Toys & Gadgets

RIM has an interesting reputation in the trade show world: it rarely makes any announcements of interest or consequence during events, but if you look hard enough, you still might just find something juicy. Last year’s CES, for example, briefly saw a Curve 8900 mysteriously running AT&T-branded firmware, which we now know foretold a release several months later. This year’s shindig in Vegas proved to be a little less bombastic — or so we thought, anyway, until a dude cleaning out his camera’s memory card noticed that Case-Mate (of all companies) allegedly had an unannounced Curve 8910 chilling in its booth. It’s pretty common for manufacturers to give valued accessory partners some prototypes ahead of time to make sure there are plenty of add-ons available by the time a device is released, they just don’t usually… you know, put those prototypes out at a booth for everyone to enjoy. We actually stopped by Case-Mate this year and didn’t catch the 8910, but we don’t know how long it was actually out — and besides, telling the difference between this and a Bold 9700 takes a Mike Lazaridis-like understanding for the subtle differences in RIM’s industrial design. Next year, though, be on notice, guys: we’ll be scanning your kiosks with a fine-tooth comb.

Unannounced BlackBerry Curve 8910 took CES refuge at Case-Mate’s booth? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not sure why we’ve been putting this off, but we’ll just come right out and say it: there’s no doubt that this was the year for 3D at CES. We walked the show floor for countless hours and can tell you that just about everyone was showing something related to 3D at their booths. Most of these demos required a bit of a wait to experience them (thanks, hype), and everywhere you went people were talking about 3D. Granted, not all of that talk was positive, but it was talk nonetheless. Whether or not the technology will be seen in history as a success in the market place is obviously still up in the air, and much like a finely crafted episode of Lost, 3D at CES this year was littered with more questions than answers.

Continue reading 3D stole the show at CES 2010

3D stole the show at CES 2010 originally appeared on Engadget HD on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is soon enough to market that it’s hard to blame the iPod nano specifically for its appearance, but either way it seems that the Philips Cam is the newest member to the oh-so-small club of MP3 / camera combos. The new player is joined in its life of crime by the new Muse and Ariaz, which at last offer a higher-end aspect to Philips‘ long-lackluster PMP lineup. The Cam does up a 1.8-inch screen, 8GB of storage and a 2 megapixel camera for $100, but the Muse has a full 3.2-inches of touchscreen, 16GB of flash, SD expansion and HDMI out for a mere $50 more. The Ariaz finds a simpler calling, with a 2.4-inch LCD, HDMI, 8GB and an $80 tag. We’ll have to play with these to see if they’re worth taking home from Walmart, but we’re glad to see Philips is trying to stay in the game — we can’t all be lucky enough to be Zune HD owners.

Philips Cam, Muse and Ariaz mark a renaissance for the boring PMP originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re just cleaning out the rest of our memory cards from CES, and we totally forgot this moment of unintentional hilarity while grabbing a quick hands-on with Panasonic’s new point-and-shoot line — that’s the new touchscreen DMC-FP3, asking for the name of our baby. Sadly, we were not able to provide it with one, and it responded by continuing to have a somewhat wonky hybrid touchscreen-and-buttons control scheme. We’re assuming some of the lag we saw had to do with an early software build — we’ll see if things are cleared up when this guy ships, since we’re big fans of touch-to-focus. As for the rest, well, they’re Lumix point-and-shoots — they all seemed competent and sturdy, and we can’t wait for the day when Panasonic hires a design team to clean up that straight-from-1983 all-caps interface. Check out the rest in the gallery!

Panasonic 2010 point and shoot line hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We saw some incredibly cheap, ill-thought, Android-based videophones at CES this year, but this wasn’t one of them. The SoIP S1 from Inbrics is running Android, of course, but it’s under that same fine UI skin that Inbrics has coated its M1 Android slider in. The result is a finger-friendly device with nice software for making calls and sending messages — though it could really benefit from an external text-input device of some sort, and luckily there’s Bluetooth onboard to make that a possibility. There’s HDMI, Ethernet, USB and an SD slot around back, and the device is designed to sling video calls and media playback to a TV over the HDMI plug or DLNA (there’s also WiFi onboard, natch). For VoIP there’s a wireless handset embedded in the base of the unit. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see a demo of the video calling in action, and the big hangup with most of these video calling stations is still here: there’s no mention of the big standards in video calling like Skype, Google Talk or iChat, so it’s hard to see this catching fire with people who actually video chat. Still, at least Inbrics has roughly half of the software problem solved. Check out a video walkthrough after the break.

Continue reading Inbrics’ SoIP S1 tries to make videophone converts out of us yet

Inbrics’ SoIP S1 tries to make videophone converts out of us yet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve known since August that Toshiba was working to rule the roost when it came to voluminous and speedy SDXC storage, and at CES it took the time to beat its chest again, indicating that its new 64GB SDXC cards have started shipping in samples, putting them on a crash-course with card slots sometime this spring. The 64GB cards offer 60MB/s reads and 35MB/s writes, which should be enough to keep up with the Jonses, and the company’s upcoming 32 and 16GB SDHC should be dropping about the same time. Toshiba is claiming this is the world’s first 64GB model, but we’re only interested in retail releases, and Panasonic and its February-bound offering might have something to say about who gets there first. The race is on.

Toshiba demonstrates 64GB SDXC, pledges spring release originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember those elegant mantelpieces with OLED infusion launched at CES? Turns out they’re from a company called Nanobrick that dubs this product range Miyoul. Most of the 11 models sport multiple screens — either 3.3-inch or 4.1-inch — but such indulgence seems to be out of touch with current OLED prices, not to mention the cost of craftsmanship on top of that. Until the day we can afford a Miyoul in each room, just keep trying your lucky lottery numbers.

Nanobrick Miyoul OLED media frames are for your luxurious inner-self originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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We know, we know, it’s only $149! What could possibly be stopping us from entering the marvelous world of Android-powered netbooking? Well, maybe it’s the fact that it’s been tried before, and just didn’t make any sense. Maybe for someone who doesn’t have $50 more to get a “real” netbook, or $150 more to get a “great” netbook, it could make sense to be subjected to a 7-inch screen, 500MHz ARM Cortex A9 processor in the name of “lightweight” web surfing, but we’d like to imagine we have a little more self esteem than that. Oh shoot, we just accidentally bought four. Check out the Charbax-infused hands-on after the break.

Continue reading Hivision’s $149 Android-based netbook reminds us we’re not really shopping for a netbook right now

Hivision’s $149 Android-based netbook reminds us we’re not really shopping for a netbook right now originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh UMID mBook BZ, it’s not easy being the unwanted offspring of a netbook and a MID, is it? Well, it sure isn’t easy on us either. After spending a bit of time with the hand-sized device, we just don’t really see how anyone could use the small clamshell for more than a few minutes at a time. But hit the break for some hands-on impressions and a video of the $549 lilliputian laptop and decide for yourself.

Continue reading UMID mBook BZ two-fingers on

UMID mBook BZ two-fingers on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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