Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Kyocera launched two new slider phones Wednesday targeted at users who primarily want a device for email and text messages but don’t want to compromise on features. But the new phone models’ run-of-the-mill features and all-too-familiar looks aren’t likely to win it big fans.

Kyocera said it plans to offer two new devices, the G2GO M2000 and Laylo M1400.

The G2GO M2000 has a slide-out QWERTY keypad, reminiscent of the Sidekick phone from T-Mobile. It also comes with a 1.3-megapixel camera that has a digital zoom, a 2.4-inch display, and a music player. Along with Bluetooth capability, the phone supports a WAP 2.0 browser.

The Laylo has a 2.2-inch display that slides out upwards and includes features similar to the G2GO phone.

"The G2GO and Laylo provide consumers with a blend of style, functionality and affordability,” said Eric Anderson, vice president of sales at KCI in a statement.

But the company didn’t back that up with pricing or expected availability on the phones. What could be a potential stumbling block for Kyocera is that its latest phones have little to distinguish them from rivals such as Motorola and Samsung that offer far more innovative and stylish devices. Kyocera’s latest phones may be perfect for someone who wants just a basic device. For more discerning consumers there’s little here to grab their attention.

Photo: G2GO M2000/Priya Ganapati

Detailed specs on the two phones [Kyocera]

Looks like all that pent-up demand for SlingPlayer for iPhone has caused the suits at Sling to go mad with greed — the company just posted up a page saying that owners of every older SlingBox save the Slingbox PRO will have to upgrade to a Slingbox SOLO or Slingbox PRO-HD in order to stream to iPhones. Yes, this is totally ridiculous: we’ve been told that the limitation is purely money-driven and that previous builds of the iPhone client worked just fine with older Sling hardware — hell, if a Palm Centro can stream off the original Slingbox, there’s no reason at all the vastly more powerful iPhone can’t hack it. Sling’s offering a $50 credit to owners of older hardware, but honestly, we can’t say some token coupon is going to take away from the bitter taste of a forced upgrade here — unless Sling comes up with legitimate technical reason for crippling such highly-anticipated software like this, we’d say it’s about to piss off a lot of formerly-happy Sling customers.

[Via SlingCommunity; thanks David]

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Older Slingboxes won’t work with SlingPlayer for iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most of us grew up with the Environmental Protection Agency’s friendly "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" motto* —
but when it comes to gadgets, being environmentally responsible isn’t quite so easy.

That’s
because electronics are neither easy for manufacturers to create nor simple for recyclers to disassemble. On top of that, laws on handling
e-waste are inconsistent between countries, states and even cities.
Long story short, the biggest problem with recycling gadgets is it’s
confusing as hell for consumers.

But it really doesn’t have to
be. Over at Wired.com’s How-To Wiki, Gadget Lab rounds up a list of major companies and how their
recycling programs work — so your next useless cellphone doesn’t end up sleeping in a drawer or leaching toxics into a landfill. We start with the easiest stuff first and move on to the more complicated programs.

So check out our friendly guide before tossing that dead iPod in the garbage, won’t you?

And if the thought of recycling bores you, check out Wired.com’s awesome photo gallery of a recycling facility we visited. We promise it’ll get your eco-friendly juices flowing.

* Or "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse," if you grew up being misinformed by Recycle Rex.

Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

About a year ago Sony introduced the Handycam HDR-TG1, a painfully pricey pistol-grip camcorder with relatively decent specs for its tiny, titanium, travel-sized body: 1920×1080 AVCHD video, 2.7-inch touch-screen LCD, 10X zoom optically stabilized lens and a 2.4-megapixel ClearVid Exmor CMOS sensor. Now Sony’s replacing it with …

Dovetailing dreamingly with the company’s SDK announcement today, Palm’s chosen CTIA to show off a round of third-party apps for the Pre, and the good news is that they’re definitely dispelling some doubts we had about the robustness of webOS’ development platform and its ability to deliver compelling software. We were emphatically reminded that everything here is strictly for the sake of preview — it’s all beta, just like the Pre itself — but that being said, it all looked smooth and relatively crash-free (as best as we could gather anyhow without giving it a more ruthless hands-on beating of our own).

First off, we saw a NASCAR app, perfect for die-hard fans (but really, even more perfect for Sprint’s track record of sponsoring NASCAR events) that culls video highlights, driver profiles, and more. Next, we were treated to a brief look at the Pre’s Google Maps implementation, Pandora, Amazon’s music store, and FlightView, a trick little flight status app that every frequent traveler will likely want loaded. We also saw a Pre version of the Sprint TV player — a staple service on most of Sprint’s devices — proving that the Pre has the stones to handle multimedia within its development framework. Video was just a little bit choppy, but they’re not making any claims that this is final, optimized code at this point. The best part of the whole demo, perhaps, is Pandora’s notification implementation, which brings up a mini-player by tapping on the “P” visible at the bottom of any Pre screen; from here, you can play / pause, rank tracks up and down, and see a full track name, all without leaving the comfort of whatever app you might be in. Try that on an iPhone, eh? Follow the break for video!

Continue reading Pandora, Amazon, other third-party apps demoed on Palm Pre

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Pandora, Amazon, other third-party apps demoed on Palm Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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