Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 hands-on

This week the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 has been revealed: a massively powerful smartphone working with Android and a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display with an Intel Atom Z2580 processor (that’s Clover Trail, mind you) under the hood. This smartphone is super slim at just 6.9mm and weighs in at just 162g, both of these specifications rendered extra impressive by the fact that you’re working with the features you’re about to read all about. This machine feels just as nice as it sounds, looking ready for the market in the very near future.

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The Lenovo K900 is the company’s new hero phone, working with a composite of stainless steel alloy and polycarbonate in a Unibody mold – sleek and robust. The phone remains thin due to work Lenovo’s done on optimizing both the thinness of the camera setup and the layout of the internal battery. The front of this device is covered with top of the line Corning Gorilla Glass 2 for scratch protection as well – their newest solution.

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Though as Lenovo mentions, Intel has not released full specifications on the chipset as such, Lenovo will be bursting forth with this SoC sooner than later – April in China, in fact. Pricing, if you’re wondering, has not been announced at the moment. Then there’s the camera technology behind this machine’s lovely 13 megapixel shooter.

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You’ll be working with a Sony Exmor BSI sensor as well as an F1.8 focal length lens. This camera has the widest aperture of any smartphone-based camera in the field today, and the front-facing camera has been given a boost as well. With a fabulous 88 degree viewing angle on the front-facing camera on this smartphone you’ll once again be working with the best of the best – no front-facing camera on a smartphone has a wider angle than that.

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Have a peek at the hands-on look we’ve got above and below to get a handle on what this phone will mean for you in the very near future. At the moment it is, in fact, only announced for China – but we can dream! Stick around our CES 2013 portal all week long as well to make sure you’re into the fold with all of our up to the minute news bits and hands-on adventures.

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Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

P2i aims to bring waterproof smartphones to the mainstream

We’ve seen our fair share of smartphones and devices that claim to be “water-resistant” or something close, but the folks from P2i aim to deliver the full experience to all smartphones. Yesterday we showed you guys Liquipel that will treat and waterproof your device for a fee, but P2i wants our OEMs to launch phones already fully protected.

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The technology, product, and option isn’t really anything new at the moment. It features the same process that will treat your smartphone or tablet on a molecular level. Essentially coating every aspect of the device in a waterproof film invisible to the eye. This covers the electronics inside, speaker grills, cameras and everything else.

We’ve already been enjoying P2i’s technology in some of our favorite Android smartphones. The “Splash Guard” feature that Motorola introduced with their DROID RAZR and RAZR HD is all P2i. The difference between them and other companies is P2i wants our device to be protected out of the box, rather then ship them off for a water-proofing process.

Shown off here at CES 2013 is their brand new technology that builds on Splash Guard to make the entire device 100% waterproof, or what they call “dunkable” to the point where we can drop our smartphone in the tub for hours at a time without harm. As you saw in my image above they featured the Samsung Galaxy S III resting at the bottom of a tank completely unharmed. So while this technology is slowly becoming available to end users, hopefully we’ll just enjoy future smartphones that are 100% waterproof thanks to technology from P2i. They’re working with multiple partners and will be launched inside millions of smartphones throughout 2013.


P2i aims to bring waterproof smartphones to the mainstream is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

OtterBox Defender with iON Intelligence hands-on

OtterBox is here at ShowStoppers at CES 2013, and they’re just unveiling some new, updated iPhone cases. The Defender series is the company’s most popular product, and they just revealed an updated version that comes with an extra battery, as well as an accompanying mobile app that provides a user interface for monitoring the extra battery.

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The case provides the same great protection that the Defender series has always provided, but this updated version, which OtterBox is still calling a prototype, comes with some extra new features, including an extra 1450mAh battery, which will provide double the power of the iPhone 4/4S, which comes with a 1440mAh battery on the inside.

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The case also has ten LED indicators on the front, and each one represents 10% of the battery life, and clicking a button below the LEDs will turn on the indicators for a couple of seconds so that you can see what level the external battery is at without having to open up the OtterBox app.

Speaking of the app, OtterBox introduces iON Intelligence technology with this new Defender case. The app tells you how much juice you have left in both your iPhone and the external OtterBox battery, and will automatically determine when your iPhone battery needs more juice. Again, this is still an experimental sample, so some things may change, but the company said that we should expect it to arrive before the summer.

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OtterBox Defender with iON Intelligence hands-on is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Eink CST-01 world’s thinnest watch hands-on

This week we’ve gotten the opportunity to have a talk with Sriram K Peruvemba, Chief Marketing Officer of Eink, showing today what’s now the world’s thinnest watch. This is the CST-01, a Kickstarter project at the moment, coming from the folks at CST (aka Central Standard Timing) and Eink itself, a partnership that’ll be delivering the watch to users this year. Have a peek at our talk with Peruvemba in video form here at Showstoppers during CES 2013.

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What we’re seeing here is a watch that takes the best features of a regular watch, that being low power, readability, and an overall pleasing experience and made it as thin as its ever been. This watch is more than just rugged, too, able to be punched directly in the face (so to speak) without having its usability altered at all. The watch itself is actually only 0.80mm thin – miraculous, really.

The watch is charged through a base station that’ll be coming with the device when users receive it in the mail (or in stores in the future) and you’ll be able to choose from two different time displays, 24 or 12 hour formats. The whole weight of the device is 12 grams – that’s less than 5 pennies, imagine that! From what we’ve heard from Peruvemba right here live and in-action at Showstoppers, this machine is going to be a real fashion hit (as well as a tech hit for nerds of all kinds). See it soon!

The watch is in the process of being funded by a Kickstarter where the first 500 users will be able to own it for $99 (if you fund it, of course). After that you’ll be paying for the watch for a total of $129 USD. The watches we’re seeing here are right off the assembly line, prototypes right out of the factory, literally. Check the photos above and below and see it all in your hands soon!

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Eink CST-01 world’s thinnest watch hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Kingston 1TB USB 3.0 Thumb Drive Hands-on

Earlier this week we mentioned the folks from Kingston unveiled the worlds first USB 3.0 thumb or flash drive to also have a full 1000GB of storage. We’ve certainly seen 1TB flash drives before, but none support USB 3.0 at the moment. Today here at CES we managed to quickly get some hands-on pictures with the new flash drive so check it out.

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1TB of storage just slightly bigger than the size of a thumb rocking USB 3.0 speeds. That’s just crazy. I want one already. Sadly as I’m sure many of you know, the price tag is pretty ridiculous. Now like mentioned above, we’ve seen 1000 GB flash drives before, so lets talk about the speed in this crazy fast thumb drive.

Kingston has added this to their HyperX Predator series for the simple fact that it’s blazing fast and they didn’t compromise on speed when building this device. Kingston’s Predator doesn’t skimp on speed, at all. Promising read/write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160MB/s, respectively. Nice right?

It might not be as fast as many SSD’s available today, but then again this this is relatively small and fits in your shirt or pants pocket. Then as usual Kingston’s popular wireless storage WiDrive was updated and their new model features removable storage — instead of the integrated versions available today. Add this 1TB thumb drive to that and you’ll have your own 1TB of sweet sweet storage. Almost your own personal cloud as the storage is all accessible over WiFi. The 1TB HyperX Predator will be available later in Q1, and while the price hasn’t been disclosed yet, the 512GB version is available for a staggering $1,750. Tough pill to swallow right there. Expect a rather steep price when they reveal all the details later this month. Start saving those nickels.

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Kingston 1TB USB 3.0 Thumb Drive Hands-on is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We can see right through Samsung’s latest advertising

If CES is all about grabbing eyeballs, then Samsung’s transparent display cases could be the perfect promotional accessory: drop your new product in the box, load up a video, and see people queue up to gawp. First announced last August, as part of Samsung’s push into atypical screen aspect ratios, the cases are intended to show off the company’s efforts in transparent screens.

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The concept is pretty straightforward. The product sits in a lightbox, with glass sides and an illuminated back and bottom panel, while the front is actually a display. That can be loaded with a promotional video, with a list or specifications, or something else, and constantly loops.

Alternatively, there’s full PC control, so you could cook up a display which would interact with the viewer. That might include showing different specifications and demo clips, depending on what they want to see, or paging through pricing and other information.

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Although we’ve seen transparent screens before – Samsung was showing off panels based on the same technology back at CES last year – this is perhaps the best use we can actually think of for the panels. They’re undoubtedly cool, but otherwise not terribly practical.

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We can see right through Samsung’s latest advertising is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Razer Edge (Project Fiona) gaming tablet Hands-on

Razer’s poplar Project Fiona gaming tablet made quite the splash last year at CES but today it’s finally been made official, hardware is final, and the gaming tablet machine will begin shipping in Q1 of this year. In case you missed it, Razer announced all the details this afternoon and renamed it the “Razer Edge” but we managed to get some hands-on pictures with prototype so lets take a look.

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Now Razer is planning to offer a few different variations of this product, as the full out gaming experience isn’t for everything. Their basic kit may sound plain, but it certainly isn’t coming in at $999. You’ll want to check out our coverage for a better idea of the different options Razer will be offering. Essentially that $999 gets you the basic kit with a third-gen 1.7GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GT640M LE GPU, and a 64GB SSD. That will be powering the rather crisp 10-inch 1280 x 800 resolution display.

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From there you’ll be able to upgrade to the Edge Pro, which offers the same impressive device with a better and faster 1.9 GHz Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128 or 256GB SSD storage instead. Now since we already know the specs lets talk about feel, weight, and options. Being a very well built device from Razer it certainly isn’t lightweight, in any form factor. As just the slate you’ll be surprised just how heavy it is, and if you opt for the Pro you’ll certainly feel the weight. It’s heavier and thicker than a traditional Android slate, but then again you have that Core i7 power and unlimited Windows gaming options.

Playing games was awesome though, as you’d expect. WarHammer was excellent and the controls worked quite well. Being able to wonder around the floor and play was quite entertaining. It might not be the most powerful gaming PC around, but then you can’t play most in your living room or the backseat of a car now can you? You’ll be greeted with USB 3.0 up top, as well as an array of power buttons, volume up/down, and more. Then each handle rocked start, select, and other usual game controls.

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Razer will be offering the basic and pro model, as well as an additional keyboard dock and regular desk dock options later this year. The pictures in the gallery below should give you an excellent idea of what to expect, although the final design could change ever so slightly from what we’re seeing here today. The pricing however, won’t be changing and are set in stone.

We’ll hopefully be getting one in for a full review when the time comes so for now enjoy the quick hands-on pictures, and stay tuned to our CES 2013 portal for the rest of CES.

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Razer Edge (Project Fiona) gaming tablet Hands-on is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Toshiba Smartwatch tracks health, location, and passive-aggressive mail

Toshiba just wants to know you’re fit, healthy, and eating well, and if its new smartwatch prototype can help you with your email, calls, and messages too, that’s all the better. The company is showing off a new concept watch with a 1.7-inch color OLED display, capable not only of hooking up wirelessly to your smartphone so as to ping over reminders, alerts, message previews, and other notifications, but of tracking your pulse from your wrist and keeping a fitness record. It even uses biometrics for security.

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The display runs at 200 x 320 resolution, which is sufficient for multiple lines of text, with simple controls to navigate through the menus and options. As well as messages and calls, it will offer directions pulled from your iOS or Android smartphone, together with news headlines and weather forecasts.

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The ECG sensor tracks heart-rate and can keep a record of your fitness, but Toshiba also expects to use it for security: if the smartwatch doesn’t recognize your usual pulse, it won’t unlock. Toshiba also envisages a download store for alternative watch faces and apps.

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What most struck us, though, was the content of Toshiba’s looping demo, which included choice messages like “I get so emotional when your [sic] not around. I think the emotion is called happiness.” There’s no telling whether the watch and its charging cradle will actually make it to market, but Toshiba would probably need to slim down the design before that could happen since it’s a chunky block right now.

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Toshiba Smartwatch tracks health, location, and passive-aggressive mail is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung NX300 hands-on: 3D mirrorless top-tier action

This beast we’re looking at right here is the Samsung NX300, just announced this week as the company’s hero 3D-capable mirrorless camera – and it looks just as nice as it appears to work. What we’ve got here is not a SMART CAMERA, not a Android camera like the GALAXY Camera, but a full-on flagship made to be your professional digital top-notch hero for every single 3D photo you shoot from now on – and it feels just about as high quality as it gets, 20.3 MP APS-C and all.

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The NX300 is Samsung’s replacement for the NX210, bringing this beastly 20.3 MP APS-C CMOS sensor to replace that last-generation machine along with a set of features that are not to be missed. You’ll be getting a full-on 3.31-inch AMOLED touch display, 1080p video shooting abilities at 60 frames per second, and of course a massive ISO range of 100 to 25600. You can take burst shots at 8.6 photos per second too – snap em up!

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The maximum shutter speed on this next-generation camera is an undeniable 1/6000th of a second, meaning you’ll be able to capture a lion leaping in for the kill on your favorite zebra this summer season without a hassle. This this device isn’t technically part of the same push for Samsung’s SMART CAMERA lineup, you’ll still be rolling out with built-in dual-band wi-fi and you’ll have the ability to connect to the device with your smartphone, too. The NX300 is part of Samsung’s line of devices that have their own Android and iOS app to rock and roll remotely – upload at will and use a remote viewfinder as well!

Have a peek at the Samsung tag to see what else Samsung has presented this week and check out the full details of the company’s excellent offering for web-ready cameras for 2013. Also be sure to jump in on our CES 2013 hub to see all of our hands-on action and up to the minute updates all week long!

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Samsung NX300 hands-on: 3D mirrorless top-tier action is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Netflix launches Super HD and 3D; Reveals Ultra HD trial with Samsung

Netflix has launched Super HD, offering a new top-tier of streaming video quality for those on select ISPs, but there’s Ultra HD content in the pipeline thanks to a special partnership with Samsung. Funneled out through Netflix’s Open Connect delivery network direct to ISPs, the Super HD video is even higher quality 1080p than the streaming company offers as standard, with certain 3D titles available in the US. Meanwhile, at CES, Netflix is demonstrating the fruits of its 4K resolution experiments with Samsung.

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Hiding in Samsung’s booth at the show – or at least, as close to hiding as an 85-inch TV can manage – was an Ultra HD set running a 4K stream from Netflix’s servers. There were few details to hand, and no sign of a public launch date, but the picture quality looked great.

Still, it’s Super HD that will be reaching more people – though not everyone – first. Netflix subscribers will need to get their internet connection via one of the ISPs currently working with the media company, a list that includes Cablevision, Virgin Media, British Telecom, Telmex, Telus, TDC, GVT and others.

Everyone else will have to wait, unfortunately, and only those subscribers in the US will get Super 3D content, at least initially. You can find out if you’re on an Open Connect compliant ISP here.


Netflix launches Super HD and 3D; Reveals Ultra HD trial with Samsung is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.