Hasta La Gadget!

With the introduction of their full 2013 (and beyond) lineup of processors for the mobile universe, Qualcomm had made it clear that they’re here not only to stay, but to bring on feature boosts like Quick Charge 2.0. With this second iteration of the feature many only discovered existed just about a week ago, you’ll be charging up to 75% faster than the competition. This means that if you’ve got your phone (with Quick Charge 2.0 technology inside), and your friend has their phone, and you’re both charging your devices at the same time, you’ll be going up to 75% faster than he or she – off to the races!

There’s already a collection of Quick Charge 1.0 device out in the wild today, each of them working with Snapdragon processor. This is a Qualcomm technology, so you can expect many device to be working with it in the future as well. Many HTC devices in the past have been working with Quick Charge 1.0, and the HTC One is a device that’ll be busting out with Quick Charge 2.0 in the very near future. Quick Charge 2.0 comes embedded in all smartphones and tablets working with the next-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor under the hood.

This technology resides in both the device and the AC/DC wall charger you’re using day to day. Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 is offered as a standalone IC solution (outside the Snapdragon 800) or as part of the Snapdragon 800 processor’s power management integrated circuit (PMIC). According to Qualcomm, devices they’d tested before Quick Charge 2.0 technology was embedded took 7 hours to charge compared to 3 hours after the switch.

The great thing about Quick Charge 2.0 is the fact that Qualcomm is working – right this minute – with AC/DC chipset suppliers to “fully enable the power supply ecosystem.” In other words, you’ll be using Quick Charge 2.0 and might not even know it. In addition, while Quick Charge 1.0 was made primarily for mobile devices, Quick Charge 2.0 will be ramping up to 60 watts of power when needed, both improving charge times for mobile devices and getting powerful enough to charge up notebooks, too.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional Qualcomm insights from the past week and get pumped up about Mobile World Congress 2013 and more Qualcomm action than you can handle. Hit up our Mobile World Congress 2013 tag portal for more information right this minute!

Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 revealed: power up quick! is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

The Wii U launch sort of came and went, didn’t it? I mean, it’s a nice console, but it certainly didn’t cause any major waves. In fact, Nintendo only sold 57,000 units in January. For those who don’t track game console sales numbers — and why would you — that’s bad. Very bad.

The Wii U, at least so far, has underwhelmed consumers. There isn’t a killer application just yet, and despite some interesting innovation with the touchscreen controller, no one is sitting in his living room, staring at an empty space in his entertainment rack, thinking, “You know what I need? A Wii U.”

And now we’re all waiting so see what Sony does with the PlayStation 4. Rumors are that they’ll do what Sony always does: Pack a ton of technology into a package that will be expensive — but cost less than it should — in order to get early adopters on board. It’s actually possible that by the time this column is posted, Sony will have already released details about its upcoming hardware and you’re too busy oohing and ahhing about frame rates and visual controllers.

I hope so. It’s clear that we need new hardware. We’re desperate for something amazing. We need a new hardware war, something to get us fanboys off our heels. Faint rumors about Microsoft’s next console, images of possible new PS4 controllers and buzz about anti-DRM features have me interested, but I’m not getting the sense that people are bouncing around message boards, gritting their teeth and hungry to get their hands on a new console this year.

Perhaps it’s because the last generation of hardware is still quite serviceable. I still use my PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on a regular basis. The PS3 is my go-to Blu-ray player and I’ve been grinding my way through Ni no Kuni. The Xbox 360 does my Netflix and media playback duties and is also my choice when it comes to playing shooters given Live’s solid performance despite throngs of screaming fools.

At this point in the previous hardware generation, I was more than ready for new hardware. Shadow of the Colossus was dragging the PS2 to its limits. I wished at the time that I was playing it on more powerful hardware. Meanwhile, the giant Xbox was clearly ready for better networking features in order to do all Microsoft wanted to do with Live, and who didn’t want a prettier Halo? Meanwhile, the GameCube desperately needed to be replaced by something more innovative and competitive.

All three companies delivered. The powerful PS3 is still the best Blu-ray player on the market, Xbox Live is the best gaming network outside of Steam and the Wii remains an excellent party device.

I’m worried, though, that this next generation will just be more of the same. The PS4 certainly sounds powerful, but what can it possibly do that will blow our socks off? There isn’t a new optical format to get excited about. The new Xbox will most likely also be a powerhouse, but instead we’re hearing more about how Microsoft could be appeasing publishers with some strict anti-DRM measures. We all saw what Nintendo did: Innovate a little, but keep the Wii brand name and deliver a better — but similar — experience.

In short, these are probably going to be the most conservative game console updates we’ve seen yet. We’ll hear a lot about applications, digital downloads and better performance. We’ll have a hard time telling the difference between a game console and a set-top box. But what we’ll be left with might be underwhelming, and that’s going to be disappointing. Let me be clear: I hope I am wrong.

Maybe it’ll all be in the apps and the way they change the way we consume games and media. Maybe the new devices from Sony and Microsoft will allow us all to finally say goodbye to cable companies. Maybe we’ll never have to rent a Blu-ray disc from Redbox again.

Or maybe it’ll just be more of the same. Here’s hoping it won’t be. C’mon, Sony. C’mon, Microsoft. Get crazy.

Joshua Fruhlinger is the former Editorial Director for Engadget and current contributor to both Engadget and the Wall Street Journal. You can find him on Twitter at @fruhlinger.

Filed under: Sony

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If you’re one Elon Musk, you’re probably ready for just about anything to take the place of the only story dominating the Tesla tagline for the past few weeks. Of course, a $90 million net loss isn’t the ideal story to overtake the Model S kerfuffle, but hey — at least the company’s aiming to pull in a profit next quarter. In a bid to keep investors focused on the positive, the automaker’s Q4 2012 shareholder letter notes that Tesla is officially predicting its first quarterly profit in Q1 2013, sliding up from “late 2013.”

For the quarter that just wrapped, the firm saw revenues of $306 million (a 500 percent increase sequentially from the $50.1 million seen in Q3 2012), and it ended the year with $221 million in total cash after having made the first quarterly principal payment of $12.7 million to repay the loan to the U.S. Department of Energy. Tesla also plans to deliver some 20,000 Model S vehicles in 2013, with around 4,500 of those happening in Q1. Europeans and Asians can expect their deliveries in “summer” / “late this year” (respectively), with the first Model X deliveries to occur in early 2014. Musk also told investors that it plans to “spend significantly less on capital expenditures” in 2013 compared to 2012, helping to (hopefully) generate “slightly positive net income on a non-GAAP basis” in Q1 2013.

Filed under: Transportation

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Source: Tesla

Toy maker, Takara Tomy, releases nationwide on March 7th, a line up of four independent swimming robot fish. About the size of your average goldfish, these water activated fish swim around quite realistically as soon as they hit the water. Robofish comes in red or grey shark color. The Aulonocara comes in a blue straight out of Lake Malawi in East Africa. And the bright orange Clownfish looks like it could be swimming directly out of a group of soft coral. For a retail price of ¥1,500 grab a …

That little, white pixelated bean spinning around above might look more like a bad 80s video game than the near-messenger of quick and devastating apocalypse, but that’s what happens when you’re taking shots 74,000 miles away from your subject. What you’re seeing is, in fact, 2012 DA14 at a resolution of around 13 feet per pixel over an 8 hour period just as it was mercifully passing our beautiful space marble by on the evening of February 15. More »