p resolution and a pixel density of more than 400ppi. A version of Google Android is installed, which we expect to be 4.1 Jelly Bean, however Lenovo has yet to confirm this.

You may be expecting a Qualcomm chip to be running the show, but you’d be wrong, as the K900 is Intel powered. It uses the dual-core Atom Z2580 processor, the latest to come from Intel’s Medfield family of chips, which has a clock speed of 2GHz, Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology and has been built using a 32nm process.

K900 release schedule may disappoint

The camera is suitably exciting too, as the 13-megapixel shooter has an f1.8 aperture, the widest seen on a smartphone so far, plus the lens uses Sony’s Exmor R backside illuminated sensor. The primary camera is joined by a 2-megapixel forward facing video call lens with a very wide 88-degree viewing angle too.

All this is wrapped up inside a 6.9mm thick chassis – yep, just 6.9mm, slimmer than the iPhone 5 and a whisker off the record-holding 6.65mm thick Oppo Finder – which has a unibody construction made from stainless steel and polycarbonate. As tough as this combination will no doubt be, it does make the K900 quite heavy, as it weighs in at 162 grams. However, it’s still lighter than the 183 gram Galaxy Note 2.

If you’re all excited about getting your hands on Lenovo’s impressive K900, we’ve got some bad news, as its release isn’t going to be as wide as many will hope. Currently, it’s scheduled to appear in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Russia, and the Philippines. Lenovo has never given its smartphones a wide release in the U.S., Canada or Europe, something which fits in with Intel’s mobile chip strategy, as it’s also concentrating on these important high-growth markets. It’s a shame though, as not only is the K900 a real tech powerhouse, but it could finally persuade many to buy an Intel powered smartphone too.

There’s always a chance Lenovo will add some more countries to the K900’s release schedule in the future though.

Auroch Digital’s Game the News project hit a stumbling block on Tuesday when Apple blocked the release of Endgame Syria, a game about the ongoing Syrian Civil War, from release on the App Store.

Auroch Digital’s Game the News project began in October. The goal is to prototype short games for mobile devices and PCs in just two weeks based on global current events. That way, people can absorb complex information through interaction rather than passive viewing or listening. The studio’s first release was Moral Kombat: Obama vs. Romney, a game that mimicked the presidential debates. Its most recent game covered a more challenging subject. Endgame Syria puts players in command of the rebels challenging Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Despite the fact that the game was built to educate people about an ongoing conflict claiming thousands of lives, Auroch Digital has run been blocked from releasing the game on iOS devices.

Apple blocked the App Store release of Endgame Syria because it violates the store’s submission guidelines. No App Store game can “solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation or any other real entity.”

“This decision is a shame really as it makes it hard to talk about the real world,” Auroch designer Thomas Rawlings told GamesIndustry International on Tuesday, “We had hoped that Apple would be more nuanced in how they applied this rule but we got a bit worried when it had been in submission for around two weeks without a decision—we than figured that because of the controversy of using the gaming medium to cover an ongoing war meant passing the game had become an issue for them.”

Though the game won’t be sold through Apple’s App Store, it is still playable on iOS devices via browsers since it was built using HTML 5.

Games depicting real world conflicts have often caused uproar. Konami cancelled the development of shooter Six Days in Fallujah within weeks of announcing it was funding the game due to public outcry. Exploiting conflict for entertainment is typically the cause for uproar, though. Auroch Digital’s purpose is primarily educational.

It’s troubling that Apple’s submission guidelines are so myopic. After all, Apple has no problem distributing propaganda for the US military like America’s Army, a comic book app developed and distributed by the US Army, via the App Store. If the App Store isn’t a forum for serious work, how can Apple expect anyone to take it seriously?

The ZTE Grand S just made its debut at CES 2013 and it is the world’s thinnest Android smartphone boasting a 5-inch full HD 1080p display. Can it compete with the current leaders? We compared it with the Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5.

The latest smartphone manufacturer to shrug off the budget tag is ZTE. The Chinese company just showed off the flagship ZTE Grand S – a powerful quad-core Android beast with a stunning, full HD display and an impressive camera. We decided to take a look at how it measures up against the two best-selling smartphones on the market right now, the Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5. If ZTE wants to make headway these are the phones to beat.

As you can see the ZTE Grand S measures up well, although that battery is a concern, especially with a 5-inch display to power. It is an attractive, minimalist design and it comes in a range of seven colors. It looks good next to the current leaders, but we know that the next Galaxy S will probably be along soon and the recently announced Sony Xperia Z and the Huawei Ascend D2 have similar specs to the Grand S. The competition will be tough, but one thing’s for sure, ZTE is serious about shaking up the smartphone market.

It will launch in China in the first quarter of 2013, but we’re not sure when, or even if, it will touch down stateside, what the price tag will be, or which carrier might pick it up. These details will undoubtedly have a big impact on its potential success, so we’ll keep you posted.

Firaxis and 2K Games released The Second Wave, a new package of downloadable content for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, on Tuesday. The content alters much about the way the game is played while not adding much new campaign content, a sign of how the game will expand in the future.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is one of the happier stories to come out of 2012. The Firaxis-developed strategy game not only resurrected a long-dead video game franchise from obscurity in a grand fashion, it was also one of the absolute best games to come out last year. It has also been a significant financial success for publisher 2K Games, particularly as a digital download. Unsurprisingly Firaxis has supported the game with downloadable add-on content since its October release. This week’s release, The Second Wave, doesn’t add new story content which may be disappointing to some but it is representative of how the game will expand in the future.

The Second Wave is actually wholly free. It consists of twelve different options that can be toggled to greatly alter the way the game is played. This include options that make the already difficult game even more challenging, like the Red Fog option which slowly degrades wounded soldiers statistics in the field or Diminishing Returns which raises the cost of building vital satellites. There’s even a Marathon option that makes the game even longer.

“We look at XCOM as a sort of platform for this stuff,” game designer Jake Solomon told PC Gamer on Tuesday, “We all, as a team, completely agree that XCOM is a great platform for more things, basically. More items and aliens and maps. We totally get that. It’s just that those things take time.”

The first paid DLC for XCOM, Slingshot, was released at the beginning of December and was broadly criticized for how its new story missions were incorporated into the game. Firaxis plans to continue developing new content into 2013, but it’s unclear whether it will focus on new campaign content in the vein of Slingshot or The Second Wave.

“Certainly people have enjoyed Slingshot, but the criticisms that it’s linear and that it’s unlike the rest of the experience are fine. I don’t even disagree with that,” said Solomon, “Our goal is to support people in the way that they want to play XCOM.”

Firaxis’ openness with its fans and the rate at which it’s releasing new content is promising for fans of the series. It implies that 2K Games sees value in continued investment in the XCOM franchise. 

We play with Lenovo’s new IdeaCentre Horizon, an all-in-one computer that can also be used as a tabletop productivity and gaming system.

Lenovo surprised everyone at CES by announcing the Horizon, an unusual all-in-one that can be laid flat and used as a tabletop device. A battery is included for up to two hours of use away from power and a demo at Intel’s press conference suggested it will ”bring back family night.”

Is it really that much fun? We decided to put it to the test with a game of air hockey. Lenovo handed us a pair of unique capacitive-touch mallets and sent us to play. Though we did miss the feel and sound of a real puck the experience was far better than the cheap air hockey sets most people can afford. We had no problem sending the puck flying across the screen or blocking incoming shots. The only handicap was the glossy display which made the game difficult to enjoy in Lenovo’s brightly lit showcase.

We also briefly played Monopoly, poker and several arcade games. Monopoly was disappointing, but that was the fault of a grating soundtrack and shaky performance rather than the Horizon’s touch controls. Poker, however, seemed like good fun. Lenovo connected two of its smartphones to the Horizon and let us use them to display cards, though that’s not required to play the game. Virtual cash was used to make bets and players could toss chips in the pot by swiping on his or her smartphone.

The selection of games is only part of what Lenovo’s custom interface, known as Aura, offers. It can display a variety of media content, including photos and video, on a virtual tabletop. Each individual media item can move, rotate and resize with a few simple gestures. There’s also a selection of creativity and productivity apps that we didn’t have the opportunity to check out.

Though we enjoyed our time with the Horizon we can’t deny that its price is intimidating. $1,699 buys the all-in-one with a stable of capacitive accessories, but the stand is not included (pricing is unannounced). Will families spend almost $2,000 to play virtual versions of  games sold at a fraction of the price? We have our doubts.  

Corsair’s Voyager Air can store files, sling them to tablets via Wi-Fi, and even share Internet access among up to five devices.

As devices like smartphones continue to take on more and more capabilities in our everyday lives, it comes as no surprise that we’re starting to expect more from other devices as well. Corsair injected some more utility into the tired old external hard drive at CES 2013 with the Voyager Air, a Wi-Fi-enabled portable drive with a few other tricks up its sleeve.

While the Voyager Air looks like any other portable external hard drive at first glance, it can do more than merely store your files. In the same vein as the older Kingston Wi-Drive, you can use Voyager Air not only with computers (both Windows and Mac), but also with tablets and smartphones. The device comes with built-in Wi-Fi, so you can access your files even without  an Internet connection, as long as your mobile devices have the accompanying Android or iOS app installed. You can stream up to five videos at any one time on different machines.

If you want to watch videos on  a bigger screen, you can connect the Voyager Air to your home network so it can be accessed by your smart TVs, game consoles, and streaming boxes, among other devices. It also acts as an Internet passthrough: Let’s say you’re out of the house, and you can only connect one device to a mobile hotspot – you can use the Voyager Air as a hub so your laptops, tablets, and phones can share Internet access. Corsair’s Voyager Air comes with a USB 3.0 connection for fast file transfer. It will be available starting February in 500GB and 1TB capacities for $199 and $229, respectively. At launch, only the red and gray versions will be available, but if Corsair’s product shot is any indication of the product’s final color range, you’ll have a lot more to choose from in the future.

Huawei’s Ascend W1 trots out with a 4-inch LCD and dual-core processor, and unlike many of the Chinese company’s devices, is destined for United States later this year.

After revealing the mammoth Ascend Mate and 1080p Ascend D2 on Monday, Huawei pulled one more rabbit out of hat on the opening day of CES 2013 with the Ascend W1 – its first foray into the Windows Phone 8 market.

Though smaller than the two super-sized Android phones it showed off yesterday, the Ascend W1 maintains the trend in boxy shape and thin case, coming in at just under 0.4 inches thick. The four-inch LCD display has a resolution of 800 x 400. The device will be powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8230 processor. A 1,950mAh battery will provide up to 470 hours of standby time, which Huawei claims is the longest among phones in its class.

Though there is no price point for the Ascend W1, we do know it will make its debut in China and Russia later this month. The phone will then make its way to Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S. later in the year. With no official release date or price point to go on, we can at least revel in the fact that the phone will be available in multiple colors, including  blue, red, black and white.

Nintendo’s latest console has its share of detractors, but Ninja Gaiden 3 director Yosuke Hayashi is not one of them.

In November of 2012 we reported a series of comments made by Huw Beynon during an interview with NowGamer that were decidedly negative toward Nintendo’s new Wii U console. For context, Beynon is employed as the full time studio representative for developer 4A Games, creators of the upcoming Metro: Last Light, and the interview was centered on whether or not 4A might eventually bring its survival horror, first-person shooter franchise to the Wii U. A simple “no” would have sufficed, but Beynon opted to take the more candid route.

“We had an early look at [Wii U], we thought we could probably do it, but in terms of impact we would make on the overall quality of the game — potentially to its detriment — we just figured it wasn’t worth pursuing at this time,” Beynon said, before being joined by 4A’s CTO Oles Shishkovtsov who stated simply that the “Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU.”

Those are harsh words, but who would better know the specific details of a gaming console better than those employed by a company dedicated to game development? How about another developer? Newly published excerpts from an upcoming Edge interview with Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi (pictured above) provide exactly that as Hayashi directly counters the claims made by 4A’s employees and instead states that the Wii U is definitely a “next generation” gaming machine.

“The Wii U is an infant that’s just been born,” Hayashi says. “It’s a little unfair to compare it to mature platforms that people have been working on for over five years. I’m sure people will find ways to bring out even more power as the platform matures.”

“To be completely blunt and honest, there’s no way that the Wii U processor is ‘horrible and slow’ compared to other platforms. I think that comment was just 4A trying to find a scapegoat for a simple business decision on their part.”

While Hayashi admits that the Wii U is likely lacking in raw horsepower compared to whatever new technology Microsoft and Sony inevitably unveil (not to mention modern gaming PCs), he claims that the system’s unique functionality more than makes up for this dearth of processing speed. “

“If you’re basing this simply on processor speed, then it’s not next generation,” Hayashi states. “If you’re basing this on Wii U being a new idea that challenges existing platforms, then it definitely is next generation. It is a console videogame platform that is now independent of the TV. Nobody has done that before.”

“It’s no mistake to say that we have entered a period where it’s difficult to provide an obvious difference to many players based on processor speed alone. Players want new innovation that includes the environment in which you play and services you use, rather than just raw processor spec,” Hayashi explains. “Nintendo is at the forefront of that innovation. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other platforms come up with in the future.”

Whether you side with Hayashi or the developers at 4A is largely a matter of perspective. This argument has been raging among Nintendo fans and detractors ever since the original Wii introduced motion-sensitive controllers in lieu of true high-definition graphics, and likely won’t die down any time soon. Objectively Nintendo consoles are technologically inferior to their competition, but for many developers (and fans) that simply doesn’t matter, as Nintendo’s machines offer a gaming experience you can’t find anywhere else. 

We won’t be hearing about any major announcement from Dell during this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – in lieu of a new product reveal, the company has announced the HD version of the XPS 13 and a refresh of its Inspiron R line of laptops.

Dell will release 2013 versions of the Inspiron R line of laptops in 14, 15, and 17-inch options that look noticeably thinner than their 2012 counterparts. The 14- and 15-inch versions are 1-inch thick at their thinnest points. The laptops come with a healthy number of ports and connectivity options (Ethernet for wired internet, two super-fast USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port,  a media card reader, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack) as well as an optical drive. They also have 720p webcams and are pre-installed with Windows 8.

Like previous iterations, you can customize your laptop to your heart’s content – you can upgrade the basic 320GB hard drive to higher storage capacities of up to 1TB or upgrade the processor from the basic 3rd generation Intel Core i3 to Intel Core i5 or i7 for more processing horsepower . You can also choose from a number of different graphics card options (Intel’s onboard graphics cards, NVIDIA GeForce, or AMD Radeon) and even have a touchscreen display installed instead of an ordinary screen, although all these upgrades will cost you more money on top of the laptops’ basic prices.

Dell has yet to reveal the new laptops’ pricing and release date, but to note: the 2012 Inspiron 15R starts at $550, while the Inspiron 17R starts at $600.

Video games are doing just fine in 2013. Opportunities for creative game designers to get their wares in front of players are increasing by the day. Wards of the old game business like retail chain GameStop, though, are facing hard truths as the market changes.

The NPD Group, the electronics market sales tracking firm, is expected to release a dour assessment of the video game industry’s holiday season. Analysts are predicting that console, handheld, and game sales all saw significant year-on-year declines from past Christmas seasons. Remember this, though: The NPD Group’s sales reports are no longer an accurate depiction of the health of the video game industry. It doesn’t reflect the booming digital download trade on mobiles and PCs, nor does it reflect the booming creativity of independent game makers. Those grim sales figures that come in month after month demonstrates one thing unequivocally: That the business that made GameStop one of the world’s most profitable retailers is dead for good.

GameStop reported its holiday sales data on Tuesday morning 48 hours before the NPD Group released game industry data for the holiday period. GameStop’s total sales fell but they didn’t dip too much. Global sales for the nine weeks that ended on Dec. 29 came to $2.88 billion, a drop of close to 5 percent year-on-year. A number of factors contributed to the drop. Console sales fell close to 3 percent while new game sales were down 5 percent. The company’s digital business of downloadable content grew 40 percent, with mobile games bringing in $76.5 million for the period, promising growth but not speedy enough to make up for lost revenue from physical sales.

The poison in GameStop’s well is its used game business. Used game sales dropped nearly 16 percent over the period. The company attributed the dip on “limited inventory due to fewer new titles released throughout 2012 and less promotional activity negatively impact[ing] sales compared to last year.” That is in reality more symptom than cause, though. The truth is that people are spending less and less on physical copies of games. That is the reason that GameStop’s used game inventory is shrinking; people aren’t buying games that can be sold back to GameStop and then resold again at a steep profit.

On a long enough timeline, the erosion of the used game market will kill GameStop. Historically the company has made close to half of its profits on used game sales. Even if sales totals only dip slightly year-on-year, its GameStop’s profits that are really hurt.

What GameStop’s decline will ultimately mean for the video game business is up in the air. It’s possible that game developers will finally see more money from game releases once the secondhand market is eliminated, allowing them to take more creative risks. On the other hand, piracy remains a crippling problem for digitally distributed games.

At CES, Panasonic showed off an exciting project it has been working on, a massive 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with a screen capable of displaying 4K resolution images.

When one usually thinks about a tablet, one imagines a device that’s at least vaguely portable. However portability clearly wasn’t at the top of Panasonic’s list of considerations when it sat down to develop its latest model. How do we know? Because it has a massive 20-inch screen, boasting a frankly astonishing 3840 x 2560 pixels, a resolution that’s slightly higher than 4K.

Before you start working out which body part to sell so you can put down a deposit on Panasonic’s new beast of a tablet, you should know it has only been teased at CES 2013 and is currently a development prototype. It doesn’t even have a name yet.

What it does have is a spec list though. We’ve mentioned the 4K resolution, 230ppi, 20-inch IPS panel already, but not that it’s running on an Intel Core i5, 1.8GHz, dual-core Ivy Bridge processor with 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and an unspecified Nvidia GeForce graphics card. Windows 8 Pro is the tablet’s operating system and it comes with support for a digital pen, plus there’s the usual array of USB ports, a micro SD card slot, Bluetooth 4.0 and an HD video camera.

Naturally, a tablet this size is no lightweight, so the 2.4kg (5.3 pounds) figure isn’t really a surprise, but you wouldn’t want to carry it about all day. Despite its overall heft, Panasonic has managed to get the chassis down to less than half-an-inch thick. So who does the company think will buy one of these? It says the screen “embodies the characteristics of printed media, with texture rich rendering and natural handwriting” that existing tablets cannot provide. In a scenario describing how it could be used, the Panasonic behemoth shows up at an editorial meeting, where magazine proofs are checked and revised on screen, as the tablet can display A3 pages at almost full size.

A reporter for Engadget said that up close, the tablet’s screen “looks like a photo,” and we’d expect pro photographers and video editors to be interested in the device too. It’s not really for playing Angry Birds, but professional types will probably be queuing up to try it if the price is right.

On the subject of availability, Panasonic isn’t committing to a date, saying only that it’s going to “strive to commercialize the 4K tablet, making it available globally to provide new business values to customers.” Exciting stuff.

Back in October, Samsung and Verizon formally announced the the Ativ Odyssey.  Now we finally have new word suggesting that the phone will arrive in “the coming weeks”.

What kind of specs will the phone have on offer? The original leaks appeared to be right on cue, with the phone having a 4 inch WVGA 800 x 480 super AMOLED display, a 1080p HD 5 megapixel camera on the rear, and 1.2MP camera on the front.   This phone will be released with Windows Phone 8 OS.

The display points to this phone, more than likely, being an entry or mid level smartphone.  However, coupled with some of its not so basic features, this will still be a great phone for many users.  We currently have no word on the actual release date or the pricing for the Ativ Odyssey.

If this phone is priced to move, would you consider picking one up?

We take a closer look at the Helix, a unique convertible melds the portability of a tablet with classic Thinkpad durability and Windows 8 functionality.

Lenovo’s new ThinkPad Helix stands out immediately from the current crowd of convertibles. Nearly all of them are targeted at consumers and, as such, focus more on flashy design than durability. Not the Helix. It’s a ThinkPad, and that means tough.

All the classic features are here. Most surfaces are matte black and the lid uses a semi-soft coat that’s not initially pleasing to the eye but resists scratches better than the glossy coat used on consumer systems.

Lenovo has also made sure to include the trackpointer, though there’s been a change to the buttons – they’re now integrated into the surface. This change lets the Helix offer a large touchpad in spite of its diminutive 11.6-inch display.

The Helix’s ace is its unique hardware. It packs a Core i5 low-voltage processor, yet all of that compute power is kept behind the screen. This means there’s no interruption or reduction in performance when using the Helix as a tablet.

And that’s not all. Users can flip the display and re-attach it so that it faces up when closed over the keyboard. By doing this a user can enjoy the system as a tablet without giving up the ports and extra battery life found in the keyboard base.

All of this does come at a price. Lenovo will ship the Helix in February at $1,499. That’s more than most consumers will pay for an 11.6-inch laptop and, frankly, the IdeaPad Yoga 11S will prove a better choice for home users. The Helix is aimed at business travelers – and it may well be the perfect convertible for them.

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Huawei’s 5-inch Ascend D2 may not be getting as much attention as its larger sibling, but this Android superphone is well worth a look.

Huawei is all about big smartphones this year. The Ascend Mate‘s 6.1 screen is garnering a lot of attention, but the smaller Huawei Ascend D2 should be on your radar as well. This 5-inch Android device has all the hallmarks of a flagship phone: powerful hardware, full HD display, amazing camera, and a huge battery.

The Ascend D2′s 5-inch screen is really impressive with its bright colors and wide viewing angles. We’re fans of the 1920 x 1080 pixel display and the 442ppi density. All this screen does not equal a bulky phone, nor a heavy one. It’s noticeably smaller than the Galaxy Note 2, yet you still get all the advantages of a large display.

The D2 may be right in the Goldilocks zone for people who want a big phone that doesn’t overdo it. The Note 2′s display is only a few fractions of an inch more, yet it makes a big difference, as you can see in the side-by-side shot. Plus, the D2 has a slim bezel, minimizing the overall bulk. It’s very holdable thanks to the curved back, which is similar to the Ascend Mate. The edges could be a little curvier and more comfortable, though that’s a minor nit. The phone feels very solid, and though it’s not light for its size, it’s not heavy, either.

You won’t want to add more bulk or weight with a case or cover, and according to Huawei, you won’t need one. It’s touting the D2 as droppable as well as water and dirt resistant. The demo of these features was very impressive. We’d be interested to see if the phone can stand up to repeated droppings and which surfaces are its Achilles heel. 

During our hands-on time we took a few pictures with the 13-megapixel camera and the shots looked really good on the screen, coming out crisp and colorful. We’ll be excited to see if HDR video works as well as advertised.

The speaker on the bottom produced surprisingly well-rounded audio, even in a loud room.

Based on the time we spent with the Huawei Ascend D2, we’re both impressed and eager to see how it holds up in real-world usage. Huawei doesn’t have any deals with U.S. carriers yet, so we might be waiting for a while. Pricing is also a mystery right now, again because there are no carrier deals in place.

Check out our gallery and hands-on video for more.