Game Gripper makes grand entrance on Nokia's N900 (video)
Say what you will about
Nokia's strategy (or
lack thereof), but there's no denying that the
N900 is one capable gaming machine. Thus, it makes perfect sense for the blokes at
Game Gripper to mold a controller specifically for that very handset, no? We've already spent
a fair amount far too much time with our
made-for-Droid edition, and if you're looking to boost your enjoyment level when playing NES ROMs, you can toss your pre-order in this very second. The company's offering the complete Game Gripper N900 for €14.95 ($20), or the button set alone for €3.95 ($5), with initial shipments expected in around a fortnight. Head on past the break for a taste of that aforementioned Mario action.
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FaceTime 3G data consumption tested: about 3MB per minute
The folks over at
9to5Mac have kept up their investigation of
FaceTime over 3G with a quick and dirty data usage analysis. Lest you've forgotten,
jailbreaking Apple's
Quattro permits walled garden escapees to FaceTime each other using dusty old 3G, and now we've got some numbers to show how much of an impact doing so will have on your bandwidth allowance. A 5-minute call resulted in 14.7MB of data transfers -- including both uploading and downloading -- for the 3G-riding iPhone, which breaks down to a rate slightly lower than 3MB per minute. That's not too horrible when you consider some streaming services use that much just to feed you video of England embarrassing itself in global football tournaments. Then again, we'd be remiss not to note that
Fring does it at a claimed 1MB a minute and sans the jailbreak -- but who are we to begrudge having more options?
[Thanks,
Sam]
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US Navy working to make drones laser-proof
No, you're not looking at a still from a purported UFO video. That's an unmanned drone that the US Navy recently shot down with a
prototype laser weapon. While that test was a runaway success, it looks like the Navy is now already going the extra mile -- it's begun work on making its drones laser-proof to guard against such weapons eventually winding up in the wrong hands. That's still in the earliest stages, but the Navy has already recruited California-based Adsys Controls and Texas-based Nanohmics to work on the project, which will apparently allow drones to both spot laser weapons before they're fired and deploy countermeasures to avoid being tracked. Head on past the break to see what happens when a drone gets hit by one of the weapons.
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Motorola Sage pictured in glorious detail, on a collision course with AT&T
Confirming our
FCC-inspired conjecture, here we have a gallery of pictures giving us a detailed look at Motorola's latest (though probably not greatest) Android handset. Just as we posited, this QWERTY slider is bound for AT&T's airwaves and it comes with a Motoblur 2 skin, as seen most recently on the
Droid X. We keep telling these manufacturers that bone stock Android and a
rapid upgrade cycle would be preferable but they don't listen. You'll have to make do with Android 2.1 when the Sage launches, which can't be too far off from now given that our tipster has had his test unit for a good month already.
[Thanks, Charlie W.]
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Samsung's 24-inch SyncMaster FX2490HD monitor doubles as 1080p television
Samsung's updating its
SyncMaster monitors today with the new premium LED backlit 90 series. Most notable is the 24-inch FX2490HD model with integrated TV tuner and inputs in the form of 2x HDMI, D-Sub, and even SCART for Europe -- sorry, no mention of DVI or DisplayPort that we can find. The panel itself sports a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, 5ms response, 1,000:1 contrast, and 250 nits of brightness.
Akihabara News adds a few details such as PiP support, a jack for viewing media direct from USB sticks, and support for 7.1 channel Dolby Digital and DTS audio. It should land in the US and Europe as early as this month for around $540.
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Keepin' it real fake: EVO 4G Shanzai edition
Shameless isn't even the word for it. While some companies try to get away with calling themselves
Nokla or
BlockBerry, these Chinese KIRFers have no qualms about copying HTC's EVO 4G in its entirety (externally, anyhow). Yes, that includes the Sprint insignia
and the promise of 4G, both of which are, of course, amusingly untrue. Not only do you not get that
supersonic WiMAX radio, you also miss out on Android, as
this EVO rides the WinMo 6.5 gravy train. There's also no 8 megapixel camera, no 720p video, and no mini-HDMI output. But you still get a 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 screen and one of the best copy-and-paste KIRF jobs we've seen to date. See the back of this skilled imitator after the break.
Continue reading Keepin' it real fake: EVO 4G Shanzai edition
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Logitech S715i rechargeable iPod / iPhone speaker unleashes next generation hyperbole
We know what you're thinking: not
another iPod / iPhone speaker dock. Maybe, but it's way more than that if you listen to Logitech describe it. According to the boys from Cali, the $149.99 S715i "sounds like a beast" with 8 custom-designed, laser-tuned speaker drivers that deliver "next generation," "professionally tuned acoustics" capable of "filling a room" with "bold sound." So yeah, it's just another iPod speaker dock, although that 8-hour rechargeable battery is nice. Full PR and video overview after the break.
Continue reading Logitech S715i rechargeable iPod / iPhone speaker unleashes next generation hyperbole
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Intel and GE form healthcare joint venture, sluggish Atom-powered home servants on the way
Okay, so maybe we're only
half-kidding about the prospective of having
home health robots that can barely multitask, but we're hoping that Intel and GE at least have the heart to equip any domicile servants with a Core i3 or stronger. If you haven't heard, the two aforesaid companies have joined hands this week to create a 50/50 joint venture, one that'll result in the creation of a new healthcare company "focused on telehealth and independent living." Financial terms aren't being disclosed, but the goal is pretty simple: "to use technology to bring more effective healthcare into millions of homes and to improve the lives of seniors and people with chronic conditions." It's a bit unclear at this point what all the duo will be creating, but we wouldn't be shocked to see medical tablets,
Core i7 980X-based "medical monitoring PCs" and Moorestown-powered "I've fallen and I can't get up!" neck pieces surface in the near future.
Continue reading Intel and GE form healthcare joint venture, sluggish Atom-powered home servants on the way
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Square payment system is coming back in full force by 'late summer'
Unsurprisingly, given the small company and big ambitions behind the project, the Square mobile payments system got off to a shaky
start earlier this year. Hardware shortages were resolved relatively quickly, but setting up the proper fraud prevention infrastructure without transactional limits -- which, shockingly, were disfavored by merchants -- threatened to
shelve the little credit card reader for a long while. Not to worry, though, as today the
Wall Street Journal has word that Square is looking to be back in business, kicking ass and taking card numbers, before the summer is through. We're now at an advanced stage of said season, so it shouldn't be too long before those dongle-assisted microtransactions start flowing again.
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Motorola Glam brings Android 2.1, plenty of ritz to South Korea
Yeah, it may look like the
Dell Aero when peeking it head-on, but Motorola's Glam is apt to be far more sophisticated that the self-proclaimed "
world's lightest Android phone." Launched today over in South Korea, this Android 2.1-based handset (which we
toyed with earlier in the year when it was known as the XT800) boasts a 3.7-inch capacitive multitouch panel (854 x 480), dual LED flash, a 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 3.5mm headphone jack, USB 2.0 connectivity, an HDMI socket, 1GB of NAND Flash, 512MB of SDRAM, an 8GB microSD card, inbuilt GPS and support for a multitude of multimedia formats. Mum's the word on a price, but it should be shuffling over to SK Telecom -- high heels and all -- by the end of August.
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PS3 firmware 3.41 updated, hard drive upgrade problems exterminated
Sony has rolled out an update to
the update, which fixes a major flaw found in version 3.41 of the PS3's firmware. An unintended consequence of the patch was that industrious hard drive upgraders found themselves staring at a disquieting error message when swapping out storage units, but Sony has acted swiftly and the very latest data update does not suffer from the issue. It's somewhat unhelpful that the upgrade-friendly firmware is still called 3.41, but we prefer companies that follow the "fix first, pick names later" methodology anyway.
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Clearwire's 4G iSpot brings wireless broadband to Apple devices... and anything else with a WiFi pulse
Check it out, Clearwire has decided to do up an Apple-centric version of its
Spot 4G hotspot, so it's
quite naturally fashioned it in the shape of a
Magic Mouse and stuck an
i prefix to the front of the device. Really, there's nothing new or Apple-exclusive that we can see here -- up to eight devices can hook up to this portable 4G emitter via WiFi and the only authentication required is a password. So yes, like a lot of products before it, the iSpot has done the ignoble thing of associating itself with iPhones, iPads and iPod touches just because those devices are considered the cool kids of the digital playground today. Then again, Clearwire might decide to be difficult and refuse to sell you one of those excellent-sounding $25 (pre-tax) a month 4G broadband packages that go with the iSpot if you don't have an i-something else in tow. If you're fancying this curvy little accessory for your mobile gear, it costs $99, but can be had for $29 on sale from Clear today, ahead of an August 10 launch at major retailers.
Continue reading Clearwire's 4G iSpot brings wireless broadband to Apple devices... and anything else with a WiFi pulse
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iPhone 4 unlock available now (update: video!)
17diggsdigg It's the moment that many of you have been waiting for: the Dev-Team's
ultrasn0w carrier unlock for iPhone 4 is out. You'll find version 1.0-1 of ultrasn0w in Cydia on
jailbroken devices. If not, just add the repo666.ultrasn0w.com repository. It works for iPhone 4 baseband 01.59 and 3G/3GS basebands 04.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.12.01 and 05.13.04. If none of this makes sense then you've got no reason unlocking your device in the first place, buddy.
Update: No-nonsense video embedded after the break showing how to jailbreak and unlock. Easy peasy. [Thanks, Adam]
Continue reading iPhone 4 unlock available now (update: video!)
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BlackTrail BT-01 is the $80,000 electric bicycle of your dreams (video)
When Germany's PG-Bikes sets out to build a cruiser, it doesn't mess around -- the contraption above may look like an
electric bike, but when it goes on sale in the US this year, you may have to register it as a motorcycle. Constructed of lightweight carbon fiber, aerospace aluminum, titanium and magnesium, the BlackTrail BT-01 travels up to 65MPH with a 1.2 kilowatt motor embedded in its 44 pound frame, and can carry you across 120 miles on a single 2.5-hour charge of the leather-clad 17Ah Li-ion battery pack. Of course, those sorts of numbers don't come cheap -- the company's marketing it to the likes of West Coast Customs, The Sharper Image and a vehicle enthusiast named Jay Leno -- and each of the 667 limited pieces will cost $80,000, the better part of a
Tesla Roadster and far beyond a
Brammo. Still, if anyone has an offshore bank account they care to donate, we call dibs on 666 -- the number of the beast. Video after the break.
Continue reading BlackTrail BT-01 is the $80,000 electric bicycle of your dreams (video)
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Sharp to launch glasses-free 3D smartphone with 3D camera globally this year
Can't say we didn't see this coming. After wooing us with a number of glasses-free
3D displays -- including the
one that gives Nintendo 3DS its magic -- and
3D HD cameras for mobile devices, the company has finally laid down the gauntlet. It's promising to release a smartphone with such an
autostereoscopic screen and 3D camera, just like we
always wanted, before New Year's Day 2011. It certainly wouldn't be the first 3D phone in the market -- Hitachi touted one
early last year for Japanese carrier KDDI, and NTT docomo has had a prototype 3D display -- but a Sharp spokeswoman said that this 3D smartphone would be going international. The more the merrier, we say. Now, how about some more details and a pretty picture or two, eh Sharp?
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Saudi Arabia beats UAE to the punch, BlackBerry service to be ceased by Friday
Folks in the
United Arab Emirates may have until October to enjoy BBM, but neighbor Saudi Arabia isn't the patient type. According to state news agency SPA, the Communications and Information Technology Commission for the country has ordered all BlackBerry services in the country to be halted by this Friday. The reason apparently has to do with "not meet[ing] regulatory requirements," which echoes what UAE and India
have said before. We probably wouldn't place bets on a regional launch for the new
Torch anytime soon.
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Kindle 2 gets more game, Kindle 1 gets more wrinkles
Sure, Jeff Bezos may be keen on keeping
Kindle a "
purpose-built reading device" (for now, at any rate), but that doesn't mean you can't have a little multimedia fun, right? Amazon has published two diction-centric games, Shuffled Row and Every Word, free of charge and available now for delivery via Whispernet. Both involve word creation -- the former with 60 disposable letters and the latter with six or seven reusable tiles à la Scramble -- and neither seem to be available for the Kindle 1.
Second-generation and
DX owners seem to be playing without issue, but the most faithful of early adopters? You just got another reason to upgrade -- a minor one, yes, but it very well could be a sign of Things to Come.
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HTC Glacier leaks out in GLBenchmark database, boasts really high scores
Remember the HTC Glacier
spotted in a database a few months ago? Neither did we, but it's back and eating most every other smartphone's pixel-pushing lunch. Here it is at number four on the GLBenchmark Pro 1.1 charts, where only one variant of Samsung's
Galaxy S and a
pair of Tegra 2 tablets managed to keep it from claiming the top spot.
AlienBabelTech, who found the entry, believes this is evidence the device has one of the new
Snapdragon dual-cores, and though we won't speculate that far, a series of coincidences point to a T-Mobile launch (and a bout of logic has us worrying about battery life) if or when it hits our shores.
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Lego bipedal bot takes several small stairs for man, one big fall for robotkind (video)
Climbing stairs is one of the hardest physical tasks for a bipedal collection of motors and circuits,
as Honda's ASIMO can relate, but one man's managed to achieve just that with this head-banging Lego Mindstorms NXT robot. After spending years tinkering with the plastic blocks, 222Doc's X-2 Chicken Walking Biped can autonomously walk up and down flights of small steps with relative ease, perform headstands and even scale five-inch cinder block cliffs if precariously pushed. The robot requires only seven Lego servo motors plus a touch sensor and gyroscope in each foot, but also uses a pair of third-party multiplexers (also spotted in that
transforming Wall-E) for fine control of the extra motors. Watch it perform after the break, but stop the second video at 3:20 if pain makes you queasy -- the bot takes a pretty ugly spill.
Continue reading Lego bipedal bot takes several small stairs for man, one big fall for robotkind (video)
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Photon enhanced thermionic emission could double efficiency of solar cells
Engineers at Stanford have developed a process which can harness the light and heat of the
sun simultaneously, which could lead to
solar cells that are twice as efficient as those currently available. Called photon enhanced thermionic emission -- or PETE for short -- the process differs from traditional cells which lose efficiency as temperatures rise, and the materials needed to build the cells are cheap and widely available. The engineers got around the lower efficiencies by coating a piece of semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal cesium, which enables the material to use both heat and light simultaneously. While the materials as currently demonstrated work best in very high temperatures, the researchers indicate that in the near future, the materials could have wide enough application to make them competitive with traditional forms of energy. Hit the source for the full story.
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Pantech drops AMOLED completely due to shortage, may resume use in 2H 2011
The
Pantech Vega that just hit Korea may boast a sizable 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, but don't expect future phones from the
Helio manufacturer to follow suit -- after suffering the same shortages that
drove HTC to Sony's SLCD-illuminated doorstep, Pantech's also temporarily giving active-matrix organic technology the boot. Now, you may not give two nickels about the technologies in Pantech's next handset, but the firm's got a finger on the industry's pulse. So when an unnamed executive says
"phones to be rolled out in the first half of next year" won't use AMOLED, that hints at when the shortage for US-bound devices might also let up. In case you're curious, 2H 2011 is when Samsung's next AMOLED facility is slated to open, though by that point AU Optronics and TPO Display
should be shipping the screens as well.
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Motorola Sage spotted in the wild, Mr. Blurrycam claims there's QWERTY on board
Sure, we'd heard tell of a Motorola Sage and
briefly posited that the 850 / 1900MHz Android device
could be AT&T's followup to the
Backflip, but bless our bluetooth and count our digital compasses if this isn't it.
Ubergizmo obtained this shot of a Motorola device that's a dead ringer for the aforementioned horizontal clamshell, complete with the huge trackpad (mounted on the front
this time) and 3.1-inch screen. Mr. Blurrycam reportedly says it will sport Android 2.1 and a hardware keyboard as well, though from this angle there's no telling where Motorola might have stuck the QWERTY in, on or around the silver-trimmed shell.
Portrait slider, anyone? [Thanks, Calob]
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iOS 4.1 beta 3 breaks loose (update: Game Center killed on iPhone 3G and second gen iPod touches)
Member of the illustrious iPhone Developer Program? Well, aren't you special? So special, in fact, that you're once again being granted access to a highly-coveted iOS build that the unwashed commoners can't get: yet another beta of
iOS 4.1. This time around, it's beta 3, suggesting that Apple might be getting close to having this thing ready for the mass market; after all, it's been just a week since
beta 2, and Apple tends to accelerate the pace when a release is drawing near. Now, what about that
iPad version?
Update: Looks like there's some bad news for legacy users in this update... namely the fact that
Game Center compatibility for second gen iPod touches and the iPhone 3G has been dropped. Thanks for nothing, Apple!
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Motorola-Verizon tablet will have FiOS TV, ten-inch screen?
Sure, we've heard Verizon discuss Android tablets
once or
twice, but it's just now that we're getting our first real juice about Motorola's
companion device.
The Financial Times reports that Verizon and Motorola are teaming up on an Android tablet with dual cameras, Adobe Flash support and a ten-inch screen, plus mobile hotspot functionality (which implies Verizon cellular data) and -- get this -- access to pay TV. As it so happens, Moto makes a Verizon FiOS set-top box, and sources tell the
Times that the television tablet may get grandfathered in to the very same technology. No word on processing power or price, but the rumor mill says we could see it as early as fall of this year. And given the timing, here's hoping the Android inside will have some
Google TV mojo, too.
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HTC Sync 3.0 for Wildfire hands-on: iTunes sync tested (video)
Good news for
Wildfire owners: fresh from
HTC's oven is its 3.0 desktop sync suite that -- like the one
baked for the Desire over the weekend -- enables
iTunes sync for the company's latest budget device. Since we had a Wildfire on hand, we decided to go through the trouble to check out this new feature. And boy, it sure was a bumpy start. We had no problems with obtaining the software, but in order to get the "HTC Sync" option to appear in the USB connection menu, we had to switch on USB debugging mode (Settings -> Applications -> Development) before establishing our first link. As fiddly as it sounds, this was actually the only tricky part of the preparation, and you can leave debugging mode switched off afterwards.
So, how does the iTunes sync work? Well, it's certainly nowhere as thrilling as Palm's
cheeky hack -- it appears to simply access iTunes' database and playlists for the file locations, rather than fooling iTunes into thinking your Wildfire's an iDevice. You'll also be limited to syncing either everything or just selected playlists (smart playlists supported), so in other words, you can't sync by artists or genres, and you'll have to set up a dedicated playlist for syncing podcasts. Apart from this minor flaw, we'd say this is still a pretty neat solution for an age-old problem, and hopefully HTC will offer a similar app for Mac users. Hands-on video after the break.
Continue reading HTC Sync 3.0 for Wildfire hands-on: iTunes sync tested (video)
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HP Envy 14 review
The HP Envy 14 is like the final revision of a C+ term paper that always had potential, but just needed an bit of extra information and refinement to get an A. In fact, when HP introduced the Envy 14, the company was rather blunt about the fact that many of the issues that plagued
the original Envy systems had been addressed, including the lack of an optical drive and backlight keyboard, the frustrating touchpad and the heat caused by the Core i7 processor. On paper, the 14.5-inch Envy 14 has everything we wanted to see in those first models while still maintaining its beautiful yet tough etched aluminum chassis. It's also got a new lower $999 starting price, though our review unit rang up at $1,290. So, has the Envy 14 finally make its way to the head of the class? We've spent some quality time with the rig to find out.
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JailbreakMe using PDF exploit to hack your iPhone, so could the baddies; Apple looking into reports
As with any jailbreak or rooting of a handset, "hacking" a phone OS is usually exactly that: exploiting a weakness to get unsigned code onto a device. That means that any other hacker, be they sufficiently nefarious, could use that same exploit to mess with your phone in the bad, not-installing-emulators-off-of-Cydia sense. Early iPhone jailbreaks (back when installing your own ringtones was a
wild idea) took advantage of a TIFF exploit, the recent
EVO 4G root found a hole in Flash Lite, and the
JailbreakMe exploit is stuffing its code in a PDF font. Until Apple patches this exploit (when asked, Apple told us it was "aware of the reports and looking into them") we'd be extra careful about which PDFs we open -- there aren't any reports of malicious use so far, but with Safari's seamless handling of PDFs, it wouldn't be hard for some hacker to hide a potentially phone-invading PDF behind some harmless looking hyperlink. The iPhone devteam points out that this isn't the only known exploit for Safari on iOS, so there's no need to start hyperventilating about this particular one... unless it's a slow day at your mainstream media publication and you're looking for something to hyperventilate about.
Oh, and are you looking for a surefire way to steer clear of PDFs? Cydia has a PDF loading warner that lets you skip PDFs your browser is trying to load on a case by case basis. Of course, you'll need to jailbreak your phone to use it. Ironic, right?
Permalink TUAW |
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Cricket's new tiered data plans seem like a model for the industry to us
Here's something we can all agree on: data caps are a bummer, especially now that we've all got smartphones capable of gobbling literally gigabytes a day. Unfortunately, they seem to be a necessary evil in this crazy supply-versus-demand world of capitalism we all call home, particularly in light of the
spectrum crunch the FCC keeps warning us about. Or are they? One great band-aid rarely explored by North American carriers is the concept of bandwidth throttling, whereby you don't have a hard cap that results in overage -- instead, you just get slapped with a lower data throughput if you blow past your quota. That's what regional value carrier Cricket is doing with the launch of its new data plans today, offering buckets of 2.5, 5, and 7.5GB for $40, $50, or $60, respectively, at maximum speed on its EV-DO network -- but additionally, the quota is on a rolling 30-day basis, which means you can potentially free up some of that bucket each and every day of the month (depending on your usage patterns). If you exceed your cap, you risk falling down to a lower speed where you "may only be able to do basic email and web browsing." The downside is that this represents a $10 increase in the cost of Cricket's 5GB plan -- and bandwidth throttling still isn't fun, of course -- but at least you can keep using your modem without the dread looming in the back of your mind that you're going get a 20-page bill at month's end.
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Google finally enables same-browser, multiple account Gmail sign-in
Hardcore
Gmail users have been waiting for quite a few things from
Google, but few are higher on the must-have list than this. In the past few hours, the Big G has quietly enabled some accounts with a multiple account sign-in option, which -- as you'd surmise -- allows users to sign into more than one Gmail account within the same browser. In the past, users had to use all sorts of tricks (or worse still, a secondary browser solely for their secondary email account) in order to view various identities at once, but now it's as easy as selecting the option and tagging a drop-down menu. Sadly, committing to this sort of sorcery has its drawbacks: Offline Gmail and Calendar will both be disabled (and this doesn't work on mobile devices), and there's no time table as to when those kinks will be worked out. For now, most of you will have time to think it over as you wait for your account(s) to be activated -- everyone else has no excuse for twiddling their thumbs.
Permalink TekGoblin, Google System |
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Bing Maps' Taxi Fare Calculator keeps your lollygagging cab driver in check
We've all been there -- you step into a cab in a foreign place, ask your driver to head to your destination, and then he / she asks
you if you'd rather take the highway or go direct. Or, worse still, senses your innocence and proceeds to head the wrong direction for two or three miles. In an effort to give desperate travelers a better sense of how much it'll cost to get from point A to point
B D in a cab,
Bing Maps' new Taxi Fare Calculator was created. Turns out, this add-in for the mapping service was built by someone hankering to win the King of Bing Maps competition, and while it's only capable of calculating routes around a few dozens cities right now, we get the impression that this could soon grow into a monster of its own. Hey
Microsoft, when's the (badly needed) optimized-for-mobile version coming out?
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Microsoft teases something 'flat' and 'touchy'
26diggsdigg
Microsoft Hardware was a bit of a
late-comer to Twitter, but it sure is making up for lost time -- it's just posted a pair of intriguing tweets teasing as yet unannounced product. The first is simply the phrase "Don't be so touchy...flat is where it's at," while the second is the tiny image you see above. What is it? A trackpad would certainly fit the description, and you can sort of see what could be the side of one if you flip that image around -- although that's still just speculation at the moment. Considering it's coming from the Microsoft Hardware division, however, it seems likely that it's a peripheral of some sort and not something like a tablet PC. Feel free to leave your best guess in the comments below.
Update: As commenter
edoles has pointed out, there's also a second image in Microsoft Hardware's Twitpic account, which was actually added six days ago. Check it out after the break, along with a composite of the two images pieced together courtesy of
ChrissSk.
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Telus launching North America's first 42Mbps dual carrier HSPA+ network (update: Bell, too)
Australia's Telstra
already claimed the title of World's First on this one, but Telus up in Canada isn't far behind, becoming the first carrier in North America to push HSPA+ up to 42Mbps through the magic of dual carrier technology. The concept, of course, is nothing new -- remember those "Shotgun" two-line 56k landline modems back in the day? Dual carrier isn't much different, employing two HSPA+ connection simultaneous to get an effective max theoretical throughput of 42Mbps. Telus has already wrapped up lab trials, but it expects to offer the blazing speeds to customers some time in the first quarter of 2011 with the launch of the first compatible devices -- USB modems at first, we'd presume -- and since Bell shares the network with Telus, we'd imagine that they're in cahoots on this as well. Rogers, ball's in your court. Follow the break for the full press release.
[Thanks, Zach]
Update: Bell reached out to us to let us know that they're in the thick of testing dual carrier HSPA+ as well with trials on real-world cell sites kicking off this month, and that "no one's ahead of Bell in testing this technology." As we mentioned before, Bell and Telus are in bed with each other for their HSPA airwaves, so it makes perfect sense.
Continue reading Telus launching North America's first 42Mbps dual carrier HSPA+ network (update: Bell, too)
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The Engadget Show returns tomorrow, August 4th with game designer Peter Molyneux and much more!
Well ladies and gentlemen, the time has come -- the Engadget Show is back
tomorrow, August 4th at 8pm! This time around, we'll have the inimitable
Peter Molyneux, one of the world's most forward-thinking game designers and creator of "Black & White" and the "Fable" franchise. What's more, we'll have a rousing roundtable with Josh, Paul, and Nilay, some fine, fine music from
Zen Albatross, mind-bending visuals from
invaderbacca, and a few other
big surprises. As usual, we'll be doing
tons of giveaways at the live show only, so make the trek and join us at
The Times Center in person. If you're geographically incapable of joining us in New York City, just tune into the stream right here on Engadget starting at 8:05pm.
The Engadget Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the
Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are -- as always -- free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served... so get there early! Here's all the info you need:
- There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free
- The event is all ages
- Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 5:30PM on Wednesday, doors will open for seating at 7:30PM, and the show begins at 8PM
- You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket
- Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we're full, we're full
- The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break)
- The show length is around an hour
If you're a
member of the media who wishes to attend, please
contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other
non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.
Subscribe to the Show:
[
iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
[
Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V).
[
RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
Continue reading The Engadget Show returns tomorrow, August 4th with game designer Peter Molyneux and much more!
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Former Microsoft VP brings Halo to the Atari 2600
Sometimes you just can't stop a man and his dream. In this case, the man is Ed Fries, the former vice president of Microsoft's game publishing division, and the dream is a version of Halo for the
Atari 2600. That actually started out simply as a way for Fries to learn to program for the 2600, but quickly turned into a full-fledged, Adventure-style game that made its debut at this past weekend's Classic Gaming Expo -- in cartridge form, no less, and with a label that'd look at home in any shoebox full of 2600 carts (check it out after the break). Just as impressive as the game itself, however, is the story behind it. Here's just a sample:
It's around this time that I discovered the existence of what I call "Magic Land". I was working on a bug with the boss encounter and accidentally found myself completely outside the 64 room map. I was wandering through memory that was never intended to be interpreted as part of the map but the code was doing the best it could to interpret what was being thrown at it. Strange, misshapen monsters attacked me in even stranger ways as I wandered through this bizarre land that I had unintentionally created. I left a bug or two in the final game to allow others to find and explore this strange landscape as I did.
Oh, did we mention you can play it right now? Hit up the source link below and prepare to forget that Halo Reach even exists.
Continue reading Former Microsoft VP brings Halo to the Atari 2600
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Lenovo IdeaPad U160 review
An 11.6-inch laptop with a Core i7 processor. Does the
Lenovo IdeaPad U160 really need more of an introduction than that? Believe it or not, the ultrathin laptop you're peering at above isn't much larger than a 10-inch netbook, but instead of packing underpowered parts (ahem, Atom) its got one of Intel's most powerful ultra-low voltage processors. For $1,149, the U160 is meant for highly mobile power users, but also those with a portable fan and a bag that can fit a few extra laptop batteries. We'll explain it all in our full review after the break.
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BlackBerry Torch first hands-on! (update: video)
20diggsdigg We just got a quick hands-on with the BlackBerry Torch -- unfortunately our unit wasn't powering on. We're headed back for more in just a second and there's video on the way, but check the gallery for some hardware shots and some Droid X / iPhone 4 head-to-head action right now!
Update: We went back in for round two with a functional device -- the hardware is quite nice, and the keyboard feels similar to the Tour / Bold. Software-wise, we're still waiting to play with BlackBerry 6 in-depth, but it definitely feels like the OS overwhelms the hardware a little when it's really cranking -- for example, the phone basically locked up while it loaded Engadget in the new Webkit browser, but when it was done loading it responded smoothly to panning and zooming.
Update 2: We've got video, people. It's a little scattershot in scope, but it should illustrate the basic feel of the new OS. You can find it below the fold.
Continue reading BlackBerry Torch first hands-on! (update: video)
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RIM launches BlackBerry 6 platform
24diggsdigg It's been
teased since WES back in April -- but with the launch of the
Torch today, RIM had to come clean with all the details on its thoroughly refreshed
BlackBerry 6 operating system, too. Besides the obvious name change from "BlackBerry OS" to simply "BlackBerry," the software features countless updates, most notably new universal search functionality, social network aggregation, WiFi-powered media sync with your desktop music collection, and an all-new (and desperately needed)
WebKit-based browser with support for HTML5. Thankfully, RIM has also committed to bringing BlackBerry 6 as an upgrade to at least a few recent models -- the
Bold 9700,
Bold 9650, and
Pearl 3G, to be specific -- "subject to carrier certifications in the months ahead." Follow the break for the full press release and video teaser.
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BlackBerry Torch is official, launching August 12th on AT&T for $200
23diggsdigg It hasn't been announced just yet -- we're expecting that shortly at a New York event today -- but the long-rumored BlackBerry Torch (née
9800) just went live on AT&T's site offering the opportunity to sign up for a notification when you can buy the thing. Major features include a 5 megapixel cam with flash, full QWERTY on a portrait slide, 802.11n support, and -- of course -- BlackBerry 6 with an all-new browsing experience and a host of other features that should help position RIM within earshot of its less-stodgy rivals. You've also got 4GB of storage onboard paired with a 4GB microSD card in the box, 512MB each of ROM and RAM, a quadband 3G radio that'll travel well around the globe, a 480 x 360 touchscreen display (same resolution as the
Bold 9700) measuring 3.2 inches, the typical optical trackpad down below, and an interesting new Media Sync feature that'll let you sync your media library right over WiFi -- something various third parties have tried over the years, but has rarely been offered as an out-of-the-box capability. Interested? It'll hit AT&T and third-party retail locations and websites on the 12th of the month for $199.99 on contract. Follow the break for RIM's introductory videos and the press release.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Continue reading BlackBerry Torch is official, launching August 12th on AT&T for $200
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