Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve got this image burned in our brains of the Pre as this slick, black, streamlined, ultra-glossy pebble of a phone, and by and large, that’s an accurate image — unless you spring for the Touchstone. The inductive charging accessory — which seems like an almost automatic purchase for any Pre buyer with a single geeky bone in their body — needs magnets in the Pre to hold it in place when it’s attached, but it turns out that the standard glossy battery cover doesn’t have those magnets. Instead, the Touchstone will include a replacement cover that has the magnets and loses the gloss for a stickier matte soft-touch surface, ostensibly to help secure the phone against the charger’s slanted top. For some, the soft-touch is going to be perceived as an upgrade — but others are undoubtedly going to be bummed that they won’t be able to see their own reflection against the shiny Palm logo dead center. What’s more, if you want the matte without the Touchstone, you’re out of luck (at launch, anyway) — it won’t be available separately. Whatever; it’s not like you weren’t planning on getting this thing Colorwared anyway.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre’s Touchstone charger requires matte, soft-touch battery cover originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Find yourself in situations where you can’t bring a handset but are in desperate need of one? This D.I.Y. from instructables will definitely sort that and your phone foot fetish out in a jiffy. All that’s needed is a tiny handset (the article recommends the Panasonic GD55) a pair of shoes big enough to stash said phone in, and a bit of spare time to put it all together. The win? You’ll find yourself in the company of secret agent Maxwell Smart as you surreptitiously dial and take calls from your shoe. The lose? Well, you’ve made and are talking on a shoephone.

[Via techdigest]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables

Play Agent 86 with a D.I.Y. guide to making a shoephone originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, look, Samsung, this is excessive. All we want is one OmniaHD — one, for cryin’ out loud — and here you go showing off your whole frickin’ wall of ’em. We think the “!” shape these 3.7-inch OLEDs form is a particularly appropriate choice to represent the reaction the OmniaHD’s display has garnered from passers-by this week.

Oh, and if you’re curious, we count 97. Video after the break.

Continue reading Samsung’s pricey wall of prototype OmniaHDs at MWC 2009

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung’s pricey wall of prototype OmniaHDs at MWC 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Versa could end up being one of the more fascinating North American devices to launch this year, and it turns out that Dooney & Burke agrees. New documentation arriving on our doorstep this week indicates that Verizon’s launch of the unusually adaptable device will be supported by fashion accessories from Liz Claiborne and Dooney & Burke, not to mention the usual host of water resistant, sport, and plain leather cases to keep your multi-hundred dollar investment safe from harm. More importantly, though, we’re seeing that it’ll launch on March 1 in all sales channels for $199.99 on contract after a $50 rebate — but that funky dedicated game pad controller will set you back another $29.99, and you better get it while the getting’s good since it’s labeled as a “limited stock” item. Can’t get caught playing Monopoly without a dedicated 8-way pad, can you?

Filed under: Cellphones

LG Versa press shots, full specs, accessories in the mix ahead of March debut originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so maybe Palm hit its head on the corner of a goalpost in a charity hockey tournament recently (stupid ego — no helmet) and hasn’t been the same since. Maybe they’ve lost their ever-loving minds, gone back to 2006, and resurrected the original Centro ID with a build of webOS so janky that it looks like a knockoff of webOS. We prefer a couple more reasonable theories: someone’s hard at work on a webOS skin for Palm OS (bless their heart) or Palm had used a Centro for early mockups / prototyping on webOS and the shots of that effort are just now starting to leak out. Either way, dude pressing on the screen in the middle picture: nice stylus.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Don’t worry, this isn’t the Centro 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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