Hasta La Gadget!

Etymotic, a company we’ve seen here at CES and in the past, has developed a pair of earplugs that protect your hearing against things like loud explosions and gunfire. The EB1 and EB15 Electronic Blast PLG Earplugs, retailing for $449 and $499, respectively, are aimed toward buyers such as hunters, musicians and soldiers — folks who are exposed to loud noises and need protection. The analog earpieces are powered by a 312 hearing-aid battery and will last three weeks. There’s no on/off switch — just a high and low gain control. High gain is used for environments that require an amplification and the opposite applies for low gain. In other words, if a soldier is out on the battlefield and needs to hear an enemy inside a house, he’d switch to high gain to generate a louder sound. The difference between the plugs is simple: the EB1 is for people who are going to be around one-off noises and the EB15 are for those who are going to be exposed to prolonged noises. We got a chance to test out the plugs on the loud show floor and we gotta say, the difference between high- and low-gain modes is easily recognizable and we feel like these earplugs will make superb head-hole protectors. Plenty of complicated graphs and numbers in the gallery below.

Etymotic EB1 and EB15 earplugs hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We heard a brief mention of Samsung’s Central Station during its first press event, but it wasn’t until we had a chance to check it out for ourselves on the floor did we really understand how the monitor / wireless docking station worked. Turns out it’s thanks to a USB dongle that connects the laptop in question to the rest of the setup. A clever idea, for sure, but we’d definitely need to put it through the ringer before we’d suggest. The 23-inch and 27-inch models are coming in March with prices as-yet unspoken. Enjoy the pictures below!

Samsung CA750 wireless Central Station eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LAS VEGAS — Another day at CES 2011, another 4G smartphone announcement. HTC debuted three new 4G mobile devices last week: the Thunderbolt, the Inspire and the EVO Shift.

Release date and price points on the Thunderbolt and the Inspire were murky. As in, HTC didn’t have any. But that’s been par for the course on a lot of smartphones announced at CES thus far. We do know the EVO Shift will be dropping Jan. 9, the last day of CES. All three phones will be running Android version 2.2 (Froyo).

I got to spend some time playing around with the Thunderbolt at the trade show. Here are a few first impressions, broken down by category:

Screen

It’s been a big year for big screens at CES, and the Thunderbolt doesn’t stray far from what’s been debuting. At 4.3 inches, it’s a sizable display equal to that of Motorola’s new Droid Bionic, last summer’s EVO 4G and the Thunderbolt’s sister product that debuted alongside it: the AT&T-carried Inspire.

All the advantages of such a large screen come through when using the back-facing 8-megapixel camera. It’s got a nice array of filters to tweak your photos, including the “vintage warm” filter (aka the Instagram effect). And sadly, I didn’t have anyone to video-chat with, but it’s nice to know I can, with the 1.3-megapixel front facing camera.

The haptic feedback on the Thunderbolt’s capacitive touchscreen is a nice touch, but I had a bit of difficulty with pressure sensitivity when trying to scroll through menu screens. On occasion I’d require a little extra effort to choose a widget. This was not a huge deal, but was still noticeable.

The sausage-fingered shopper need not worry. Where the spaciousness of the screen shines is in typing on the Thunderbolt’s keyboard. It’s easy to compose texts fairly quickly, and I made relatively few errors during test texts.

Browsing and Performance

We’ve been hearing lots about 4G network capability lately, and the Thunderbolt is HTC’s Verizon-carried contender. From the bit I did, the phone’s browsing speed is indeed ample. A quick Google search for Wired.com brought our site up in about five seconds. Scrolling downward on the page was fairly smooth, with only minimal clipping.

Under the hood, the Thunderbolt runs on a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, with 768 MB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage. It moved along through the menus speedily, and it pulled up video and pictures without much lag. There’s also a microSD card slot with a 32-GB card included.

Feel

The back of the Thunderbolt has a matte finish to it, somewhat akin to HTC’s unsuccessful Nexus One. With the Thunderbolt’s finish, it doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to slipping from the hand that easily.

The little Google-branded kickstand on the back is a nice flourish, especially when you want to watch video on the phone’s large screen. And the metal finish of the kickstand just looks cool.

Overall, I dug the Thunderbolt well enough upon first glance. We’ll have to see how it and Verizon’s 4G network perform when the phone is eventually launched.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Android tablets aren’t exactly in short supply at CES 2011, but the Enspert Identity Tab stands out — despite hailing from a manufacturer we’d never heard of before the show. Enspert’s got two slick 7-inch slates on the floor, and while the E201 mostly cribs from Samsung’s WiFi-only Galaxy Tab — right down to a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird chip — the flagship Enspert E301 pumps up the pixel density with a 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, adds an all-metal case, a mobile DTV antenna, and 3G connectivity. We poked and prodded these tablets all over and got a peek at the full spec sheets, so after you peruse our gallery below, hit the break for details!

Continue reading Enspert Identity Tab E301 and E201 hands-on preview

Enspert Identity Tab E301 and E201 hands-on preview originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, we’ve seen an iPad on a dashboard. Ready for some in-car PlayBook action? Recent RIM acquisition QNX is all over it, showing off what it calls simply QNX Car. It’s a basic reference implementation of some technology that will be running the infotainment systems of cars in the coming years — though they’ll surely look very different than this by then. QNX is showing how it can pull media from multiple sources, like an iPhone, use Message Access Protocol Bluetooth to pull data from a BlackBerry, and even use Terminal Mode to replicate the UI of something like the PlayBook. Plus, the PlayBook was able to change climate control settings in the car.

The company is also working on what it’s called the Simple UI Protocol. It’s basically a lowest-common-denominator smartphone integration — something like Ford’s AppLink that, in theory, will work regardless of the app or the hardware on the car. It’s very limited, allowing just two lines of text and a few icons to be sent from the phone to the car, and just two buttons (left and right) to be sent back to the phone as controls. The idea is to remove any aspect of driver distraction and to provide AppLink-like functionality in a standard, non OEM-specific way, which we like. But, it’s so limited in scope we’re not sure just how useful it would be. See for yourself after the break.

Continue reading QNX Car concept with PlayBook integration hands-on (video)

QNX Car concept with PlayBook integration hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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