Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

The King of Fighters XII (KOF XII) is the latest instalment of The King of Fighters series and is currently available on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

King of Fighters XII is very Street Fighter esque though it uses a 3 on 3 team system with each fight consisting of up to five rounds. Though it is possible to play in a versus mode where you can either have 3 on 3 or 1 on 1 against another player or against a CPU opponent.

One of the main things I noticed about the game were issues with the graphics. All the backgrounds in each fight are colourful and well drawn but the actual characters are blocky and have very poor detail, it was certainly not something I would expect on the PS3 unless it was a PSN game.

KOF XII has a slimmed down roster than previous versions of KOF and this has come under quite a bit of criticism from fans.

In terms of the game play it does play well and the animations of the characters are fluid and if you are not used to fighting games you can chose a simple mode which allows you to pull of character moves without pressing a ridiculous combination of buttons, or if you are more used to fighting games you can play it normally.

The game also has some issues with lag that comes with online multiplayer though I suspect this will eventually be fixed with a patch.

This game without a doubt is focussed on the more seasoned fighting game player and I am sure they will play it, however for other gamers I am unsure how appealing it is. One of the main problems I have with it is the £39.99 asking price. For a game with questionable graphics and problematic online multiplayer this is extortionate.

If the game was £10-£15 and available to download on the PSN I would say go for it, it could provide quite a lot of fun while playing against your friends on a LAN, but as a £40 game I just don't think it is worth it.

There’s been plenty of rumours of Amazon’s Kindle being released on these shores and at last it’s here (and 99 other countries)

For those unsure on what this piece of kit is, its basically the best e-reader money can buy (if you believe everything you read of course) It has the ability to connect to a 3G network, allowing it to download new books directly from Amazon online(a choice of 250,000 books). You can also subscribe to online magazines and newspapers (The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the New York Times) and it will download these automatically. It also has the ability to receive Microsoft Word documents and also email capabilities and has a keyboard to facilitate these.

Now getting one isn’t as easy as you’d think. You cant just order an English kindle from Amazon.co.uk. Instead you need to get onto Amazon.com and order one from them. This will set you back $299 and a $45 import tax which roughly translates to £220. This will come with an American power adaptor but will work just fine here in Blighty as will the free 3G access.

7Digital will be the default music app for Blackberry users thanks to a deal signed up between the two companies. 7 Digital which recently had 50% of it bought by HMV offers 100% DRM-free downloads and has a rather extensive library.

The price war between 7Digital and iTunes has started already with 7Digital cutting the price of singles to 77c a track, to iTunes 99c per track. As per usual though the UK wont benefit from it as  both companies still sell tracks to us at 79p.

Coming first to the Curve 8900, the Bold and the Storm it will come head to head with iTunes and Nokia’s “Comes with Music”. Over the next few weeks/months it will be added to more of its phones.

7Digital’s music is encoded at 320kbps, larger than your average mp3 but obviously a better quality than what iTunes offers to you. It also has a good little tool called “Wi-Fi Auto-Sync”. When the phone is connected to your mobile network, it downloads lower audio quality versions of tracks, then upgrades that to full quality when your phone's in range of a faster wi-fi connection. Clever eh?

The highly anticipated VAIO X Series is the world’s lightest notebook at just 655g, and measures 13.9mm thin, has a 11.1” X-black widescreen LCD and up to 16 hours of battery life.

It will also cost an arm and a leg at $1,499 (£933) and will ship with an SSD drive and Windows 7 Home Premium.

No word on what CPU it uses yet but at that price it better had be one of Intel's new ULV CPUs.

Below is an interesting image from Sony showing the innards of the X Series.

For those of us that didn’t know, Toshiba helped develop the Cell processor with Sony which powers the PS3. Now Toshiba re taking the tech into its new TV, the “Regza 55X1” LCD TV. The processor improves the quality of the image with better colours, brightness balance and improved picture quality around the edge of the screen.

The Cell chip is actually housed in an external box which also houses a 3TB HDD to save up to a whopping 26 hours from up to 8 simultaneous channels. Yes that’s right 8 simultaneous channels. Just to show off you can show 8 separate channels at one time on the screen. These can then be flicked through without any delay like a standard HDTV.

Throw in 55 inches of LED backlit screen, a 240Hz display and a contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1. A 7 speaker sound bar attached under the screen, network functionality with DLNA support and an Opera based web browser you can see this TV packs just about everything. Now what will it cost?? The TV was on show at CEATEC in Japan where it will be released this December at a cool 1 million Yen. That’s around £7000 to you and me…… Ouch

Adobe those wonderful chaps who develop Flash, have announced a full version(the same that your home PC or Mac runs) of there media software that will be available for your mobile, no more “Lite” versions.

This will be great news to most people who use there blowers to surf the internet and want full content support for websites. If you have a Windows Mobile device or a Palm(from 16th October) you will be able to pick it up before the end of this year. Those of us sporting Android or Symbian phones will have to wait a bit longer with an “early 2010” date pencilled in. Blackberry support is still being developed according to Adobe but there has been no mention of iPhone. Surely  due to the size of the iPhone market this can’t last too long.

Adobe have said full Flash support will bring “uncompromised web browsing of expressive applications, content and high definition (HD) video”. It will also improve general performance of phones visuals and will also bring mobile friendly support for touchscreens and also improve the quality of downloadable apps.

CAN’T WAIT!!

We’ve had a couple of these out in the past alongside the LG Prada phone, this is the phone for all the designer brand orientated of us who care not for gadgetry and specifications and just want style, class and above all looks. That’s exactly what the Samsung Armani phones deliver. The full details won’t be released till later but we’ve picked up on a leak on what to expect.

Not fully up to spec with the latest smartphones it still packs plenty of goodies. A 3.1” OLED(yum) touchscreen and a 5MP camera the Armani also has tucked away a T9 keypad for quicker texting. It also sports a microSD slot and HSDPA for your fast connection. Lets face it though if you’re still reading this the last paragraph was of no interest to you as you’re probably still drooling over the Armani name.

Frighteningly similar in spec to the Instinct HD(USA only Samsung) but much better looking, this phone is for all fashionista wannabe’s.

We’ve talked before about gadgets supplying wireless electricity. Palm’s touchstone, The Powermat and Dell’s new Latitude Laptop, utilise the technology to charge or power themselves without the need for a straight to the mains connection. Sony has got it’s boffins working on the efficiency of wireless power, enough to power a whole television, ideal for those who don’t like wire clutter or no hanging wires from your wall mount.

Sony’s power supply will use magnetic resonance to send the electricity through the air to the TV without the need for a plug. Sony have claimed to have hit an efficiency rate of 60% which means it can send 60W of energy within a 50cm range. This means that although the TV will not require no trailing power leads it would still have to be in range of a power socket.

When the tech or the TV will get launched is unclear but CES isn’t far away and that usually leads to the competing TV companies to show off some goodies.