Symbian’s revealing something tomorrow, but what? (update: open source!)

Oh, Symbian, you tease! For an organization as committed to openness and sharing its roadmap (and its code) as the Symbian Foundation, it’s pretty unusual that they’d be counting down to a big unveiling of anything — but sure enough, they’ve been tweeting decreasing numbers with the hashtag “#symbiancountdown” starting back on January 26 with 108. Today we’re down to 12 (it’s hard to say what sort of jacked-up counting system they’re using here) with a note of “what will tomorrow bring?” so it looks like we can expect this all to go down in just a few short hours. One thought is that they could announce that Symbian^3 has gone Functionally Complete, a key milestone in getting it pushed to devices — but that’s a shot in the dark. Don’t disappoint, guys.

Update: Looks like it may be the full source for Symbian^2, the Foundation’s first open release.

Symbian’s revealing something tomorrow, but what? (update: open source!) originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments

Acer pulled closer to HP than ever in the third quarter of 2009, when it shipped 8.86 million laptops compared to HP’s 9.91 million, but it looks like things swung well back in the other direction during the fourth quarter. According to DigiTimes, HP shipped a whopping 11.38 million laptops worldwide in Q4, while Acer moved 9.5 million units during the same time period — an sizable increase in itself, but likely not enough to cause too much celebration at Acer HQ. As you might suspect, the holiday shopping season was largely responsible for the jump in sales from both companies, with strong sales in North America in particular said to be the main reason behind HP’s widening lead.

HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Horizon debuts H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system for R/C cars

Continue reading Horizon debuts H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system for R/C cars

Horizon debuts H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system for R/C cars originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Zeppelin spotted again, Android-ness confirmed

Yes, we’ve seen this puppy before — but last time, we’d merely heard it was running Android. This time around, we’ve got a little more confirmation that the so-called Zeppelin from Moto is sporting Google code (allegedly Cupcake, sadly) with a dash of Blur added in for good measure. Gizmodo Brazil — which scored some time with a prototype — suggests that this’ll see duty on the lower end of Motorola’s smartphone lineup, and we tend to agree considering the HVGA display that takes up far less space than it could if Moto had wanted to go for broke. A keyboardless companion to the CLIQ / DEXT, perhaps? Carriers are an open question here, but we’ve heard rumblings of interest on T-Mobile USA’s part; the site says it’ll hit streets in March, so we shouldn’t have long to wait to find out.

Motorola Zeppelin spotted again, Android-ness confirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Devour officially coming to Verizon next month

And just like that, it’s official. Verizon Wireless has today announced that Motorola’s scrumptiously named Devour will be heading to its network next month, with it being the first VZW phone to feature Motoblur. Not that we’re seeing any surprises here, but a quick specification run down draws our attention to a 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, a touch-sensitive navigation pad, a pre-installed 8GB microSD card and Bluetooth support. Unfortunately, there’s no apparent mention of multitouch, but we’re crossing our fingers (and toes, for that matter) for Google to sling that delightful Nexus One update to the rest of its high-powered Android phones in the very near future. There’s nary a mention of an asking price, but we’ll be sure to keep an eye out as launch day approaches.

Motorola Devour officially coming to Verizon next month originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Large Hadron Collider schedules holiday for 2012, full 7 TeV power for 2013

It’s good to know that even huge inanimate objects appreciate the need for a work-life balance. After a nice winter hiatus, Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider is coming back online soon, set to resume smashing protonic beams at one another with the force of 3.5 trillion electron-volts (TeV) per beam, or 7 TeV in total. We have to swallow hard when we hear such force described as “low-energy,” but that’s what the LHC designers consider it, and moreover we’re learning they’ll skip past the middle and go for the full 14 TeV potential smashes after a retooling break during 2012. Although this may delay the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, other physics research shouldn’t be stalled in the meantime — scientists claim they’ll be able to extract data from the low-energy collisions that could lend us more information on aspects of string theory, extra dimensions, and supersymmetry. Doesn’t all this sound like nerds trying to avoid getting real jobs?

Large Hadron Collider schedules holiday for 2012, full 7 TeV power for 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FlexiKnob paddle controllers are perfect for playing your old Atari Breakout ROMs

Spend any time in a audio or video editing suite of applications and you’ll find yourself overwhelmed by a selection of on-screen controls that have absolutely zero relevance to your on-desk controls — keyboard and mouse don’t really equate to slider and dial. FlexiKnobs bridge that gap, and allow collaborative work too. A project by researchers at the University of Applied Sciences, they’re little wooden mice of a decidedly non-ergonomic shape, but they allow you to move cursor (shown after the break) over on-screen control, then click in the wheel and spin it to adjust the value. The cursor changes depending on whether it’s locked on or floating free, and each bears the color of the FlexiKnob it is associated with. Up to 250 of the things can be paired with a computer at once, which sounds like heavenly pandemonium to us.

[Thanks, Sam]

Continue reading FlexiKnob paddle controllers are perfect for playing your old Atari Breakout ROMs

FlexiKnob paddle controllers are perfect for playing your old Atari Breakout ROMs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung does the 2TB shuffle with EcoGreen F3EG hard drive

Look out, Western Digital — you’ve got a little competition up there in the rarefied storage air. Samsung just got official with its newest EcoGreen HDD, the 1.5TB and 2TB F3EG. This here drive is the followup unit to last year’s F2EG, and aside from sucking down as little power as possible for a capacious internal drive, it also incorporates a 3.0Gbps SATA interface, native command queuing features and 16MB / 32MB of buffer memory. It should be making its way out onto European and US shelves this month starting at $179.99, thus bringing your ultimate archival dreams that much closer to reality.

Samsung does the 2TB shuffle with EcoGreen F3EG hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NEC MultiSync PA241W brings full 1920 x 1200 IPS glory to the well-heeled old schooler

Do you care about color? We mean do you really care about getting the most true-to-life color reproduction on your monitor? Then you’ll probably be wanting an IPS panel, preferably with 99.3 percent coverage of the Adobe RGB color spectrum and 100 percent of the sRGB stuff. What’s that — you’d also like more headroom than what these silly new 16:9 ratio displays can give you — yup, the PA241W has you covered with 1200 pixels of vertical workspace as well. A solid 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 360 nits of brightness, 8ms response time and 178-degree viewing angles flesh out the spec sheet, while a tilt-and-swivel ergonomic stand, USB hub and DisplayPort connectivity figure as the predictable extras. Less foreseeable is the generous 4-year parts and labor warranty, but then you’d want nothing less when splashing a cool $1,079 on a monitor. NEC is ready to ship it to you today, but if you’re feeling in a thrifty mood we’d suggest also checking out Dell’s competing model, which offers a similar spec at a much lower price point.

NEC MultiSync PA241W brings full 1920 x 1200 IPS glory to the well-heeled old schooler originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson Aspen: first with Windows Mobile 6.5.3

It’s finally here: Wndows Mobile 6.5.3, the iterative finger-friendly Windows Mobile release that should have been wrapped into 6.5.0. It comes wrapped inside the Sony Ericsson Aspen.

Developing…

Sony Ericsson Aspen: first with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell ‘Mini 5′ tablet prototype shows up as M01M in Shenzhen black market

Who’s got some love for prototype gadgets, eh? Apparently someone does in Shenzhen (surprise of the day?). PC Online managed to cuddle up with a black Dell Streak / Mini 5 prototype, which has “Model M01M” marked under the battery cover — something not seen in the earlier teardown, and is probably the most official name to date. Spec-wise the M01M sums up what’s been speculated all along — 5-inch 800×480 touchscreen, Android 1.6, 1GHz CPU (presumably Snapdragon, as revealed by the teardown), WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G of some sort, 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, front-facing camera, and the same 1530mAh battery as the one in the teardown. The price? ¥7,500, which converts to a whopping $1,098 in US cash, but bear in mind that this doesn’t reflect the M01M’s actual retail price for whenever it might launch.

[Thanks, Shaun Wu]

Dell ‘Mini 5′ tablet prototype shows up as M01M in Shenzhen black market originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Emotiv EPOC gets reviewed by Joystiq, proves once and for all that videogames turn your brain into mush

We don’t want to ruin everything for you, but after some extensive testing by our friends over at Joystiq, it looks like the promising Emotiv EPOC needs a little more time in the thought sensing oven. In its review Joystiq points out the fragile, hard-to-handle nature of the $299 device, but more disappointingly found the thought-sensing functionality of the sensor-stuffed EPOC headgear to be a bit too random, haphazard and inaccurate to actually be enjoyable. Of course, you could blindly assume that 400 hours spent in WoW and a six digit gamerscore has somehow disqualified this Joystiqer’s mind from those joys of telepathy, but before you plunk down your hard earned cash and shave off contact points all around your skull, we’d say the full review is at least worth a skim.

Emotiv EPOC gets reviewed by Joystiq, proves once and for all that videogames turn your brain into mush originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s iPhone dev program whoopsie: ‘Need to update this for the 27th launch’

We’re sure everyone in Cupertino is ordering Chinese to the office this evening; it’s going to be a late night. I’s to dot, T’s to cross, as they say, in preparation for what’s undoubtedly going to be a big day tomorrow. Of course, consistently burning the candle at both ends leads to mistakes — mistakes like this, for example: a placeholder on the signup form for Apple’s iPhone Developer Program (that we’ve been able to confirm) reading “Need to update this for the 27th launch.” 27th launch, indeed — so what does this mean? If we had to guess, devs are going to get first crack at an updated iPhone OS — something the company has done before — which is suddenly going to make the $99 sign-up fee for the program sound a whole lot more reasonable for the impatient among us, isn’t it?

Apple’s iPhone dev program whoopsie: ‘Need to update this for the 27th launch’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Illusion Labs shows off multitouch ‘Touchgrind’ gaming demo on a MacBook

One of our favorite iPhone games is Touchgrind. Sure, we’re terrible at it, but at least we feel like we’re accomplishing something “totally street” and “badass” with the multitouch input that the iPhone allows. Well, Illusion Labs is looking at bringing some of that magic to the Mac. They’ve got a demo up of the game running in a jumbo manner on a multi-finger-friendly MacBook. It looks pretty much like a straight port at this point, but hopefully the added horsepower and screen size of the Mac can make this into something a bit more magical — and maybe even trick us into thinking we’re decent fingerboardists, if only for a moment. Right now this is just a tech demo, and there are no firm plans of a release. From the noodlings of Illusion Labs’ Twitter account, it looks like they also wouldn’t mind porting it to an “iSlate” if the opportunity presented itself. Hear that, Cupertino? You might be able to get someone to build an app for this mythical device! Big sigh of relief, we’re sure. Video is after the break.

Continue reading Illusion Labs shows off multitouch ‘Touchgrind’ gaming demo on a MacBook

Illusion Labs shows off multitouch ‘Touchgrind’ gaming demo on a MacBook originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Display’s 19-inch E Ink display plays loose with the truth

Well doesn’t that look impressive? A big ‘ol 19-inch electronic ink display that appears to emulate your father’s newspaper. No doubt, this massive Metal-Foil e-paper prototype from LG Display is impressive at this size (just 0.3-mm thin and 250×400mm — about the same size as a 297×420-mm sheet of A3) and weight (130 grams). Hell, we were already impressed with the flexible 11.5-inch panel from LG Display found in the Skiff Reader. However, like the rigid Skiff Reader, a flexible panel doesn’t mean that we’ll be seeing a flexible e-reader. In fact, chances are we won’t after the manufacturer gets through adding a touchscreen overlay, application processor, and radio chipset. Let’s hope for a surprise though, whenever these panels do make it out for mass production… assuming anyone still cares about monochrome E Ink displays by then.

LG Display’s 19-inch E Ink display plays loose with the truth originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pico projectors caught in the wild, one on a camcorder, one in Samsung’s W9600 cellphone (video)

Yeah, we know: you haven’t bought a pico projector and you really have no plan to do so. Still, it’s kind of fun to see them doing their thing, beaming little, dim images onto walls from improbably small boxes. The folks at PicoProjector-info are happy to oblige, posting two videos of DLP picos in action at CES. The first is a Texas Instruments model that’s been stuck atop a camcorder (presumably with bubblegum), pointing backward to splay the image of whatever it’s filming into the wall — and to temporarily blind whoever dares pick up said camcorder. Next up is a demonstration of the Samsung W9600, which we spent a bit of time with ourselves at CES. Now you can see how it looks in motion, as both videos are embedded after the break.

Continue reading Pico projectors caught in the wild, one on a camcorder, one in Samsung’s W9600 cellphone (video)

Pico projectors caught in the wild, one on a camcorder, one in Samsung’s W9600 cellphone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Symbian provides early glimpse at 2011 Nokia smartphone experience

We’ve been pretty hard on Nokia with regard to its miserable S60 5th (aka, Symbian^1) user experience as compared to the competition. Fortunately, Nokia’s bound and determined to freshen things up in 2010 with two major updates scheduled for the first and second halves of the year. At the moment, Symbian^3 (that’s Symbian three) is expected first with Symbian^4 coming before the end of the year (functionally complete in Q3 with S^4 devices shipping in early 2011 according to the symbian.org wiki page). What we’ve got above then, is a UI Concept proposal for the latter. As you can tell from the pics, Symbian^4 promises to deliver an entirely new user interface: navigation is streamlined and platform apps will be reorganized and redesigned to leverage next gen graphics meant to deliver visually appealing transparencies and transitions on Symbian devices. The experience is based on Direct UI and built upon Qt and Orbit — a strategy that Nokia hopes will lure developers to the table by making apps easy to build and update with broad scalability across Nokia’s entire lineup of handsets. Note that the concept is open for discussion (and thus change) so voice your opinion now. And no, responding “N900 FTW” doesn’t count. One more image after the break.

Continue reading Symbian provides early glimpse at 2011 Nokia smartphone experience

Symbian provides early glimpse at 2011 Nokia smartphone experience originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel profits recover to $2.3 billion in Q4 2009, company describes it as 875 percent jump

Yo Intel, when your 2008 fourth quarter was one of the worst you ever recorded, it’s slightly, just slightly, facetious to go trumpeting an 875 percent improvement in your 2009 fortunes. The self-appointed chipmaking rock star has clocked up $10.6 billion in revenues for the last quarter, which filters down to $2.3 billion in pure, unadulterated, mother-loving profit. That’s good and indeed technically nearly nine times what the company achieved in the same period the previous year — we’d just appreciate this to be represented as the recovery it is, rather than some major leap forward in the face of a global financial meltdown. Either way, the Santa Clara checkbook is now well and truly balanced, even if it would’ve looked fatter still but for the small matter of a $1.25 billion settlement reflected in last quarter’s results.

Intel profits recover to $2.3 billion in Q4 2009, company describes it as 875 percent jump originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Japan gets Torne PS3 DTV DVR adapter in May, all is right with the world

When the PS3 was announced so many moons ago, one of the major functions that was tauted about the thing would be its ability to record and process high-definition video. It’s taken quite some time to get there, with the oft-delayed PlayTV tuner finally hitting Europe in late 2008, though the rest of the world still got left out in the cold. Sony’s finally taking care of its home crew, announcing Torne, a DTV adapter for Japan that will enable recording of television and even video playback while surfing the web. The Torne will ship in March, priced ¥9980 ($110) on its own or ¥42,800 ($465) as part of yet another PS3 bundle. When will we in the US get a little tuner love? Probably never, at this rate.

Japan gets Torne PS3 DTV DVR adapter in May, all is right with the world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Viliv N5 MID hands-on, HD5 PMP makes a cameo

For those of you hoping that Viliv’s aesthetic excellence will somehow make magic out of the 4.8-inch flip MID form factor, you might want to look away right about now. We too were hoping that Viliv could somehow sprinkle fairy dust on the errors of something like the UMID mBook BZ, but sadly the N5 is no such MID. It’s good looking, to be sure, and might even be better constructed than UMID’s entry, but it has the same squint-inducing 1024 x 600 display and aggravating optical mouse pad holding it back. In reality, both of these little computers are more akin to “observing” what it’s like to have a full computer running on an impossible form factor, instead of anything appropriate for actually using that computer.

Perhaps the CE-based Viliv HD5 PMP will find a truer calling. We saw the slate unit pumping out some HD video at a steady clip, and its hardware is certainly refined — if only just a little chubby. Unfortunately, none of the buttons were working, so we couldn’t hop out of the video and see what the rest of the player has to offer. At least it’s not Windows XP under there, daring us to use it. Videos of both devices are after the break.

Continue reading Viliv N5 MID hands-on, HD5 PMP makes a cameo

Viliv N5 MID hands-on, HD5 PMP makes a cameo originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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