Hasta La Gadget!

Right around this time last year, Texas Instruments was busy showing off its OMAP 3 platform, which enabled 720p playback from a mobile phone. At this year’s MWC, we’ve got a real live handset recording 720p, and TI upping the ante once more with a chip that handles 1080p. For those still with us after being blasted with resolutions, the predictably titled OMAP 4 aims to bring 1080p support, 20 megapixel imaging and “approximately a week of audio play time” to mobiles and MIDs that house it. Granted, TI also calls this stuff “future-proof,” so don’t believe it’s totally incapable of uttering some pretty outlandish stuff. At the heart of the platform is a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 chip, a programmable multimedia engine based on TI’s C64x DSP and a POWERVR SGX540 graphics engine. We’re told that it’ll play nice with Linux variants such as Android and LiMo, Symbian and Windows Mobile, though it’ll have to be mighty impressive to outgun NVIDIA’s Tegra. Battle on, we say.

[Via Linux Devices]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

TI’s OMAP 4 bringing 1080p support to smartphones and MIDs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba TG01

(Credit: Crave UK)

If you thought the iPhone’s screen was large, wait till you see the 104mm (4.1-inch) 800×480-pixel face on Toshiba’s TG01–a phone our friends over at Crave UK just spent 20 minutes coating in finger grease.

The TG01 was first announced two weeks ago …

Despite the fact that LTE looks to be the de facto standard for next-gen mobile data, ASUS has an unwavering love affair with WiMAX. In fact, we’ve already seen the company introduce a WiMAX-equipped laptop, and a WiMAX-enabled Eee PC was demoed way back at CES 2008. That said, the company is just now getting around to producing a new one for the adoring public, but for whatever reason, it’s not even boasting about it. Tucked deep, deep within a release gloating about the Eee PC 1003HA and T91‘s ability to handle Windows 7 Beta is the promise of an Eee PC 1000HG. Said netbook will include both WiMAX and WiFi capabilities — or, more specifically, IEEE 802.16e, WAVE2 and WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n support in the 2.4GHz~2.7GHz and 5.1GHz~5.8GHz bands. Of course, “future” could mean “we’ll release this in late 2019,” but we’re banking on hearing more details sooner rather than later.

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS announces WiMAX-equipped Eee PC 1000HG originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As always, Hasbro had plenty of tech-toy offerings at this year’s toy fair. But the toy giant has scaled back, compared with last year’s show. Well, scaling back is a familiar theme right now for all kinds of companies, but I was a little disappointed that my favorite products of last year, the Room Tech Beingz, weren’t being added to.

I did love a lot of what I saw at Hasbro, though–especially that plushy guy above, from the Kota and Pals line. He’s Monty Rex (around 15 inches tall), and he moves his head, tail and arms; walks; roars; and plays songs. For ages 3 and up, $74.99 list; look for Monty and the other pals in fall of this year.

More toys after the jump!

Eyeing that $400 netbook? How about getting one for half the price in just a few months?

Freescale is racing to get netbooks out this summer, featuring the company’s chips, that would offer up to eight hours of battery life, be significantly thinner than existing designs and priced under $200.

"We are taking dead aim at the netbook space," says Glen Burchers, marketing director at Freescale."The value proposition that Freescale brings is dramatically lower power consumption and even lower prices."

Netbooks have become the fastest growing segment in the PC market, with about 15 million devices sold worldwide in 2008. This year, despite the economic slowdown, sales could double says ABI Research. So far Intel’s family of Atom-based processors released last year have overwhelmingly dominated the market. But Atom processors offer just about three hours of battery life while users are clamoring for more.

Freescale hopes its new line of chips could make a dent in Intel’s market share. Last month, the company introduced the i.MX515 processor that is based on the 1GHz CPU from Intel rival ARM. The chip includes high performance multimedia processing and supports embedded 3G connectivity. "We can combine processor, graphic chips and memory bridge into a single chip, which means netbooks based on the Freescale platform will be just about 15-mm thick," says Burchers.

On Tuesday Freescale said it has tied up with additional partners to expand
operating system options for netbooks based on its processor. Freescale processors will support Android and Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Xandros.

The company says its hopes to have its processors-based netbooks in production by the middle of the year and hopes to have the products in retail stores in time for the 2009 holiday shopping season. But Freescale is yet to announce any manufacturing partners for netbooks with its chips.

It won’t be an easy ride for Freescale as it tries to catch up to Intel’s Atom processor, which has an 18-month head start. Yet Freescale is betting that its lower prices and promise of higher battery life will draw in buyers.

"When end users are presented with a differentiation that dramatic, they won’t be concerned with how early a processor was available in the market," says Burchers.

Photo: (Hiltch/Flickr)