Archive for May, 2010.
So we’ve been hearing rumors about the Dell Streak being some kind of a rugged bad boy. Word is, the Gorilla Glass display on this 5-inch slate is good enough to withstand pretty much anything a human would care to throw its way. Them’s fighting words where we come from, so we did the only thing a responsible tech blog can do — we put them to the test. Should you be brave enough to follow us after the break, you’ll come upon our best efforts to destroy our own Streak prototype, albeit with little success. Then again, the end result might be less important than the journey there, which is not to be missed.
Continue reading Dell Streak’s Gorilla Glass screen: torture tested for your amusement (video)
Dell Streak’s Gorilla Glass screen: torture tested for your amusement (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 15:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Contrition is not something you normally see from Facebook. What are they going to do, say sorry for trying to squeeze a profit out of all that data everyone’s willfully throwing at them? Sure, they have their fun over at Facebook HQ. Everyone gets naptime, there’s a kegerator next to every computer, and most clothing is optional — that’s to promote openness. But running the site does take a fair amount of work and work costs money.
Pandigital’s already manage to at least pique our interest with its Android-based
Novel e-reader / handheld, and it looks like the device has now reached one more milestone on the road to availability — it’s just turned up at the FCC. As you can see, the particular device undergoing testing is black (not white as the final version will apparently be), and the FCC unfortunately doesn’t give us much of a look of that bright 7-inch LCD in the on position. It has, however, given us a glimpse of the device’s insides, subjected it to the usual battery of tests, and kindly provided us with the device’s user manual — though there’s not too many surprises in there at this point. Hit up the link below for all that and more.
Pandigital Novel e-reader / handheld hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 19:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you’ll allow us to do a little dot-connecting and hand-waving here, we think we may have just stumbled across a new version of Barnes and Noble’s Nook that drops the GSM connection and soldiers on with WiFi alone, matching up nicely with a rumor that spread across the webs not long ago. You see, the Nook’s FCC ID is BNRZ100, and this thing that we just found in the FCC’s filing system under Barnes and Noble’s name has an ID of BNRV100 — and the test reports are very explicit about the fact that this is for “EBOOK, WLAN, AND USB PORTS WITHOUT WWAN.” WWAN, of course, is a fancy way of referring to a cellular connection, so that’s that. If this thing can sell for, say, $100 less than the Nook’s $260 — a price that puts it out of reach of the average person’s impulse purchase limit — we could see some significant new uptake of the platform, we’d wager. No word on a release, but we’ll keep our ears to the ground.
WiFi-only Nook gets FCC approval? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 18:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While we’ve got no way to confirm at the moment, here’s some proverbial food for thought. A friendly reader last night published on our comment thread for the two rumored Verizon-bound Motorola devices with the above picture (subtitles added by us), claiming the bottom image is the Droid 2′s upgraded QWERTY keyboard. The story goes that his friend had one but no other information is currently available — the font on the keys is identical, and the mic icon on the bottom left is distinctively Android. If it’s legit, we gotta say we’re hopeful; the keys look to have a more protruding center à la the CLIQ, which should make typing on the little guy much easier than before. And if it’s not the Droid successor, well, it’s still something we haven’t seen. Could this be the updated QWERTY-fied Android solution we’ve been waiting for? Time will tell.
Update: Droid Life has what it claims to be a screencap from the Verizon inventory system showing the M1955, a.k.a. Droid 2, hanging out in Ontario, California. Easily fakeable? You betcha, but it’s not like the Droid name is going to any other carrier. Interesting food for thought.
[Thanks, mabbikeel and Tuan Tran]
Motorola Droid 2 found in Verizon system, keyboard makes an online cameo? (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 18:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Shots of some docs over on BGR have us believing that AT&T is on the cusp of launching a program called “MobileProtect,” but don’t be fooled by the fancy name — this is basically an Asurion-operated handset insurance plan just like any other, the only real difference being that it’s for the iPhone and offered directly by the carrier. Interestingly, it seems that you’ll buy the protection through the App Store of all things, automatically billing the credit card that you’ve got on file with Apple, but you’d better really want the protection because it’s going to run $13.99 a month. Oh, and you’ll have to pay a $99 deductible to fix an 8GB 3G, scaling up to $199 for a 32GB 3GS. To put that in perspective, that means it’ll cost you $367 to replace an insured 32GB 3GS after a year of coverage, at which point you’ll say “well, I’d rather have an iPhone 4 anyway” and shell out $200 with an upgrade pull-ahead. Yeah, call us jaded.
AT&T prepping MobileProtect insurance program for iPhone? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 17:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Don’t expect to ride it on solid ground — much less water — but what you see above is indeed a hoverboard that floats. Using electromagnets embedded in the podium and a laser system to measure its position, artist Nils Guadagnin has managed to keep a familiar-looking pink plank aloft, a full five years and five months before the real deal supposedly sees common use. Give the man a pair of kicks, a car and a flux capacitor, and he’ll be all set. Video after the break.
Continue reading Artist creates Back to the Future hoverboard — that actually hovers (video)
Artist creates Back to the Future hoverboard — that actually hovers (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 17:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The One Laptop Per Child project announced Friday that it has teamed up with semiconductor manufacturer Marvell to offer kids in developing nations a computer for under $100. This time, the project will offer Marvell’s Moby tablet computer. Previous attempts by the OLPC to provide children in developing nations sub-$100 computers hit various snags and holdups — will the OLPC be able to succeed this time? OLPC said its next-generation tablets will be based on Marvell’s Moby reference design.
Thanks to advances in computer-generated technology, the images simply jump out at you from the TV screen, as all good commercials should: massive sheets of orange fabric covering up the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and unfolding down the sides of buildings on the Las Vegas Strip, dropping from the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, being unfurled by shiny happy people all along an East Coast beach. The late British singer-songwriter Nick Drake’s “From the Morning” lulls you into accepting all this as just another day in the U.S.
One of the early predictions of a Verizon iPhone goes back to 2007, when ZDNet’s Russell Shaw predicted the iPhone would be on Verizon within a year. Since then, there have been countless other stories offering predictions or circulating rumors that inside sources had disclosed a Verizon iPhone would “definitely” be coming in the next week/month/year. All obviously have been proven to be false. When Steve Jobs delivers his WWDC keynote on June 7, one of the big questions people hope he will answer is what carriers in the U.S. will be getting the next-generation iPhone.
