WSJ: 2012 iPhone to support global 4G LTE

Now we’re intrigued. It’s a common (if unconfirmed) belief that the next iPhone will support LTE-based 4G, but the Wall Street Journal now understands through the ever-present “people familiar with the matter” that Apple is taking 4G worldwide. Where the current iPad only supports two LTE frequencies and drops to HSPA+ outside of the US and Canada, the new iPhone will supposedly cover parts of Asia and Europe as well. The exact countries haven’t been outlined, although it’s easy to imagine Apple going for those countries where 4G speeds matter the most: there’s been rumblings of talks with KT and SK Telecom in South Korea, but we could also see France, Germany, Japan and Scandiavian countries in the mix. The rumor hasn’t been confirmed, of course. That said, the iPhone was already purported to be using a new cellular chipset — and a number of carriers, most often in the US, have long said they won’t carry new smartphones unless LTE is part of the package. We’ll know the full scoop on Wednesday.

Wall Street Journal

Dell unveils Alienware Aurora gaming rig, will serenade you for $2,200

Dell has just taken the wraps off a brand new addition to the Alienware family, hailing it, rather poetically, as “a serenade to raw gaming power.” It’s called the Alienware Aurora, and it’s staring at you with a Cylon-like grin in the image above. Beneath its menacing veneer lurks Intel’s six-core, 3000 series Core i7CPU, an X79 Express chipset and quad-channel DDR3 memory, all of which are kept in check by Dell’s liquid cooling and active venting technologies. The gaming rig also supports both multi-display and 3D configurations, with GDDR5 memory-laced graphics cards. In case you’re not satisfied, you can always get under the hood and tinker with it yourself, without even busting out your tool belt. The Alienware Aurora is available now for prices starting at $2,200, so hit up the source link for more details.

Dell

MSI demo’s X79 motherboards with PCI Express 3.0 and UEFI BIOS at IDF 2011 (video)

While MSI wasn’t quite ready to publicly divulge all the details of its forthcoming X79-based motherboards, it was more than happy to give us a teaser. We were shown three upcoming models from the company at IDF, all toting PCI Express 3.0 slots, overclocking buttons and that snazzy UEFI BIOS. The latter makes changing settings a snap, and is carried over from the company’s existing Sandy Bridge boards — it even comes with a button that launches a browser, but unfortunately the machines in the booth weren’t configured to support it. We’ll know more in Q4, but in the meantime a gallery awaits you below, along with a video after the break.

Qualcomm reports record quarterly revenues, boasts 100th Snapdragon device

Qualcomm’s back again with yet another set of impressive numbers. For the second quarter of this fiscal year, the chip giant saw record earnings of $3.88 billion, up 46 percent from the same quarter in the previous year, and collected $999 million of sweet profit which is a 29 percent jump from last year. This is no doubt to do with the 70 percent increase in the MSM7000- and MSM8000-series Snapdragon shipments in this half of the fiscal year (compared to 2H 2010), and it should be noted that this quarter also saw the 100th Snapdragon-powered device announced by a Qualcomm client. Additionally, EVP Steve Mollenkopf reassured us that the recent events in Japan won’t have any significant impact on upcoming shipments, so the 30 Snapdragon tablets in the pipeline should arrive as scheduled. Excerpts from the financial report can be found after the break.

Intel to support USB 3.0 alongside Thunderbolt, coming with Ivy Bridge in 2012

We were just pondering this very thing yesterday — would Intel dedicate itself to Thunderbolt and give USB 3.0 the cold shoulder — and now we have our answer from the Santa Clara crew, albeit delivered from Beijing. The Chinese capital is the site of Intel’s currently ongoing developer conference, which is where Kirk Skaugen, VP of the company’s Architecture Group, assured the world that the promise for native USB 3.0 support in Intel chipsets will be fulfilled. Not this year, mind you, but it’ll be with us in 2012 as part of the Ivy Bridge CPU refresh. That matches AMD’s plans to support USB 3.0 in Fusion APUs, and was augmented with a strong word of endorsement from Skaugen about the connector’s future. He urged developers to embrace USB 3.0 on an equal footing with Intel’s proprietary Thunderbolt interconnect, describing the two technologies as “complementary.” If you say so, captain.