Hasta La Gadget!

Sharp Galapagos A01SH tablet goes on sale in Japan from $1, comes with a catch originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Huawei’s handsets may not get the high-profile, stateside attention other OEMs are subject to, but that’s no reason for us to turn a blind eye to the company’s efforts. Spotted out in the wild with an accompanying spec list, the Honor (or U8860) purportedly packs a 1.4GHz processor, 4-inch FWVGA LCD display, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera capable of 720p video, a thickness of 9.9mm and an unspecified version of Android 2.3. Judging by the phones Europe- and Asia-only UMTS 900MHz / 2100MHz bands, it’s highly likely we won’t have the honor of seeing the company’s rumored flagship device grace North American shores. We’ll keep an eye out and let you know if we catch this one slipping through the FCC’s arms.

Huawei Honor leaks into the wild, prepares for ascension to the flagship throne? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inkling turns your scribblings into bitmap and vector files

Inkling is Wacom’s latest digital drawing tool and, frankly, it looks amazing. Inkling consists of a special ink pen and a detector device which digitizes anything you draw on paper and lets you send it to your computer. This is nothing new — just yesterday I wrote about a the Apen for Android devices. But there’s a reason Wacom is at the top of the pen tablet market: it does these things better than anyone else. Take a look:

Assuming that the Inkling works as well as it seems to do in the video, there are a few things that stand out here. First is that the pen is pressure sensitive (with 1024 levels), so the lines that end up on your computer should have the same weight as those you make on the paper. Second is layers. Tap a button to start a new layer. On paper. That’s pretty amazing right there.

Finally, you can import your drawing into Adobe Illustrator as a vector file. Frikkin’ vectors! This means that you can bend and tweak the individual strokes of your ink drawing as much as you like. It also means that you could scale up a tiny doodle and print it onto a billboard with no loss in quality.

Once done, the resulting files can be opened in Photoshop, Illustrator, Autodesk Sketchbook or Sketchbook Designer on the Mac or PC. And even the case design is clever: The pen sits inside the oversized hinge, and the case itself is the charger (three hours of charging gives eight hours of use).

It’s not often I go out and buy something I write about here on Gadget Lab, but I’m ordering one of these as soon as they start to ship in September. Sure, it costs $200, but it’s my birthday soon.

Inkling product page [Wacom]

See Also:

• Bamboo Paper, A Slick Notepaper App for iPad
• Apen Writes On Paper, Smartphones, Tablets
• Wacom Stylus for iPad Is Not What You're Hoping For

JawBone’s Icon gets a bigger speaker and a new friend — the Nerd. Photo credit JawBone

You’re still going to look like a total dork if you wear it, but at least you won’t go crazy with frustration when you use the new JawBone Icon HD Bluetooth headset, and its accompanying dongle, the Nerd.

The Icon HD is the same as the existing Icon, only with a bigger, better speaker inside — hence the “HD” moniker. You can connect to two devices at once (like JawBone’s JamBox speaker), letting you stream music from your laptop and also answer incoming calls from your phone. You can also add the same DialApps (actual applications) and AudioApps (voices that read out status and caller ID) as with the old Icon.

But the big difference is the Icon’s plucky sidekick, the Nerd. This brings an instant Bluetooth hookup. Plug it into a computer’s USB port and it will automatically register as a USB audio device. And because it is already paired with the Icon, you don’t need to do bothersome pairing every time you use a new machine.

The Icon HD comes bundled with the Nerd and can be had for $140. Now, if only JawBone would make a pair of stereo headphones already.

JawBone product page [JawBone. Thanks, Eva!]

See Also:

• Review: Jawbone's Latest Headset is Smaller Skinnier Sexier …
• Jawbone Makers Dream Big for Tiny Headset
• Software Update Makes Jambox 10x Bigger, Crawl Across Desks …
• Review: Jawbone Bluetooth Handsfree Set— Talk Handsfree …

Barnes & Noble is seeing store sales drop, but when it comes to its Nook, things are looking up.

Originally posted at The Digital Home