Toys & Gadgets

Oh boy. Research firm OTR Global is making some waves today with a report claiming that Palm ordered all Pre and Pixi manufacturing to be halted, but apparently they didn’t look at a calendar — or, you know, call Palm. We just talked to Palm and here’s the real deal: Pre and Pixi orders were halted for the Chinese New Year on the 14th, and production will go back online at the end of the month. That’s the whole story — Palm also told us that production for Verizon was ramped up early in the year to cover the downtime, so there shouldn’t be any effect on availability. We’ll be getting an official statement soon, we’ll update as soon as we get it.

Update: Here’s the official word from Derick Mains, Palm’s director of corporate communications:

Palm regularly adjusts its product manufacturing levels to manage inventory. In anticipation of the Verizon Wireless launch and Chinese New Year, we increased production levels prior to February, and anticipate ramping production back up after the Chinese New Year ends.

Move along, nothing else to see here.

Debunk: Palm not halting Pre / Pixi production, just on hold for Chinese New Year originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no shortage of reasons why we should throw this render in the trash. First is the simple fact that it’s a render at all, and we all know how extraordinarily talented the world’s artistically-inclined phone fanboys and girls are. Second, we’re hearing that this is known as the N98, which runs counter to other rumors (and retail evidence in the X3 and X6) that Nokia is moving to a one-letter, one-digit naming convention across its smartphone range. Third, this looks like a straight-up cross between a Sidekick 2008 and a Sidekick LX 2009 (save the tilt-up display, of course). All that said, we can’t help but feel that a device exactly like this makes sense for Nokia’s high-end, multimedia-savvy Symbian range — a proper successor to the N97 that might clear up some complaints like the off-center spacebar.

Anyhow, rumor has it the so-called N98 features a 4-inch touchscreen (likely capacitive, considering the precedent set by the X6) with 32GB of internal storage and a launch date in time for holiday 2010 at around €450 ($617) — and we’re even seeing an HDMI logo silkscreened on the side, too. This actually mixes pretty closely with another recent rumor that says we can expect an N8 model this Summer with a 3.5-inch capacitive display, 12 megapixel sensor, and Symbian^3, so an alternate possibility is that we’re actually looking at that N8 here. Either way, if any of it is real, it could see a debut anywhere between MWC next week and Nokia World later in the year — but admittedly, our fake-o-meter’s reading pretty high on this one until we see an announcement. Nokia fans: is this what you’re looking for in a next-gen device?

Is this the Nokia N98, or the twisted brainchild of a Sidekick fanatic? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s already tipped its hand for the year Twenty Ten by publicly stating its intent to deliver a sleeker, more attractive, and faster Symbian UI; fewer nags; and at least one Maemo handset before the year is done. What we’ve been missing though, are the details. While we still don’t have the complete story, it is beginning to take shape according to alleged leaks received by Tom’s Guide. First up is a new naming convention, something already telegraphed by Nokia’s Xseries launch and Cseries trademark. According to the French language site, Nokia will end the use of monikers like XpressMusic or Classic as it simplifies around the following five ranges:

• C: voice-centric handsets.
• X: targeting youth, entertainment.
• E: business focused.
• N: high-end.
• S: limited editions.

Tom’s Guide claims to be privy to 14 new models, a few of which it spilled the beans on today. Click through for the gossip.

Continue reading Nokia N8-00: first Symbian^3 handset with 12 megapixel camera, 720p video, and HDMI leaked in summer roadmap?

Nokia N8-00: first Symbian^3 handset with 12 megapixel camera, 720p video, and HDMI leaked in summer roadmap? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A quick glance at that render we’d obtained of the rumored MOTOSPLIT had us thinking we were seeing a large, Sholes-style phone with a musclebound OMAP3 core, but hold up — maybe this is a lower-end (and stranger) phone than we’d originally thought. Android Community has gotten tipped with additional details and another supposed render of the handset, and the most notable tidbit here seems to be that the phone is said to use dynamic key labels (a la Samsung Alias 2) to let the user pull out a single side as a numeric keypad or both sides (hence the “SPLIT” in the name) for full QWERTY action. In the QWERTY configuration, there’s apparently a kickstand around back that would help you set the phone on a desk and type with all the ease of the world’s smallest netbook cocked at an awkward 45-degree angle.

The wisdom and usability of this kind of setup remains a huge question mark, but the bigger question mark might be inside the phone itself: we’re hearing here that the MOTOSPLIT would use the same core as the Backflip, an old-school Qualcomm MSM7201A. Frankly that seems unlikely at best — virtually every Qualcomm-powered midrange smartphone to be introduced in 2010 from here on out will be using an MSM7227 or 7627 (including Moto’s own Devour), so we’re going to cautiously assume this particular piece of the intel is incorrect. Please let it be incorrect, Motorola, we beg of you.

Motorola MOTOSPLIT to have dynamic key labels, lame processor? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For your viewing pleasure, we present the latest Apple rumor doing the rounds this Saturday afternoon — namely, GeekBench results for a “new” Core i7 MacBook Pro. According to the results, what you’re looking at above are the numbers for the MacBook Pro 6,1, sporting a nastified Intel Core i7 (dual core, not quad) 620M (Arrandale) percolating along at 2.66GHz. Other curious points here are the 4.8GHz FSB, which sounds a little screwy to us, and a final GeekBench score of 5260, which makes current MBPs clocked at the same speed look like your grandfather with a walker (those ranges hover around 3700-4000 on average). The laptop in question is also allegedly running a fresh version of Snow Leopard (build 10C3067 of 10.6.2), which certainly makes sense if someone is out there benching a new Apple product, though it’s not a number we can verify. Still, if you were using a new Apple product, would you be dumb enough to publicly share this info? Probably not, which of course raises the question that this might just be a hackintosh or some other clever spoof (even if we did see a suggestion of new MBPs on the way recently). In the meantime, you can dream of having your pants burnt off by the above monster, and we’ll let you know if this thing starts looking a little more real.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Is a Core i7-based MacBook Pro strutting its specs in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For a platform billing itself as the business user’s best friend, BlackBerry’s list of unsupported protocols that have achieved ubiquity is actually astonishing: you can’t do two-way read status sync with an IMAP email account, for example, and amazingly, you can’t natively connect to an Exchange ActiveSync service without being routed through RIM’s back-end software. In a shocking move that’s straight out of 2002, it seems at least one of those niggles is going to get patched up soon thanks to a leaked list of email features in BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0, the software carriers deploy to marshal all data connectivity on the handsets they’ve deployed to customers. Yes, that’s right: you’ll be able to synchronize read status and sent items with your Gmail account, just as if you were using virtually any other phone produced in the last several years! It’s hard to fathom that it’s taken this long, but hey, we’ll take it — unfortunately, it’s up to each carrier to decide when they’re going to deploy BIS upgrades, so your mileage may vary on the wait time. Of course, RIM could just add IMAP support directly to its phones so that this whiz-bang tech would work with any third-party email service and wouldn’t have to go through BIS in the process, but that would be crazy talk, right?

[Thanks, Jeff]

RIM’s BIS 3.0 email features apparently leaked, finally does Gmail justice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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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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There’s not much to go on here, but according to alleged sources of Gamervision, Sony’s planning a relaunch of sorts for the PSP Go. The oft-maligned portable hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm — and with its lack of an UMD drive, despite the company’s continued support of the format, that arguably wasn’t the point of its existence, anyway. An apparent marketing blitz is in the cards (unsurprising), and additionally there’s speculation that a price drop might be coming, too. That seems a bit early given it only launched back in October, but if the company’s really wanting to get aggressive and pushing units of its admittedly pretty hardware, that’s a pretty good way to do so. Then again, its hands might be full adding some vigor to its other gaming machine.

PSP Go ‘relaunch’ in the works? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s not much to go on here, but according to alleged sources of Gamervision, Sony’s planning a relaunch of sorts for the PSP Go. The oft-maligned portable hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm — and with its lack of an UMD drive, despite the company’s continued support of the format, that arguably wasn’t the point of its existence, anyway. An apparent marketing blitz is in the cards (unsurprising), and additionally there’s speculation that a price drop might be coming, too. That seems a bit early given it only launched back in October, but if the company’s really wanting to get aggressive and pushing units of its admittedly pretty hardware, that’s a pretty good way to do so. Then again, its hands might be full adding some vigor to its other gaming machine.

PSP Go ‘relaunch’ in the works? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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