Hasta La Gadget!

Atmel’s XSense technology made its debut way back in April of 2012, but today ASUS became the first big name gadget maker to commit to using the tech — pledging to put it in an unnamed next-gen tablet set to debut in Q1 of this year. For those unfamiliar, XSense is a capacitive touch sensor that can be bent and bonded to surfaces of any shape. We got to see XSense for ourselves at CES today and chat with its makers to learn a little more about it.

While there are no technical limitations to the size of its touch sensors, Atmel’s technology is currently limited to a max size of 32 inches due to manufacturing constraints. However, the company has plans to increase that fabrication size at its Colorado manufacturing facilities. We got to test out the technology on a piece of Corning Gorilla Glass bonded imbued with XSense (alas, no ASUS tablet sneak peeks to be had), and can confirm that the technology does work quite well. The company sees its touch sensor as a way for device makers to utilize currently unused edge real estate on phones and tablets, in addition to providing designers with more flexibility when creating gadgets. Of course, we’ll have to see what kind of creative ways ASUS and other OEMs implement XSense, but you can see some shots of the sensor film and Atmel’s demo unit in our gallery below.

Continue reading Atmel’s XSense technology’s will make curved touchscreens possible (hands-on)

Filed under: Displays, Mobile

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We just got to spend a few moments with HP’s new Pocket Playlist, a tremendously small WiFi drive that can pump out media to up to five devices at once. Thanks to a PlayLater subscription, the drive can pull content from Hulu, store it up and push out content to your smartphones. Capable of pushing out video to three devices at once or audio to five, it’s designed for those long car trips where one person wants to watch Dora while someone else watches Duck Dynasty. In person, its a startlingly thin and light piece of hardware, barely a few millimeters thick and only a little longer than an iPhone 5. Of course, like anything that’s clad in black, piano gloss plastic, it takes barely a few moments before it’s covered in fingerprint smears. The 32GB drive ships on February 15th and will set you back $130.

Dana Murph contributed to this report.

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ViewSonic’s just revealed a trio of 10-point touch displays with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution and 20,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratios, and they’re Windows 8-certified, to boot. As for connectivity, each monitor comes loaded with DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA and USB compatibility. The 23-inch TD2340 features a dual hinge stand that can be adjusted four ways, which allows the monitor to pivot or lay flat. It will be available this month for $599. The 27-inch model, the TD2740, brings a picture frame stand which allows it to lay flat. That’s coming in available in February for $799. If you’re feeling particularly generous with your cash, the business-minded $2,499 TD3240 sports a 32-inch screen alongside a stand for kiosk usage and will be up for grabs this April. Hit the jump for a mix of hands-on and glamour shots.

Continue reading ViewSonic outs three Windows 8-certified touchscreen displays

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Jabra has announced a new line of headphones that make a solid case for leaving your phone in your pocket. The bluetooth Jabra Revo Wireless headphones let you control your music with just a tap to the ear. More »

If you were following Huawei’s presser from earlier today, you may have thought the company’s CES 2013 story was “All About Android.” Turns out, it’s not. On the showfloor here at Pepcom, the company was able to give us a first look at the Ascend W1: it’s first entry for the Windows Phone 8 space. Admittedly, the W1 doesn’t share any of the lust-worthy, high-end specs that adorn the Ascend Mate and D2, but that’s not its angle. As one Huawei rep put it, this is a value proposition, outfitted with a 4-inch display (we couldn’t verify resolution) and 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 paried with 512MB RAM. Software-wise, this is about as stock WP8 as it gets, so don’t expect to see any applications come pre-loaded onto the hardware.

Dimension-wise, the W1 is a girthy phone, cutting a silhouette that’s just about 10mm — so, it stands far outside the “world’s thinnest” category that we’ve heard so much about at this CES. It also bears a bit of heft which we can’t ascribe to its battery size. At 1,950mAh, the W1 should pack enough juice to last seven to nine days on standby and given the reduced power requirements of WP8, it’s sure to get moderate users through a full day. There’s a paltry 4GB of storage onboard, but thankfully, users can augment that via a microSD slot, allowing for up to 32GB.

UI navigation on the W1 lives up to the elegant, sweeping transitions that have become trademarks of Windows Phone 8. It’s appreciably quick and responsive. And somewhat surprisingly, viewing angles on the display held up remarkably when we tilted it about in various degrees. As for that standard micro-USB port, it seems Huawei’s done something different by allocating it to the bottom right of the handset.

Wondering when and where you’ll see the W1? Well, join the club. Huawei’s remaning tight-lipped about pricing and release details, but we did manage to get a confirmation that the W1 would be US-bound this year. For now, feast your eyes on the gallery below and check out our video after the break.

Sarah Silbert contributed to this report.

Continue reading Huawei Ascend W1 hands-on: the company’s first Windows Phone 8 device (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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