Hasta La Gadget!

As far as most of us are concerned, if we’re going to pay a lot for a phone — you know, like, $350 on contract — it had better come with the works. We’re talking a qHD display, dual-core processor, 8 megapixel camera with 1080p recording, NFC, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 4G radio, to boot. If you’re someone who buys things made by Tag Heuer, you’ve got different priorities. The company just introduced the Link Phone, a darling clunker of a handset festooned with steel, 18K rose gold, or titanium, topped off with leather, alligator- and lizard-skin, rubber, and diamond accents — a medley that’ll set you back no less than €4,700 ($6,712). What’s that you say? You want specs? The Link, named after the Swiss outfit’s storied watch line, runs Android 2.2 — a clear step up from its feature phone predecessor. Other ho-hum features include the 3.5-inch (800 x 480) display, 5 megapixel autofocus camera, 256MB internal memory, an 8GB memory card, 1400 mAh battery, and EDGE / HSUPA connectivity. Tag Heuer also says it’ll be particularly durable, though it’s coming up short on specifics. Somehow, though, we don’t think it will survive when we accidentally drop it in our gold-plated toilet.

Update: Tag Heuer might not have the chops to build a highly spec’d phone, but it sure knows how to root one. As a tipster pointed out, if you pause the video at 1:18 you’ll see Superuser in the app menu — a telltale sign of hacking if ever there was one. Freeze frame after the break. [Thanks, Sasika!]

Continue reading Tag Heuer outs $6,700 Link Phone for those who like alligator skin with their Froyo (video)

Tag Heuer outs $6,700 Link Phone for those who like alligator skin with their Froyo (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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E-reader ownership in the U.S. has been surging lately, surpassing even the adoption of tablets, according to a new report.

Originally posted at News – Digital Media

With friends this good looking, you might want to video chat all day long

Fring, the cross-platform mobile VoIP app, has issued an update that brings native four-way video-calling to the iPad, before Skype has even released an iPad app of any kind.

The app, which is also available for Android and even in Nokia’s OVI store, offers video and audio chat over both Wi-Fi and 3G (unlike FaceTime, which is currently Wi-Fi — and iOS — only).

Considering that Apple’s own iChat multi-way video calls at first required a honking great Mac Pro to initiate and control the session, running this on an iPad shows how far we have come in just a few years. Sure, you probably don’t take your iPad skiing, or blow kisses to three of your friends at once like you see in the promo photo above, but there are times when four-way chat could come in useful.

The obvious use is podcasting, but as Fring offers no desktop software it’s unlikely to usurp Skype anytime soon. In fact, this might be Fring’s major problem. Most of my Skype calls (and I imagine the majority of all video calls) are to family and friends far away. Most of these don’t have smartphones yet, let alone tablets, so Skype remains the default for now.

Still, if you can actually manage to round up more than one friend who are both geeky enough to have Fring, and are also as good looking as the people in these promo shots, then good luck to you. You are clearly awesome.

NEW! Fun Group Video Chat for iPad: Full Size! [Fring]

Fring for iOS [iTunes]

See Also:

• Apple Change Quietly Makes iPhone, iPad Into Web Phones
• Test: Fring Brings VoIP To iPhone With Mixed Results
• Fring Brings Video Calling Over 3G to iPhone 4

Google’s legal woes are piling up in a hurry. French search engine 1PlusV is suing El Goog over alleged anti-competitive practices, less than a week after the Federal Trade Commission opened a formal inquiry into similar accusations levied stateside. The suit, set to be filed in a Paris court this week, claims that Google uses its market dominance to bury rival search results while unfairly promoting those for its own services. According to 1PlusV, Google “black-listed” 30 of its vertical search engines between 2007 and 2010, making it difficult for the firm to compete. The company is also complaining about having to adopt Mountain View’s technology in order to use AdSense and, in total, is seeking €295 million (about $418 million) in damages — the largest damage claim Google has ever faced in Europe. 1PlusV operates the legal search group EJustice.fr and, along with Microsoft, helped spur an EU antitrust probe against Google last year. The company says its forthcoming lawsuit represents the “logical” next step in its ongoing antitrust crusade, while Google issued a brief statement, saying it “look[s] forward to explaining this.”

Google to face €295 million French lawsuit over alleged anti-competitive practices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know you’re going to be shocked — shocked! — to hear this, but NVIDIA’s gone and refreshed its high-end line of GeForce GTX cards. The GTX 580M takes the place of the GTX 485M, and NVIDIA’s bragging that it’s the “fastest notebook GPU ever,” capable, we’re told, of besting the Radeon HD 6970M’s tesselation performance by a factor of six. The new GTX 570M, meanwhile, promises a 20 percent speed boost over the last-generation 470M. Both 40-nanometer cards support DirectX11, OpenCL, PhysX, CUDA, 3D Vision, Verde drivers, Optimus, SLI, and 3DTV Play. As for battery life, NVIDIA’s saying that when coupled with its Optimus graphics switching technology, the 580M can last through five hours of Facebook, but last we checked, that’s not why y’all are shelling out thousands for beastly gaming rigs. You can find the 580M in the Alienware M17X and M18X (pictured) starting today, though you might have to wait a week or so for them to ship. Meanwhile, the 570M is shipping in the MSI GT780R as you read this, and you’ll also find the 580M in a pair of 3D-capable Clevo laptops: the P170HM3 and the SLI-equipped P270WN. Handy chart full ‘o technical details after the break.

Continue reading NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R

NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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