Feb 04

Motorola Xoom coming to Best Buy on February 24th, HTC Thunderbolt on the 14th

Posted in: 4G, Android, BestBuy, honeycomb, HTC, launch, lte, moto, motorola, release, thunderbolt, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, xoom

We’re already fatigued of reporting launch dates for devices announced at this year’s CES — it seems like each one has had at least four different potential release points — but when you get one of Best Buy’s official Facebook pages blabbing about when the Moto Xoom and HTC Thunderbolt will be arriving… well, you sum up the strength to do it one more time. Contrary to earlier insider leaks pinning the Xoom to a February 17th launch, Best Buy is now promising to have the vanguard of the Honeycomb tablet revolution on February 24th. That’s exactly a week later than our earlier info, so perhaps somebody somewhere decided to push things back a bit. We have no doubt, however, that Motorola is nearly ready with its slate — there have been plenty of them spotted around the Super Bowl this week. In the meantime, HTC’s LTE-equipped 4.3-incher seems to have finally settled down on Valentine’s Day as its time of reckoning, a day after the similarly sized Inspire 4G hits AT&T.

Motorola Xoom coming to Best Buy on February 24th, HTC Thunderbolt on the 14th originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Feb 2011 03:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 03

Watch Google’s Android event in full: Honeycomb on the Xoom, Android Market website, in-app purchases, and Cee-Lo Green

Posted in: Android, android market, AndroidMarket, Google, honeycomb, motorola xoom, MotorolaXoom, Today's Chili, video, xoom

There was plenty about yesterday’s Android event that didn’t make headlines but was worth noting. Hardware acceleration of both 2D and 3D UI elements — shown off to great effect by Google’s Hugo Barra, who managed to scroll through three lists simultaneously without inducing any lag on the Motorola Xoom — should make Honeycomb as delicious to look at as it sounds, while our personal favorite, the new tablet-specific email interface, should be part of Gmail yesterday. The email UI is built out of elements Google calls fragments, which will supposedly be easy to transition down to smartphones, so thumbs up all around. The video above also runs you through the big news of the day, namely that Android Market can now be accessed via a dedicated website and apps downloaded to your device remotely, along with the equally important (for devs) addition of in-app purchases. Finally, Cee-Lo Green pops in for a video chat session from wherever he is on the internets, and we’re all treated to an exhibition of lag-afflicted, awkward conversation. What’s not to love?

Watch Google’s Android event in full: Honeycomb on the Xoom, Android Market website, in-app purchases, and Cee-Lo Green originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Feb 2011 02:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 02

408 Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs sold in US during January, limited supply probably to blame

Posted in: car, Cars, electric, electric car, electric vehicle, ElectricCar, ElectricVehicle, ev, sales, statistics, stats, Today's Chili

The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are alike in a lot of ways: both rely on electric motors for their locomotion, both have earned Car of the Year awards (Volt in North America, Leaf in Europe), and both have had stunningly low sales in their first couple of months on sale. January’s numbers have just come out and the Volt leads the way with 321 vehicles sold or leased, while Nissan scores an even weaker 87 purchases. That compares to figures of 326 and 19, respectively, for the month of December. Before we all start writing off the EV as DOA (again), let’s remember that both companies have massive back-orders for their electrified people carriers, leading us to believe that the most likely cause for this slow trickle of deliveries is a limited supply rather than dwindling demand. Production volumes of the Volt and Leaf are expected to ramp up as we go forward, so panic’s inadvisable — unless we come around to January 2012 and are still looking at fewer sales than the Joojoo managed.

408 Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs sold in US during January, limited supply probably to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 19

HP’s first webOS tablet may start shipping in March, fulfill longstanding promise

Posted in: HP, leak, palm, plans, roadmap, rumor, schedule, shipping, slate, speculation, tablet, Today's Chili, webos

Way back in August of last year, when temperatures were above zero and Honeycomb was still a great unknown, HP promised us the first webOS tablet will come “in early 2011.” Just yesterday, however, our noteworthy exposure of the vanguard members of the webOS tablet family led us to believe that at least one of them, the Opal, would take until September to arrive. That may still be the case, but DigiTimes is bringing us back around to HP’s original pledge, with word that Inventec has received instructions from HP to start producing and shipping a webOS slate (most probably the Topaz) in March. As usual, this comes from the (in)famous insider sources that tend to miss as often as they hit, but it does make sense for HP to follow up its February event with a relatively rapid product rollout.

HP’s first webOS tablet may start shipping in March, fulfill longstanding promise originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 04:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 18

Apple on iPad competition: Windows is ‘big and heavy,’ next-gen Android tablets are still vapor

Posted in: Android, Apple, apple ipad, AppleIpad, earnings, financials, ios, ipad, Today's Chili, Windows

Apple’s COO (and current Steve Jobs stand-in) Tim Cook thinks “there’s not much” competition to the company’s iPad tablet. When queried about Apple’s view on what the rest of the market offers, Cook was brutally candid in describing Windows-driven machines as generally being big, heavy and expensive, while current generations of Android-based slates are in his opinion merely “scaled-up smartphones.” While we agree that Windows 7 isn’t a terribly touch-friendly affair, we don’t know that Cook’s comments on Android are quite so pertinent now that Google’s tablet-savvy Honeycomb iteration has been unveiled. Then again, he has something to say about the next generation of Android tablets as well, noting that the ones announced at CES lack pricing and release schedules, leading him to conclude that “today they’re vapor.” Ouch. As a parting shot, Tim took a moment to reaffirm Apple’s belief that its integrated approach will always trump the fragmented nature of Android and its plurality of app stores. Hear his comments in full after the break.

Continue reading Apple on iPad competition: Windows is ‘big and heavy,’ next-gen Android tablets are still vapor

Apple on iPad competition: Windows is ‘big and heavy,’ next-gen Android tablets are still vapor originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 18

Acer building Sandy Bridge tablets for Android, will use them to ‘phase out’ netbooks

Posted in: 10-inch, 7-inch, Android, intel, plans, roadmap, sandy bridge, SandyBridge, schedule, slate, tablet, tablets, Today's Chili

You’d be forgiven for expecting that the dual-core Tegra 2 that swept all before it at CES would be the king of tablet processors for a good while, but Acer is already plotting ways to overthrow it. Admittedly, Acer is kind of cheating by jumping into x86 land and snatching some unspecified Intel Sandy Bridge silicon, but are you really going to complain about getting multi-core grunt under the hood of your well-lubricated Android machine? An official from the company has promised two to three new tablets, sized at either 7 or 10 inches diagonally, for the first half of this year — a tasty morsel of information, which he garnishes with the forecast that netbooks will eventually be phased out in favor of such touchy-feely slate devices. If you can fit a full second-gen Core CPU inside a tablet, why the heck not?

Updated: Acer’s US team has clarified for us that the Android tablets it announced in November are still set to hit in April. Obviously, these Sandy Bridge versions would be farther off, but we’ve also heard from another source that Acer would likely wait for Intel’s ULV-based Sandy Bridge processors, which aren’t due until the spring / summer timeframe. We’ll let you know if we hear more…

Acer building Sandy Bridge tablets for Android, will use them to ‘phase out’ netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 16

HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates

Posted in: HP, laptop, netbook, official, palm, plans, roadmap, schedule, teaser, Today's Chili, webos

Todd Bradley did promise us there’d be more than just slates on HP’s webOS menu and today we can add netbooks to the list of form factors for Palm’s famed OS. This heretofore unknown slice of info comes from a carrier training website HP has set up to educate resellers on the strong points of its forthcoming products. The training video on the site speaks of the great synergies that can result from smartphones, slates and netbooks all running the same OS and “speaking” to one another, which echoes Bradley’s “connected experience” mantra from a couple of days ago. Smartphones are said to be the beginning of a new family of webOS products, with their larger siblings set to come “soon enough.” Is February 9th soon enough? We’d say so.

Continue reading HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates

HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 14

Moog Lap Steel adds infinite analog sustain to the top of your thighs: ears-on at NAMM 2011 (video)

Posted in: audio, guitar, hands-on, Music, Today's Chili, video

Leave it to Moog to give us one more reason to be jealous of lap steel players. As if their twangy, slidey Hawaiian metallics weren’t cool enough in the first place, they’ve now got the semi-magical ability to magnetically sustain or mute each string via the pickup — kind of along the lines of previously Moog-enhanced stringed instruments. The legendary synth manufacturer has also thrown in ladder filters and a gaggle of other switchable effects into the beautiful instruments. Orders are just being taken now, and each one will be custom-crafted (pink and purple sparkle starburst with a MIDI pickup, anyone?) by a luthier friend of the manufacturer for a little under $3000. We sat down with Cyril Lance from Moog and one of only four models in existence — catch video of the new acid-bluegrass sounds after the break.

Continue reading Moog Lap Steel adds infinite analog sustain to the top of your thighs: ears-on at NAMM 2011 (video)

Moog Lap Steel adds infinite analog sustain to the top of your thighs: ears-on at NAMM 2011 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 08

International Year of Chemistry 2011 seeks to educate and commemorate

Posted in: science, Today's Chili

Chemistry is a subject we don’t usually delve to deeply into here at Engadget, but this year is a special year for the science, marking the International Year of Chemistry. This event, which was made official by the United Nations, seeks to bring worldwide attention to the achievements in the field of chemistry which have contributed the welfare of humankind. Sponsored by 23 nations and various organizations, including the American Chemical Society, it includes the very interesting 365: Chemistry for Life calendar, which marks nearly every day of the year with a significant development in chemistry, such as January 8th, which commemorates Aircraft De-icers, which we are very, very grateful for. Hit up the source links to check out the full calendar.

International Year of Chemistry 2011 seeks to educate and commemorate originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 03:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 04

Tesla Model S to have 17-inch infotainment console powered by Tegra; BMW using NVIDIA tech too

Posted in: navigation, NVIDIA, tegra, tesla, Today's Chili, touchscreen

Tesla is touting the world’s biggest center console for its upcoming Model S today: a titanic 17-inch touchscreen display powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra chip. Infotainment, climate control and navigation will all be managed using the vast dashboard dominator, while NVIDIA’s hardware will also take responsibility for keeping the 12.3-inch instrument cluster LCD updated. Considering the Model S, like the Roadster before it, is an all-electric vehicle, you’d expect energy efficiency to be a pretty important consideration in the choice of infotainment system and Tesla points that out as a key advantage of Tegra, describing it as “power-stingy.” Another motor company hooking up with NVIDIA is BMW, who promises that all of its upcoming models for 2011 will benefit from Green Team GPUs powering their iDrive navigation and information systems. We don’t know what exact GPUs will be used, but a “visually rich” next-gen UI is being promised, stretching out to a 1280 x 600 resolution. You’ll find both press releases after the break.

Continue reading Tesla Model S to have 17-inch infotainment console powered by Tegra; BMW using NVIDIA tech too

Tesla Model S to have 17-inch infotainment console powered by Tegra; BMW using NVIDIA tech too originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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