Archive for July, 2010.
Apple’s Friday press conference may have left a bad taste in some rival handset manufacturer’s mouths, but not all of them are taking Cupertino’s derision of their devices seriously — HTC’s Droid Eris was arguably the most effected by the grip of doom, its bars dropping to zilch when held, but the Taiwanese company keeping any controversial opinions to itself for now. Instead, it’s sharing a simple percentage to help clear the air. Whereas Apple claimed over 0.55 percent of customers called AppleCare with reception-related complaints, HTC’s Eric Lin told Pocket-lint the Droid Eris technical support rate was 0.016 percent, nearly thirty-four times lower — though even with a seven-month head start, we have to wonder if the Eris sold close to three million by the time Verizon brought the axe down.
HTC fires back at Apple antenna demo with percentage pew-pew originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This certainly is an interesting time for solar powered flight.
Solar Impulse just returned from a 26-hour manned test flight, and now QinetiQ’s Zephyr, a drone who we last saw clocking
over 83 hours in-flight is in the air again: this time, it’s more like seven
days and counting! The craft, which took off from the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona last Friday, is being billed as an “eternal aircraft,” one that can stay aloft for extremely long periods of time for use as recon and communications platforms. The previous world endurance record for a UAV was set by NASA’s
Global Hawk, which stayed aloft for 30 hours and 24 minutes.
Continue reading Zephyr solar UAV sets yet another flight record: 7 days and counting!
Zephyr solar UAV sets yet another flight record: 7 days and counting! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Lithium-ion battery technology keeps improving by (theoretical) leaps and bounds, but what good’s that to you when you’re faced with a dead TV remote? Brother Industries has a plan, and it doesn’t involve ink for once — the Japanese printer company’s developed a set of prototype batteries you simply shake to charge. AA and AAA models are already in the works, though you shouldn’t expect to slot them into cameras or R/C cars, as the miniature electromagnetic induction generators inside are designed for infrequently used gadgets and provide as little as 10mW (or as much as 180mW) when shook. Of course, when it comes to TV remotes there’s an even lazier way for couch potatoes to squeeze the juice, but we have to imagine standard-sized cells have a slightly better chance at market.
Brother shakes up expectations with vibration-charged low-power batteries originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Everything you know about
awkwardly attaching SLR lenses to iPhones is wrong. This is how you do it. What started out as a quick and less-than-perfect mod of
OWLE’s Bubo iPhone mount by one Jeremy Salvador (pictured above) has turned into a collaboration between production company Vid-Atlantic and OWLE itself on a more finely tuned, iPhone 4-friendly prototype that delivers some truly impressive results. Sadly, the actual iPhone 4 version of the rig won’t be available for a while yet, but you can get an idea of what will be possible with it after the break.
Continue reading iPhone DSLR: the next generation (video)
iPhone DSLR: the next generation (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Verizon has yet to publish a list of the launch devices customers in its first commercial LTE markets will be enjoying later this year, but if we had to guess, this sucker is a strong possibility. What you’re looking at here is LG’s VL600, a USB modem that’ll do both LTE and CDMA in the same package — in other words, it’ll have you covered on Verizon for laptop data pretty much anywhere you go within the carrier’s entire footprint. Judging from the size of the USB connector relative to the rest of the device’s body, this might not be ridiculously large, either; typically, first-gen products like this are bordering on hilariously huge, but LG and others have had a really long time to ramp up to commercialization of their LTE products, so we’re cautiously optimistic for once.
LG VL600 hybrid LTE / CDMA modem for Verizon clears FCC hurdle originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 15:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What do you call the iPhone 4 antenna … thing? A disaster? A non-issue? Is it a tiny problem blown way out of proportion, or an embarrassing blunder from a company that’s supposed to be known for genius engineering? Ever since users discovered that they could kill an uncased iPhone 4′s signal simply by holding it a certain way, the company has faced its worst PR disaster in quite a long time. Critics said it was a blot on the brand that made it seem Cupertino was dead asleep at the wheel when it came time for field testing.
At a hastily called press conference on Friday, Apple chairman and CEO Steve Jobs offered free cases to all iPhone 4 users to make amends for widespread complaints about the design of the smartphone’s antenna, which causes it to lose signal strength when the phone is held a certain way without a case. Users who have already bought Apple’s cases, called “Bumpers,” will get the $30 price refunded. Jobs also said that iPhone 4 owners who are still unhappy with the device can exchange them for full refunds.
How’s this for tying together Old Spice’s winning social media strategy and Apple’s current iPhone problems: While the cologne and deodorant company is ending the week smelling like a rose, Steve Jobs’ tech colossus is in danger of stinking up the joint. Follow along with me as I attempt to marry the two top tech stories of the past few days. Both involve the Internet, media relations/marketing strategies, and consumers drunk with the newfound power that social media/Web video imparts upon them.
Apple has approved Firefox Home, a free app from the Mozilla Foundation for mobile devices running the iPhone operating system such as the iPhone and iPad. Firefox Home lets users sync and view bookmarks and open tabs and browser history between the iOS device and a desktop or notebook computer. It’s not a Mozilla-made browser, but rather an add-on to Apple’s own Safari browser. The Firefox Home app gives users access on their iPhones to their Firefox desktop histories, bookmarks and open tabs, the Mozilla Foundation said.
Apple released operating system updates for both the iPhone and the iPad on Thursday, on the eve of its emergency press conference about the iPhone’s antenna debacle. The iPad 3.2.1 update addresses, among other issues, a problem with WiFi connectivity that surfaced in May. The iPhone update — to iOS 4.0.1 — is targeted directly at the snarled reception problems and how signal strength is displayed. Apple likely will have specific comments to make on the hardware portion of that dilemma at its Friday press event.
