It’s been a great week for skinflints. Not only has the 8GB iPhone come down in price by £100 (prompting the web to go ablaze with rumours of an imminent 3G version), but students’ supermarket of choice Tesco has also announced a new download service, called Tesco Digital. And it promises ‘competitive’ pricing when it launches in May. Judging from how it’s priced out local shops from the kind of villages that look like they’re made of shortbread, we reckon it’ll be cheaper than iTunes.
Is there a new Nintendo DS incoming? A Japanese gaming mogul seems to think so. And who are we doubt him? Touted for announceage at trade show E3 in July, the DS Extreme is said to do away with the GBA port, being even slimmer and lighter than the DS Lite, and feature a new design. As long as it’s got new versions of Brain Training, we’ll be happy.
It’s also been a big week for wireless. The Nokia 6212 has gained Near Field Communications (NFC), along with a new Parrot speaker, the Party Black Edition. Instead of searching for paired devices like with Bluetooth, you just tap each to sync them wirelessly. Sweet.
Would you buy trainers from a vending machine? Well it’s nice to have the option. Onitsuka Tiger’s trainer vending machine made an appearance in London’s Carnaby Street this week, and will soon be touring the country. One of our chums went down to try it out, only to find you needed a voucher from the Onitsuka Tiger store to be able to use it. Look like our dream of buying kicks at 4am will remain just that.
So you reckon you’re a big man with your iPod Classic and its 160GB hard drive, huh? Well check this punk: Irn-Bru swilling researchers at Glasgow University reckon you’ll soon be able to fit 300 million tracks on one. That’s probably more than you could listen to in your lifetime, which makes us want it even more.
In other news, 3D gaming is here, O2 now does mobile broadband, Tag Heuer has admitted it’s making a phone, and self-destructing DVDs are go.
For more on the week’s news, complete with comments and jokes, check out the T3 Podcast or subscribe through iTunes.
Filed under: Cellphones
Samsung’s been getting pretty creative with cell cameras lately — the Instinct lets you pan around web pages by tracking movement with the camera, for example — but the company’s latest patent application, for a gesture-based phone interface, might be a little less practical. The idea is to use the phone’s camera to track your hand movements, which, from the drawings, should have you looking insane on the subway in no time. Of course, we’ve all been guilty of waving at and even talking to our devices when they’re acting up, so maybe a little feedback wouldn’t be a bad thing — there’s one gesture we’d definitely like to see programmed in there.
[Via Textually.org]
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Filed under: Cellphones
AT&T has announced plans to cut 1.5 percent of its workforce of 309,000. Sad times ahead for the company? Not quite. Apparently the 4600 jobs will be harvested from managerial spots in its flagging wired home phone business, so no worries, wireless types. Now here’s where it gets interesting: word has it that AT&T also expects to hire back that same number of employees into the fold — the wireless fold, that is — keeping the total headcount nice and steady. We’d wager that we’ll see more cuts like this in the coming months and years, so if you were pondering that job as a switchboard operator, time to retrain. So yeah, turns out it’s business as usual for the number one carrier after all — unless you happen to be in the 4600-strong group of obsoleted folks, that is.
[Via mocoNews]
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Filed under: Cellphones
That Air France in-flight calling trial is now well underway, and it looks like there’s still some kinks left to iron out. The New York Times hitched a ride on a recent flight featuring tests of the system, and found that things weren’t quite working up to snuff: voice quality was said to be like “talking to a small robot,” only six passengers could get a signal at a time, Blackberry email didn’t work, and calls placed from the ground to cell phones in the air went straight to voicemail. That’s a pretty long list for a system that’s been talked about for a couple years now — let’s hope OnAir manages to clear up some of these glitches before angry passengers revolt over not only having to listen to other people’s conversations, but also their screaming over bad connections.
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Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds
Alright, so we know there aren’t hordes of you out there currently possessing one of GamePark’s GP2X F-200 handhelds, but we have absolutely no doubts that the owners that do exist are mighty vocal about their diminutive emulation powerhouse. When the unit was reviewed recently over at Ars Technica, critics found an awful lot to love, but it’s not like the admittedly hefty, battery-eating, mildly unsightly unit was flawless or anything. Sure, we know the hardcore emulation geeks out there are likely turning their attention to the forthcoming Pandora, but that’s not to say the F-200 can’t handle a good talking-to from its loyal followers. Go on, put away that unconditional adoration for just a moment and tell the world how this thing actually could be improved upon — we’re sure there’s something that grinds the gears.
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Filed under: Cellphones
We’ve seen quite a few prototype fuel-cell powered mobile devices, but Samsung’s upping the ante by predicting that we’ll all be running our phones on water by 2010. The company says it’s developed a method to generate hydrogen by exposing water to metal, but the details are a little shaky — we’re guessing it’s similar to the system used in the HydroPak generator, but it’s hard to tell. Still, we’ve got no reason to doubt Samsung’s engineers, who say the system currently provides about 10 hours of use, or about five days of average cell usage, and will eventually allow users to simply top off and go. That’s every traveler’s dream — let’s get this to market, Sammy.
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Filed under: Handhelds
BenQ has been showing off its
first stab at an
MID since the Intel Developer Forum
last fall, but it hasn’t exactly been all that forthcoming about the full specs of the device. That situation seems to have changed at the more recent IDF in Shanghai, however, although those details seem to just now be making their way across the Internet. As we knew before, the device will pack an Intel Atom processor (the
base 800MHz model), which will apparently be backed up by 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD hard drive, and HSPDA support in addition to some integrated WiFi and Bluetooth. The device will also apparently pack a so-called “G-Senser” for “direct touch and free movement to surf on internet,” along with voice activation, and optional GPS. Still no word on the all important pricing or release details, unfortunately, although we hope BenQ will save itself some embarrassment but getting the thing out the door before the
next Intel Developer Forum.
[Via Slash Gear]
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Filed under: Desktops
If your interest in processor speeds doesn’t extend much beyond “is it fast?” then these juicy tidbits likely aren’t for you. That said, AMD is certainly getting excited about its upcoming Barcelona sucessor: the 45nm Shanghai. The main points of interest out of the gate are HyperTransport 3.0, which was nixed late in the game on Barcelona, and six cores, which are meant to pit the chip up against Intel’s upcoming six-core Dunnington chip. Where things get really exciting is a few months after Shanghai’s late 2008 debut, when AMD plans do release a twin-die version, with 12 cores of happiness connected by HyperTransport 3.0. What does all that mean? Beats us, but we hope it’s fast.
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Filed under: Desktops
If your interest in processor speeds doesn’t extend much beyond “is it fast?” then these juicy tidbits likely aren’t for you. That said, AMD is certainly getting excited about its upcoming Barcelona sucessor: the 45nm Shanghai. The main points of interest out of the gate are HyperTransport 3.0, which was nixed late in the game on Barcelona, and six cores, which are meant to pit the chip up against Intel’s upcoming six-core Dunnington chip. Where things get really exciting is a few months after Shanghai’s late 2008 debut, when AMD plans do release a twin-die version, with 12 cores of happiness connected by HyperTransport 3.0. What does all that mean? Beats us, but we hope it’s fast.
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Filed under: Gaming, Laptops
It’s time to pull out your pocketbooks because the charity auction you’ve been waiting for is going down right now. Up for grabs: the absurdly rare, one of a kind, hand-made PS3 Laptop, built by Ben Heckendorn for Engadget. 100% of the proceeds of this auction will go to National Cancer Coalition, most or all of which should be tax-deductible by the winner. And to sweeten the deal that much more, we’ll even pay shipping, and have Ben Heck himself autograph the thing (if you want). The rules are below, read them carefully.
- Place your bids in the comments of this post; bids should be placed in US dollars. There is no reserve price.
- Real bids only people, this is for charity!
- Let us repeat that: only leave a bid if you’re prepared to pony up that amount of money. Especially because we might come a knocking if for some reason we can’t get in touch with the top bidder.
- Please, only leave bids below — and don’t bid below the current top bid, ok? If you’re not leaving a bid, don’t leave a comment.
- Auction is over at 11:59PM ET Friday, April 25th. We’ll contact the winner by email.
- Payment will go directly to National Cancer Coalition, and will be expected to be made within one day of the auction’s close. We will confirm with the charity that the payment has been made.
- A US winner will get free FedEx air shipping.
- We will also ship internationally, but auction winner will likely have to pay customs.
- Product is sold as-is, with no warranty by Ben Heck, Engadget, and certainly not by Sony.
Just in case you need a refresher, here are pics and video of what you’re bidding on. Good luck — and for those that don’t win, please don’t let that stop you from donating to the NCC or another charity of your choice!
Update: We’re postponing the auction. A few people can’t be mature enough to bid properly on something for charity; others believe we should be posting the auction to eBay (despite the fact that the last time we did a charity eBay auction we got scammed). We’ll get back to you, thanks.
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