Acer announces Liquid Mini and beTouch E210 Android Froyo phones

Acer’s just announced a couple of new Android smartphones that are heading to the other side of the pond. Pictured on the left is the Froyo-powered Liquid Mini which — as the name says for itself — sports a humble 3.2-inch 480 x 320 capacitive LCD touchscreen, along with a 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 chip, 512MB of RAM and ROM each, and a 5 megapixel camera that records 480p video on the back. On top of DLNA connectivity for your home entertainment setup, the usual wireless goodness like WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and FM radio are also present. Potential British buyers will be able to pick from one of the five color options — blue, white, pink, yellow, and black — when the Liquid Mini ships in April, with pricing to be announced.

The beTouch E210 on the right comes with a portrait keyboard plus trackpad, but users will have to make do with a less thrilling set of specs: you get a 2.6-inch 320 x 240 resistive touchscreen (oh dear), an underwhelming 416MHz ST Ericsson PNX6715 processor, 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. But like the Liquid Mini, the Froyo-laden E210 also has WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and FM radio. Keep an eye out for it and its price come March in the UK..

Continue reading Acer announces Liquid Mini and beTouch E210 Android Froyo phones

Acer announces Liquid Mini and beTouch E210 Android Froyo phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gateway Media Console with CableCARD and Windows Embedded Standard 7 hands-on

Microsoft’s working hard to get people believing in its Windows Embedded Standard platform as a real set-top box contender and one of its vanguard devices is the above Gateway Media Console. It’s still a concept product in the Acer / Gateway labs, but what it promises to deliver makes us wish it hurries up and makes the leap to retail nice and quickly. Based around a Sandy Bridge Intel CPU, this machine runs Windows Media Center and gives you access all the internet-connected content that you can enjoy on your Windows 7 Home Premium-equipped PC, but it also boasts a InfiniTV 6 CableCARD tuner that permits up to six HD broadcast TV streams at a time. Those can then be networked out throughout your house — whether over a wireless or wired connection — and then recorded on whatever laptops, desktops or other Windows devices you have lying around the house. The end result is that the kids can be recording a pair of channels upstairs in their bedroom while you watch the football game in the living room and your mother-in-law enjoys whatever she’s into down in the basement — all coming in from the same, single coax cable plugged into the Media Console. There’s a hidden optical drive as well and Microsoft tells us this thing could range between $500 and $700 when it does eventually make its way out for sale.

Gateway Media Console with CableCARD and Windows Embedded Standard 7 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Iconia Tab A500 first hands-on! (update: video)

Acer’s ten-inch Tegra 2 tablet with Verizon LTE? You’re looking at it right now, courtesy of the NVIDIA booth at CES 2011’s Digital Experience show. It’s just the same engineering prototype with an early build of Android 2.2 we’ve seen before — it’ll run Honeycomb at launch — but this time, we got to touch. The hardware seriously feels final, with a solid metal case and a supremely responsive touchscreen that tracks a full ten points of contact. There’s an interesting array of ports, too, with a full-sized USB port (as well as micro-USB) on one side and a dedicated charging socket too, as well as a dock connector on the bottom. What’s missing are the standard Android Home, Menu and Back buttons, as instead of those, you simply swipe the lower right corner of the screen to bring up a tiny pane of virtual alternatives. No LTE connectivity to be found at Digital Experience, we’re afraid, so we’ll have to bring you speed tests another day — but we’ll have video up soon. For now, peep the gallery below.

Update: Video after the break!

Continue reading Acer Iconia Tab A500 first hands-on! (update: video)

Acer Iconia Tab A500 first hands-on! (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Texas Instruments announces DLP Pico HD chipset, slew of pico projectors CES-bound

Texas Instruments has just announced its latest DLP projector chipset, the Pico HD. The newest, tiny chipset offer HD WXGA resolution projections of up to 100 inches, and promises to be brighter and clearer than ever. So what does this mean to you, the consumer? Well, Texas Instruments is promising a host of hardware partners showing off their brand spanking new projecting wares. We don’t have full details yet, but we do know that we can expect to see Acer unveil its HW300T pocket projector, while ViewSonic will show the PLED-W200 DLP Pico projector, and offerings from Optoma and LG to boot. We’ll track them all down for you as soon as our tiny hands possibly can. And that, in a nutshell, is our Texas Instruments pico news of the day. The full-fledged, not in a nutshell press release is after the break.

Continue reading Texas Instruments announces DLP Pico HD chipset, slew of pico projectors CES-bound

Texas Instruments announces DLP Pico HD chipset, slew of pico projectors CES-bound originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Aspire One 522 falls from the clouds, sporting dual-core 1GHz Ontario APU?

AMD Fusion’s taken its sweet, sweet time getting here, but we’re hearing you’ll be able to get your hands on some Atom-beating netbook chips soon — for instance, in this Acer Aspire One 522, which will reportedly drive its oh-so-glossy 10.1-inch, 720p screen with a 1GHz AMD C-50 Ontario APU. In case you need a brief refresher, Ontario’s the chip rated at just nine watts, meaning we should expect some fairly decent battery life here, though possibly not the heroic performance of its 1.6GHz Zacate cousin. Aside from those specs, the Acer’s mostly your standard netbook — three USB ports, VGA-out, a webcam and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi — though it does have HDMI out, something you won’t find on the otherwise similar Aspire One D255. It’s hard to say what it’ll cost stateside, but a Thai e-tailer’s ringing up a version right now with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive for 12,829 baht (about $425). Wonder if it runs Android?

Acer Aspire One 522 falls from the clouds, sporting dual-core 1GHz Ontario APU? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer’s Android tablet (and its gyroscope) previewed on video

While Acer wasn’t willing to let us power on its forthcoming Android tablets at its press event last month, it looks like the company just doesn’t have the same kind of control over its partners or employees. Three videos of what appears to be Acer’s 10-inch Android tablet have popped up on YouTube, and not only is the slate powered on, but the footage provides a pretty clear look at some of Acer’s custom Android apps. The entire UI looks like it’s still in a beta stage and the video itself looks like it is some sort of internal test demo — don’t forget Acer is planning to ship these with Honeycomb in April — but the company seems to be messing around with gyroscope-based page turns and some unique zoom gestures within the photo / e-reader application. We’re assuming the tablet is running Froyo as there’s a quick peek at the homescreen and app drawer in the first video, but other than that we’re really at a loss for details here. Hit the break for the trio of videos and to see it all for yourself. Oh, and Acer, if you send us one, we promise to go easier on the screen (see 0:12 of video three) than this lady… just sayin’!

Continue reading Acer’s Android tablet (and its gyroscope) previewed on video

Acer’s Android tablet (and its gyroscope) previewed on video originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Aspire 5742G laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics reviewed, es ist schnell

Acer Aspire 5742G laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics reviewed, proven wunderbar

When first announced, we had fears that the new NVIDIA GeForce GT 500M-series graphics would be little more than a tweak of a clock speed here and a new sticker there, as the specs of the 540M (96 CUDA cores, 128-bit memory interface) match the 435M series bit-for-bit. But, a Notebook Journal review of the first laptop to bear NVIDIA’s latest, the Acer Aspire 5742G, finds that the performance boost is tangible. “Much stronger,” even, scoring 8315 points in 3DMark 06 — a good bit higher than the 435M scores we’ve seen. The laptop otherwise is said to be quite a powerhouse, with a massive 8GB of DDR3 memory onboard, but it’s a gentle machine too, Optimus letting the thing run cool and long (up to five hours on a charge) when you’re not getting your frag on. Indeed it’s deemed the most powerful notebook you can buy for €700, and while that translates to roughly $920, we’ll have to see what Acer decides to charge when it comes Stateside.

[Thanks, Markus]

Acer Aspire 5742G laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M graphics reviewed, es ist schnell originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Iconia priced at €1,499, on sale in Spain on January 28

Physical keyboards are old news, right? They will be come January 28, which is when Acer intends to make its dual-screen Iconia laptop available for public consumption. That’s the date we’ve received from the company’s official Spanish mouthpiece, accompanied by a lofty €1,499 ($1,987). Literal currency translations are as usual inadvisable, but that’s a hefty fee, however you want to think about it. Then again, the Iconia does come with two 14-inch multitouch LCDs, which last we checked weren’t the cheapest parts in the land, and also furnishes you with some decent grunt under the hood courtesy of a Core i5 CPU, up to 4GB of RAM, up to 750GB of storage, an optional 3G module, and — lest we forget — a USB 3.0 port. We’re sure it’ll end up as somebody’s perfect bowl of porridge.

Acer Iconia priced at €1,499, on sale in Spain on January 28 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 05:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Revo 100 now available in UK, slide-out RevoPad and all

We did a bit of a double take when we first saw the press release this morning for the new Acer Revo 100. Sifting through our memory banks (and Engadget archives), we finally remembered: the “Revo 2” with Intel CE4100 shown off earlier this year at IDF. We’re betting this is just a twin and the Intel version is still en route, but for now, the Revo 100’s packing AMD Athlon II Neo dual-core processor with NVIDIA ION graphics, up to 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, Dolby Home Theater v3, Blu-ray drive, 802.11b/g/n, and a multitude of ports including HDMI and two mini-PCI Express card slots for expansion. More interesting, though, is the slide-out RevoPad, which can function as either a multitouch gesture pad or, when activated, a QWERTY keyboard with lit-up keys on the same surface. Software-wise, we’ve got Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and Acer’s new clear.fi media sharing system. When’s it available? Now — at least in the UK. How much? £599.99 including VAT. We’ve dropped Acer a line as to US release details; we’ll let you know what we hear. Press release after the break.

Continue reading Acer Revo 100 now available in UK, slide-out RevoPad and all

Acer Revo 100 now available in UK, slide-out RevoPad and all originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M refreshes mobile graphics midrange (update: hands-on pics)

Uh oh, just as we thought NVIDIA had moved beyond its penchant for rebadging hardware, here comes the vanguard of its 500M mobile GPU series — which happens to be specced nearly identically to what’s already on offer in the 400M family. The GT 540M chip maintains the same 96 CUDA cores and 128-bit memory interface as the GT 435M, but earns its new livery by cranking up graphics and processor clock speeds to 672MHz and 1344MHz, respectively, while also taking the onboard memory to a max speed of 900MHz. Power requirements have been kept unchanged, mind you, and NVIDIA itself admits it’s exploiting the maturation of the production process to just throw out some speedier parts. China gets the GT 540M immediately, courtesy of Acer, while the rest of the world should be able to buy in at some point next month. Jump past the break for the full press release.

Update: We’ve managed to track down the particular Acer model that’ll mark the GT 540M’s debut, it’s called the Aspire 4741G. The option we saw came equipped with a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5-480M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB HDD, a Blu-ray disc drive, and a 14-inch screen up top. There’s not much, aside from the new top cover design, to really distinguish this from the rest of Acer’s Aspire line, with the keyboard in particular being the very same one that we’ve witnessed on Timeline series machines for over a year now — comfortable, well spaced, but exhibiting quite a bit of flex around the Enter key. See more of it in the gallery below.

Continue reading NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M refreshes mobile graphics midrange (update: hands-on pics)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M refreshes mobile graphics midrange (update: hands-on pics) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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