Neofonie announces WePad 11.6-inch Android slate originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After four three flavors of the HTC Hero, the Taiwanese mobile giant has finally brought back the chin with an additional lick of aluminum and a similarly quirky name -- the Legend. If this alone isn't of much interest to you yet, just bear in mind that this is HTC's first Android 2.1 device with Sense UI. It didn't take much for us to fall in love with this Android phone at MWC -- HTC convinced us of its unibody toughness by banging it against the wall, and needless to say, the vibrant AMOLED screen caught our eyes, too. However, there are still some questions to be answered before we can decide whether the Legend lives up to its name, especially on battery life, wireless reception, camera quality and software performance. Unless there have been major tweaks, we'll try not to bore you with features already seen on the Hero -- so please, won't you join us?

Continue reading HTC Legend review

HTC Legend review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Averatec outs light as air 10-inch netbook, can move move move any mountain

Averatec outs light as air 10-inch netbook, can move move move any mountain originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP's ProBook s-series wants to be your everything: punchy enough for work, stylish enough for home. And with a new brushed aluminum industrial design and Core i3/i5/i7 processing power, they may just bridge that gap.

HP's rolling out four new ProBook models, ranging from the 13.3-inch 4320s to the heavy-duty 17.3-inch 4720s. In addition to those speedy Arrandale processors and "caviar" and "bordeaux" aluminum finishes, the new line-up also features optional ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4350 discrete graphics (compared with the previous generation's Radeon 4330, HD LED-backlit displays, and an optional 2MP camera.

The ProBooks also feature DayStarter, a feature that lets you view your calendar to distract you while your computer loads, and ArcSoft TotalMedia Suite audio and video editing software. WIth an optional 9-cell battery, the battery life is listed at an impressive 10 hours.

You won't find any USB 3.0 here, and the price points—starting at $719 for the 13-inch base configuration—are good-not-great. But if you need a work notebook with a little flair, and a home notebook with a little kick, ProBook might be your answer for both. You'll have a chance to find out when they become available later this month. [HP]

No leaks or release date rumors this time, a mere 39mb download is all that separates your Sprint, O2 or Movistar connected Pre from video recording, Flash, enhanced message notifications and much-desired performance and battery life improvements. Verizon, Bell and Telcel customers are unfortunately still waiting for their day in the sun, only specified by the official Palm blog as "soon." Check out Palm's trailer for the new features and the full webOS 1.4 changelog after the break, after queueing up the download of course.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Palm's webOS 1.4 update now available for Sprint, O2 and Movistar phones

Palm's webOS 1.4 update now available for Sprint, O2 and Movistar phones originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In today's Remainders: a celebration. Photoshop turns 20 and reminds us why we love it with laser-eyed babies and an Earth with AT-ATs. We've also got possible iPad preorders, definite MobileMe and Chromium OS improvements, PMA bummers and more.

RIP PMA
Pentax is the latest manufacturer to bail from PMA, joining Canon and Leica who have also announced that they will not be attending the gigantic photography trade show this year. It could be in protest of the show's relocation from Las Vegas to Anaheim, though you'd think they'd take the vacation anywhere they could get it. [Electronista]

iPreorder
Charge your MacBooks, grab your sleeping bags, and make your peanut butter and jellys—iPad preorder time is drawing nigh. According to the website AppAdvice, "a reliable source of ours familiar with the matter" claims that preorders for the tablet will start next Thursday, February 25. Though the source says the initial preorders will be limited to Wi-Fi models, I'm sure that won't stop the foam that's already accumulating at the corners of the fanboys' mouths. [AppAdvice]

MobileMeep
Apple has quietly rolled out a number of improvements for MobileMe, specifically enhancing its accessibility from the iPhone and iPod Touch. In the main, the improvements come by way of new set-up links in the Contacts, Mail, and Calendars sections, as well as the ability to use the Find My iPhone feature from another iPhone instead of just a computer. So thieves should take note: MobileMe and its phone-finding abilities are now actually mobile. [Yahoo!]

Got My Eye-On Chromium
A new build of Chromium OS, dubbed Flow, features a few important updates: improved battery life, better automatic updating, and full support for machines running NVIDIA Ion. So if you've got a rig running on Ion and your eye on Chromium, now's your chance to tinker away. [Engadget]

Photoshop Strikes Back
Photoshop turned 20 today, and while it's not old enough to legally drink it can still seamlessly blend our world with those of Star Wars, as seen in these unsettlingly realistic images of Star Wars characters, vehicles, and villains hanging around out on Earth. Might be time to enlist in the Imperial Academy, just to be safe. [This Blog Rules]

Lasers, Baby
We see Photoshop's (re)touches everyday without even realizing it—in print ads, book covers, billboards and the rest—but those of us who spend countless hours on the internet see things that wear their Photoshopped status as a badge of honor on a daily basis. The latest in a long line of unabashedly unrealistic memes is Babies With Laser Eyes. Sure in the real world babies are cute and cuddly and adorable, even when they're poopy and crying. But in Photoshop world, all babies are potentially deadly robots whose eyes can scorch anything with a single glance. I like Photoshop world. [Babies With Laser Eyes]

Acer's keen on racking up lots of firsts for its netbook arm, with this Aspire One 532G having the claim of being the world's first to use NVIDIA's Ion 2 graphics technology for 1080p playback.

The 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen will playback videos at 1080p with 7.1-channel audio output. It'll also be suitable for 3D gaming, Acer claims, though why you'd want to do that on a little netbook is beyond me. A 10-hour battery life, Wi-Fi and the choice of embedded 3G all figure, along with an Intel N450 Pine Trail chip and HDMI video output. On sale in just a month or two, it'll be available in several colors—blue, red, and silver.

Acer Aspire One 532G: first netbook with dedicated graphics for true
Hi-Def video enjoyment

Playback 1080p on external screen for viewing Hi-Def content with friends and family

The new Acer Aspire One 532G sets the netbook trend in the digital world where Hi-Def viewing online is growing dramatically. Acer presents the world's first netbook with dedicated next-generation NVIDIA® ION™ graphics acceleration enabling users to enjoy Hi-Def content online as well as playback at 720p; alternatively, connect through HDMI output to a secondary Hi-Def TV/LCD monitor for sharing Hi-Def content with friends at a larger 1080p resolution.

With up to 10 hours* of battery life, integrated Wi-Fi®, 10.1" Hi-Def LED backlit display and optional 3G, the Aspire One 532G matches outstanding performance with an ultra-compact design, offering all the power you need. Netbook users can now enjoy flawless Hi-Def web content streaming and multiple Internet applications with ease.

Flawless web Hi-Def acceleration† and Hi-Def entertainment
Go beyond simple Internet browsing to experience full high-definition video on sites like YouTube HD, Hulu and Facebook, Aspire One 532G with dedicated graphics accelerates web Hi-Def content streaming effortlessly. Enjoy smooth and flawless 3D computing, mainstream PC gaming, boost the performance of editing and converting videos, face-tagging photos and Hi-Def video playback up to 1080p via HDMI-output to HDTV; and effectively perform everyday Internet browsing, emailing, chats, photo viewing, document editing and such on the Aspire One 532G. All of these are achieved with the new Intel Atom™ N450 platform and next-generation NVIDIA® ION™ GPU with dedicated 512MB memory.

Smart power and Hi-Def performance
The Aspire One 532G makes no compromise on great performance and battery life; it mobilizes online Hi-Def computing, at the same time lowers power consumption for longer-lasting battery. NVIDIA® Optimus™ Technology intelligently, automatically, and seamlessly transitions between the powerful NVIDIA® ION™ GPU, and battery-saving integrated graphics – depending on the needs of the application – delivering great battery life and great performance when you need it.

Care-free mobile companion
Making light work of Internet multi-tasking, the Aspire One 532G needs only a single charge for up to 10 hours* of cable-free power, enabling users to stay connected and get the most on-the-go. The innovative AC adapter is travel friendly, lighter than typical adapters, saves 1/3 charging time and comes with interchangeable AC converters. No matter where you are, you can always have the right plug.

Measuring only 1" thin and about 1 kg in weight, the Aspire One 532G is available in three contemporary colors – Sapphire Blue, Ruby Red and Pearl Silver. Its compact form, fluid Hi-Def cinema and flawless Hi-Def flash video quality along with great battery life, truly realizes barrier-free communication.

This highly efficient netbook is Energy Star® v5.0 qualified and compliant with RoHS and WEEE EU directives, regulating the use and disposal of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. It also features LED backlight, making it mercury free.

The Aspire One 532G will start shipping at the end of Q1 2010.

There's nothing to look at just yet, but Samsung's own Phil Newton apparently just confirmed that the company will be debuting a Chrome OS netbook in the near future, according to a report by Australia's Channel News. The laptop will be similar to the N210 (pictured), with a 10.1-inch screen, 3G, WiFi, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of flash storage and a purported 12 hour battery life. There are also rumors that it'll be running a 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor, but the amount of straight up information from Phil makes speculation almost feel silly at this point. The netbook is supposed to be introduced later this year.

Samsung doing a 10-inch Chrome OS netbook later this year originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last time we saw the 10-inch EROS tablet it was powered down and pouting about its two hours of battery life, but the tablet's pulled itself together and powered up to show off its skills. he performance is pretty much what you would expect of a Intel Atom-powered Windows 7 Home Premium netbook with its keyboard chopped off, and from what we've been able to glean from the 11 minute video below the touchscreen seems responsive to writing with a stylus and to flicks of photos and pages in a comic book. You'll notice, however the reviewer only uses his fingers a few times, though he's actually quite good at typing on the on-screen keyboard. The rest of the time he uses the stylus to move through those far-from-finger-friendly Windows 7 menus. If you're wondering why Windows 7 still needs additional software tweaks to work on a purely finger-driven tablet device, spend 10 minutes watching the video below. Or just listen to The Weepies' awesome "Gotta Have You" -- which perhaps not coincidentally ends when the tablet's done booting.

Continue reading EROS tablet video is a lesson in why Windows 7 isn't strictly meant for finger navigation

EROS tablet video is a lesson in why Windows 7 isn't strictly meant for finger navigation originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yes, we realize that it's hard to provide too much visual differentiation between tablet PCs with large, ebony bezels, but we can't help but think that this 8.9-inch multitouch tablet looks a lot like another, recently announced 9.7-inch multitouch tablet. Nevertheless this one's quite different on the inside, delivering "the web without compromise," meaning full browser support with flash courtesy of Windows 7 on an Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 32GB SSD with SD expansion. Yeah, those specs are familiar too, and while we're not thinking this will deliver the sort of snappy performance seen on the iPad, it will certainly be a lot more functional. Battery life is only four hours, but at last it user-replaceable, and a price of $599 matches the 32GB iPad. Likewise it will be available in March -- or you can get a non-multitouch prototype for $780 right this very moment. If, that is, you speak enough French to manage the order page.

[Thanks, Jean-Baptiste]

8.9-inch ExoPC Slate has iPad looks, netbook internals, Windows 7 soul originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What do you get when you mix a dedicated GPU, 50FPS Crysis gaming, A Core2Duo, an 11-inch screen, and a $800 price tag? An absurd(ly powerful) little laptop, which nobody—and apparently Alienware—is comfortable calling a netbook.

We first saw the M11x back at CES—impressions here—where we were told it'd hit the market in about a month, for under $1000 dollars. Well, a tipster sent Engadget a little bit of info scraped from the HTML of the notnetbook's official product page, which is currently holding some kind of "Guess the Price" sweepstakes:

The Alienware M11x, with over 6.5 hours of battery life and weighing under 4.5 lbs. will start at an amazing $799! Leave it to the folks at Alienware to enable truly mobile performance gaming at an affordable price.

Er, contest's still open, folks!

[Engadget]

A somewhat tame version of the X6 has been announced by Nokia today and will become available this quarter. The new 16GB X6 has half the memory capacity of the 32GB version, and it’s also missing the Comes With Music feature. If you think you can live with that, the 16GB X6 has an impressive battery life of 11.5 hours talk time and 18 days of standby, 4.5 hours of video playback and 35 hours of music playback. Of course, Nokia doesn’t cut any corners with cameras on its high-end devices, and this one features a 5 megapixel shooter with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash — pretty much par for the course on Nokia devices these days. The new X6 also has in-phone video editing capabilities and TV out support so you can watch your amateur cinematography on a big screen. No details on pricing, but we’d imagine it to be less than the full-fledged 32GB version.

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A trio of Toshibas, the newest Palm smartphones, and an FM transmitter that won't make you want to tear your brain out. Start saving your tax return for what's now available.

Toshiba Satellite E205-S1904
Toshiba's new Satellite has launched. Our previous interactions with the Satellite series has left us decidedly underwhelmed. Mainly citing battery life and a wonky trackpad button as sticking points holding this laptop back from being truly great. The most exciting feature on the new model is the inclusion of Intel Wireless Display technology and a Netgear Push2TV adapter, allowing easy video streaming to your entertainment center. A simple way to watch Hulu in your living room is always a welcomed feature—especially on a laptop. Best Buy has these for the decently reasonable price of $899.99. For that price you get an Intel Core i5-430M CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 500GB of storage—along with the Netgear adapter. You can peruse it here.

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus
These newest Palm offerings have finally landed on Verizon Wireless' webstore. If you are a Sprint customer worried that you're getting the shaft on these babies don't worry. Aside from the RAM being doubled and a marginally improved keyboard the entire experience is more or less the same. Granted these guys can run up to 50 apps at once, but that seems a tad hedonistic. Perhaps the most tantalizing facet of these little gems is their ability to become mobile hot spots, essentially showing where smartphones should be headed in the next few months. Add that to their soon-to-be-able ability to shoot and cut videos and you've got a pretty decent little device in your pocket. Buying it online also nets you a $100 discount. Get it here.

Toshiba Tecra A11 and Qosmio X500
In addition to the Satellite, Toshiba has also started shipping the Tecra A11 and the Ferrari-esque 18.4"-behemoth Qosmio X500. The 15.6" Tecra A11 features an integrated number pad—for tax season I assume—and the standard duo of new NVIDIA and Intel hardware in it's guts. It'll set you back about $879 and probably not raise too many eyebrows. Tecra's larger and more flamboyant relative boasts a bullish 2010 Intel Core i7-720QM quad-core processor and a GeForce GTS 360M. It can sport up to 8GB of RAM and a Blu-ray drive. This spicy specimen will set you back $1,549. You can discuss the irony of Blu-ray on a Toshiba or the fact that both of these are marketed as 'business laptops' in the comments. Get either one here.

Belkin TuneCast Auto Live iPhone FM transmitter
We're not really on-board with FM tuners as a whole, but at least this Belkin adapter makes listening to the radio a tad less cumbersome on your iPhone. What differentiates this from other FM transmitters is the inclusion of an iPhone app for direct control over the frequency. We're surprised it's taken this long to integrate a functional app into an FM tuner, but it's probably just a subtle statement on how obsolete regular radio is becoming. Reminisce the FM band here.

This news just missed mention in our ultimate ebook reader guide, too bad so sad, but nevertheless there's an eReader coming soon from Asus. The 6-inch OLED reader plays flash, includes wifi/3G and lasts up to 122 hours per charge.

Note that, like with all electronics being marketed to consumers today, that battery life claim comes with a caveat: "Under ideal conditions."

The due date is an ambiguous "end of the year" and no price is given, although it doesn't sound cheap (even if it is coming from Asus). [Times Online via Engadget]

Well, isn't this a doozy. ASUS was a bit of a no-show in the e-reader arena at CES, but has dropped some knowledge on the Times Online's InGear: it's building a 6-inch color OLED e-reader, which flies in the face of previous rumors about an ASUS e-reader entry. The device, currently dubbed the DR-570 and pictured to the left, will play back Flash video, includes WiFi and 3G, and supposedly can last for 122 hours on one charge under "real world conditions." It's supposed to be released by the end of the year, and while from anybody else we'd assume this would cost an arm and a leg, the ASUS brand gives us some hope that we might actually be able to afford one when it hits.

[Thanks, Ian S.]

ASUS DR-570 e-reader to sport 6-inch OLED color screen, 122 hours of battery life originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The fastest laptops usually get lousy battery life, but Asus has made a few innovations that supposedly net its memorably named UL80JT laptop an incredible 12 hours of battery life, despite its Core i7 processor. I really hope it's true.

The big change here is a real-time management system that re-clocks the processor on a moment-to-moment basis depending on what you're doing, which means light work should result in light power usage. That's how it can hit 12 hours of battery life despite the Core i7 and its Nvidia GeForce 310 GPU. We haven't been able to test it yet, since it was just announced at CES, but here's hoping the claims are anywhere near true. [Ars Technica]

Back in October we told you about Nokia filing suit against Apple over the iPhone, claiming that Apple’s mobile offering violated Nokia patents pertaining to GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards. Perhaps some legal posturing, we thought; a public and principled shot across the bow aimed at the Cupertino based tech company? Apparently not, as Nokia has taken off the gloves. In a December 29th filing with the International Trade Commission, Nokia seeks an immediate injunction that would ban the import of anything with a camera and an Apple logo on it: iPhones, iPod Touches, iMacs, Macbooks – you get the idea. The suit claims Apple is violating Nokia patents in its use of a combined camera chip which keeps the size and power usage of devices down, a voltage controlled oscillator (VOC) that “increases the efficiency of the wireless device and uses less power than traditional VCOs, thereby increasing battery life,” and the sensor technology used in the iPhone that turns the screen off when it is within proximity of your face to prevent accidental input. We’re not sure if Nokia’s strategy is a sound one, but we’ll stay on top of this one as the filings continue to mount. You can hit up the link to read the original article translated from Finnish.

[Via Nokia Views]

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