AT&T has noted today that the upcoming PS Vita with 3G will be carrier locked, meaning only AT&T SIM cards will work in the handheld.
All international GSM SIM and T-Mobile in the U.S. will give an error when turned on.
Yesterday, the carrier revealed pricing for the 3G data plans. The carrier says 250MB will run you $15 per month, and $25 will get you 2GB. Those prices come on top of the extra $50 premium the 3G model demands on the base price.
Although the device is carrier-locked, Sony revealed that device will at least be region-free, meaning Japanese games will work on American handhelds, and every other combination.
With a release date in late February for the U.S. and Europe, the Vita will run on an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor and be powered by a quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU.
Featuring a 5-inch capacitive multitouch OLED screen (with 16 million colors), the device will be 7.16 by 0.73 by 3.28 inches. Furthermore, the Vita has 512MB memory and 128MB VRAM in its graphics processor.
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According to analysis from Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen, Google’s Google+ social network will hit 20 million users by this weekend.
Allen says the 10 million mark was hit Tuesday afternoon, and the overall user base has increased 350 percent in the last 6 days.
Using “surname-based analysis,” Allen used U.S. Census Bureau data about last name popularity and compared it to Google Plus users with the same last name. The researcher used similar tactics for the international markets.
RWW explains that “Allen used a sample of 100 to 200 surnames to estimate the total percentage of the U.S. population who has signed up for Google Plus. He then used that number and a calculated ratio of U.S. to non-U.S. users (one U.S. user for every 2.12 non-U.S. users) to generate his worldwide estimates.”
On July 4th, the model had user count at 1.7 million, and by July 9th that had jumped to 4.5 million.
Google+ is available to all Gmail users, and on Android. An iOS app is awaiting Apple approval.
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The RIM Blackberry PlayBook is now on sale in the U.S. and Canada, hitting stores with a mixed bag of critical reviews.
Selling for $499 for a 16GB/Wi-Fi model, RIM is hoping to break into the tablet market dominated by the Apple iPad.
The PlayBook features the standard 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM but its real differentiating factor is its Internet experience. The browser has support for Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and HMTL 5 and many reviews say it is the best browser on a tablet, ever.
Additionally, the PlayBook has a 7-inch screen, 1024×600 resolution, dual cameras, a microHDMI port and the BlackBerry App World, which has thousands of apps.
Models with 4G access will be available during the summer.
