Smartphone cameras are becoming increasingly powerful-many, in fact, are fully capable of taking very sharp and professional looking photos. But are these phones capable of holding their own against more sophisticated equipment? And which phone does it best? More »
We’ve got a little more detail on those four new pre-orderable phones up in Best Buy Mobile’s business this week now that the news has gone from leak status to official, and needless to say, the truth is even stranger than fiction. The Dell Streak will be available for the first time in retail stores for $299.99 on contract come October 24, joined by a white version of Verizon’s Samsung Fascinate for $149.99 on contract; those two will be followed on November 8 by the HTC Surround for $199. Here’s where it gets interesting, though: the white Sony Ericsson X10 for AT&T — also rumored in our original leak — will come pre-loaded with “The Essential Taylor Swift Experience,” which frankly doesn’t paint a picture of the target demographic we’d really expected. But hey, we like surprises! What does her essential experience entail, exactly? Two albums, a new single, ringtone and video content, and access to her new album when it launches on October 25. This bad boy also comes in on October 24 for $99 on contract. Best Buy claims that all four of these are in-store exclusives… which, particularly with the Surround, is pretty insane. Follow the break for the press release.
Dell Streak, HTC Surround, white Samsung Fascinate, and Taylor Swift-ified white SE X10 coming to Best Buy exclusively originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Featuring Intel’s fastest ultralow-power processor and an 11.6-inch screen, the Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T could be a template, if not a viable alternative, to an upcoming MacBook ultraportable.
Originally posted at Nanotech – The Circuits Blog
Concept contraption clips onto your mobile phone, giving you a padded surface to put against your ear.
It’s funny that the most interesting iPad accessories so far have been the ones that try to squeeze Apple’s tablet into more traditional shapes — we’ve seen a wave of rebranded Bluetooth keyboard cases that ape the netbook form factor, a number of cases that aim for a Moleskine vibe (including some from Moleskine itself), and even an official Etch-a-Sketch case. And now we’ve got SMK-Link’s PadDock 10, an iPad stand that unapologetically turns your tablet into the tiny touchscreen iMac you’ve maybe always wanted. But is it worth $99 for a rotating stand and some speakers? We just got one to play with — read on for our full review.
Continue reading SMK-Link PadDock 10 review
SMK-Link PadDock 10 review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Today on The 404, we use Justin’s absence as a way to introduce a new friend of the show, “Stoopid” Andy. Ironically enough, Andy isn’t as dumb as his name implies as we all learn the man is quite the nerd. Andy shares some geek secrets on hacking DVR boxes and spending weekends reprogramming drivers.
Also joining us today is longtime 404 friend and guest Kenley, aka “Flow.” We’ll chat about Apple’s initiative to trademark “There’s an app for that,” and other commonly used phrases countless people utter every single day. Then it’s off to a discussion about the iPad hitting other carriers, which leads to a heated conversation about the inevitable fallout resulting from the iPhone’s migration to Verizon.
Finally, we all try to come up with ways we’d take advantage of Taskrabbit.com, the service that allows customers to outsource common tasks. Of course, we can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be illegal, so if you’ve got ideas, feel free to send them our way.
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There are fewer places to go to for consumers seeking access to unlimited data on their smartphones. T-Mobile plans to reduce data speeds for those consumers who use more than 5 GB of data in a single billing cycle, according to the Tmonews website.
The move will kick in this weekend and T-Mobile claims less than 1 percent of its customers will be affected.
T-Mobile’s decision is just a step short of the data caps announced by other wireless carriers. In September, Verizon said it plans to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers and will, instead, introduce two service plans with monthly data caps. A few months earlier, AT&T decided to retire unlimited 3G-data plans. Sprint has said it will have to reconsider unlimited data for its 4G network if data usage increases significantly.
Consumers today are using their smartphones for more than just voice and e-mail. The rise of social networking sites and mobile video and apps has led to a tremendous increase in the amounts of data being sucked through wireless devices.
Average data consumption increased to 298 MB a month in the first quarter of this year, from about 90 MB a month for the same period last year. That’s a gain of approximately 230 percent in a year, according to research by Nielsen Mobile. And, so far, it hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
T-Mobile has said only “extreme data users” will feel the pain. The company plans to send text messages warning users about their data speeds if they reach the limit.
This is not the first time T-Mobile has tried to throttle data speeds for power users. Earlier, the company capped usage around 10 GB but it seems to be reducing the threshold now.
For consumers this makes for a difficult choice. They can either get limited data from AT&T and Verizon and pay heavily for exceeding that or get “unlimited” data at T-Mobile and see their data download to a trickle after a certain point. Either way, it’s clear–the days of unlimited data on mobile devices are over.
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Photo: (Shawn Mclung/Flickr)
Last month marked 10 years since the release of the first public beta of Apple’s Mac OS X. The trial version of the forthcoming operating system was released on September 13, 2000, carrying a box price of $29.99.
In March of 2010, the first final version of the OS, Cheetah, will turn 10 years old. It’s hard not to get a little nostalgic thinking about how far Apple’s plucky little operating system has come — particularly in light of yesterday’s OS X 10.7 announcement preview. It looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of Lion very shortly.
In honor of next week’s announcement, we thought it would be fun to take quick trip down memory lane and hit on some of the milestones of OS X’s first 10 years.
SteelSeries has that very special distinction of building officially branded equipment for World of Warcraft, and now, two years after launching its original WoW mouse, the company is back with a “Cataclysm” mouse to celebrate the upcoming expansion to the world’s biggest MMO. The mouse has the similar advantage of its predecessor of close software ties to WoW itself, with 14 programmable buttons that can handle 130+ preset commands, and the ability to store 10 character profiles in software and one in the mouse itself. Also, thankfully, the mouse is Mac friendly out of the gate this time, and the software also controls the LED lights running down the back and “four different pulsation levels” for an extra bit of flair. For those of you who care for the pro gaming pedigree of SteelSeries, you’ll be interested to know that the original WoW mouse was actually mostly built by Ideazon before SteelSeries bought the company, so this is the first from the ground up to use SteelSeries technology and know-how. For everybody else: it has pretty lights! The mouse will retail for $100 in December, launching alongside World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
Continue reading SteelSeries celebrating Cataclysm with new WoW MMO gaming mouse
SteelSeries celebrating Cataclysm with new WoW MMO gaming mouse originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Continue reading Viewsonic rolls out 24-inch V3D241wm-LED monitor with 3D glasses
Viewsonic rolls out 24-inch V3D241wm-LED monitor with 3D glasses originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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