Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier today our brethren over at Engadget Chinese got to hang out with Huawei Device chairman Richard Yu, who was kind enough to inform us that his company will release a HiSilicon K3V3 chipset — the follow-up to the current quad-core K3V2 — in the second half of this year. What’s more, much like NVIDIA’s upcoming Tegra 4, the new platform will be based on the more powerful Cortex-A15 ARM architecture instead of Cortex-A9. Yu also hinted that the K3V3 will be featured in the successors to the Ascend D2 and the Ascend Mate, but our guess is that we won’t be seeing those at MWC next month. We shall tickle the man live on stage for more answers this Thursday.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile

Comments

Beatpower just announced its existence to the world today and it’s brought a fleet of speakers to help celebrate. For years its parent company, CorpCom, has developed and distributed audio products for other outfits, but it set out to develop its own line of HiFi Bluetooth speakers roughly 13 months ago. Each of the firm’s boxes connects to audio sources via bluetooth, feature USB ports for charging devices and are accompanied by a Bluetooth remote that can even control treble and bass. With the help of architects and industrial engineers, Beatpower has managed to concoct particularly striking audio hardware.

Take the outfit’s 40Hz to 20KHz BeatClear speaker, which packs 350mV amp input sensitivity, two tweeters and a pair of woofers inside a clear acrylic case. There’s no release date attached to the hardware just yet, but it’s set to retail for $199. The BeatBlock set of speakers wraps a pair of tweeters and a duo of woofers in a striking hand-stitched leather package, which comes in a variety of color combos, while offering a 20Hz to 20KHz frequency range. Word of a release date hasn’t arrived yet, but it’ll carry a $199 price tag.

Continue reading Beatpower enters the HiFi Bluetooth speaker fray, introduces speakers with panache (hands-on)

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video

Comments

Source: Beatpower

Either Improv Electronics loves trees, or note taking. Perhaps both? What we do know for sure is that its latest offering to the list maker is here at CES, and we just got some hands (and pen) on time with it. The Sync is a 9.7-inch slate containing the company’s own eWriting technology. More than that, it also has a microSD card slot, USB and Bluetooth. That last addition is where the money is with this particular model, allowing you to wirelessly… sync with other enabled devices (i.e. second screens, desktops and iOS / Android devices). This means you can scribble away on the Sync, and have your scrawls appear at presentations and beyond. Of course, any note taking device wouldn’t be complete without some Evernote integration, and luckily enough, it’s present here. So, once you’re done transferring inspiration from brain to slate you can grab it as a an image, and store it in the cloud for later.

The models themselves were still prototypes, but they looked and felt solid and comfortable to use. As with the other models in the line, there are little ergonomic touches that please the eye and hand alike. There’s a mount on the side for the all important stylus, and the screen itself — wile utilitarian in nature — is easy to look at, and text, words and drawings appear clear. The SD card functionality means you can save your notes for later upload, and the mobile app functionality is also set to continually improve, with real-time second screen coming to mobile and tablets, as well as on desktop. The Sync will be up for grabs sometime around the holiday season this year. For now, sync with the gallery and video past the break.

Steve Dent contributed to this report.

Continue reading Improv Electronics Boogie Board Sync hands-on (video)

Filed under: Tablets

Comments

I really love to shop, but I always feel bad about pestering the salesperson for different sizes or colors of a pair of pants or something. But Facecake eliminates that issue—and makes it so you never have to ask another human being if a pair of jeans make you look fat. More »

Otterbox has teased its new Defender case here at CES but there’s an important new addition inside the iON Intelligence case — this one is a bit more considerate how it charges your iPhone 4 (or 4S). There’s a strip of LED lights along the bottom edge which indicate how charged the case is, and it will only ever start topping up your phone when it dips below 100 percent, all without the need to flip a switch. An installable app will monitor how power is transferred between the iPhone and the 1,450mAh pack housed inside that Defender casing. This is still an experimental sample, but Otterbox tells us that the case will arrive before the summer. Until then, we’ve got a teaser video after the break to tide you over.

Continue reading Otterbox unveils iON Intelligence iPhone case with automatic power management and Defender protection (hands-on)

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments