Hasta La Gadget!

Just a few meters from the entrance to Nokia World at London’s sprawling ExCel Exhibition Centre, we found a Toyota iQ compact with Nokia branding on the door. And in the dash was Toyota’s new Touch Life smartphone integration system, complete with Nokia Drive compatibility and display mirroring via MirrorLink. In addition to mirroring your Symbian Belle (or MeeGo) display on the 7-inch touchscreen, Touch Life also provides a driver-friendly interface, including enormous icons to control music playback, or to place calls to contacts by tapping their name and photo, or by using the jumbo telephone keypad. It also integrates with the Nokia Drive app, with a very simple (and also oversized) navigation interface. The concept is simple: access basic smartphone functions as you drive while limiting distractions. While you’re parked, you’ll have unrestricted access to your phone’s interface, but non-critical features are disabled as you drive.

The demo unit we saw is still a few months away from hitting production, so there were a few hiccups. After connecting the Nokia 701 to the system, the smartphone’s display appeared on the in-dash screen within a few seconds. We had full access to all of the phone’s features until shifting into drive, when a much simpler screen popped up, with Call, Drive and Music modules. Everything worked rather seamlessly until we neared the end of the demo, when an “Enjoy the sound while driving” message appeared on screen, where the navigation window had been just a moment before. There isn’t a firm release date in place, and the demo unit only appears to work with Symbian Belle at the moment — though MeeGo support (and likely Windows Phone as well) will be available after launch. Jump past the break to see how it works from behind the wheel.

Continue reading Nokia Drive with MirrorLink on Toyota Touch Life hands-on (video)

Nokia Drive with MirrorLink on Toyota Touch Life hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HTC Rhyme is one of the newest additions to the Verizon wireless line-up, setting itself apart from the rest of the family since it’s specifically for women — or hipsters who like purple. This time around, the company decided to focus on the accessories, leading its marketing campaign with a glowing purse charm to avoid missing calls — a fate all too familiar for gals whose phone is oftentimes buried at the bottom of a Louis Vuitton.

Unfortunately, we’ve been skipped over when it comes to some of the features popular with higher-end, more macho phones like the Droid RAZR or the Galaxy Nexus. Sorry, ladies, no 4- or 4.3-inch touchscreen, no 4G LTE and certainly no dual-core processor. Instead, this phone is pretty run-of-the-mill, with a 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, single-core, 1GHz processor, a WVGA display, a 5MP rear-facing and VGA front-facing camera, as well as an 8GB microSD card. Running the newest Sense 3.5 UI atop Gingerbread, the Rhyme offers a unique user experience for those who like HTC’s custom UI and, of course, the color purple. But is this phone powerful enough to keep up with the multitasking mayhem that is a day in the life of a modern woman? Jump past the break to find out.

Continue reading HTC Rhyme review

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Rhyme review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Trick your kids into tidying up with this OCD-friendly Lego brick sorter

Like every human child, I loved Lego. And like every human being ever, I hate tidying up. So the Box4Blox would have been just about the second best gift I could have received when I was small. Box4Blox is a simple sifter that sorts your lego blocks by size.

It works by grading the bricks. Of the four layers, three have holes in the bottom which only let through a certain size of brick. As you go lower, the holes get smaller, so you end up with similar-sized bricks stored together.

The best part is that you can trick your kid into tidying up. We all know children like to make noise and shake things. The Box4Blox lets them do both at the same time.

The Box4Blox holds up to 1,700 pieces, and goes for $40. A small price to pay for a tidy living room.

Box4Blox product page [Box4Blox via Chris Scott Barr]

See Also:

• Lego Star Destroyer: 50-Inches Long, 3000 Pieces
• Lego Camper May Turn Children Into Hippies
• iPhone 'Life of George' Combines Real Lego With Virtual Lego …
• Marty McFly's Air Mag Sneaker — In Lego

Contrary to the promise of its name, Pioneer’s Potternavi will not help you find platform 9 3⁄4

What sits on the handlebars of your bike, has GPS, an accelerometer, and LCD screen and ten hours of battery life? Nope, it’s not your smartphone — it’s the Potternavi, a specialized bike GPS from Pioneer.

The trouble is, it’s worse than your phone in almost every way. If we ignore the fact that you can’t do anything with it other than navigation and bike computering, and it still looks bad. The display is a tiny 2.4 inches, with 240 x 320 resolution, and the battery life isn’t much better than you get from a phone. Worse, when it launches in Japan next February, it’ll cost over $500.

On the plus side, it has built-in ANT+ support for hooking up wirelessly to cadence and power meters, and the price includes two years of cellular network access.

But the best part is the name, Potternavi. It’s not, as you would be forgiven for thinking, a device to navigate the Harry Potter universe. The name comes from the activity of “pottering,” or “puttering” as you call it across the pond. Who can’t love a device devoted to “occupying oneself in a desultory but pleasant way”?

Potternavi press release [Pioneer via AVWatch]

See Also:

• Garmin's New Tiny In-Bike GPS
• Should UK Police Use GPS-Equipped 'Bait-Bikes' to Catch Thieves …
• Bike My Way, a Bare-Bones iPhone GPS-Logger
• Review: Garmin Edge 705 GPS Offers Maps and Metrics for Data …
• Five iPhone Apps That Replace Bike Hardware

Remember that downright futuristic BlackBerry we spied back in September? Say hello, all over again. RIM and Porsche (of all companies) have just taken the official wraps off of the Porsche Design P’9981 BlackBerry, a frighteningly beautiful new slab that offers up a forged stainless steel frame, hand-wrapped leather back cover, sculpted QWERTY keyboard, and “crystal clear touch display.” It’ll ship with an exclusive Porsche Design UI and a bespoke Wikitude World Browser augmented reality app experience, not to mention the “premium, exclusive PINs that help easily identify another P’9981 smartphone user.” Fancy. As for specs, it’s boasting a 1.2GHz processor, HD video recording capabilities, 8GB of onboard memory, Liquid Graphics technology, a microSD expansion slot, an inbuilt NFC module and BlackBerry OS 7. We’re told that it’ll be available from Porsche Design stores later this year, but mum’s the word on the (presumably stratospheric) price. Head past the jump for T-break‘s hands-on vid.

Update: MobileSyrup reports that the device shown here will sell for “around $2,000,” and they’ll be (unsurprisingly) limited in quantity.

Continue reading Porsche Design P’9981 BlackBerry provides a long-awaited design jolt, compensates for a lot

Porsche Design P’9981 BlackBerry provides a long-awaited design jolt, compensates for a lot originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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