Hasta La Gadget!

Corporate legal teams are so large, so powerful, and often so evenly-matched that when you combine them with the glacial wheels of justice, patent disputes can take years to resolve — in fact, we’d say it’s the rule rather than the exception — and inevitably, they end in anticlimactic fashion with the alleged offender agreeing to shell out some fraction of the plaintiff’s original request in exchange for sweeping the whole matter under the rug. Nokia’s had its fair share of such spats, and one that’s been dogging the company for a good long while now is with InterDigital, which has been systematically targeting firms in the industry for years with claims that it holds patents inherently required for UMTS — in other words, if you make UMTS gear, you automatically owe InterDigital money. Of course, Nokia has been politely disagreeing with that claim all along, and the US International Trade Commission has just issued an initial determination in its favor, saying that it doesn’t violate the four patents InterDigital’s all worked up over. For the record, the US ITC has been investigating this issue for a solid two years now, so yeah, if someone’s ripping off your IP, don’t expect a speedy resolution. The commission’s initial determination will be followed by a final, binding determination this December; in the meantime; Espoo “will continue to present its case.” Now that we think about it, we’re pretty sure we saw this episode of Law & Order already.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Nokia / InterDigital patent drama continues with ITC ruling in Espoo’s favor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Studies just released by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research polled iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre owners on their respective levels of satisfaction with their devices — then compared them. In the studies, 200 iPhone 3GS users and 40 Palm Pre owners were polled. Overall, 99 percent of owners of Apple’s phone proclaimed themselves to be “satisfied,” while 82 percent of that number declared they were “very satisfied.” The poll of Pre owners showed that 87 percent are “satisfied,” and 45 percent of those owners describe themselves as “very satisfied.” Interestingly, the 42 percent of “very satisfied” customers are the highest score ever attained by a Palm device, and it’s a number that’s only ever been bested by RIM and Apple. When asked about their respective reasons for buying their devices, Palm Pre owners listed the touchscreen interface, ability to multitask, and ease of use in the top three, while iPhone users cite its touchscreen, ease of use and faster web browsing as its biggest draws. So what about drawbacks? iPhone users (a whopping 55 percent of them, in fact) say that AT&T’s network is their main gripe with the device, while Pre owners list short battery life and lack of third party apps as the devices biggest drawbacks. All in all, a pretty good showing for both — though the microscopic sample size (especially for the Palm Pre) makes us wonder about the validity of the findings a bit.

Read – Apple’s iPhone 3GS has 99 percent satisfaction rate
Read – iPhone vs. Palm Pre: Satisfaction bakeoff

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre, iPhone 3GS owners’ satisfaction polled, compared in new study originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson Satio

(Credit: Kent German/CNET)

It’s Sony Ericsson’s turn in the FCC spotlight this week as the company’s Satio and T715 get the official government approval. Because the Federal Communications Commission has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test …

(Credit: VMPoweruser.com)

Just a few days ago, we read about BlackBerry’s patent on a hybrid resistive capacitive touch screen. This would give you the best of both worlds–the sensitivity of a capacitive screen for finger input and the flexibility to use a stylus when needed.

Well, it looks …

Starline — a Hong Kong-based PC manufacturer — has unleashed the netbook you see above, the NB1000. This 10-incher’s got all the standard, yawn-inducing specs — an Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, three USB ports, plus ethernet and VGA ports. The thing that makes this little guy stand out? Well, it’s got a massive touchpad running all along the palm rest beneath the keyboard, and that’s enough for us to want one — or at least to touch one, repeatedly. Sadly, this baby is a Hong Kong-only affair, and runs HK$2,498 (about $322), but there’s a video of it after the break.

[Via SlashGear]

Continue reading Starline NB1000 netbook’s giant, invisible touchpad is the only thing it’s got going for it

Filed under: Laptops

Starline NB1000 netbook’s giant, invisible touchpad is the only thing it’s got going for it originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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