Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome to ‘This day in Engadget‘, where we crack open the archives and take a whimsical look back at the memories and moments of our storied past. Please join us on this trip down random access memory lane.

Try to recall if you will, June 19th of 2009, a rainy, ugly day, when the iPhone 3GS launched. People had pre-ordered, sure, but a few hundred people lined up at the cube in New York City anyway, and our very own Paul Miller braved the elements to document the proceedings for us lovingly. And here we are, in 2010, on the cusp of the launch of the iPhone 4, which has pre-sold about 600,000 units by last count. We’ve heard random reports of a few people already waiting in line (see the photo below of two early birds snapped by a reader in Santa Monica), but we’re going to stay inside for now and take a look back at June 19th in the history of Engadget below.

Also on this date:

June 19th 2009: The Zune HD was confirmed to have a Tegra processor, Microsoft extended Windows XP’s downgrade availability to 2011, and Nokia’s N86 MP and N97 launched to great fanfare in the United Kingdom.

June 19th 2008: The Mars Phoenix lander discovered ice on Mars, Chevrolet’s Volt plug-in hybrid got priced at $40,000, and Dell launched its UltraSharp 2709W 27-inch LCD.

June 19th 2007: A man was confirmed to have gotten two Zune tattoos, Sony’s Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, stepped down, and Apple was rumored to have a cheaper (and possibly smaller) iPhone in the pipeline.

June 19th 2006: Taiwanese company Foxconn denied operating sweatshops, Steve Jobs was rumored to be fighting for $9.99 iTunes movie downloads, Verizon sued Vonage for patent infringement, and we caught sight of a Batman Begins casemod.

June 19th 2005: Monks were reported to have started using hyperspectral imaging to retrieve ancient texts, and Engadget took a little aggression out on the mainstream media.

June 19th 2004: We checked out the SciFi Museum in Seattle, Washington, caught sight of a 70 megapixel, panoramic camera, and were introduced to a product called the Pixie.

[Thanks to Craig for the photo of the store in Santa Monica]

This day in Engadget: waiting in line comes to an end as the iPhone 3GS launches originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading iPed tablet running Android 2.1 spotted in the blurry, blurry wild

iPed tablet running Android 2.1 spotted in the blurry, blurry wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Its existence has been an on-again, off-again rumor for over a week now, but it looks like a new build of Android 2.2 Froyo for the Nexus One — FRF72 — is very real. It finally leaked in the past few hours, we’ve tested it on a Nexus One of our own, and as far as we can tell, it’s straight-up legit. Get it if you dare — it’s up on Google’s official servers right now, but if it’s pulled, we’ve no doubt it’ll be floating around on a bunch of mirrors ad nauseam. G’luck to ya, folks!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Android 2.2 build FRF72 for Nexus One finally leaks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hitachi has improved its Emiew robot so that it’s more dynamically stable and understands speech better. What would you say to it?

Ah, the inexorable rise of a once-small Taiwanese company. Acer chairman JT Wang has told investors in a conference call this week that his company is on track to overtake HP in worldwide laptop shipments before the year is through. That assertion is backed up by Gartner’s data, cited in the Wall Street Journal, which indicates that Acer shipped 9.49 million mobile computers in the first quarter of 2010, just ahead of HP’s 9.47 million. Positive vibes are also being felt on the desktop front, where Acer aims to shift 10 million units this year, while a decent $15 million is being invested into “developing a a smartphone platform based on Google Inc.’s Android.” We’ll be curious to see whether this thrifty strategy pays off against HP’s ebullient $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, but one thing’s for sure: PC vendors are hungry for some of that sweet smartphone pie.

Acer expects to overtake HP as world’s biggest laptop vendor by year’s end originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 08:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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