Archive for June, 2009
So, the first time we watched this Macbreak video, we thought to ourselves, “now, this is downright silly” but the second time? Well… we probably won’t be investing $300 in a pro Red Rocks Micro shoulder mount for any iPhone 3GSs anytime soon, but the video does demonstrate what we all already knew: if you stabilize an even decent mobile phone cam, the results are better than if you don’t. Insane? Surely. Hit the second read link for the video.
[Via Wired]
Read - Video on the iPhone 3GS: How Far is Too Far?
Read - Video of iPhone 3GS with shoulder mount
Filed under: Cellphones
Video: iPhone 3GS gets professional shoulder mount, we giggle originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
June 24, 2009
iSupply has done an analysis of the iPhone 3GS and estimates that the bill of material and the assembly cost about $179 (iPhone 3GS 16GB). That doesn’t take into account other things like marketing, shipping and R&D.
The cost is very comparable to the iPhone 3G 8GB model that iSupply previously looked at , although one would believe that the component prices for that other model went down (a little) as well.
That’s the wonderful thing with electronics: it gets faster and better - or much cheaper, pressuring tech companies to go ever faster in a race against devaluation that ultimately benefit the end user. More details in the full post.
Permalink: iPhone 3GS Costs $179 To Build (iSuppli) from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
June 24, 2009
After yesterday’s joint Intel/Nokia announcement where not a lot was said, the web is now buzzing about a possible Nokia Netbook that would be manufactured by Taiwanese contract manufacturers Quanta and Compal.
The word on the street is that the Nokia-branded Netbook would arrive late this year, which basically means that they would be using current technology, namely Atom, although an Arm-powered version also in the works, apparently.
Now, the real question is: “what OS will power the devices?”. Most customers want Windows in a Netbook. Nokia and Intel both support several flavors of Linux, and so far, the open-source OS had a very limited success in that space. Most likely, Nokia would build such devices to partner with wireless carriers in some sort of bundled package. Nokia might also want to leverage its strong brand in developing countries with Netbooks.
Permalink: Nokia Netbook (Rumor) from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
June 24, 2009
In nine hours, Microsoft will officially announce Hohm, a web-based service that has been created to help people and utilities companies manage energy more efficiently. The official announcement will be made at the Edison Electric Institute utility industry conference, at 9am (PT) on Wednesday.
Hohm works by tracking one’s energy consumption and providing some optimization advices, based on the information that is provided by the user, or by sensors. Hohm will provide an estimation of the savings induced by a proposed change (use different light bulb, choose a different time to plug your electric car ) and will track the actual results after you follow the advice. Hohm will constantly refine its data to provide ever more pertinent advices. Microsoft’s approach is interesting in many ways and here are the highlights:
Permalink: Microsoft Hohm: Energy Conservation 2.0 from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
We’d already pretty much figured that HTC’s London event tomorrow would have something to do with Android — the invite for the shindig playfully teases us with a rose in the picture, after all, which is probably a reference to HTC’s Rosie UI that’s been circulating in leaked ROM form for a while now. Indeed, Pocket-lint points to a fellow journalist whose “colleague” has apparently played with the new hardware and gives it a “rave review,” so we’re excited to find out what it is exactly that HTC’s got brewing — and as we’ve said before, it certainly lines up nicely with T-Mobile UK’s promise of more G1 Touch details “soon.” At any rate, we’ll be on hand to find out what’s good as it happens, so stay tuned for all the HTC news that’s fit to print starting at 6:30AM ET, 11:30AM London time.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
HTC launching new Android phone in London tomorrow? We’ll be there! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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June 23, 2009
If you’re anything at all like us, you were just a tad disappointed by the color “options” of Apple’s newest foray into the world of mobile phones, the iPhone 3GS. After all, who wants to be limited to just black and white these days? Not us, that’s for sure — and ColorWare’s just announced a fix for all that. Pricing for these customs jobs runs $150 for the back of the handset, $20 a piece for the bezel frame and button, and $15 the SIM holder. They’ll also do up your earbuds for an additional $15. A small price to pay for beauty, no? Another shot of a different color combo after the break.
[Via SlashGear]
Continue reading ColorWare outs custom colors for the Apple iPhone 3GS
Filed under: Cellphones
ColorWare outs custom colors for the Apple iPhone 3GS originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Of all the AC adapters stuffed into your personal item when globetrotting, the plug used in Merry Old England must surely be the most cumbersome — its three copper prongs flung to the extremes of a giant block of plastic. That Victorian holdover gets a major re-do with this UK Folding Plug concept. The two horizontal prongs rotate themselves in-line with the top, vertical one, and the body of the adapter then folds in half, resulting in a thickness of about 1cm. Interestingly the plug would still work in either position, with a slimline power strip envisioned to accept three of these slender lovelies at once. It’s positively brilliant, but is just a concept at this point, and while we don’t have any news to pass along about its likelihood for production, surely some manufacturer will watch the video after the break and start churning these out by the millions.
[Via Pocket-lint]
Continue reading Video: UK Folding Plug concept could flatten that bulky British adapter
Filed under: Peripherals
Video: UK Folding Plug concept could flatten that bulky British adapter originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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June 23, 2009
If you have been worried by the reports saying that the 2009 Macbook Pro 2009 hard disk performance was capped to 1.5Gbps, we have some good news for you: a fix has been issued!
Just as we thought, this was a software issue and a fix in the EFI Firmware 1.7 is said to patch the problem and restore the SATA speed to its full 3.0Gbps theoretical speed. You can download the update at this Macbook Pro support page, but Apple warns that this is not a supported update.
Previous rumors suggesting that Apple had cut down on performance to cut prices were indeed totally bogus. The hardware does support full SATA II speeds.
Permalink: Macbook Pro 2009 SATA Fixed - Back To 3.0Gbps from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
We don’t know exactly how, but Belkin’s claiming its new Gigabit Powerline HD Starter Kit adapters can outpace the current 200Mbps standard speed of most other powerline devices (not all of them, mind you) by five fold. Of course, the caveat here is that the touted 1000Mbps is under ideal settings, and there’s no telling what other network traffic, interference, or problematic wiring could lower that figure — still, assuming all conditions are sound, we’re talking some hefty numbers for an HD streaming network run via your home’s electrical system. It’s available now in North America at a penny under $150 for a pair of adapters, with a European release in early August.
Filed under: Wireless, Networking
Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline Adapter ups the ante for electrical outlet networking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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June 22, 2009
A journalist from the Nikkei told me about this device last week: the idea is that someone find data storage media is not sufficiently reliable as they live for a few decades and might fail. We suppose that they are thinking about CDs and DVDs, or tapes.
Japanese researchers have set the goal of creating a data storage medium that would last 1000 years. For reach their objective, they are using chips to store the information and some sort of high-speed wireless transfer to move data around. The project is led by Prof. Kuroda, shown in this photo.
If this is a consumer product, it sounds a lot like some sort of fancy flash-memory. If it is a business product, we think that (serious) businesses don’t keep their data on CDs or Tapes (that could be a last-ditch backup), but on redundant hard drives arrays that would be regularly upgraded over the years. Finally, who’s going to have a proper reader in a thousand years? huh? What do you think?
Permalink: 1000-Years Memory Device In Japan from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing
