It appears like CES 2012 is going to be an event mainly intended for the thinnest this and thinnest that, just like last year. The newly-unveiled Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook, which is the successor to the company’s Aspire S3, is the thinnest of its kind and it’s definitely going to turn more than a few heads at Las Vegas.

The Aspire S5 measures in at a mere 15 mm at its thickest point and weighs less than 1.35 kg. The device comes equipped with a 13.3-inch LCD display, Onyx Black colored magnesium-alloy cover and palm rest, an Intel Core processor and uses SSD internal storage.

Similar to the Aspire S3, the S5 features Acer’s Green Instant On technology which promises a fast boot and resume experience of just 1.5 seconds.

The machine also comes with Acer’s Always Connect which will allow you to access AcerCloud for managing data stored on the S5, even if the device is in the sleep or hibernate mode. With the feature, you will be able to instantly view updates on your Facebook or Twitter accounts whenever you resume your S5. There won’t be any need for refreshing the web page.

One of the coolest features on the Aspire S5 is what Acer is calling “MagicFlip I/O”. With the special mechanism, the HDMI, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt (20Gbps) ports remain hidden. You just have to press the MagicFlip key to open the port cover panel and get access to the ports.

Other features include Dolby Home Theater v4, a PowerSmart battery pack that provides three times longer battery life, and a chiclet keyboard. No word on pricing, but we do know that the S5 is coming sometime in Q2 this year.

Check out the video below, which comes to us courtesy of Netbooknews, to take a peek at the ultra thin design compared with a Vaio and you will also get to see how the MagicFlip works.

[ PR ]

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If you have dropped your phone in the toilet, sink, swimming pool, or pond, you’re going to love Fujitsu. The device in the photo above is being is a new waterproof smartphone from Fujitsu, dubbed the ARROWS ES IS12F.

The ARROWS claims to be the “world’s thinnest smartphone”, and thin it is, measuring in at just 6.7mm.  That beats Motorola’s RAZR sitting in at 7.1mm but just a bit thicker than Huawei’s newly revealed at 6.68mm  P1 S.

Although being waterproof and thin, the device does come with decent specs. The ARROWS runs the Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, comes with a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655 processor,  4 inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 480 × 800 and 100,000:1 contrast ratio and the front of the device is cased in Corning’s Gorilla Glass.

Other features include 1GB ROM, 512MB of RAM, a 5.1 MP CMOS camera, Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi connectivity, DLNA support and a microSDHC memory card slot. And all that is packed into a body that weighs in at only 105g.

Just in case you are wondering, the handset could withstand water up to 1.5 meters (4.5 feet) for up to 30 minutes.

The Fujitsu ARROWS was unveiled in Japan in December, and is now being shown off at CES 2012 in Las Vegas. It is currently intended only for the company’s home market, but is expected to hit some carriers from around the world sometime in the near future. We haven’t got any hints regarding pricing; we will let you as soon as it’s available. So, stay tuned.

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CES officially kicks off tomorrow, but there’s no lack of news coming out of the desert at all.  Toshiba has their new Excite X10 tablet (Regza over seas) which is now claiming the title of “the world’s thinnest 10-inch tablet,” impressive.

As you might not have forgotten, the company’s last 10-inch tablet was the Thrive. That tablet was definitely not a head turner when considering its design. But the Excite X10 is beautifully designed.

The Android-powered Excite X10, which features a TI OMAP 4420 1.2GHz dual-core processor along with 1GB of RAM, is 7.7 mm thin. That’s over 1mm less than the Apple iPad 2 which measures in at 8.8 mm. And the X10 weighs only 1.2 pounds, 11% less than the Apple tablet. It’s thin alright, but we can’t say for sure about how long it will retain its title, as the iPad 3 will arrive sometime in the not so distant future, among other Android slates destined to be unveiled this week as well.

A high-quality magnesium alloy surface on the back of the Excite X10 makes it durable and light. If you believe in their marketing, the so called “scratch-resistant” Corning Gorilla Glass comes equipped with it, alongside an anti-smudge coating that is supposed to help a lot. But we’ll have to see once a production model is actually released.

The display has a resolution of 1280 x 800, a 5.0MP rear-facing camera with LED flash, and a 2.0MP front-facing shooter to satisfy all your video chatting needs. The physical buttons have been beautifully crafted on the sides and are almost invisible. With this slate, you will have access to micro USB, mini HDMI out, and micro SD card slot.

Toshiba is saying we’ll see a mid Q1 release with Android 3.2 Honeycomb, or a bit later with Ice Cream Sandwich. A little bit of waiting won’t kill anyone and also by that time we will have a lot of tablets to choose from.

They have included very little of their own software which includes the DLNA compatible Toshiba Media Player, their File Manager, Netflix, and QuickOffice, so you can expect a relatively unmodified Android experience.

The 16GB Excite X10 will retail for $529.99 and the 32GB model for $599.99, not bad for the thinnest 10-inch tablet in the world. And yeah, that Regza brand name won’t be there on US units.

[Source]

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