Hasta La Gadget!

An iPhone Nano launching at January’s Macworld Expo? You don’t say.

It’s
unlikely, but a few websites are drumming up rumors about the fabled
gadget. An image purporting to be a leaked photo of the iPhone Nano suggests
the device is just like the original iPhone, except shorter and less
wide.

Boring. Apple designers are a lot more imaginative than
that, aren’t they? But while we’re in the spirit of wishing, here’s a
list of features Wired.com would like to see in an iPhone Nano, if one
ever sees the light of day. 

Dual-Screen Clamshell Design
In order to deserve the name "Nano," this iPhone needs to be
considerably smaller than its bigger brother. It should easily slip into a pocket, to the point where one could barely even notice
it. If all Apple did was scale down
the original iPhone, as "leaked" photos suggest, it would be difficult to
control the touchscreen without a stylus. Imagine typing on one of
those things or playing with an app!

Instead, Apple should embrace a clamshell form factor similar to a patent the company published
in 2006 (left). We’re taking this a step further: Folded up, the phone
resembles the iPod Shuffle (same buttons), with a very small, always-on screen to
display status icons (e.g., missed or incoming calls).

Unfolded, the
iPhone Nano would look somewhat like the fourth-generation iPod Nano —
except a second, low-powered touchscreen would replace the scroll wheel. The low-powered touchscreen would display a dialer once the phone is opened. The screen above would be the primary, fully powered one, and this would display the apps. The bottom screen would change depending on which app is open on the above screen (e.g., if the SMS app is open, the bottom screen would turn into a virtual keyboard.) You’d also be able to unfold the phone both length-wise and width-wise. (The photo at the top of the story, illustrated by reader James Camp, is similar to our idea.)

A Separate App Store
So here’s what would make the diminutive size of our iPhone Nano
work logistically in terms of software: It would have its own App Store. The current App Store is
cluttered enough; imagine how messy everything would get if developers
had to code software for two different types of iPhones. With a Nano
App Store, developers could code mini, simple apps meant to be played
around with on a two small screens. Heck, this would
even create a new market for iPhone developers looking to strike it
rich.

Universal Landscape Mode
In order for a mini iPhone to not be a pain in the butt to use, landscape mode should work for everything.
Not just Safari or the video player, which is how the original iPhone
works. We’re talking text messaging, e-mail, third-party apps. Make
this happen, Apple — and while you’re at it, think about doing the
same thing for the current iPhone.

Built-in, Beefed Up Voice Recognition
The current iPhone doesn’t have voice recognition, and a Nano
version would need it even more. Apple could even step it up a notch
and make voice-enabled text messaging, e-mailing and web search to work.

Those are just some ideas that sprung off the top of our heads.
What would you want in an iPhone Nano? Submit your suggestions and vote
on your favorites in the Reddit widget below.

What do you want in an iPhone Nano? Submit your suggestions — and drawings, if you want — in the Reddit widget below. Then vote on your favorites!

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See Also:

• iPhone Nano Rumors Continue, Look More Legit
• Possible iPhone Nano Photos ‘Leaked’
• Rumor: Apple Definitely, Probably Not Working on iPhone Shuffle …
• iPhone Nano To Be Announced Within Next Decade

Photos: James Camp, Apple

At long last, iPhone users who have grown increasingly frustrated by using Google Maps as their primary navigational tool can find relief… sort of. Available right now in the App Store, XRoad’s G-Map application requires no internet connection whatsoever in order to function; rather, it packs oodles of maps into a 932MB package that covers most of western America and a few sporadic locales on the east. We’re a bit baffled (and angered) by the not-at-all-comprehensive coverage, but we suppose we can expect updates to patch the gaps in the near future. It provides most of the same amenities you’re used to seeing on real-deal GPS units, including POI editing, memo capabilities, location searching, etc. A word of caution, though: early reviews don’t seem too stoked about it, so you may want to gloss it over good before hitting your card for $19.99.

[Thanks, Karel]

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

XRoad G-Map app brings bona fide navigation to the iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you thought the original XPS 730 H2C was boss, get a load of this. The incredibly diligent benchmarkers over at HotHardware have taken the Core i7-powered XPS 730x H2C under their wings for a fortnight of testing, and they’ve got a baker’s dozen worth of review pages to display their findings. We can’t even begin to cover the array of graphs, bar charts and triple-digit FPS numbers here, but we can tell you that critics were duly impressed with how well the Core i7 performance compared to older Core 2-based offerings. Gaming performance was predictably “fantastic,” and even the single GeForce GTX 280 that it was packin’ held its own under pressure. All in all, this fanciful machine was deemed “a worthy update to what [reviewers] thought was the best XPS 700 series system to date,” and if you’ve got the coin, you’ll probably be incredibly pleased with what it delivers. Dive deep (and we mean deep) in the read link below.

Filed under: Desktops

Dell’s XPS 730x H2C Core i7 gaming PC benchmarked and tested exhaustively originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No, we’re not talking about Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition or iPhone firmware 2.0, we’re talking moderately more diabolical stuff here: explosions, international intrigue, fancy casinos where everyone wears suits and plays baccarat, the whole nine yards. Echelon Conspiracy is a movie about… well, who cares, really? Point is, there’s an all-knowing phone that tells you what to do and brings you both great fortune and great tragedy, making for a modern King Midas tale that has Critic’s Choice Award nomination written all over it. The flick probably would’ve made more sense back when phones actually looked evil, but yeah, sure, we’ll add it to our Netflix queue in a few years — somewhere between Death Race and The Transporter 3. Catch the spellbinding trailer after the break.

[Thanks, A. Razaq]

Continue reading Star of new movie is the cellphone equivalent of a psychotic K.I.T.T.

Filed under: Cellphones

Star of new movie is the cellphone equivalent of a psychotic K.I.T.T. originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC’s G1 phone featuring Google’s Android mobile operating system is a blockbuster hit for the company.

It expects sales of more than one million G1 phones this year, says a HTC executive. The G1 launched on Oct. 22 nationwide on the T-Mobile network.

Still that is lower than the number of Apple 3G iPhones that were sold since the device’s launch. Apple hit sales of 1 million iPhones just three days after it was available in stores starting July 11.

Meanwhile, the G1 has put HTC at the front of the pack when it comes to Android-based devices.Though competitors such as Samsung and Motorola are also betting big on Android, HTC has clearly taken the lead on the platform.

The company is likely to release its second Android-based handset in the first quarter of next year and is working on its third one.

[via mocoNews]

Photo: (jugglerpm/Flickr)