February 8, 2010
If you’ve been keeping up with the Nexus One news, you’ll most certainly have read about Google’s Equipment Recovery Fee, which is essentially an ETF (early termination fee) imposed by Google if you get out of your contract early, on top of T-Mobile’s ETF. When it was reported and brought to light a while back most people didn’t like it, and fortunately, it seems that Google has decided to look into the issue. The Equipment Recovery Fee is still there, but it’s been reduced from $350 to $150. Folks will probably still complain about it, but at least there is a $200 reduction now, right? If the ETF was something that was deterring you from picking up a Nexus One, does this latest update change you mind about it? If you need more information on the Nexus One’s features, check out our review on it.
Permalink: Nexus One Equipment Recovery Fee Reduced To $150 from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review
February 8, 2010
Funny that this special red edition of the TomTom Ease is actually beating the regular version to market, but hey, it’s Valentine’s Day. Nothing new here apart from the case color — you’re still looking at a 3.5-inch QVGA display, 2GB of internal memory preloaded with Tele-Atlas maps, Map Share / IQ Routes, an integrated battery, and a built-in Fold & Go mount. Amazon has the limited-edition red exclusively for $119 now, if you’re ready to commit — or you can wait and just be friends with the boring gray model, which should be out any day now.
TomTom Ease arrives in limited edition red for Valentine’s Day originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
February 8, 2010
Think you’ve got a smartphone? Think again. This Fujitsu PRIME F-01B handset comes with…wait for it…
3.4 inch touchscreen12.2 megapixel camera (with [...]
119 words |
Christmas isn’t coming early, but at least you’re getting a heads up. GM car dealers got their annual model guide, and what has our interests piqued here is the listing for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the plug-in hybrid electric car that seems to make our heart race in equal proportions to our wallets crying. According to the chart, the company will be accepting orders starting in September, with the official production date (or “Job 1 date” in automotive lingo) starting November 1st. There’s a bit of a discrepancy, however, as the dealers won’t know their final allocation until two weeks after the startup time — notice how it’s typically done weeks before with the other models — but hey, maybe time paradoxes is just another bullet point on its list of features. It’s about time Doc’s DeLorean had some competition.
2011 Chevy Volt pinned with a November 1st official production kickoff date? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
February 7, 2010
This might be the best entry yet in Google’s Nexus One video series. Today’s double feature is marked by the testing and manufacturing of the device, and while the all-white facilities and assembly lines can be interesting in their own right, we love nothing more than seeing just how Google and HTC stress test its labor of love. Watch it dropped, slammed, bent, poked, and detonated — okay, maybe not detonated, and we unfortunately don’t get to see any phones crack, but it’s still good fun. The big game’s not on yet, so give yourself a few minutes and hit up the two short videos after the break.
Continue reading Watch Nexus One get built, then beaten mercilessly
Watch Nexus One get built, then beaten mercilessly originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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February 7, 2010
Hey, now, this is some great news, right? The trouble-plagued Large Hadron Collider looks to be doing a bang up job in some of its primary tasks. After breaking the energy record previously held by the Tevatron particle accelerator back at the end of November, 2009, reports are now coming in that the LHC is, in fact, producing some extremely high energy collisions. A research team led by MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary have released a report detailing findings that the collisions are producing an “unexpectedly” high number of particles called mesons, subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark. The research is considered one of the first steps in the search for rarer particles, and the elusive, theoretical Higgs Boson. The paper, published in the Journal of High Energy Physics has led scientists to fine-tuning their predictive models for how many mesons will be found in even higher energy collisions. Hit the read link for the full, high energy news.
Report: Large Hadron Collider producing tons of awesome collisions originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you ask us, our theory is that the Daleks are rather huggable by nature, but they probably partied a tad too hard with these beer-toting fellas before trashing the world. One such “Heineken Bot” — crafted by the geniuses at Middlesex University — turned up at Kinetica Art Fair in London. Daring humans can stop this drifting bot by hovering their hands above its sonar-sensing head, and then place a cup in its holder for some bevvy spat out of its keg. When you’re served, the lonewolf continues to wander along its pre-programmed path, probably waiting for the assassination signal from Skynet. See for yourself after the break while you’re still alive.
Continue reading Heineken Bot does what it says on the keg, soon to be man’s new best friend
Heineken Bot does what it says on the keg, soon to be man’s new best friend originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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February 6, 2010
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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February 6, 2010
We’ve seen some pretty wacky hard drive clocks in the past, and here’s one that will probably look quite comfortable on your desk. Done by the folks over at TEcoART, it’s made from a recycled hard disk, and the clock dial is an actual mirror-finished disk platter. The base of this clock is made from the circuit board from a computer’s modem boosting its geeky credentials ever so slightly. Each of these clocks will come with a signed and numbered certificate of authenticity. At $36, it makes for a rather nice novelty item, perfect for the computer loving nephew of yours. Of course, if you’re really into DIY, you could always come up with one of these yourself, which should certainly look interesting.
Permalink: Recycled Hard Drive Clock from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review
February 6, 2010
While we all continue to twiddle our thumbs in anticipation of the X10’s general availability, Dutch site Tweakers took some time out with Sony Ericsson’s Jacob Sten to get a few pressing questions from the community answered. It’s quite a test — Sten fielded over 80 questions in all — and there were a few big takeaways that should be of interest to anyone who’s got even glancing interest in putting this thing in their pocket in the next few months. First off, it’s still scheduled to launch with Android 1.6 Donut, but his words along with a post over on SE’s official Product Blog give us hope that we’ll be seeing 2.0, 2.1, or something even fresher down the road (to quote the post’s headline, the phone “will be upgradeable”). 1.6 doesn’t support multitouch in the framework, and indeed, Sten confirms that the X10 will be a unitouch device, though it’s not clear whether that could change with a newer firmware or if there’s a hardware issue involved. As for pricing, we can expect this to launch for €599 (about $817) — in Holland, anyhow, where it’s on track to hit shelves before the end of the quarter. The subsidized pricing should hopefully be a tad less heart-stopping.
[Thanks, Len B. and Moody]
Sony Ericsson answers your nagging X10 questions, ‘newer version’ of Android will come originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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