Hasta La Gadget!

iPhone 4, EVO 4G Powermats arrive at Best Buy originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

It ain’t the first time we’ve seen fresh hardware hit the small screen, but we can’t think of a chassis much larger than this making a cameo on the tele. Thermaltake’s monstrous Level 10 enclosure popped up on NCIS: Los Angeles this week, with Chris O’Donnell doing his darnedest to lift valuable information off of the internal HDDs via telepathy. Or maybe we missed the point.

[Thanks, Daniel]

Screen Grabs: Thermaltake Level 10 plays coy on NCIS: Los Angeles originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The oddly named ZooGue Smart Kase has become a popular choice for iPad owners due to its versatile design, which can hold an iPad at any angle. It even comes with adjustable straps for mounting to a car headrest. Now that case has been updated, and the inventor is making a bold statement about it. “I honestly can not imagine a better case than the new Version 2. I’m so confident in this case I will offer 100 percent satisfaction or a full refund. I’ll even pay for the return shipping!” says Tim Angel. You might as well try it.

The ZooGue Smart Kase V2 features superior leather and an internal thin plastic lining to ensure the cover is kept straight and sturdy. It provides a soft micro-fiber-like interior that helps protect the face of the iPad. The leather stitching on the Velcro gives a crisper and cleaner look, and the company stands behind it with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. Getting one will cost you $54.98.

You know what we always say: never enough battery life. Energizer‘s new AP1201 case for the iPhone 4 should come as a welcome addition to your Apple gadget family. As a slim, protective case of silicone rubber it’s not completely offensive looking (if fact, it’s pretty attractive), and it charges your phone while it’s wearing it. It’s got two charging options — a high speed charging mode which charges the phone first, then the case, while the other option provides simultaneous pass-through charging. The case promises to about double the life of your iPhone, and it’s available now for $69.99.

Energizer AP1201 case for iPhone 4 charges while it protects originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 01:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Energizer  | Email this | Comments

Apple weathered that Antennagate storm surprisingly well, but now there’s another potential cloudburst on the horizon, and it’s been pre-named for your convenience: “Glassgate.” Or maybe “Glass-That-Shatters-If-Scratched-By-A-Casegate.” Ryan Block has just posted a story on gdgt citing sources “inside and outside Apple” claiming that Apple has discovered a different flaw — or weakness, shall we say — in its iPhone 4 design. The basic problem seems to be with non-bumper cases, specifically ones that slide on to the phone, and the danger of trapped particles scratching the back of the phone while taking the case on and off. Case-caused scratches are nothing new (though still annoying), but the big problem seems to be that these scratches can lead to cracking and even full-on shattering of the back panel. Apparently this lead to Apple severely limiting its reselling efforts of third party cases for a time (which you might have noticed), and while Apple currently has some third party cases online and in its stores, none of the hard cases are of the slide-on variety. Apple also purportedly has a new test program set up to understand this specific issue.

Of course, plenty of questions are raised by all this: is this a widespread problem with folks that have managed to acquire a slide-on case? We haven’t really heard of such a correlation so far. Do the snap-on folks, many of whom received their cases free of charge from Apple, have anything to worry about? And does Apple have any intention of warning its consumers about this potential danger? Apple didn’t respond to Ryan’s request for comment, and we doubt they’ll respond to our own until they’re good and ready to talk — let’s just hope there’s not another faux hat-in-hand press conference in our future!

View Poll

Apple afraid of a shattering followup to its Antennagate woes? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  gdgt  | Email this | Comments