G.Skill's Phoenix II SSD Using SF-2000 Series

G.Skill is showcasing its new Phoenix II SSD series using the SandForce SF-2200 processor.

Tuesday G.Skill International displayed its new line of SATA 6 Gb/s-based SSDs, the Phoenix II, at CeBIT 2011. Similar to other SSDs recently announced by Patriot Memory and Corsair over the past week, the new Phoenix II uses the SandForce SF-2200 processor to achieve sequential read speeds of 550 MB/s and write speeds of 500 MB/s. Little else is known about the SSDs in regards to capacities and pricing. However, G.Skill said the Phoenix II drives will ship in the middle of Q2 2011.

Havok Tech Coming to PlayStation Phone Games

Xperia PLAY developers will now have access to Havok's middleware.

ZoomIf you thought that the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY would by just another fancy smartphone that can play PlayStation ports and app-sized Android games, then think again. Sony Ericsson and Havok revealed during Game Developers Conference 2011 that the latter company's middleware will now work with the PlayStation-sanctioned Gingerbread-powered smartphone.

"As part of Havok’s overall support for the Android platform, we are very pleased to partner with Sony Ericsson to put the full power of the Havok product line into the hands of Xperia PLAY developers," said Havok managing director David Coghlan. "We were extremely impressed by the performance of the Xperia PLAY and the ease with which we were able to port and optimize our technology to the platform."

For consumers, this means that developers will have access to Havok technology which will create "cinematic, rich 3D immersive games" for Android, especially the Xperia PLAY. According to Havok lead pre-sales engineer Steve Ewart, there's a particular set of hardware instructions on the PlayStation phone that's not on all the Android platforms. Those instructions and the phone's "relative hardware power" convinced the company to bring its middleware to the platform.

Thanks to all that horsepower packed under the hood, Ewart said that players will see more complex games than what's seen on previous mobile devices. "If you're going to have a physics simulation in there, and you're going to have lots of characters dying and piling up on each other – that's the core physics problem – you're going to need extra capabilities [like Havok's middleware] to push that particular scenario,” he told Gamasutra.

Set to launch this month on Verizon Wireless, the Xperia PLAY will arrive with 50 launch titles from Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Glu Mobile, Namco Bandai and numerous other publishers that was designed to make use of the phone's slide-out gamepad. Fifteen of these games will be ports of original PlayStation titles, one of which has already been confirmed to be the original Crash Bandicoot (booga booga).

Current titles which make use of Havok's middleware include Halo: Reach, Fable 3, LEGO Universe, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Just Cause 2, DJ Hero 2, and numerous other games found on the PC and current gaming consoles. Havok tools include Havoc Physics, Havok Script, Havok AI, Havok Behavior, Havok Destruction and others.

Former Apple Exec Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud

Back in August of 2010, midlevel Apple manager Paul Devine was accused of taking as much as $1,000,000 in kickbacks from Apple partners....

Back in August of 2010, midlevel Apple manager Paul Devine was accused of taking as much as $1,000,000 in kickbacks from Apple partners. Devine was said to have used his position as a midlevel executive at Apple to gain access to confidential information, which he would then sell on to Apple suppliers. 

White iPad 2 Bezel Leaked?

Leaked iPad 2 bezel may mean a white iPad is on the way.

On Sunday, 9to5Mac posted a photo that may very convincingly be a snapshot of a leaked white iPad 2 bezel.

The photo was taken in Shenzhen City, China, by iFixYouri iPhone repair shop and is believed to be the new thick bezel of the upcoming iPad 2. Judging from the popularity of Apple's white products, it is very possible that a white iPad 2 is also on the way.

Aside from the white color of the bezel, another noticeable feature is the small camera hole at the top of the bezel, which will likely accommodate the iPad 2's forward facing "FaceTime HD" camera. 

Whether or not the bezel is real, we'll let you decide. But until then, we'll just have to wait until March 2nd rolls around for all of the juicy iPad 2 details.

Motorola Xoom Gets the Teardown Treatment

No rest for the wicked.

The iFixit team has yet to down tools after what’s turned out to be a monster week in terms of disassemblies. Following hot on the heels of the Motorola Atrix, the Samsung Galaxy S 4G, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro is the Motorola Xoom.

Officially launched earlier this week, the Xoom is the nearly-4G tablet that made such a splash at CES. Packing Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset and 32GB of storage, the device is a bit of a beast, and will be even more so once Motorola gets around to upgrading it with 4G support.

If you were keeping an eye out yesterday you’ll know that updating the device for 4G involves sending your tablet in to Motorola for approximately one week. The team at iFixit reports that looking inside the device, it seems as though the tablet was designed with this future upgrade in mind. 

Upgrading the 4G will involve a T5 Torx screwdriver to gain access to the circuit board, and then disconnecting of two antenna connectors, unscrewing the two Torx screws holding the board in place, and swapping it out with an 4G LTE board. It’s not a very involved process and iFixit reckons it’s something that could easily be done by a technician in a Verizon store in under ten minutes. So why you have to send it away for a week is anybody’s guess. 

4G fun aside, the tablet scored a fairly decent eight out of 10 on the repairability scale, losing points for the massive amounts of screws (57!). This $800 (if you’re going for the 4G version) tablet boasts that dual-core Tegra 2 we mentioned before, Toshiba THGBM2G8D8FBA1B NAND Flash, Samsung K4P4G154EC DRAM, Qualcomm MDM6600 supporting HSPA+ speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps, Broadcom BCM4329 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and FM Tuner, Hynix H8BCSOQG0MMR 2-chip memory MCP, AKM 8975 Electronic Compass and Texas Instruments 54331 Step Down SWIFT DC/DC Converter with Eco-Mode.