In recent times, football has seen a shift with the rise of a new type of player: the “Engine”. There’s even a mathematical algorithm to back that claim – at least, that’s the thinking behind adidas’ new range of boots that the company will be launching tomorrow. The adidas Nitrocharge 1.0, as it will be called, has already been tested by some of the company’s sponsored players, and may even make its official debut during the UEFA Champions’ League final later this month.

Ahead of the launch, the company has already posted several teasers about the new Nitrocharge 1.0 boot, with YouTube teaser videos featuring Daniele De Rossi as well as a #theengine Twitter campaign that details the characteristics of the Engine player profile featuring Javi Martinez and Dani Alves.

Hit the jump for more information on the new adidas Nitrocharge boot, with some of the detailed infographics published by adidas about the Engine player profile.

The BlackBerry Q10 is finally here and it looks like Celcom has unveiled its BlackBerry Q10 phone bundle on its main page. Sign up for a 12-, 18- or 24-months contract with Celcom and get the latest BlackBerry device from as low as RM1,388. Celcom is offering the Q10 with its usual Celcom First postpaid plans along with a data plan of up to 5GB.

We’re not too sure if it’s a typo at Celcom’s end, the mPro and mPro Plus plans usually comes with a 24 months contract but it’s listed as only 18 months for the BlackBerry Q10, which makes it a pretty sweet deal. Unfortunately though, accoding to the terms and conditions for mPro plans, “All Device Bundle plans with mPro &mPro Plus come with special discounted prices for the device with 24 months contract attached”, so we’ll be keeping an eye out to see if the telco makes any changes.

Visit Celcom for more information or hit the break for more details about the Q10 bundlings.

It is not exactly a surprise since most of us are already aware of it through leaked early builds but Microsoft has officially confirmed that Windows Blue will be officially called Windows 8.1. This confirmation was made few hours ago by Tami Reller, the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer for the company’s Windows division.

Not only that, Reller has also announced that Windows 8.1 will be made available as a free update to existing Windows 8 users via Windows Store. While no actual delivery date has been mentioned, do note that the public preview of Windows 8.1 will be out on 26 June to coincide with Build developer conference in San Francisco.

Available for both Windows 8 and Windows RT, the conference is certainly a good venue for Microsoft to release the preview to users as the company are expected to discuss Windows 8.1 (as well as other major Microsoft products) in detail over there. Let’s see if Windows 8.1 able to provide significant improvement to the operating system.

[Source: Windows Team Blog. Image: Mary Jo Foley] 

At one time, BlackBerry Messenger (fondly referred to many as BBM) is the biggest attraction of BlackBerry devices. Soon, its long-time exclusivity to BlackBerry devices will be over as the company has decided to make BBM to Android and iOS devices later this year.

Pending approval by Apple and Google, BlackBerry stated that the first iteration of the BBM for Android and iOS will feature many elements that BBM users are familiar with such as the immediacy of BBM chats, multi-person chats, photo and voice notes sharing, and BBM Groups with up to 30 people in a single group. In addition to that, the app will be free on both platforms.

The company also mentioned that BBM will support iOS 6 and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher but further information about its full system requirements and availability will only be announced once we get nearer to the app’s launch date.

[Source: BlackBerry and BlackBerry Official Blog]

Can’t live without QWERTY smartphones but found that the BlackBerry Q10 is too high for your budget? Well, soon you might be able to consider the other QWERTY BlackBerry 10 device in the form of BlackBerry Q5 which was just announced at the on-going BlackBerry Live 2013 in Florida.

While the unveiling might mark its first official appearance in the public, the BlackBerry Q5 seems to be the very device have been previously called as R10. Apart from having a 3.1-inch touch display and (of course) QWERTY keyboard, BlackBerry didn’t reveal much about the device’s processor, camera and various other details.

Said to be out sometime in July in select markets including Asia Pacific (which should include Malaysia too), no pricing has been mentioned as well. Judging from the R10 rumors, we expect that the BlackBerry Q5 will be the lower cost BlackBerry 10 that the operating system badly needs. It shouldn’t take long before we able to learn more about the new device, so stay tuned.

[Source: BlackBerry Official Blog]

First shown at CES 2013, NVIDIA’s little Android-based handheld gaming system which they called Project Shield is now ready for eager gamers out there.  Now officially known as NVIDIA Shield, we honestly can’t tell it apart from initial version that the company shown at Vegas.

Since it is going to be released to consumers soon, this means that we now able to learn what NVIDIA packed into the portable gaming system. Apart from the NVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset (which runs at up to 1.9GHz) and the 5-inch 1280×720 retinal quality touch display, we are also looking at 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and a battery that is rated at 28.8 watt hours.

Ships with Android Jelly Bean 4.2.1 and two pre-installed games, the NVDIA Shield is priced at RM 1043 (USD 349) once it heads out to the shelves sometime in June but it will be initially available only in US and Canada. To learn more, head on to shield.nvidia.com.

[Source: NVIDIA Shield] 

After all those rumours and teasers, Nokia has finally revealed the latest member of its Lumia family of Windows Phone 8 devices – the new Lumia 925 – in a press event at London just few hours ago.

Among the highlight of the new Windows Phone 8 smartphone by Nokia is its 8.5mm body which is a combination of aluminum (the main chassis) as well as polycarbonate (back area). Weighing at around 139g, the device is certainly a departure from the thick body of Lumia 920 and further reflects the new design philosophy that Nokia has brought to the Lumia series – something that is already quite apparent with Lumia 720 and 520.

Additionally, Nokia also stated that the aluminum frame also acts as antenna for the device and claimed to offer incredible antenna performance. As per many of previous Lumia releases, the Lumia 925 also supports wireless charging through an optional snap-on wireless charging case.

Another feature that Nokia highlighted at the global unveiling event for the Lumia 925 is the device’s imaging capability. Nokia pointed out that the Lumia 925’s PureView main camera offers better lens (in the form of 6-elements Carl Zeiss Tessar lens) and software algorithm, certain things are rather identical to Lumia 920 such as 8.7-megapixels sensor, dual LED flash and of course, the optical image stabilization capability.

There are still more to see of the new Nokia Lumia 925, right after the jump. Click on the Read More link below to continue.

It looks like the next couple of weeks will be more interesting than ever, Google I/O will go on from 15-17 May 2013, Apple’s developers program, WWDC is only a month away and it looks like you have more things to look forward to – Samsung SM-C101 aka Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom.

Shortly after the first rumor about the next Samsung phone built for photography, the device appeared in the Bluetooth Certification Body and now, the first sample image taken with the SM-C101 has appeared in a Google+ account. The accounted belongs to a person named Shahriar Hossain, who supposedly works for Samsung Electronics in Bangaladesh.

According to the EXIF data of the picture captioned as “Morning View”, the device carries the same model number as the one that showed up in Bluetooth SIG – SM-C101. No further information have been revealed, the data does not provide any solid information as to how many megapixels the camera has and the zoom level offered on the lens, but I guess it shouldn’t take too long for Samsung to finally make an announcement.

(Source: GSMArena)