Hasta La Gadget!

Activision’s being pretty guarded with DJ Hero at the moment. Not only is it available only behind closed doors at its E3 2009 booth, but even then we weren’t able to get our own hands-on time with the game, relegated instead to playing guitar along with someone else on the deck through that Monkey Wrench / Sabotage mashup. We did, however, get a chance to play take it out of the darkly-lit room and get a good feel of its weight and build quality, which we might add is pretty solid. Click on through for our full impressions and a video showing off the DJ vs. guitar mode.

Continue reading DJ Hero hands-on

Filed under: Gaming

DJ Hero hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not to be left out of the Palm Pre day hysteria, Verizon Wireless launched a smart phone today. It’s no Pre, though. The BlackBerry Flip 8230 has been out on Alltel for a while, and it’s first cousin to a phone that’s been on T-Mobile for several months.

The 8230 is a BlackBerry Pearl remixed into a (very long) flip phone, with two color LCD displays, a 2-megapixel camera, GPS and Verizon’s 3G EVDO Internet connection. It supports all the latest BlackBerry features, including App World and Media Sync, RIM’s somewhat clunky but effective iTunes syncing solution. You enter text using a Pearl-style hybrid keyboard, with two letters on most keys.

The Flip 8230 will cost $129.99 with a two-year contract and $70 mail-in rebate (so you’ll be paying $199.99 at the point of purchase.) It goes on sale June 19.

Reading Walt Mossberg’s review of the Palm Pre is amusing, because Mossberg obviously has the next iPhone and can’t talk about it. Read between the lines: he’s straining to compare the Pre to the un-announced iPhone on his desk. He wants to do it so badly. But he can’t, because that would steal Apple’s thunder.

When you’re suffering from a case of NDA-itis that badly, it’s no surprise when things slip out around the edges. In this case, Mossberg confirmed that Apple will indeed release an iPhone next week. And did I mention that he probably has it?

“I’d note that the new iPhone to be unveiled next week will have lots of added features that could alter those calculations,” he writes.

Wording is important here. He couches many of his other iPhone predictions in “I expect” or “rumor” language: “I expect to see an iPhone with up to 32 gigabytes of memory, video recording, a higher-resolution camera, a compass, and greater operating speed. Plus, there are persistent rumors that Apple will announce at least one iPhone at a drastically lower price than $199.”

But the first sentence is declarative, definitive: that new iPhone is to be unveiled next week. Not “expected to” or “rumored to.” We’ll be there, on Monday morning at 10 AM PT, and we’ll be liveblogging.

The Palm Pre is a great device, but the battery needs a little help. Like with the iPhone, you shouldn’t expect this phone to last more than a day or two on a charge. Palm gave us these useful tips for making the Pre’s battery last longer. We tried them, and they made a big difference.

Log out of IM, especially AIM. There’s a bug in the AIM client that sucks up battery way too quickly (Palm’s fixing it) and the Google Talk presence alerts also use battery, though less than AIM. Remember, you can’t just throw the IM program’s card away; you have to click on “Sign Out” in the IM applications.

Turn on Wi-Fi. Sounds unintuitive, right? Well, the Pre doesn’t have the greatest Sprint reception of anything we’ve ever tested, and it actually has a relatively power-efficient Wi-Fi radio. When the Pre’s Wi-Fi is running, it uses Wi-Fi rather than 3G to make Internet connections. So connecting via Wi-Fi saves battery rather than wasting it.

Change your e-mail settings. By tapping on the upper left corner of the screen in the e-mail program, you can pop down a menu that lets you change e-mail preferences. For accounts where you get relatively little mail, set them to push. But for accounts where you get an e-mail every five minutes or more often, set them to check every 15 minutes. That will save battery.

With these battery tips, you’ll definitely get more than a day’s use out of each charge on the Palm Pre.