Author: John Herrman

After years of fighting, Amazon’s infamous 1-Click patent has been (re)confirmed. In other words, if a site wants to deploy a single-click checkout system for registered customers, it’s gotta license the tech from Amazon. Oh, patents! More »

If the terrorists could vote, they’d vote for Candidate X—this argument is America’s greatest rhetorical treasure. So let’s apply it to smartphones, right now! I’ve got a picture of a high-level terrorist with an iPhone and everything! Updated

The man pictured here is the recently captured Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, who is world famous for precisely the kind of stuff that you don’t want to be famous for. Infamous, even!

Update: Apparently the magazine misindentifies the man in the photo. That’s actually Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, a former Taliban official’s who’s been spotted with his iPhone before. (Thanks, Ray!)

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, next time you find yourself in an endless online flamewar about smartphones representing the side of Android or WebOS or Windows Mobile or BlackBerry, it is totally fine to call your opponent a terrorist. [Jeune Afrique—Thanks, Benjamin!]

I respect what Barnes & Noble is doing with this multi-reader ebook strategy, and I’m glad Samsung’s finally been brought in from the cold, into the warm presence of a real ebook collection, but $300 for this thing? Really? UPDATED

A six-inch-screened device with a sliding keypad, the Samsung E6’s biggest draw is probably its stylus, which allows for full, paper-style annotation and notetaking. But the dual-display Nook, which itself is considered one of the pricier e-readers, costs less, and has 3G—a price and feature gap that’ll stare every potential E4 buyer right in the face, since the two readers will be sold side-by-side in Barnes & Noble stores. UPDATED: The price is actually $300; dropped from the original official price of $400. It’s not clear if the readers will be sold in stores, or if they’ll merely tap into B&N’s book store.

The Samsung E6 will arrive, awkwardly, in Spring. [MarketWatch]

Every year, Hanover, Germany hosts hordes of tech journalists, analysts, and PR people for CeBIT. It’s like CES, sort of, except further away, and more boring. We decided not to go this year; it ends tomorrow. Here’s what we missed!

To be clear, these were some of the bigger stories of the conference, at least for American audiences. We’ve written a few other CeBIT stories up as well, which you can find here, but by and large, the event just sort of came and went. So, this is what was happening over in Hanover this week, while the rest of the tech world was going about their business.

Pierre Cardin Tablet: Wikipedia tells me that Pierre Cardin is a “Italian-born French fashion designer” who is famous for his “space age” clothing designs. He’s paired up with a small Taiwanese OEM to make a tablet—the old foldy kind, not the slate-like new kind. It’s pink, and it will cost $450, if it ever hits stores in the US.

ASUS EeeTop ET2010PNT and ET2010AGT On the exterior, ASUS EeeTops are basically a budget take on the AIO concept you’re familiar with from the likes of the iMac and HP’s Touchsmarts. On the interior, as with most ASUS products, they’re incomprehensible parts soup.

Shuttle I-Power External GPU: Breaking news, for people who would like to buy a box that’s nearly the size of a netbook and which can help boost their notebook’s graphics capabilities! (But only certain notebooks, because you need a special adapter!) The Shuttle I-Power External GPU is ready to accommodate your fantasies.

1Cross B’ook ereader: Entourage eDGe on a budget: The first step here is to try to remember what the Entourage eDGe is. Now that you’ve done that, the second step is to figure out why you care about this cheaper, gaudier, and somehow less practical take on the same concept.

Intel Atom for Storage Devices: Intel’s Atom processors, traditionally meant for netbooks and cheap laptops, are about as unglamorous as tech products get. I’d even hold that this was true five minutes ago, which was before I’d even heard about the Intel Atom for storage devices, which is a special version of the platform for household and small business network storage devices.

New Intel Classmate: Intel’s ultra-budget Classmate convertible tablet PCs are evolving! (Slightly!) Here is the reference design for the newest one, which is quite similar to earlier reference designs on the outside, but adjusted slightly for cost and performance reason on the inside.

LG 12x Blu-ray drives: Did LG not have 12x Blu-ray writers before? Are these just new versions of their old Blu-ray devices? Such are the mysteries of CeBIT, which could easily be solved, if anyone cared enough to Google for backlinks.

ASUS O!Play USB 3.0: We’re big fans of the ASUS O!Play set-top boxes around here and we’re not very slightly more enamored with the concept, now that it supports USB 3.0.

HTC’s HD2, the last of the semi-tragic WinMo superphones, is coming to T-Mobile on March 24th. We’d heard this! And now we’ve heard it again, for certain, from a source within a company working with the product. [Thanks, Tipster!]

It was 3:59 AM Hong Kong, and Brando’s offices reeked of Vodka and sweat. The design intern cowered from the men that encircled him. “Reach into the parts bag,” one of them hissed, “and make us something we’ll like.”

Silhouetted by a single yellowed bulb, with memories of design school lectures still fresh in his brain, the intern hesistated. “I heard there are scorpions in there. Is… is that…” Silence. And so he reached.

He grabbed the largest piece he could find, hoping for a USB hub, or something similarly versatile. Yes, he though to himself as he pulled a miniature keyboard from the bag. There’s still hope. Reentry. Fumbling. A minor puncture wound from a frayed wire. Finally, he grabbed hold of something smooth and square. He realizes his mistake almost immediately, but not before one of his new bosses could club him in the back of his head with the nearest weaponizable object he could reach, a combination power strip/barometer. “That’s two items, you stupid child.” A hand reached out and slapped the battery and touchpad from the intern’s hand, onto the floor. “Go again.”

A wireless transmitter. A d-pad. Some LED lights. A backlighting panel. Lastly, a…wait, what’s this? A laser pointer? Fuck. A portly man with darkened sunglasses snorted as if he’d just been jolted awake, and gestured slowly, as if conducting an orchestra in slow motion. The room fell silent.

“That will be all,” one of his apparent henchman said. He gestured toward a cracked door on the other side of the room, labeled “Engineerin.” (The “g” had fallen off in 2007, and nobody had bothered to replace it.) Through the gap, the intern could see his tools: there was a flathead screwdriver, some electrical tape and a soldering iron. For a fleeting second, he thought he saw small a tube of glue, until the black shape scuttled away under the table. He loaded up his now-drenched shirt with the parts like a child hoarding Easter eggs, and shuffled wearily into the engineering chamber, too nervous even to glance over his shoulder.

The next thing he heard was the sound of a turning key; the thud of a setting deadbolt; the slow sinking of a human stomach. Hidden in the near corner was two gallons of water, a USB hotplate, and a pile of broken, unpackaged ramen noodles. “See you in three weeks” our intern heard through the door. Or was it three months? It was hard to hear over all the laughter.

The Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard is available today, for $92. Update: Commenters have found a lower price: $50 for what looks like the same product. [Crunchgear]

Apple’s claim that HTC is infringing on 20 obnoxiously broad cellphone patents will almost certainly end in a quiet settlement, behind closed doors. But as Gadget Lab asks, uh, what if it didn’t? Presenting: The Apple-safe Nexus One! [Gadget Lab]

One drop. Five minutes in a pocket with your keys. Three months of regular use. This is all it takes for an iPhone’s backplate to go from a mirror-like shine to a scratched-to-hell eyesore. Here’s how to fix it.

MacRumors forum member Shenaniganz08 salvaged an iPhone 3G from eBay, sanding, buffing and polishing it back from the brink of a life in a case, which would be dumb, because cases are dumb. (I mean, not really, but that’s kind of the premise of this whole process, right? Anyway.) Here’s what you need:

• Sandpaper 320(or 500),800,1000,1500,2000,2500,3000 grit
• 3M Rubbing compound
• Machine Polisher ( Power Drill or small buffer)
• Microfibers
• Sticky tack and or tape

What’s great about this is that you don’t need to buy almost anything. Half the stuff you need—the microfibers, the polishing disc and the rubbing compound—is included in a $15 3M headlight restoration kit , and you can use just about any crappy household drill for the buffing stage.

In any case, the results are stunning, and the documentation meticulous, so if you’ve got a few hours, a few bucks and an iPhone that looks like a piece of shitty sea glass, why not? [Macrumors via Gadget Lab]

These are the first photos of Microsoft’s Project Pink phones, snatched from deep within the bowels of the Microsoft/Verizon industrio-complex —not the Turtle, but the larger, Sidekick-like Pure. This doesn’t look like Windows Phone 7, so what is it?

The shots come just hours after a leaked advertising campaign for the Turtle outed Verizon as a carrier for the Pink Turtle, without so much as a mention of the Pure.

Our tipster confirms the Pure is also headed to Verizon, but doesn’t have a release date. (Though it’s hard to imagine the release date would fall too far out of line with the Turtle, which is expected to hit stores at the end of April. Business Week‘s claim that the release will be May or June of this year supports this.) Anyway, this thing: It’s strange! The paneled interface, with fixed squares for everything from music (with Zune typography) and email to RSS feeds and what looks like a unified social networking hub. As hinted earlier, the aesthetic is similar Windows Phone 7, but the software is distinctly not Windows Phone 7. This looks like Windows Phone 7: Feature Phone edition.
Our source got a few seconds to use the Pure, and said it was intuitive, “better than Android,” and decorated with Windows Phone 7-style animations throughout. That said, the app situation still doesn’t add up. There’s apparently an download screen for new apps, but it’s not populated with anything yet. This could mean two things: Either the Pink phones will tap into the Windows Phone 7 marketplace somehow, which would be great (but also doesn’t make sense), or they’ll have apps like the Zune has apps—which is to say, only sort of, and only from selected partners.

The more we see, the more the Pure and Turtle look like they’re stacking up to be Zune-ified followups to the Sidekick. It’s an interesting move, but who does Microsoft think they’re going to sell this thing to? Tweens?

Update: Firmware Leak

We’ve got our hands on leaked Pink firmware, and we’ve dumped all the icons and photos we could extract. Sadly, there’s not way to run this right now, but we can see a lot of what’s shown above, like the homescreen application icons, in full resolution. There are also traces of Zune, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Windows Live. There are some shots (discovered by someone else who’s got the firmware) that show a lockscreen dialer, but these are likely placeholders of some sort. Also tucked away in the firmware are default wallpapers for both phones, in their rumored resolutions. Finally, we’ve got a shot from the Turtle’s unremarkable camera, which appears to have flash.

(Filenames included in the gallery, because they’re pretty descriptive.)

Here’s what we can glean from the dump so far:

• The carrier is definitely Verizon, though there are references in the firmware to AT&T and T-Mobile in the US (which are probably placeholders, since the rest of the evidence points to CDMA radios as standard for these phones.) There are also references to a wide range of foreign carriers in the UK, mainland Europe and Asia, but again, most of these carriers don’t support what looks like the initial version of the handset’s CDMA hardware, as far as I can tell.

• The OS is based on Windows CE, like the Zune and Windows Phone 7. This doesn’t mean a ton to users, but the guy who passed us the firmware sums up what that means under the hood:

Everything is programed in .NET a lot like 7 is. It does not say it inside the files where I have seen, but It is coded in XAMl and is in the structure that CE 7 is supposed to be structured, it is my belief that it will be based off CE 7, and it will have a lot of tie in to Windows Live as well.

• Turtle and Pure codenames are used in the firmware, but that doesn’t mean that those’ll be the shipping names for the product. There are also codenames for the “Pride” and “Lion” handsets, which appear to just be the international versions of the Turtle and Pure, respectively.

• The Turtle’s screen is 320×240, while the Pure’s is 480×320—the same as the iPhone.

• There are reference to something called “The Loop,” which sounds like some kind of central social networking hub.

We’re powering through the firmware dump now, so we’ll post more as we get it. [Special thanks to our tipsters, and Conflipper]

After the Windows Phone 7 launch passed without so much as a mention of Project Pink, Microsoft’s other new phone project started to fade into memory. Today, we can confirm: Pink’s coming, and Verizon’s the carrier. UPDATE: First live shots.

A tipster passed us a load of 3rd-party marketing materials, in which a promotional plan for Pink is laid out in detail. (Campaign specifics and most graphics have to be witheld to protect the innocent, but rest assured, they’re legit.) The documents don’t talk about specs or software details, or more importantly why the hell Microsoft thinks this weird little pebble is a good idea, but there’s plenty we can learn:

• The early Pink renders leaked to us back in September? Those are exactly the same ones included in the proposal.

• Of the two phones in prior leaks, only one shows up here: The Turtle vertical slider. It’s a messaging phone, basically—one part Pre, and two parts Sidekick. (Or maybe three.)

• Verizon is a launch partner for the device, and probably an exclusive carrier. The branding and marketing in the documents suggests a joint Microsoft/Verizon launch, but another carrier isn’t completely out of the question.

• The phones aren’t running Windows Phone 7, unless it’s hidden behind a different interface. Virtually all rumors around the Pink platform implied as much, and again, this appears to be something fundamentally different.

• Social Networking! It’s all over the proposal, and presumably, the phone.

• It’s suggested that the platform has apps of some sort. For a phone like this to share apps with Windows Phone 7 is pretty much impossible—the minimum hardware requirement for a Windows Phone look out of reach for this little black lump—so this one’s a big question mark. Is it another SDK? Or closed app development like we’ve seen on the Zune HD? Web apps?

Since the documents come from a party working with Microsoft, and not Microsoft itself, a few things are missing: there’s no mention of a release name for the product (Pink is the codename we’ve been using, but the launch title could be different.); stil no sense at all as to how the interface works; and no announcement or launch date. The documents are just days old, and hint at a near-term launch, which would be inline with what we’ve been hearing about a second Microsoft phone launch at or around CTIA at the end of this month. And remember, this are marketing materials, designed to promote a launch, not just an announcement. In other words, Pink, or whatever the hell it is, will likely beat Windows Phone 7 to market. So that explains all those Tweets, I guess.

All these missing pieces add up to a massive gap, not just in the phone’s feature sheet, but in our understanding of what it’s supposed to be. If it’s a replacement for the Sidekick, the obvious question is, is anyone asking for a replacement for the Sidekick? If it’s just a Microsoft-branded feature phone, er, why? Doesn’t the future of youth/budget phones all about scaled-back smartphones (see: Pixi, Backflip), and not glorified feature phones?

UPDATE: More insiders have come forward, and now we have a possible timeframe: Late April. Oh, and there are two phones, as implied by the original leak. The second, according to our tipster, is the Pure horizontal slider, pictured below:

So these two phones – the Sharp PB10ZU and the PB20ZU – there are names for them but I can’t tell you what they are, cause Verizon may just put out different code names in order to find out where any leaks occur. And frankly the names are really really awful sounding so I hope what I’ve been told aren’t the final names anyway…

Apparently the interface shares some aesthetic elements with Windows Phone 7, albeit with “some sort of UI skin/more of a social-networking edge to [it].” As for release, apparently Verizon is “looking at a late April launch date,” though this isn’t set in stone. [Thanks, Tipsters!]

In 2002, to experience augmented reality was to lash 26 pounds of equipment to your body and hobble waywardly within the confines of predefined area. In 2010, you can augment the entire world with a free app for your smartphone.

This shot of the Columbia University’s Mobile Augmented Reality System (MARS) comes from a PopSci story written 10 Februaries ago. (The magazine’s searchable archives just went online.) This right around the time that augmented reality had made the jump from esoteric sci-fi concept to actual thing, albeit in the form of awkward research projects and simplistic military applications:

If you strap on this rig, as [the writer] had, you begin to understand the profound possibilities of an AR system, which can superimpose computer-generated text, graphics, 3D animation, sound, or any other or any other digitized data on the real world.

As much as modern smartphone apps like Layar actually do more—they’re connected to the internet constantly, for one—they still don’t meet one of the core criteria of the augmented reality concept: they’re not glasses. In other words, you’ve got to hold your smartphone out in front of you, as if you’re taking a video at all times, which is as obnoxious as it is exhausting to your upper arms. So it’s not quite sci-fi.

But it’s a far sight closer than we’ve ever come before. [PopSci]

I’m imagining a Venn diagram of 1.) People who’ve already built a PC compatible with USB 3.0 and 2.) people who are gravely concerned about data security. The middle section is quite large! Hence, the Super Talent SuperCrypts.

These jumbo-sized flash drives, which are backwards compatible with USB 2.0, have been built around AES hardware encryption, with 128-bit ECB and 256-bit XTS encryption for the Standard and Pro Editions, respectively. Capacities will range from 16GB to 256GB, and while Super Talent hasn’t announced prices yet, don’t expect these drive to be cheap when they start selling later this month.

Anyway, encryption and comically huge storage options are nice features and all, but this is a USB 3.0 drive, so tell me about the speed:

This new drive supports USB 3.0 speeds of up to 240MB/s.

Granted, that’s almost certainly a read speed rather than a write speed, but still, 240MB/s download put this in league with later generation SSDs, which is pretty amazing for a thumb drive—even a chubster like this one. [PCPer]

Google’s mobile web interface for Buzz is technically impressive, in that it behaves more or less like a native app. Cool, guys! But in use, it’s just too slow. Buzzie, the first native Buzz iPhone app, helps pick up Google’s slack.

As the first iPhone app for Buzz, Buzzie gets a lot right. The minimalist UI recalls the classier breed of Twitter apps, like Tweetie, why the local and map views are a treat to see rendered natively, in the app and on a Google Map, respectively. My only reservations? I don’t see a way to post images in a new Buzz, which is kind of a big deal for avid users. That, and I’ve found that even when I check the “Remember Me” box, I’m sometimes logged out when the app starts up.

If you’re a serious Buzz user, Buzzie will make your life easier. (But honestly, who the hell is?) If you’re not, the $2 price—a promotion, even—is just too steep. [TheNextWeb]

Each month, the best new iPhone apps-and some older ones-are considered for Gizmodo’s Essential iPhone Apps Directory. Who will join? Who will live? Who will die? Here’s the best of the best from February.

For the full directory of Gizmodo’s Essential iPhone Apps for 2009, click here. Here are the best of the month, and what we’ve added to the directory:

February’s Best Apps

For a single-page view, click here.

Essential App Directory Inductees

Camera Pro Plus: It isn’t enough for a camera app to add options to still shooting. No, nowadays you need video.

Meebo: An ultra-slick messaging app that makes every other free entrant look either quaint or crappy.

Angry Birds: I could have gone outside last Saturday, but I didn’t. I played Angry Birds instead. I have no regrets.

Siri: Rolls speech recognition, search, and intelligent text parsing into one semi-magical package.

Logitech Touch Mouse: Does 75% percent of what more expensive iPhone-as-a-touchpad apps do, for 0% of the price.

The Fallen

Fring: Because Meebo is that good.

Snapture: Replaced by Camera Pro Plus.

And that’s it! What counts as an essential iPhone app changes all the time, and so should our guide: If we’ve missed anything huge, or you’ve got a much better suggestion for a particular type of app, let us know, or say so in the comments. We’ll be updating this thing pretty frequently, and a million Gizmodo readers can do a better job at sorting through the app mess than a single Gizmodo editor. Enjoy!

286 booths, and nary an iPhone in sight. In fact, a lot of the gadgets on display here were first released in 2007. Welcome to CAN InfoTech: the CES of Nepal.

BoingBoing’s photo tour of the January conference, held in a country with a near-50% unemployment rate and a per-capita GDP of $1,200, paints a picture of a sort of proto-CES, in which Apple is a new and novel brand, many of the attendees don’t have mobile phones, and electric generators are a prime attraction.

I’m not sure why, but I assumed a trade show like this would be inflected with a different feeling. Instead of complaining about ebook reader overload or a crowded trade floor, attendees would glimpse a technological future that a lot of the world lives in, and that they too could one day enjoy. But no: A trade show is a trade show, all the way down the economic scale. It’s a way for innovators and hucksters alike to get the word out, for better or for worse, about the thing they’re trying to sell right then.

Head over to the source for the full photo set, because it’s utterly fascinating, from the 2008-vintage Sony catalog on display to the cellophane-wrapped display laptops. I’ll never complain about CES again. (This is a lie.) [BoingBoing]

AT&T’s first Android phone, the Backflip, is a smartphone for people who probably wouldn’t otherwise buy a smartphone. And for them—and only them—it might just work.

The Price

$100, on a two-year contract with AT&T. As usual, you can expect retailers to beat this price, and soon. (Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Backflip end up free, or nearly free, within a close timeframe.)

The Theory

It’s cute. It’s ever so slightly odd. It’s, in short, the opposite of what nearly every other Android phone on the market has strived for. But where Motorola’s Cliq and Devour had identity issues—the Cliq was unavoidably viewed as Motorola’s grand entrance into Android, even though it was a second-tier product; and the Devour suffered from perceptions of downgraded Droid-ness—the Backflip knows what it is, and who it’s for: a budget phone, for the masses.

The Hardware

The first thing you notice about the Backflip is the way it unfolds. It’s weird! Quite weird! Instead of closing screen-to-keypad, clamshell-style, it closes with the screen and keypad facing outward. (Contortionist-style?) Behind the screen is a hidden trackpad, which does what a trackball or d-pad does on other Android phones.

The advantages, as far as I can tell, number three:

• since the keyboard doesn’t have to slide inside of the screen, it’s free to take up the entire rear surface
• when the phone is closed, you can still see the screen
• the phone can be propped halfway open, so you can set it down on a table for movie watching.

It’s a concept that works if only because the Backflip is fairly compact, just a bit thicker than the iPhone, and smaller in every other way. The rounded outside edges mean the body slides in and out of your pocket with ease, and that it feels even smaller than it is. The keyboard is spacious, and despite its smooth surface and lack of gaps between keys, provides juuuuust enough surface differentiation and feedback to make typing effortlessly fast. The rear trackpad strikes me as a gimmick most of the time, especially since you can only use it when the phone is open, but I will give it some credit—it’s no worse than a trackball for most tasks, and for scrolling through long email messages and webpages, I actually prefer it to a Droid-like d-pad.

It’s when you drill down past the surface that the Backflip reveals its weaknesses. The touchscreen is resistive, and a bit squishy to the touch. Wi-Fi and GPS are all included, but really, how couldn’t they be? And that camera, with a 5MP sensor and LED flash, couldn’t be classified as better than “good enough,” though the fact that it’s mounted on the keyboard makes MySpace-style self-portraiture dangerously easy.

The processor is an outdated 528MHz Qualcomm number, and the whole system is propped up, Motoblur and all, by 256MB of RAM. In terms of raw hardware specs, the Backflip is really no better than the Cliq, and more damningly, the G1. If you’re the kind of person who snaps up phones from the bleeding edge, the Backflip isn’t for you. Just buy a Droid.

The Software

Last I saw Motoblur, Motorola’s social networking-centric Android skin, it was on the Motorola Devour, a similarly-placed Android phone on Verizon. I’m not a huge fan of the interface, but I get what it’s going for, and who might like it—it makes sense for social networking hounds, even if it’s a little clumsy sometimes.

But here’s where it gets weird: The Backflip runs Motoblur atop Android 1.5, which means that at its core, its software is older than the G1’s. And there’s no way around it: This is a bad thing. New Google apps like Google Maps Navigation don’t even show up in its App Market, 3rd party apps increasingly won’t support it, and Android 1.6+ accoutrements like voice commands just aren’t there. Add to that Motoblur’s inherent slowness, and you’ve got a decidedly strained software experience.

This would be a dealbreaker—even for the smartphone noobies the Backflip is targeting—if not for one thing: Though they couldn’t give me a timeframe, AT&T tells me that a software upgrade to 2.1 is coming—something which I couldn’t confirm for the Devour, which shipped with a slightly more futureproof 1.6. On the one hand, this is reflective of a truly bizarre software and upgrade strategy on Motorola’s part; on the other, it means that the Backflip could actually be a buyable phone, for the right user.

The Right User

If you’ve read through this review and you’re feeling flat about the Backflip, that’s fine. It’s not for you! And honestly, it’s not for me. There are objectively more capable phones on other carriers, and soon, probably, on AT&T as well. But if you’re not even sure you need a smartphone, plan to spend most of your time texting or on Twitter or Facebook, don’t really know about (or care to know about) the newest apps in the Android Market, and aren’t bothered by quirks like Motorola’s replacement of Google search with Yahoo search, don’t count the Backflip out. Just keep in mind what we don’t know for sure:

• When exactly to expect the software upgrade to Android 2.1
• That Motoblur on 2.1 will be significantly faster that Motoblur on 1.5 (The enhanced speed of 1.6 on the Devour could be attributed to its fast processor)
• That newer apps in generally will perform well on the Backflip’s 528MHz processor
• That AT&T won’t release another Android phone that’ll instantly nullify the Backflip entirely.

These are some serious caveats for a new phone, to the point that even my tempered recommendation comes with a separate recommendation to wait and see—what Motoblur has in store for Android 2.1, what AT&T has in store for Android, and what retailers have in store for the Backflip’s price. To us, the gadget nerds, the phone is basically unbuyable. But Android’s future is as much about Backflips as about Nexus Ones—not because the Backflip is comparable to the Google Phone, but because it’s not. As an agent from Android’s budget future, the AT&T’s firstborn gets a lot right.

It’s more functional than the messaging/feature phones it’s attacking


The backwards folding mechanism is surprisingly functional


Android 2.1 to come


Spacious keyboard


Launch price too high, though it will probably fall


The rear trackpad: great when the phone’s unfolded, but useless when it’s closed


Ships with Android 1.5


Resistive screen


Underwhelming hardware specs

Here’s a funny story! Some time ago, Virgin Mobile snatched up a little wireless company called Helio, with hopes of using it to start a postpaid (on contract) cell service to complement its prepaid business. Then, Sprint, one of the largest postpaid carriers in the country, bought Virgin Mobile, effectively rendering Helio (subsumed into Virgin) pointless. And now, according to Virgin, Helio has an execution date: May 25th. Customers will be offered special incentives to join Sprint, but otherwise service will just… end.

Official statement, as passed to Crunchgear:

No customer will be automatically migrated to Sprint’s postpaid service. However, Sprint has created a special offer for our customers.

Current postpaid customers are being given $50 towards the purchase of a Sprint postpaid handset with a new two-year agreement. This credit is in addition to any applicable rebates that may apply. Postpaid customers moving from Virgin Mobile to Sprint will also receive $150 off of handsets as part of Sprint’s standing new customer offer. Activation fees will also be waived.

There was a time when the word “tablet” invoked an entirely different vision, of keyboards and hinges and people working on stuff and, well, not this. The Toughbook C1, Panasonic’s 2000s-style 12.1-inch rugged convertible tablet, remembers those days well.

That’s not to say that the C1 is overly bulky, or necessarily outdated—its spec sheet suggests the opposite, listing its dimensions at a surprisingly thin 1.2-1.7 inches and its weight at a reasonable 3.2lbs, making it the “world’s lightest” 12.1-inch convertible tablet. Behind the keyboard you’ll find a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5, 2GB (expandable) of DDR3 RAM, a 250GB shock-resistant hard drive, and optional EV-DO or HSPA data. Battery life claims fall at 5 and 10 hours for the single and dual battery options, respectively, while the whole assemblage is tied together by Windows 7, or optionally, XP. The casing is, like every other Toughbook, water-resistant and just short of bulletproof. And lastly, the trackpad is circular, because why the hell not?
Anything beyond a superficial comparison to the new generation of slate-style tablets would be misguided, because this is a decidedly workmanlike device. It has multitouch in the same way that other Windows 7 tablets and notebooks have multitouch, which is to say, er, technically. It comes with a stylus. Under the hood, it’s pure laptop. And then there’s the matter of price: The Toughbook C1 will start at $2500. Not that this matters, since most of the people who use one will probably have it issued and expensed, but still: $2500! Ship date falls sometime in June. [Panasonic]

You’re probably relatively confident in your various machines’ integrity against hackers. Repeat Pwn2Own hacking competition victor Charlie Miller would like you to know that you’re wrong—especially if you have Flash.

In an interview with OneITSecurity, Miller picks off questions about hacking and security with just enough ease and nonchalance to make me queasy. Like, you know how Mac OS exploits are supposed to be tougher to root out than Windows exploits? Not quite! And they’re both vulnerable:

Windows 7 is slightly more difficult because it has full ASLR (address space layout randomization) and a smaller attack surface (for example, no Java or Flash by default). Windows used to be much harder because it had full ASLR and DEP (data execution prevention). But recently, a talk at Black Hat DC showed how to get around these protections in a browser in Windows.

And obviously, Linux is fortress, right? Again:

No, Linux is no harder, in fact probably easier, although some of this is dependent on the particular flavor of Linux you’re talking about. The organizers don’t choose to use Linux because not that many people use it on the desktop. The other thing is, the vulnerabilities are in the browsers, and mostly, the same browsers that run on Linux, run on Windows.

And within a given operating system, surely you can ensure immunity from exploits by choosing a secure browser like Firefox. Surely. No? GUUUGHHH.

[The safest browser is] Chrome or IE8 on Windows 7 with no Flash installed. There probably isn’t enough difference between the browsers to get worked up about. The main thing is not to install Flash!

So the guy who consistently prevails Pwn2Own, a competition where hackers demonstrate exploits for sport, says that Flash, which is installed on about 98% of computers on the internet, unifies all browsers in insecurity, and that IE8, an Internet Explorer browser, in case you’re having trouble unfolding that acronym, now ranks among the safest in its category. The slightly better news is, despite inherent insecurities that he doesn’t bother to elaborate on, mobile smartphone platforms are relatively secure as compared to their desktop counterparts. So there’s that.

The full interview is definitely worth a read, even for the tech disinclined—it’s a good reminder that you (and you!) can never completely avoid online security threats. So, stay on your toes, and look out for… something? [OneITSecurity via Crunchgear]