You have to break open an egg to get to the edible goodness—so it makes sense you’d have to take a hammer to an $800 lamp to make it work. Wait, what am I saying?
It may look very cool in its “I’m making a statement” type of way, but to spend $800 on a lamp you need to break open in order to make it work is absurd. Only at the MoMA store, obviously. [MoMA via Technabob]
Glimpsed in the most hi-res outfit we’ve seen so far is the HTC Legend, which—if rumors prove correct—should be shown off next week at MWC.
It still looks like the Hero only with a unibody aluminum shell, but according to Dutch carrier KPN it’ll go on sale March. KPN’s advert for the Legend touts it as having a 600Mhz processor, an optical trackpad instead of the ball seen on previous models, and a 3.2-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. The other specs gleaned from KPN seem par for the course—a 5.0-megapixel camera with LED flash, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Android 2.1 (Eclair), and it looks like it’ll be running HTC Sense, the Android skin which they’ve used on a lot of their recent models.
The leaked pics we saw recently of the Legend showed it as having black plastic inserts at the base and top of the back casing, where the SIM card, microSD card slot and camera are. It’s still got a chin by the looks of the profile photo on KPN’s site, but if you ask me that’s a good thing. This is definitely a phone to get excited about. [Tweakers via Electronista]
Just as Motorola was getting its act together and releasing brilliant hardware after years of, well, dirge, they’re now splitting down the middle into two independent companies—on one side the phone division, the other, wireless networking. Don’t glare at your Droid and vow to never put more money into Motorola, because the split is actually a good thing.
It’ll make them more streamlined and focused, with equal attention being placed on each side—though the handset and set-top box side will own the name and license it to the dustier wireless networking and radio systems unit. Sounds fair, considering we only care about the mobile division anyway, but apparently they’re both raking in around the same amount in sales (approximately $11 billion last year each).
Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day when I could write about Moto’s corporate struggles and actually be able to put a positive spin on it, but it does sound like the right decision has been made up above. [NY Times]
Swapping Twitterberry for Ubertwitter was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life, but even that has its shortfalls. BlackBerry’s impending Twitter app looks heaps better, from the design to actual usability.
It’s not available yet, but you can sign up for an invite code for the beta launch later this year. I haven’t tested it out yet on my Bold 9700 as am juggling another phone today, but I’ll definitely be giving my thoughts on it next week after trying it out properly (read: tweeting about my cat).
In the meantime, let’s look at some of those features. You can compose a new tweet from the feed of updates, rather than having to go to a separate screen like in most apps. It’s compatible with a lot of the native BlackBerry programs, enabling you to send a URL from the browser to Twitter (automatically resizing it to a bit.ly link), with the same process possible when taking a photo, using the Twitpic service.
The navigation icons at the top are a heck of a lot cleaner and more in keeping with the BlackBerry UI—as you’d expect, considering they developed it. From left to right, the icons include help, replies, your profile, direct messages, search for a user, search (which lets you filter by proximity), and trending topics.
Direct messages are pushed through instantly, and the official retweet function is supported by the app. Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing, I’ll leave it to you to decide, but I personally can’t stand that new recycled retweet feature. Nothing worse than seeing someone’s face in your feed, who you unfollowed long ago. Or maybe that’s just me.
Before the big roll-out at the end of the year, BlackBerry intends on polishing it up and has even mentioned the possibility of adding geo-tagging support, lists, profile editing and multi-account log-in. All those features would be excellent please BlackBerry, but particularly the latter. [BlackBerry Blogs]
Good news—Digitimes is reporting that many of the Taiwanese phone suppliers are ditching resistive touchscreens and focusing their attentions on ramping up production of the much more superior capacitive panels. Today is a great day to be a finger. [Digitimes]
While new colorways aren’t exactly our bag, we’ll make an exception for the Panasonic GF1 just because it’s so damned cool. It’ll be available in silver and pink options from March 12th. [Panasonic via Akihabara News]
Nevermind the war against viruses—they’ll kill each other before we even update AVG. A Russian Trojan horse program, known as Spy Eye, has stolen data from its competitor Zeus, and replaced PC infections with its own botnet-badness.
It’s still a lose-lose situation for anyone with an infected computer, with one botnet being replaced with another, but it’s pretty unheard of for one to take on another like this. Spy Eye’s campaign against the bigger, badder Zeus is called “Kill Zeus,” and while it doesn’t feature Uma Thurman in a slinky yellow jumpsuit, it will be sold to online crims who access your online bank details and any money it can find in your accounts, with Spy Eye going for around $500 to each person. [ComputerWorld]
Image Credit: Joffley
Nokia’s slashing the number of smartphone models by half this year, but at least we know one of them will be a doozy, if true: the N8-00 is rumored to sport a 12-megapixel lens and the new Symbian^3 OS.
That camera lens will be big news for Nokia, as it’ll also shoot in 720p too, according to French site Tom’s Guide. The touchscreen will be a capacitive multitouch affair, and will go on sale in summer if it doesn’t turn out to be too good to be true.
Interestingly, speculation is also claiming Nokia’s going to do a major rebrand of its series, which could prove to be a further lash of the critic-whip if it does anything other than simplify matters. Currently, it has all manner of series names and services, including XpressMusic, Classic and Navigator, but at MWC they’re expected to announce a streamlined five main lines.
The C-series will be low-end candybars like Nokia’s known for, the X-series will be multimedia and music-angled devices presumably all Coming With Music (if they don’t kill off their music download service first). The E-series will remain the business, QWERTY range; the N-series its more premium, upmarket line and finally the S-series will be even more luxurious and limited.
With any luck some of their new devices and strategies will be revealed next week at MWC, along with the inevitable gloating over their latest financial results. I really do want things to pick up for Nokia, honest—it’d please me so much to see them do something good next week. [Tom’s Guide via BGR]
These aren’t the first touchscreen laptops Toshiba’s dished out, but the U500-1EX is the latest, and has some nice specs (4GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD) for its low price.
At 13.3-inches, the Windows 7 machine has a neat-sounding LifeSpace app from Toshiba, which allows for thumbnail shortcuts on a bulletin board, and a faster way of searching for files with ReelTime.
Internally, it’s running on an Intel Core i3-330 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and has the option to upgrade the HDD to 320GB. Bluetooth, two USB ports, HD webcam and mic, the display is a TFT WXGA TruBrite with 1,280 x 800 pixels and altogether, it weighs 2.15kg.
Nothing but UK pricing has been confirmed, but if it’s £649 there, a direct conversion would have it at $1,014, but I doubt it’ll be that much in the States. [Toshiba release]
UPDATE: It appears to be on sale for $999 at MicroCenter, thanks to Bryan for the tip.
Anyone familiar with Moore’s Law will know that over the years, storage has got bigger and cheaper. But the possibility of a 1TB SSD being the size of a postage stamp? Sounds impossible, but not to those crafty Japanese scientists.
A bunch of researchers from various Japanese universities and organizations have banded together to work on bringing the size of SSDs right down, with the energy efficiency right up—with them hopeful they can produce enough so they can go on sale in 2012. They’ve already got one prototype created from 128 NAND flash chips and a controller chip, which you can see above, with the drive apparently transferring data at 2GB per second. Seriously, this is the stuff from my dreams—an SSD that can fit in my wallet? Amazing. [Nikkei via CrunchGear]
Whoa, a Microsoft employee just published details on Windows 8 on their blog, claiming it will be “completly different from what folks usually expect of Windows,” [sic] and that internally, they’re calling it “Windows.next.”
Shown above is a leaked Windows server roadmap from last year, that marks 2012 as being the year of a “major release,” with “codename – Windows 8” mentioned. The employee spoke on the blog about the codename:
“So how am I referring to the next version of Windows without saying that many words – well simple – Windows.next:) This is definitely not the official version but a version that is becoming common along my circle”
On what to expect:
“The minimum that folks can take for granted is that the next version will be something completly [sic] different from what folks usually expect of Windows – I am simply impressed with the process that Steven has setup to listen to our customers needs and wants and get a team together than can make it happen. To actually bring together dozens and dozens of teams across Microsoft to come up with a vision for Windows.next is a process that is surreal! The themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them. It is the future of PCs… “
We already knew Microsoft would be shifting its attention to Windows 8 this July, so while this latest slip-up doesn’t elucidate much, at least we can mull over what the employee means by a “completly different” Windows. Does he mean it won’t have a built-in spellchecker? [ MSDN via Microsoft Kitchen via SlashGear]
Here’s the WinMo-running M10 and Android-powered A50 both leaked in January. Problem is we still think they should get out of hardware and into apps.
But back to the phones. They’re boasting it brings “more location technology than any other smartphone,” as you’d expect from the satnav dudes at Garmin. The hardware isn’t all that surprising, with a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen, a 3.0-megapixel camera with autofocus and geotagging, Bluetooth, 4GB of internal storage (with the usual microSD card slot) and an accelerometer. No word on Wi-Fi just yet.
Bundled with the phone is a car mount and power cable for the car, which is a nice touch—nothing worse than having to fork out for additional accessories after laying down a few hundred on the actual device. The software is, of course, Garmin’s turn-by-turn navigation.
It’ll go on sale sometime in the first six months of 2010—nice and vague—and the price hasn’t been announced (or rumored, in the M10’s case) just yet.
That aforementioned M10 (above) won’t be showing up with Windows Mobile 7, launching instead with 6.5.3 (though presumably it’ll be available for a software update once WinMo 7 launches at the end of the year). Specs sound just like they did when Asustek president Benson Lin blabbed last month about it, with the 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen, 4GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM and the same again for ROM. Garmin and Asustek have chosen a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 chip which won’t steal too many headlines, but at least it’s running the most recent version of WinMo, eh? Again, wouldn’t it be neat if you could get a Garmin app on a phone that was closer to 1GHz or on an iPhone?
The rumored price was $435 last month, but we’ll keep you updated once we receive official word. [GSM Arena and BusinessWire]
Oh, to have enough time in the day to spend on this Mintpass puzzle calendar, which takes inspiration from those sliding-puzzle games we had as kids…only this time, with the day’s date. Yes, really.
With 41 puzzle-bits (and one space for allowing them to slide about), the idea behind this calendar is pretty simple—until you have to change the dates around for the next month. At least they’ve thought to include a “help” break on the bezel, which lets you pull out all the pieces and arrange them properly…rather than spending hours trying to slide them into place. [Mintpass via WalYou]
I’m not sure how I feel about these tower skin concepts, which can turn ugly buildings into modern icons. A lot of the post-war buildings aren’t the nicest-looking, but as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Architectural company LAVA believes ugly buildings should have a shot at happiness, with these tower skins acting like a “transparent cocoon” made from mesh textile, capable of being lit up in the evening for maximum attention. They’d supposedly generate energy with the addition of photovoltaic cells, collect rain water and improve ventilation for the buildings.
I’m sure the tower skins will stay firmly in “concept land,” but the designs are on display in Sydney until the 28th of March for anyone wanting a gander. [LAVA Design Boom]
Netgear and Ericsson have been tinkering away on a joint project, the fruits of which have weaned today—the MBRN3300E 3G mobile broadband router.
It’s essentially a router which uses 3G WAN in addition to 802.11n wireless and four ethernet LAN ports for 270Mbps connectivity, so there’s plenty o’ choice for internet users whether they’re in their houses or on the road (with 3G connection).
It’s available now, although Netgear hasn’t confirmed for just how much. [Netgear]
There was a time, before Avatar, when 3D meant crummy virtual gaming. A recent patent granted to Apple shows they are (or were) considering a 3D virtual Apple Store—a more welcoming way to shop for Apple products.
It doesn’t sound very “Apple,” when they normally favor start minimalism over cheesy big-headed virtual characters, but as you can see from the diagram above, they are obviously considering the idea of a store you can walk through and browse the products in, with the outside elements portrayed by falling rain/sunshine etc.
The patent was first filed in 2006 by Apple, so I’m hoping they just got swept up in the Second Life craze and have forgotten all about some naff virtual world where you can exchange 17 green and red apples for the latest Miley Cyrus song. [Patently Apple]
No longer do you need to fantasize about buying a Tesla, now that Trexa has released pricing details of its “scalable lithium-drive platform,” (aka the base for building your own electric car).
$15,999 is a fair price to pay for the starting block of your new car, when other electric cars can set you back more than $100,000 (for a Tesla, anyway—Nissan’s Leaf costs around $30,000.) Still, who hasn’t dreamed of building their very own car? And as it’s electric, you’ll be saving the planet, and your wallet.
The starting price is for the base model, which has a top speed of 100mph, an acceleration of 0-60mph in 8 seconds, charge time of four hours and a 105 mile range. [Trexa]
Gasp! Whatever could it be? I’m hoping for new MacBook Pros, what about you? [Apple – Thanks assorted tipsters!]
A few leaks here and there, and voila—Samsung’s Monte S5620 is revealed ahead of MWC. Running the TouchWiz 2.0 Plus OS, it has full HTML browsing and the usual array of social networking tricks.
A 3.0-inch capacitive WQVGA TFT touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, and Google Maps 3.0 seems to be the crux of it, with memory listed as 200MB, expandable via the microSD card slot. Yes, it’s a budgetphone, but it’s the first that we’ve seen using TouchWiz 2.0 Plus, (with the Jet, Omnia II and Tocca Ultra being some of the phones using TouchWiz 2.0), so hopefully we’ll see a few new UI features when we catch a glimpse of it next week at MWC. [Samsung]
Not only has Navigon added a bunch of new features to its iPhone app, the price is $20 cheaper—although if you want Traffic Live and 3D maps, it still adds up to $100. Nonetheless, it sounds worth it.
The update has a few nifty angles—there’s the connection to your Facebook or Twitter accounts for updating friends on your current position, destination and time you’re due to arrive; the aforementioned Panorama View 3D views (which use NASA height and terrain data) and personalized route delivery, called MyRoutes.
The addition of NASA’s data is a nice touch, meaning you’ll be able to find out more about the location you’re in, such as elevations and shadows. Discover a hill before you reach it—and maneuver around it if you’re not keen on heights.
MyRoutes, on the other hand, collects data on your preferences and habits, giving you customized routes along side the fastest/easiest ways to reach your destination.
Here we come to the price. I mentioned before that it’ll cost $100 if you want the full service for your iPhone or iPod Touch, with the actual price of the MobileNavigator app being lowered by $20 to $69.99. The Traffic Live has also been discounted slightly, from $24.99 to $19.99 (only available until the 15th of February), and the Panorama View 3D will cost $9.99. Those who bought the app before will get the update for free, according to Navigon.
Yes, it’s pricey. Yes, it’s not far off what you’d spend on a stand-along satnav. But as our iPhone navigation battlemodo deduced last August, the MobileNavigator is the best money can buy. And that was before all these new updates.
