Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Palm just gave us a demo of the Pre. You know the gadget unveiled at CES everyone is talking nonstop about. And although they didn’t let us handle the device (no touching!), we did get a very detailed preview from the Palm’s Director of Product Marketing, Paul Cousineau.

Our first impressions? The hardware itself is…succulent. When the slider is closed, it’s a little smaller than an iPhone, when opened it’s a little larger than a BlackBerry Bold. The touchscreen itself is prettier than an Icelandic supermodel with colors that pop like an M-80. The screen is also multi-touch, allowing you to pinch and expand photos and web pages…kind of like another touch screen device we know of. During the demo we didn’t see any sort of lag or jagged scrolling — the phone’s operating system looked like it was fully baked and functioning flawlessly.   

The accelerometer had no problem orienting itself. Flipping the
phone on its side and the web browser followed suit. One cool, novice
feature: when the phone is titled on it’s Y axis 45 degrees or so (like
you’re showing the person in front of you a picture) the screen orients
itself 180 degrees allowing whoever is on the other end to view the
screen right side up. It’s a clever touch that allows you to share
images and web pages with friends a little more easily than other
devices.

The browser is constructed on top of Webkit — the same platform as
Android and the iPhone — and it works. The slide out QWERTY keyboard
handles text input (there’s no virtual keyboard) with web pages that
took only a few seconds to load. When text or pictures were too small
to read, the multi-touch pinching expanded things out perfectly. Palm
claims they selected Sprint as the Pre’s lone carrier primarily because
of the very large, ultra-fast data networks. While I’m sure this will
benefit the Palm on the data side, Sprint’s voice network skews toward
the subpar end of the spectrum.

Okay remember when we said that we didn’t touch the phone before? That was a little bit of a fib. When no one was looking we did scroll
through the contacts screen. It was creamy smooth but took a very
delicate touch. When I first mashed my index against the screen the
contact list flipped out a little and wouldn’t scroll. When I lightened
up and just barely brushed the screen, it responded with fluid scrolling. I also managed to pinch a
web page, opening up some difficult to read text and a small picture.
The pinching action felt exactly like the iPhone; natural and
effortless.

The brief time I played with the Pre felt promising. Palm has been
vague on when we’ll see actual review units, but it should be sometime
in the next month or so. Hopefully, the finalized version of the Pre
lives up to the promise we’ve seen in this demo. 

(Photo by Jon Snyder/ Wired.com)

See also:

Palm Unveils Its Long Awaited Smartphone, The Pre

Video of the Palm Pre

Last year at CES, Bug Labs made a splash by unveiling their build-a-gadget system, made out of programmable, separate electronic parts like a webcam, a GPS receiver, and a cellular antenna.

This year, the company is adding new ‘building block’ modules including a Pico projector and a 3G box. Because the whole project is open-source, I’m most looking forward to seeing how the Linux ninjas will modify the Pico feature into one that improves the overall fun factor to a feature that has been underwhelming. (Yes, I’ve said that before.)

Out of the box, the Pico is powered by a DLP (at 480 x 320 resolution), 9 lumens of brightness, and stereo sound. It was developed with Texas Instruments, which also developed a couple of the other Picos. This means the video quality should be at least as good as the others. As for the 3G module, it has a SIM card input as expected and connects to any GSM network.

There are other new modules at CES 2009 that will add even more functionality to the gadget. There’s BUGwifi, a module box that adds extra 802.11b/g wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and EDR radio to connect the with peripherals. And there’s also BUGsound, which adds omnidirectional mics and extra jacks to give the frankengadget the ability of a music player and a voice/audio recorder.

None of these modules have been given a set price, but they should
all run between $50 and $80, like the others available now. These will
be released by March of this year.

I was intrigued with this moddable gadget idea ever since I heard
about it last year and these additions are interesting to me, but I’m
not so sure everyone else is into it. Swapping modules is fun for a
nerd like me, but keeping track of them without losing them, in
addition to the high hands-on factor, is bound to turn people off.

What do you guys think? Is this still interesting or have you moved
on to the more expensive but fully serviced gadget like the iPhone?

We had a chance to get on the show floor at CES and chat with Jimmy Fallon (the new face of late night television as he’s taking over for Conan O’Brien in March) on his gadget tastes, stock purchases, and jacket size. We hope you enjoy as much as we did.

Special thanks to Trent Wolbe for shooting the video

Filed under: CES, Misc. Gadgets

Jimmy Fallon and Engadget: raw and uncut originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Also making the scene in Las Vegas this week, QA is designed specifically for telepresence. This guy stands 5 feet tall and is kitted with a 5 megapixel camera, forward-mounted display, WiFi and optional 3G connectivity, and a laser pointer for, well, pointing at things. Available for purchase sometime in late 2009, the price will be somewhere in the $15,000 – $25,000 range. Video after the break.

[Via Get Robo]

Continue reading Anybots rolls out QA, the telegenic telepresence robot

Filed under: CES, Robots

Anybots rolls out QA, the telegenic telepresence robot originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Convergence! For those us aren’t ready to throw away our CDs and DVDs, iLuv’s got the i1155. The multimedia player doubles as both a CD/DVD player and a dock for your iPod.

The cover of the player flips open so you can display your iPod upright. The i1155 has a 8.5-inch display for playing DVDs or video of your 5th gen iPod. No word yet on iPod touch or iPhone support.