Hasta La Gadget!

We’re continuing our onslaught of CES hands-ons with the WAVE-HOME from iriver. In a nutshell, it’s a more feature-filled Ojo with much more than just video calling — namely calendar, notes, plus it packs a WiFi phone in the back of the unit (pictured above). The video after the jump doesn’t quite do justice to the smoothness of the interface, but your mileage may vary depending on the fatness of your fingers. iriver reps told us that they estimate the unit to be priced at less than $400 to make affordable enough for people to buy more than one. Feel free to peep our original post for all the juicy tech specs, and don’t forget to point your friends in this direction if you don’t wanna feel like a loser if you drop four bills.

Continue reading Video: iriver WAVE-HOME hands-on

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless

Video: iriver WAVE-HOME hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been somewhat charmed by the Vivienne Tam-styled HP Mini 1000 for some time now, but today on the floor at CES we got our first in-person look at the teeny fashion “clutch,” as it were, and have to say that in person it’s pretty good looking. The 10-incher’s got a fiery design plus a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom with 1GB of RAM, and an up to 60GB hard drive. We were particularly enamored with that silver mesh hinge. It’s defintely a fashionable item — and if that’s what you’re into it’s got a starting price of $699. Check a gallery of this gal (and it’s matching mouse!) after the break.

Filed under: Laptops

HP Vivienne Tam Edition Mini 1000 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just got a precious few minutes alone in a dark corner (or a huge, overlit booth) with HP’s 12.1-inch dv2 and the 13.3-inch dv3. They’re both slick little smudge-loving machines with handsome design sense and super glossy finishes. In case you’ve forgotten, the dv2 is the first netbook to have AMD’s Neo platform, and it boasts a 1.6GHz Athlon Neo MV-40 processo, up to 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive and starts at $699. The dv3 starts at $799 and comes in several configurations, including either a 2GHz Athlon X2 QL-62 or a 2.4GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-86, with ATI’s Radeon HD 3200 graphics, up to 8GB of DDR2 RAM, 160/250/320/400GB hard drive choices. They’re both available now, but check the gallery for some photographic evidence.

Filed under: Laptops

HP dv2 and dv3 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve all heard about the prospects of Android in the mobile-phone market, but the NIMble is an Android phone meant for actual desktops.

By Touch Revolution, the NIMble features a 7-inch multitouch screen (800×400)—that’s roughly 4x the screen area you’d see in the G1 loaded with 2.5x the pixels. In person, that’s sharp enough to my eyes.

Other features include a 624MHz Marvel processor, SD expansion (to supplement unspecified internal storage), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

As for Android itself, that’s fully functional. But Touch Revolution has built their own software on top of the platform for entertainment and home networking stuff.
Operating the NIMble was speedy enough, though I had some responsiveness issues from the glass touchscreen. I’m pretty sure these issues will be fixed by the device’s September release, since Mark Hamblin, Product Design Lead on the original iPhone’s touchscreen, is busy ironing out the kinks. He explained that the touch gestures within Android need to be scaled to a larger screen.

So what about multi-touch? Hopefully the NIMble will have that capability at launch as well. But right now, Touch Revolution is busy building multi-touch architecture into Android itself. They’re also pretty eager for others to jump on the bandwagon.

The photos here aren’t of the final NIMble unit, but the finished product will look very similar…though we’re fairly certain that we’ll see a handset attached at launch. Coming this September, the NIMble will run $300, or free with a $10-$20/month phone home service contact.

So we dropped by LG’s booth here in the South Hall at CES and weren’t really surprised to see a whole bunch of watch phones in a case that looked like it was just moved out of Jacob & Co. There was a surplus of models dolled up behind glass, but only two out on the floor. LG was being super secretive about the transitions between the various screens, but we did our best to sneak peeks through the fingers on our not-so-generous demonstrator’s hand. What we did see looked pretty polished though (which you should know by now) and the transitions looked like browsing music on the iPhone. We were able to find out that the screen is not an OLED. LG went with a TFT with capacitive touch but we were told that it would work through a golf glove — though we’re not exactly sure about this. Be sure to check out the gallery for even more glamor shots and check after the break for video of the device (or the parts that LG would let us see) and prepare to be amazed. Ooh, shiny.

Continue reading Video: LG Watch Phone hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables

Video: LG Watch Phone hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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