Techphiles

Nintendo once again continues to dominant with it's Wii and DS consoles. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata announced at a recent press conference that in December 2009, over 3 million Wii consoles were sold in the U.S. alone. Iwata also revealed the fact that over 10 million DS and DSi systems have been sold in 2009 in the U.S., setting a new record.

According to VGChartz, over 64 Million Wii's, and 123 Million DS consoles have been sold worldwide since launch.

Source

At Microsoft's 2009 CES press conference, CEO Steve Ballmer stated that over 39 million Xbox 360's have been sold since it's launch in November 2006. Of that number, only about have of them have registered for Xbox Live.

Note that why all Xbox 360 owners are able to register for a free Xbox Live Silver membership, to play online and use premium features such as Netflix and Facebook, you have to pay $50 a year to become a Xbox Live Gold Member.

Source

Sony has released slaes figures indicating that they have sold through 3.8 Million Playstation3 consoles during the five week period from Black Friday to New Year. This is a 78% increase from the same time period last year, largley atribbuted to the recent slim model, and price drop to $299.

Source

The Motorola Backflip is a newly announced smartphone using the Android 2.1 operating system. What sets the Backflip apart from traditional clamshells such as the enV is it's unique flipping feature: When closed the keyboard and screen is on the outside.  Outside of flipping, the Backflip has a 3.1" 480x320 LCD, and 5 megapixel camera.

The Backflip will be released Q1 of this year. Why Motorola hasn't specified which carriers the phone will be released on, Engadget speculates it will be AT&T.

Source

HTC has announced at CES today that the HTC HD2 will be released by T-Mobile in the U.S. this Spring.

The HD2 is a fully featured smartphone that runs on Windows Mobile 6.5. Hardware features include a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel camera, and a massive 4.3" capacitive touchscreen LCD display.

An exact release date or pricing details have not been released.

Source

Google has officially announced the Nexus One smartphone.

 Hardware wise, it features an incredible 3.7" 480x800 AMOLED screen, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and a 5 megapixel camera. Under the hood, it's running on android 2.1, and features a new 3D app launcher, and a voice keyboard.

The Nexus One is available for purchase on google.com/phone for T-Mobile in the U.S for $179 with a two year contract on an $80 a month plan, or you can purchase it unlocked with no contract for $529. It will also be available on Verizon Wireless this Spring.

Source

Only a few days left until we began a new decade, and Cowon is starting the year with the first gadget release of 2010, the Cowon V5 HD.

The V5 HD is a portable media player that runs on Windows CE 6.0, and features a 4.8" LCD touch screen, 45 hour battery life for audio, and HDMI output.

One thing Cowon's PMP's have been well known for is the massive amount of codecs supported right out of the box, and the V5 HD does not disappoint. The supported codecs are.

Audio Containers:
MP1/2/3, WMA, OGG, WAV, ASF, FLAC, TTA, APE, MPC, WV.

Audio Codecs:
MP1/2/3, WMA, OGG Vorbis, PCM, FLAC, True Audio, Monkey's Audio, MusePack, WavPack.

Video Containers:
AVI, WMV, ASF, MP4, MKV, MPG/MPEG, DAT, TS, TP, TRP, M2TS, 3GP.

Video Codecs:
DivX 3/4/5, Xvid,  H.264(MPEG4-AVC), WMV 7/8/9, MPEG 1.

The V5 HD will be released  January 1st in South Korea with pricing starting at 299,000 KRW (roughly $250 USD) for the 8GB version. No word on a U.S. release at the moment, but stay tuned to techphiles.net, as we will be at CES next week, and will report on any new information on the V5 HD.

Source