Hasta La Gadget!

So KDDI’s latest lineup of new phones features the usual array of 8.1 megapixel cameras, wide VGA displays, one-seg TV tuners, and teleporters, but one particular handset stood out: Hitachi’s Wooo H001. The dual-hinge flip’s claim to fame — well, besides the bizarre color scheme — has to be the stereoscopic IPS display that presumably uses the same parallax barrier method shown off by the carrier late last year. The phone will happily serve up 3D-ified versions of various UI elements and mobile TV content, and when you start to get woozy (or Wooozy, as it were), just flip a switch and you’re back to the reassuring flatness you’re used to. It’ll launch in three colors in April, and naturally, you’ll have to be in Japan to get it.

[Via Akihabara News]

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Video

Hitachi H001 with 3D display leads up KDDI au’s Spring 2009 lineup originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 23, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

In 1983, the World saw the very first handheld cellular phone, the Motorola Dyna TAC 8000X. For $3,995 you could have been the proud owner of the 13 x 1.75 x 3.5 inch phone. Thousands of people were on a wait list for this phone, simply so they could be one of the first to talk portably! It weighed a whopping 28 ounces with an impressive, or not, 1 hour of battery life. It could even store 30 phone numbers!

Amazing, isn’t it? Today we see phones with games, extensive phone books(you can certainly store more than 30 numbers), internet capabilities, cameras, and even video. Phones are considerably cheaper, lighter, and of course last longer, a lot longer! They have replaced the need for carrying around change for the phone booth, and have become one of the essentials you don’t leave home without! When you do leave home without it, you may end up in a panic wondering what you will do all day without it! Sound familiar?

Taking the Motorola Dyna TAC 8000X (wow, what a long name- even the names have gotten smaller!) and comparing it in size to one of the smallest phones available, the Motorola RAZR VC3, we are able to see just how far Motorola has come. The RAZR measures 3.86H x 2.08W x 0.57D inches and weighs a feather light 3.49 ounces! Can you imagine going from carrying a phone that weights less than 5 ounces to one that weighs almost 2 pounds?

While the mobile phones from the 80’s compared to today have certainly changed, one thing hasn’t and that is its effect on our culture. Back in the 80’s, it was only the rich who could afford a mobile phone. In 1990 we saw this brick of a phone in Pretty Woman with two men using the Dyna TAC 8000X as a method to impress Julia Roberts. Today phones are rather inexpensive and something that many people use. In fact, one source I found states that in the United Kindom, there are more phones than people! Could that really be possible? We see signs everywhere from the movies to the doctor’s office with reminders to keep phones off! Mobile phones have become an issue among lawmakers trying to determine if they increase the instances of traffic accidents, or pose a threat to public safety.

It is super impressive to think about how far technology has advanced from the 80’s until now. With all of the advances in technology with mobile/cellular phones, it makes me wonder what else they could possibly come up with next! Any ideas?

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Could Apple possibly be working on another iPhone? Well, yes, of course — but Mac Rumors may have stumbled upon the first solid evidence that there’s a major hardware revision in the works (and no, we’re not necessarily talking about the nano). Seems that the latest firmware revisions have some juicy metadata buried deep within that refers to a product code of “iPhone2,1” — a decidedly higher number than the “iPhone1,2” representing the current iPhone 3G. What’s more, an ad network is reporting web hits from an iPhone2,1, so it looks like this is very much the real deal; only question is, just what the heck is it?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Next-gen iPhone evidence lurking in latest firmware? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, Palm, you know when isn’t a good time to brag about your rich, time-honored tradition of gaming software stretching back some ten-plus years? Right before the release of webOS and the Pre, a device you’ve straight-up told us isn’t intended for games — that’s when. A lighthearted post on Palm’s official blog today waxes poetic about the top Palm OS game downloads on Handango and mentions a few favorite classics from around the blogosphere, but here’s the thing: unless Palm wants to get serious about bringing entertainment to the Pre, this just rubs salt in our TurboGrafx-16 emulator-craving wounds. The TI-sourced OMAP3430 underneath the Pre’s skin is more than capable of knocking console-quality games out of the park, so we’ll just have to twiddle our thumbs for a few months and see how this plays out; at the end of the day, it might simply be a question of how open Palm ultimately wants to get with its SDK.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds

Palm touts its gaming roots, Pre conspicuously missing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Despite its ugly appearance, Foxit’s upcoming eSleek Reader will get a close look because of two key things: Its $230 price makes it attractive against the more expensive Kindle and Sony Readers and because, according to rumors coming out today, it might be the first large hardware eInk device to play eReader files.

In the comment for a post at JKontherun, a rep from Fixit announced they’d be offering support for eReader software around the time of the device’s release. eReader freeware program files are well regarded by users in the digital community because they can be played on a number of different devices like iPhones, Windows Mobile phones, and any Symbian handset. This would allow people who already own large libraries of eReader books (like the G-Lab’s own Charlie Sorrel) to play them on a larger display and on the easier-to-read eInk tech. If this move works for Foxit, it could open up other eInk hardware makers to allow other file formats on their own devices.

Currently, one of our biggest gripes with the current generation of readers is their unfair DRM content stranglehold they have on content. Amazon’s Kindle can only play downloaded books from its site, and Sony’s Reader works the same way. While eReader files also have DRM properties, the fact you can play them on more than once device makes them valuable and user friendly. Plus, DRM is going out of style, right?

The eSleek Reader will also come with a PDF creator that converts doc files, powerpoints, and XLS files to the eInk format. Like we mentioned previously, the eSleek Reader won’t include a wireless feature like the Kindle, but the company has said it will probably add this in an upcoming version.