Hasta La Gadget!

China is a modern day Wild Wild East. It’s a strange world where copyright laws have little bearing and that supports sprawling black and gray markets for electronics.

Much of the technology we use in the West is manufactured in the People’s Republic. And that industrial knowledge base (and spare parts) eventually trickle down through the country’s vast manufacturing sector. You can find knockoff Blackberries that run on Android, mini-iPads months ahead of the rumored official announcement, and of course many examples of completely non-legit branded gadgetry. All for sale in China and other nearby markets. And, so it was really just a matter of time until the beloved cartoon mute, Snoopy became a cell phone.

Poor Snoopy is cut in half so his back side makes up the bulk of the phone. And there is some attention to detail in creating the beagle-phone hybrid–the speaker is molded in the form of a little dog bone with small dog paw prints along the bottom. Snoop even has a 1.3 MP camera built into his little bow tie (though, in my opinion, that camera belongs at the end of his signature black snout).

If you happen to come across a less-than-official dealer in Hong Kong or Shanghai and have $40 burning a hole in your pocket, you can be the toast of the town with your Snoopy phone (if you live in a town where people love Snoopy–I don’t, but you might). So, if you have a hankering for any electronic device sporting your beloved cartoon characters of your youth, take heed, because those Fraggle Rock iPads and Calvin and Hobbes laptops will eventually exist in some shady corner store’s backroom.

via M.I.C.

Rumors of a Facebook phone flared up on Sunday, thanks largely to a TechCrunch post titled Facebook is Secretly Building a Phone. The story goes that two of the company’s high-level employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos were holed up at the social network’s headquarters working on a so-called “Facebook Phone.”

Facebook was quick to deny the rumors–sort of. A spokesperson for the popular social network told the press, “the story, which originated in Techcrunch, is not accurate. Facebook is not building a phone. Our approach has always been to make phones and apps more social.”

The spokesperson went further, stating, “The bottom line is that whenever we work on a deep integration, people want to call it a ‘Facebook Phone’ because that’s such an attractive soundbite, but building phones is just not what we do.”

The second quote is telling. It’s a non-denial denial of sorts. The company may not be working on a “Facebook Phone” in so many words, but that still allows for the possibility of a handset built around the social network and, potentially, a Facebook-branded phone.

And anyway, the original rumors didn’t really have the company creating the hardware itself. Facebook was said to be working with a third-party manufacturer on that part, not unlike the partnership with HTC that result in the Google Nexus One.

A new round of rumors have named a partner: London-based manufacturer INQ. The new rumors, championed by Bloomberg, upped the ante a bit, suggesting that Facebook and INQ are actually working on two handsets.

Bloomberg’s source? Three people “familiar with the matter.”

The handsets are said to be slated for the first half of 2011 in Europe and the second half in the U.S. AT&T is reportedly considering picking up the devices, but has yet to definitively decide whether or not it will carry the devices.

Take look at the above chart. See that thin little red sliver? That’s Apple. It represents the number of iPhones that Apple sold between the months of January and June of this year. Seventeen million. Now that’s nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but it’s easily dwarfed by the blue slice–that’s Nokia, Samsung, and LG. The three handset manufacturers moved a total of 400 million phones in that time period.

Now, granted, Apple’s slice is only one company with, essentially, one product in that category–the iPhone. The blue slice, on the other hand, is three, all of which have a plethora of phone models. Still, the difference is staggering.

It really starts to get interesting, however, when you look at the second chart:

This one is the profits made by handset manufacturers over that same time period. The red slice is still Apple in this one. The company managed to snag 39 percent of industry profits–that’s seven percent more than Noka, Samsung, and LG combined. It’s a full ten percent more than the rest of the industry (outside of those for companies) combined.

Who said pie charts can’t be fun? Certainly not Steven P. Jobs.

Last night I received an e-mail from Virtualization firm Citrix stating that the company, “confirmed today that [it] will support the upcoming Blackberry Black Pad when it ships.” Odd, I thought to myself. I’m pretty sure RIM hasn’t actually announced the thing.

There has been a rumor floating around for several months now, that Research in Motion is set to reveal a BlackBerry OS-based business tablet to break into the consumer tablet space currently dominated by Apple’s iPad. The product has yet to come out of the rumor stage, however. I wondered if it was possible that I had missed a major news cycle somewhere along the way–or perhaps I was simply losing my mind.

I contacted a Citrix spokesperson, who told me,

The product has not yet been announced. However, I wanted to give you a head’s up that Citrix is committed to support the device when it is released (Citrix already supports the iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices). Let me know if you’re interested in learning more or speaking with Citrix on this topic.

The question, then, was whether Citrix was simply trying to drum up some press based around a product that, for all intents and purposes, might as well be vaporware (the spokesperson did, after all, manage to get that little plug for the company’s other products)–or whether the company knew something the rest of us didn’t. After all, it’s not unusual for a company to give a third-party the head’s up on a product before it’s official announced. What’s a bit more unusual, however is when that third-party lets that information slip first.

One of the biggest components in any of today’s portable devices is the battery. However if researchers can commercialize their latest innovation–paper-thin lithium-ion rechargeable batteries–that could all change.

According to a report on the Chemical Engineering News web site, Stanford University scientists took a regular sheet of paper, coated both sides with a layer of carbon nanotubes and then a thin layer of lithium compound to create a functioning, rechargeable battery. These thin, flexible batteries outperform other super-thin power sources and the prototypes handled at least 300 recharges.

With thin batteries, super-tiny components and possible flexible displays, paper-based and even rollable cell phones may not be that far away.

photo: Yi Cui/Stanford U