Hasta La Gadget!

I don’t care much for the microphone, but the play/pause switch and volume control on Apple’s earbuds has become essential for me. You can leave the iPod where God intended (in your pocket) and still be polite to shopkeepers (pause, remove earbuds) without missing a single second of the Gadget Lab podcast.

Sony Ericsson’s new ‘buds go one better. Remove one from your ear and the music stops. Put both buds back in and the tunes resumes. And if the MH907s are hooked up to a phone, you can answer the call just by plugging one earbud into your canal.

The earbuds are motion activated, but they only work with Sony Ericsson phones that have a fast port connector, which allows them to talk to the handset. We guess that this kind of tech will always be hooked to a specific handset, but hopefully somebody will come up with an iPhone version. Available soon, for $55.

Product page [Sony Ericsson via Oh Gizmo]

Online cycle store Performance Bicycle will sell you a properly assembled kid’s bike and send it to you in a box. The scheme is called “Bike in a Box”, and the advantage is that, unlike the bikes that come from a department store, they are properly put together instead of poorly assembled machines waiting for a long downhill stretch before they start to shed nuts and bolts.

Performance Bicycle combines this with the “Kid’s Bike Growth Guarantee”, where you get help finding the right size bike for your children, and then get discounts when you move up to bigger rides.

Unless you already know how to put together and repair a bike, it’s a bad idea to buy unassembled mail order machine or to chance it at the crappy mall store, especially when the bike is for a child who, unlike you, won’t be alert to the clicks and squeaks that warn of impending disaster. Pretty much every bike I have bought from a non-bike shop has been a disaster and required a thorough going over to make it safe. And while the ideal is to buy from your local bike shop, that isn’t always cheap enough. These machines are put together in China, in a factory, so they should be at least properly built.

The boxed bikes come sized for kids from 3 to 12, and run from $140 to $330 for a 24-inch mountain bike.

Product page [Performance Bicycles via Cyclelicious]

We know that Verizon’s version of the Windows Mobile-based Omnia II superphone is incoming, and by all accounts, we would’ve figured on it looking more or less like its global counterpart — but those tinkerers over at Big Red apparently can’t leave well enough alone, because the phone that’s appeared on Samsung USA’s site actually looks a bit different. The most notable change is the move away from the original model’s distinctive cubic center button, though the replacement — a shield design in the same vein as the B900 for South Korea — really doesn’t look any more user-friendly. Otherwise, there’s not much to see here, but there’s a brief mention of a relatively generous 1500mAh battery which should come in handy for spending hours on end using those YouTube, WeatherBug, and Facebook TouchWiz widgets you’ve got installed, eh?

[Thanks, Austin]

Update: As many folks have pointed out, it’s merely a button, not a true d-pad. Thanks, everyone!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Verizon’s Samsung Omnia II pictured, drops cubic center button originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seagate has been busy at work. A day after it starts shipping the first SATA 6Gbps hard drive, it now is shipping enterprise hard drives with self-encrypting features.

(Credit: Seagate)

The hard drive maker announced Tuesday the worldwide availability of the Seagate Secure Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) option across its portfolio …

In a Samsung-esque introduction, Samsung has unveiled a crazy stack of tech for mobile devices, most of it aimed at improving performance in high-end devices while reducing power consumption — an initiative we can always get behind. Among the introductions are a pair of 1GHz ARM CORTEX A8 processors, one for phones and one for larger mobile devices, the former of which can be paired with Samsung’s new 1Gb OneDRAM solution, and both of which can churn through 3D graphics while keeping power usage to a minimum. Other highlights include a 5 megapixel CMOS system on a chip camera, which can process 1080p at 30 fps, a 512Mb PRAM chip newly in production, and a mobile display driver with integrated capacitive touchscreen support. With samples of the processors out in December, and the camera trickling into the market Q1 of next year, we probably have a ways to wait for devices based on all this tech — but boy are we prepped for it.

Read – 1GHz low power application processors
Read – 5 megapixel camera
Read – PRAM starts production
Read – Ramped up OneDRAM production
Read – Display driver IC with embedded capacitive control

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras, Handhelds

Samsung R&D goes bananas for mobile, intros 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera-on-a-chip, much more originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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