2010: A year in review, August

Posted by Libby Plummer on December 29, 2010 Leave a comment (4) Go to comments

BlackBerry Torch makes its debut, Apple opens its biggest store yet and Google Wave is scrapped
2010: A year in review, August

We're now just days away from getting inebriated in order to celebrate the coming of the new year, but before we take our first sip of celebratory bubbly, we've still got time to take a look at the biggest stories from the past 12 months.

August can be a quiet month in the tech world as all the big brands are usually keeping quiet in preparation for some big announcements at Berlin's IFA show in September. However, some companies drip-fed us with some pre-IFA teasers such as Samsung, which confirmed that it's Galaxy Tab would be getting its first official outing at the show. It was also hinted that Toshiba would be raising the curtain on its own tablet around the same time.

Despite a plethora of rumoured names, BlackBerry finally confirmed its upcoming model as the Torch (after AT&T; leaked the new name first) and we managed to get a sneak preview of the new handset as well as the new BlackBerry Curve 3G. Despite its hotly anticipated new handset being well received, RIM had some bad news when Saudi Arabia decided to follow the UAE's example and suspend services on all BlackBerry devices.

LG unveiled its budget Wink range of smartphones aimed at young, first-time users desperate to ditch their basic handsets. The Wink moniker was swiftly replaced by the Cookie name for the UK market. No reason was given, but we had our own theories as to why the name may have been changed, involving playground taunts and a substituted vowel. Meanwhile, the Nokia X3 made its debut sporting an interesting mix of touchscreen and button operation.

August also saw the opening of Apple's largest store yet in London's Covent Garden. Naturally, we were there before the doors opened to get some snaps of the impressive retail outlet. Elsewhere in the news, Virgin Media lodged a complaint to Ofcom over proposed video-on-demand platform Project Canvas and its alleged anti-competitiveness.

Following a popular Facebook campaign, TomTom confirmed that actor and presenter Brian Blessed, famous for his booming tones, would become one of the new voices for its range of satnavs. Meanwhile, Google announced that it was to scrap its real-time colloborative working tool, Google Wave and Digg released an updated version of its website, known as Digg 4.

Possibly the story that was closest to the hearts of the Pocket-lint team in August was the revelation from George Lucas himself that the Star Wars films would be coming to Blu-ray in 2011.

In terms of games, we were impressed by Ed Fries who designed an Atari 2600 version of popular FPS Halo for those that couldn't wait until September for Master Chief's next outing. Also in gaming news in August, PC strategy game Starcraft II managed to sell a staggering 1.5million copies in its first 48 hours of being on sale. Meanwhile, Medal of Honor got into hot water for its depiction of the Taliban, giving us the perfect excuse for a round-up of the most controversial video games ever.

And finally, one for the Apple refuseniks - we pulled together a list of the biggest flops to come out of the Cupertino compound.

For a closer look at these events and the rest of August take a look at our weekly round-ups from the month or head straight to the archive itself.