Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Femtocells, or small cellular base stations designed to boost cellphone signals, are seen as the next big thing in wireless.

At CES 2009 Motorola showed off femtocells packaged in a digital picture-frame like exterior in a bid to make it easier for consumers to hop on to the trend.

The CDMA femtocell 9100 Series includes a VoIP soft phone and offers enhanced phone coverage inside the home. Touching the screen activates the femtocell.

Through the screen, users can specify
coverage radius, average number of walls, windows, doors, or select one
or more mobile devices to optimize performance, says Motorola. Device, subscriber management and access control
settings can also be handled through the femtocell frame.

Motorola will start trials of the femtocell frame in the first half of the year and hopes to have it available by the end of the year. The company hasn’t finalized any deals with carriers yet but  Verizon could be the possible service provider for the device.

In Europe, femtocells are available for about ten-euros a month. Motorola hopes to ink deals that will bring similar pricing to North America.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Remember those sub-$100 Coby netbooks that we deemed a hoax? Well, it looks like they might not be as hoax-y as we originally thought. Here at CES, Coby has a bunch of base models on the show floor in a myriad of color combos. The rep who showed us around made it clear that this was a “market research project” but that the ‘books would ring in at under $200. There were a bunch of different configurations, but nothing too different from the usual Atom setup. The six color offerings might pique your interest, but after playing with them for a few minutes, we don’t know how eager we’d be to run out and pick one up — they felt pretty low-end. However, the only way to differentiate oneself in the crowded netbook market is with price, and Coby certainly has that working for it. We’ll see if these ever make it to market, and reserve final judgment until then. Check out the non-junky gallery below.

Filed under: Laptops

Coby’s sub-$200 netbooks handled at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We happened upon this preview of the Sync concept from CES installed in a concept car sharing the same marketing visuals as the Lincoln brand. We’re assuming we’ll see it at the Detroit Auto Show.

After some demo time with WirelessHD and founder John Marshall, it appears 2009 will finally be the year cable-free TV connections roll out in a big way. Expect products to launch towards the end of Q2, according to the Gefen rep on hand, their adapter will go into production towards the end of Q1 and hit shelves for about $700, while WirelessHD tech could add as much/little as 10% to the cost of a new TV like the demo units from LG and Panasonic. How well does it work for the money? Pretty well, with no untoward effects on the picture, and easily switching from source to source automatically. Walking between the display and source didn’t cause a problem but even millisecond-switching 60Ghz hardware was no match for being picked up and fumbled around by a photo snapping Engadget editor. Check out pics featuring Gefen (fear not, the final models will have RS-232), LG & Panasonic prototypes plus OEM hardware we’re likely to see soon in one form or another.

Filed under: CES, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Wireless HD hands on & recklessly-interfering originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, with the floor open, is the first real day of CES. By now we’ve seen a good deal of gear from the big companies, and here’s the best so far.

Palm Pre : Number one with a bullet. If we told you three months ago that Palm would own CES, would you have believed us? But this phone is for real, and from the looks of it right now, it very well could be the morale lift Palm so badly needed.

And the rest, in no particular order:

Samsung BD-4600 Blu-ray Player: Wall-mountable, networked, 1.5-inches thick, and really, really nice looking.

Samsung Luxia LED TV Lineup: Samsung loosed a whole series of ultra-thin, LED-backlit, network-connected LCDs, winning the Battle of the TV Announcements hands down.

Vizio Connected HDTVs: These Vizios stream just about everything possible over wireless-N: Amazon, Blockbuster and Netflix VOD, Pandora, Flickr, Rhapsody, plus any other Yahoo web widget.

Sony Vaio P: Sony’s Vaio P is something we haven’t seen before: a 2.08:1 aspect ratio (1600×768) on a 1-inch thick portable. Something different in the very, very generic netbook field.

Casio 1,000fps Point and Shoot Cameras: Both the EX-FC100 and the EX-FS10 bring the EX-F1’s slo-mo capture goodness to a point and shoot. Casio’s still the only folks in the super slo-mo field, and they’re continuing to kill.

LG’s GD910 Watch Phone: It was a non-working, behind-the-glass prototype last year, but one of every gadget head’s boyish dreams will come true later this year: A watch that’s a phone.

Eee Keyboard: Asus took the crazy cake with their still-shadowy home theater keyboard. With an onboard processor (of some kind), a touchscreen and keyboard and wireless HDMI, it makes perfect sense as a unique home-theater machine.

Sony Cyber-shot G3: We’re all about putting web browsers on as many things as possible, and Sony’s found another way to get one into our pants: A super-slim wi-fi-equipped Cyber-shot G3 that’s the world’s first to surf the web.

Panasonic Portable Blu-ray Player: Panasonic’s DMP-B15 is the world’s first portable Blu-ray deck. Your laptop probably doesn’t have a BD drive, but this will ensure you can watch hi-def 1080p on a tiny, tiny screen on your next flight.

And there you have it. Good stuff you may or may not be able to afford in ’09? Disappointment of disappointments? Discuss.

• Also out CES day two’s Best of the Rest.
[CES 2009]