Hasta La Gadget!

It was almost a year ago that a senior Samsung VP was quoted expressing plans to drop Symbian. Samsung quickly backtracked on those comments with a vague commitment to its multi-OS strategy. Well, the other shoe just dropped via an email sent to registered Symbian developers advising that Samsung would close its Symbian forum and remove all Symbian content by year’s end. Not that we can blame them — while Symbian is just starting to show signs of recovery the OS has been floundering over the last few years. And Samsung, Nokia’s biggest threat in its bid to democratize smartphone sales, is already plenty busy with Bada, Windows Phone 7, and Android. So while Samsung might still be a member of Symbian Foundation, it, like Sony Ericsson, is doing so in name only.

[Thanks, Rohit]

Samsung terminates support for Symbian originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s the first thing you should do when you get the N8? Considering it packs the biggest image sensor embedded in a phone yet, Carl Zeiss optics, and an eight-digit pixel count, it seemed obvious to us that the answer was to take it on a picture- and video-taking stroll around London. On our way out we saw our iPhone 4 looking all sad and lonely, so we went ahead and brought it along as well. Below you shall find one gallery of pure, unadulterated N8 sample shots, another interspersed with the iPhone’s results for comparison’s sake, and a final one with side-by-side 100 percent crops from each image taker. Once you’ve digested all of those, we suggest hopping past the break and tucking into some tasty video comparisons for dessert.

Naturally, all the images are entirely unretouched (but for our masterly watermarking) and the iPhone 4’s HDR hocus pocus has been left off. We’ve also provided a zip file containing all the full-res imagery shot with the N8 in a link below.

A quick note is also merited about the N8’s resolution. The sensor’s display ratio is 4:3, which means that full 12 megapixel shots are only available in those dimensions. The camera software, however, defaults to shooting 9 megapixel snaps at the increasingly popular 16:9 ratio — this is done simply by cropping away the “excess” bars at the top and bottom of the image, meaning that the 9 megapixel images are giving us identical performance as the 12 megapixel ones, they’re just chopped down (from 4000 x 3000 to 4000 x 2248) for the sake of convenience. Now, on with the show!

Continue reading Nokia N8 vs. iPhone 4: camera showdown

Nokia N8 vs. iPhone 4: camera showdown originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on November 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Windows only
In the past we’ve talked about some mouse gesture applications for Windows including ones that targeted specific applications like Firefox. For some people these gestures can save significant amounts of time day in and day out. If you’re one of those people you should probably know that there’s a new mouse gesture program in town, and it’s called gMote.

There are some things that really make gMote unique. For starters it doesn’t have a predefined set of motions that are used to initiate an action. Instead you record all of your actions so that it knows exactly how you draw them. Your only limitation is what you can draw with your mouse.

The next awesome thing is all of the different actions you have at your disposal ready to be assigned to a gesture. The list includes launching a program, opening a folder, executing a keyboard combination/shortcut, and other common actions like going back/forward in your browser. You can even do things like control your media player.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? To get started all you’ll have to do is download gMote, extract the files, and run it. There’s nothing to install. And for the sake of wetting your appetite even more I’ll leave you with a video that demonstrates some of the things gMote is capable of:

Get gMote for Windows

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CyberNotes: Mouse Gestures in Firefox, IE, and OperaHigh Sign: Mouse Gesture ApplicationStrokeIt Updated After 4-Years; Works on Vista & Windows 7Your Week In Review with Sunday’s SummaryHelpful Tip: Vista Flip3D Mouse Shortcut

We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Brett, who seems just marginally overwhelmed by the recent flood of network media streamers. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

“I’m looking for a network media player that can play a variety of videos from my NAS as well as connect to media services like Netflix, Pandora, Hulu, etc. I thought I found the perfect match with the new Sony SMP-N100, but the DLNA sharing system was awful compared to an old Apple TV with XBMC installed. Any suggestions on the ultimate Network Media Player? Bonus points for being able to remotely queue videos or control it from a smart phone.”

We’ve been to this rodeo before, but the situation (and consumer demands, too) has changed quite dramatically from just a year ago. Given that there are more players connecting to more portals than ever before, we’d curious to know what box you’d recommend for Brett. Don’t hold back, cool?

Ask Engadget: what’s the ultimate network media streamer? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fans of the 1982 movie TRON and its upcoming sequel TRON: Legacy will love this: Razer’s new TRON-themed mouse will leave a light trail behind it as it moves across its accompanying TRON-themed mousepad. Razer announced the new line of TRON-themed and branded peripherals back in June, but the new mouse is the first product to make its way to the public, thanks to a post on Razer’s Facebook page. The mouse has blue lines across the top, giving it the ambient glow that matches the movie’s aesthetic, and features a 5600 dpi optical sensor on the underside for accuracy.

Razer didn’t mention when the new TRON-themed mouse would be available, but did say that it would be close to the movie’s release near the end of the year and would retail for $99.99.  That price, while steep, would include the light and pressure-sensitive mousepad that displays an ambient blue trail of light behind the mouse as you move it.

[via DVice]