News

Samsung will be pulling back the curtains on the successor to last year's Galaxy Note on 29 August. The presentation will be held two days prior to the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin.

A Samsung spokesman stated today: "We plan to unveil the next Galaxy Note at the Samsung Mobile Unpacked event in Berlin on August 29." This also happens to be just two weeks before the rumoured iPhone 5 release. Considering the patent war raging between the two companies, and their obvious stakes in the same market, this is likely anything but a coincidence.

The Galaxy Note 2 is rumoured to have an unbreakable plane 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display using Pentile technology (two sub-pixels per pixel), with 1680 x 1050 resolution (300 dpi). This is a step up from the 2011 Galaxy Note's 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen with 1280 x 800 resolution (285 dpi).

The Note II will reportedly run Android 4 ICS with a new version of TouchWiz and have a 2 GHz dual-core processor (Samsung's own Exynos 5250), a 12-Megapixel 1080p photo/video camera, a Mali-T604 GPU, 1.5 GB of RAM, brand new dedicated apps, a Galaxy S III-inspired design and a stylus.

We'll be at IFA in Berlin covering all the events and presentations, getting our hands on the new products to give you word as soon as it's out. Meet us here on 29 August to get the lowdown on the Galaxy Note 2, and over the following week for full coverage of the event!

IFA 2012 will be taking place from 31 August through 5 September.


> Review: Samsung Galaxy Note (2011)

> Reviews: Mobiles & Smartphones

Apple just couldn't let summer end without a new 11-inch MacBook Air.


With the flowering of the ultrabook market, is Apple still ahead of the competition in the great portable computing race? Answers and more in today's laptop review...


> Review: Apple MacBook Air 11" (2012)


> Reviews: PC and Mac Laptops and Notebooks

Researchers have developed a new kind of technology based on the workings of the human eye, which could stop inkjet print head nozzles from drying out.

Dried-up ink nozzles are in many ways the Achilles heal of inkjet printing. If you don't use an inkjet printer regularly enough, the ink dries up in the cartridges and nozzles, in turn blocking them up. To unclog the printer, you then have to clean the print heads at least once—an operation that drains your cartridges in a flash. This isn't a problem with laser printers.

Researchers in Missouri have found a solution to this problem, inspired by the human eye. After studying the way blinking helps keeps our eyes moist, the researchers came up with a system that blocks the ink nozzle using a drop of silicone oil to stop it drying out. The drop is controlled using an electric field to move it in and out of position. University of Missouri researcher Jae Wan Kwon affirmed that "the eye and an ink jet nozzle have a common problem: they must not be allowed to dry while, simultaneously, they must open. We used biomimicry, the imitation of nature, to solve human problems."

With this kind of solution in place, an inkjet printer could be left unused for four months without its print heads blocking up—that's sure to interest both manufacturers and end users.

> Multifunction Inkjet Printer Reviews