Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia’s Lumia 820 was firmly stuck in the Lumia 920’s shadow — in fact it barely figured in Nokia’s big presentation. But one thing it holds over its bigger, publicity-hungry brother is the ability to switch covers, so while the 820 won’t get its wireless charging built-in, a specific case can add the same functionality. Well, we knew that already, but Nokia’s now revealed the phone’s own range of dedicated ruggedized cases. These covers, arriving in green, yellow and orange, will measure in at the same length and width as the others, but will protrude marginally more, offering some protection to that 4.3-inch screen when it comes into contact with surfaces. A “rubber-like” trim will afford some extra protection to those glossy corners too. Expect the toughened cases to appear alongside the Lumia 820 at launch — whenever that is.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Nokia details new ruggedized shells for Lumia 820 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 03:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With its recent Kickstarter success now in the history books, it’s time for that open-sourced PressurePen to offer its stylus services to folks who missed out on the crowd-funded party. Luckily for those people, though, the pressure-sensitive instrument is now available for pre-order straight from the creator’s site, so they, too, can snag one for themselves. The PressurePen starts off at a not-too-shabby $30 for the “kit” only, which doesn’t include the plastic shell but is perfect for savvy tinkerers; meanwhile, the PressurePen with Stylus bundle costs $60, or $20 more if you’d like two additional tips. Units are expected to start shipping at some point in November, but better hurry as the company’s saying there are only “a limited number available at this price.”

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals, Tablets

PressurePen goes up for pre-order, is expected to ship in November originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 02:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not actual teeth armor…

When the word Japan comes into mind, you would think of Godzilla, cosplay, as well as Hello Kitty and Ultraman, not to mention Nintendo if you are an avid gamer. We do know that the Land of the Rising Sun does come out with some rather weird and quirky items every now and then, and here is the tooth armor that is the brainchild of a bunch of Japanese scientists who claim that this tooth armor will help prevent you from being afflicted by the scourge of many a sweet tooth – the dreaded cavities.

Researchers at Kinki University in Japan were successful in developing flexible apatite sheets that measure a mere 0.004 millimeter thick (or should we say, thin?) which are capable of being bonded directly to teeth in order to create a kind of artificial enamel surface. This particular pseudo enamel surface will be able to effectively restore your tooth enamel back to when it was fine and dandy without a care/pain in the world. They are not readily available just yet though, but is tipped to be prepared for cosmetic use in humans within a three year time period. As for dental restoration and treatment purposes, we are staring down at a five year time frame.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Wash and Brush timer helps your kids keep clean and healthy, Scientists create molecule to keep teeth cavityproof,

There is word from a Taiwanese news report that claims assembler Pegatron will be rolling out anywhere from 50% to 60% of the new iPad mini production orders, while Foxconn is touted to pick up the rest of the slack. What you see above is not the real iPad mini as frankly, there has been no leaked images of this purported device to date, but rather, a mock-up of what it might resemble when placed beside your regular sized iPad.

According to Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, Pegatron will handle majority of the production work compared to Foxconn, and to be able to come up with such verbage would mean the iPad mini is well on its way to production, or could even be in the midst of it already. This is rather interesting to note as all this while, Foxconn remained the only iPad assembler that Apple had engaged, and perhaps Apple is not about to put all of their proverbial eggs in a single basket. Industry analysts claim that it is possible to manufacture up to 5 million iPad minis each month with the workload split between the two manufacturers.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPad mini images arrive, are they legit or not?, New iPad mini rear shell photos surface,

Apple’s instant messaging service, iMessage, was said to have experienced outage issues worldwide instead of it being a local occurrence, and it certainly contradicts the “All Clear” condition on its iCloud status website. The service outage is not a long and sustained one, but rather, one that happens sporadically. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: AT&T’s CEO thinks iMessage and Skype are disruptive business models, Verizon explains recent outages,