Archive for September 3rd, 2008
You know, we’re really (really) proud of ASUS for letting the N10 strut its stuff in the wild without the crutch that is the completely oversaturated Eee brand. And look, the 10.2-inch netbook looks mighty fine, now doesn’t it? Sure, it’s not relying on hordes of siblings for moral support, but with that LED-backlit display, GeForce 9300GS and Intel N270 processor, who needs meaningless pats on the fanny? Hit the read link for a few more shots.
Hey, it’s not September 15th yet! Nevertheless, Nokia’s flagship N96 is now shipping in Europe for €550 before taxes and subsidies. Yes, the very same 5 megapixel, dual-sliding media powerhouse with 16GB of storage spotted all the way back in December of last year. By now you should be familiar with the specs, hands-ons, tear-downs, and reviews. Unless, perhaps, you stumbled upon us while looking for Ms Trudy’s Crochet and Needlepoint, we know that Engadget Mobile’s Magenta colors can be confusing.
For some reason, we’re quite taken with the Peek email-only handheld, and Gadling’s followup review of the love-it-or-hate-it device mostly reinforces that positive impression. The squared-off, Ideo-designed unit did its one task admirably well, sending and receiving emails using T-Mobile’s network with only slight delay, and the OS is minimal and easy to use. Sure, at $99 and $20/mo it’s still way too expensive for the typical gadget nerd who’s already packing a phone data plan and maybe a data card as well, but if you’re trying to keep things on the prepaid tip or looking to get a Luddite friend or relative on the mobile email bandwagon, the Peek is certainly worth a second, uh, peek.
We know what you’re thinking — it’s Windows Mobile 6.1 fool, we’ve got the developers kit already. True, but not the SDK that allows developers to create custom, interactive panels for the touchscreen QWERTY’s Panel Interface. Sony Ericsson claims that, “The Xperia X1 will offer the richest mobile user experience, putting the world at the fingertips of the user.” In other words, the expectations have been set, developers, so you’d best get to to downloading the free SDK — you’ve got your work cut out for you. Sony Ericsson will offer a panel download service in the future, showcasing all the panels built by you, Google, and other partners.
The Panel Applications are meant to be simple, rich, and fully-interactive allowing quick access to your data — eMail, calendar, multimedia, games, IM… you name it. But don’t take our word for it, SE explains the new panel ecosystem in the video posted after the break.
Update: Screenshot of the rudimentary, “Get More Panels” interface after the break.
It’s already confirmed for this week. Now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Dell Inspiron 910 Mini netbook will be announced on Thursday the 4th courtesy of an eMail received from Box.net, an online photo and document storage service already seen bundled with Creative’s Vado Pocket Video Cam. Apparently, Box.net services will “come pre-installed on the Dell Mini.” A Dell spokeswoman confirmed that Dell is working with Box.net for online storage. A person familiar with the matter says that the Mini will likely sell for less than $400, run your choice of Windows or Linux (Ubuntu, is our guess), and sport a display slightly less than 9-inches. You know, all this service talk has us wondering if this will also be Dell’s first laptop with its Zing-based audio and video services bundle. Fortunately, we’ll know tomorrow.
P.S. That image above is from these earlier leaks and matches the keyboard configuration in Dell’s own support documents. In other words, it’s what we expect to see tomorrow.
According to a GameSpot interview with Sony’s US director of hardware marketing John Koller, that new PSP-3000 screen may look a bit better… but it’s going to cost you about 20 minutes of battery life. Luckily for you gamers with endless pockets out there, Koller assures that minor wrinkle will be offset because, “We’re going to have the extended life battery that’s still available for consumers, so we’re still going to get the eight-to-ten hours out of that battery.” So just to make that clear, the regular battery life will be diminished, but you can buy a new, larger battery from Sony to extend your gaming time. Got that? Good. Watch him say it for real in the video after the break.
Details on this one are remarkably skimpy, but here are the facts as we know them. A fire caused around $30,000 worth of damage to a mobile home in Delaware this past week, but thankfully, the Millsboro and Indian River firefighters found no one home at the time of the incident. The culprit? A “malfunctioning cellphone charger that ignited the wall covering in a bedroom.” That’s it, folks — no manufacturer, no brand name, nothing. In other words, unplug your chargers when you leave the house… or store your home in a fireproof safe, either one.
[Thanks, Carl]
It’s still a rugged little bastard — and yes, it still has a laser pointer — but there’s one thing the LM801 cellphone is not: a Sonim. The CEO of Sonim, maker of the purposefully overbuilt XP1, wrote in on our LM801 piece to let us know that they don’t actually have any association with Condurro, the company advertising it. If anything, the LM801 is actually a direct competitor for Sonim’s wares — and at £149.99 (about $270) at retail, it’s bringing the heat. Assuming it actually lives up to its tough look, anyway.
Dell’s Inspiron 910 / Mini Inspiron hasn’t exactly been a secret since we first heard about it back in April, but it sounds like this baby bump is about to go from open secret to bouncing bundle of joy — Dell just confirmed to InformationWeek that the netbook is scheduled to arrive later this week. That’s all we know right now — Dell reps called those earlier specs we’d heard “pretty much rumor and speculation” — but we’ll go out on a limb and say we wouldn’t expect anything less than an 8.9-inch screen and 1.6GHz Atom in there. Sorry if we killed the surprise, guys — but remember, you can still wow us with the price tag.
While the idea of Commodore showing off some early prototype devices isn’t exactly the sort of thing that’d normally get many folks’ hopes up, the never-say-die company looks to have managed to impress the doubters at IFA, where it had a number of intriguing-looking concepts on hand in addition to that soon-to-be-released netbook we saw yesterday. That includes two Pocket PC devices — one with a sliding QWERTY keypad and one that opts for a folding design (pictured above) — as well as a much slicker-looking netbook than the one that is actually going to be released, naturally (check it out after the break). Of course, specs for any of those are virtually non-existent, although there’s apparently some talk that the Pocket PCs could sell for between €100 and €150 (or roughly $220 to $290) whenever they’re actually released. Be sure to hit up the gallery below for plenty more shots courtesy of Engadget Spanish.
