Posts for 'Handhelds' Category

Mobile phones
I'm growing as loyal to the LG brand these days as I was to Sony's for much of the past 20 years. All of LG's fridges, air conditioners, and other appliances bear the company's cool signature curves and finishes, and smart features.

My wife, Lisa, was tickled to discover a light inside our new LG gas dryer that flicked on when she opened the door. It's a simple, low-tech Easter egg, but one that might help solve the lost-sock mysteries around our house.

This is what I call the LG touch: Each of the Korean powerhouse's products has at least one great feature, which demonstrates that a designer was thinking about you when he crafted the device.

The LG Decoy (available through Verizon Wireless) is no exception. The music phone comes with its own delightful add-on: a slot on the phone that holds its own detachable Bluetooth headset. Now your phone and headset can be in the same place - saving you from scrambling for two gadgets in your pocketbook. This also reduces the need for you to walk around like a tool, with that headset permanently planted in your ear.

The Decoy is a meaty, four-ounce slider with a mirrored, metallic finish and 2.2-inch display. The face has a joystick surrounded by backlit arrows and four backlit control buttons. The phone has a black keypad with backlit keys.

You can manage much of your Verizon Wireless V Cast media without sliding the Decoy open: The joystick (which is a might too touchy) will get you to your libraries, and the V Cast streams quickly enough. The Decoy also has a 2-megapixel camera and a memory card slot.

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Apple, maker of the iPod media player, said yesterday that it would start selling movies through its iTunes online store the same day they are released on DVD.

New releases from studios, including Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., will cost $14.99, Apple said in a statement. Previously, customers had to wait several weeks after the DVDs debuted. The service will start with such movies as "American Gangster" and "Juno" this week.

Chief executive Steve Jobs is counting on movies to increase sales of iPods, Macintosh computers and Apple TV devices, which let users watch downloaded films on their widescreen televisions. In January, Jobs said customers had bought 7 million movies, which was below his expectations. Apple began selling movies and television shows on iTunes in October 2005.

"People want to watch a movie as soon as it comes out, and they don't want to have to wait," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch in New York. "What Apple is doing is knocking down one more barrier for why you wouldn't want to buy a movie from them."

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Canon on Monday announced a new mobile printer, the PIXMA iP100, which will replace the iP90v. Lightweight and compact at 4.4 pounds and 7.3 by 12.7 by 2.4 inches (HWD), the iP100 can fit into a carry-on bag or on a desk with limited space. It offers several improvements over its predecessor, such as increased color resolution (to a maximum 9,600 by 2,400 dpi; Canon claims that the iP100 is the first-ever mobile printer to have a minimum 1-picoliter droplet size) and increased print speed.

The iP100 uses two black inks one is a pigment-based ink for printing text and another for printing photos. The overall size of the pigment black ink tank has been increased by 50 percent. It can print color and monochrome business documents, charts, and graphs, as well as photo prints. It produces borderless prints in 4-by-6, 4-by-8, 5-by-7, 8-by-10, and letter sizes. Canon claims print speeds at up to 20 pages per minute (ppm) for black and up to 14 ppm for color.

When printing from a laptop, the Auto Image Fix function automatically analyzes and categorizes the scenes in photographs and optimizes print output for each individual scene in accordance with the scene type, such as Portrait, Scenery, and Snapshot. The PictBridge port allows for printing from a compatible digital camera or digital camcorder without the need for a computer.

Canon offers several accessories for the iP100. Consumers have the option to print wirelessly from the built-in IrDA port or from select Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones and computers via the optional, user-installable Bluetooth Unit BU-30 (estimated list $49.99). Canon will offer an optional LK-62 Lithium-Ion battery, along with the battery housing that connects to the printer, for $99.99. According to the company, the battery has an approximate 290-page life per 3-hour charge. For users who frequently work from their car, the Automobile Power Unit ($99.99), which lets them power up their iP100 directly through a vehicle power socket.

The PIXMA iP100 Mobile Printer will sell at an estimated price of $249.99, and it should start shipping in late April. 

It's been a tough day at the office - your boss has chewed you a new one because you were late to an all important meeting; your secretary has quit because you forgot it was her birthday and your wife has been on the phone all day threatening to leave you if you don't take her on a romantic weekend getaway to reignite the passion.

On top of that, the news reports are saying that the world will end in the next 20 years if we don't become greener. And while you do contemplate rolling around in a pile of radioactive goo to hulk up and take care of all your problems smashing-style, you instead opt for one of these little gadgets to do your part for the environment.

The HyMini is a handheld universal charger / adapter that can harness the power of the sun and wind to charge your gadgets. Simply attach it to the outside of your car, then drive between 14kph and 65kph (any faster and it won't make a difference, any slower and it won't do anything), and you've got yourself instant renewable energy.

Adapters are available for pretty much any type of phone or camera, and it also plugs into the mains power for when you just can't get enough wind or sun juice.

MOBILE phone and computer time settings have been thrown into chaos by the extension of daylight saving in the east – and the confusion is set to continue with the country now divided into four time zones.

Phones, computer programs and even Telstra's speaking clock service reverted to standard time a week too early in some eastern states yesterday, after the end of daylight savings was extended to 3am on April 6.

But someone didn't tell the phones, some of which had a mind of their own.

Telstra spokesman Peter Taylor said new-generation mobile phones and BlackBerry handsets were affected most because they had software that could override their systems.

"Technology and time went haywire at 2am yesterday, so many people slept in... Thankfully, it was a Sunday," Mr Taylor said.

Some computers and electronic clocks also switched back to standard time too early, and some companies have issued software updates for Microsoft Outlook to correct premature changes to its meeting calendar service.

Western Australia reverted to standard time yesterday, while NSW, the ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are still in daylight saving time.

Queensland, which has refused to adopt daylight saving, is an hour behind the other eastern states and the Northern Territory is an hour and a half behind.

In the US last year a similar change in daylight saving schedules meant hundreds of millions were spent on adjusting computer systems.

Although the east coast may be affected, the problem shouldn't affect Western Australia, which is in the middle of a three-year trial of daylight saving, because its systems are already in place.

Premier Alan Carpenter has conceded, while personally not a fan of daylight saving, that it does benefits the state, particularly the business sector.

WA has rejected daylight saving at several referendums and the three-year trial is an attempt to end the debate. 

Nokia’s close scrutiny by the European Commission continues, as the company’s pending acquisition of NAVTEQ comes under further review in Phase II of the pre-purchase inquiry.  Nokia is keen to point out that the review process does not necessarily suggest that the Commission will oppose the buy-out, which has otherwise received all other necessary regulatory approvals.

The Commission now has 90 working days to make a final decision on the transaction.  However, the review period may be extended to 125 working days under certain circumstances.  The completion of the acquisition is subject to the receipt of European regulatory approval.

Samsung's Anycall Haptic looks like a thinner version of Apple's iPhone, but adds a new dimension to the touch interface.

The phone, launched in South Korea on Tuesday, has a large touch-screen display that also provides haptic feedback, information transmitted via the sense of touch, when using certain functions on the device. It means, for example, that when the volume of the radio is changed, the phone simulates both the sound and feel of the "clicks" on an old-style volume knob on a real radio, said Samsung.

There are 22 kinds of vibration in total built into the phone.

The Anycall Haptic (model numbers SCH-W420 and SPH-W4200) phone has a 3.2-inch widescreen display, a 2-megapixel digital camera, full Internet browser, Bluetooth 2.0 and terrestrial digital TV reception.

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To meet the growing storage needs of laptop users, Samsung Electronics on Tuesday introduced a 500GB hard drive that could provide a notebook PC with as much as 1TB of storage.

The Spinpoint M6, a 2.5-inch hard drive, fits into the chassis of commercial and multimedia notebooks, said Andy Higginbotham, director of hard drive sales at Samsung Semiconductor. Two drives can be combined for 1TB of storage, he said.

The company was able to fit three 167GB platters in a small frame to achieve 500GB of storage in one drive, Higginbotham said. The hard drive spins at 5,400 RPM.

Priced at $299, the hard drive will ship to PC makers and retail stores later this month. A company spokeswoman declined to comment on which PC makers will be using the drive.

This is not the first attempt to put 1TB of storage in a laptop. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Asus announced the M70S laptop, which combined two 500GB drives from Hitachi.

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It's not that early since the new Zune launches tomorrow, but if you can't wait to see it, you don't have to. Jason Dunn offers up two brief videos showing both the hardware and software UI of the newest Zune on his 8 GB flash model. Part one is here and part two is here.I like the new dual-mode hardware button: you can press it like a directional pad or you can simply slide your finger across it for navigation. Anyone buying a new Zune or do you consider this just a feeble attempt to wrest away market share from the iPod juggernaut? Before you decide, you might want to get a look at how well the Wireless Sync feature works; Jason has video of that too! While it seems to work well, I agree with Jason: it would be nice to see a wireless sync progress meter on the Zune rather than on the host PC. Maybe something we'll see in the next firmware upgrade?

What a change for the once-mighty NES controller, where it used to control Mario and Samus who saved their respective worlds, all the controller does now is control the cursor on your computer display (not to mention accelerating your path towards RSI due to its obviously unergonomic nature). This DIY project replaces the innards of a NES controller with that of an optical mouse, so you’ll have to invest a fair bit and have a decent amount of technical know-how before embarking upon this project. Definitely one of the fanboys.