Hasta La Gadget!

Well, we just had our first encounter with Samsung’s new Bada-sporting Wave handset. We’ll say this to start… the screen is gorgeous, and the phone itself is super fast. No hesitation almost anywhere, but it’s hard to make a judgment call at this point. A lot of the software seemed unfinished, and we saw a few crashes and weird behavior. Still, it’s clearly a device capable of handling some pretty intense work, and a Samsung rep we spoke to wanted to emphasize its ability to multitask. We were also told that the phone has more than 512MB of RAM, which is notable for a device of this type. We’re going to play with it a bit more and flesh out our impressions, but for now feast your eyes on the gallery… and check the video after the break!

A few more takeaways (with some input from senior editor Thomas Ricker):

• Overall the device feels like a glorified feature phone, and speaking to some other tech folks here, that feeling seemed to be common. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot to it that we haven’t seen in other Samsung devices, especially considering the TouchWiz integration.
• There was an issue with flipping the keyboard from portrait to landscape — as we said the phone is early, so this may change, but we had to leave an app and reopen in the other orientation to get it working. We also noticed that there doesn’t seem to be word prediction in place right now.
• The browser is redirecting to WAP pages, so it was hard to see what the results were. We also thought the buttons were in a very odd place, making it a bit hard to navigate.
• The display wasn’t always responding to touches, and at least one unit completely froze on us.
• For those asking, from the looks of things (and the press release) there is no multitouch on this device. Correction… we just tried pinching and zooming on the phone and while it did create some kind of zoom result, it also kept giving us an error! Furthermore, when we tried to load an image heavy site, it forced the phone into its task manager mode and made us close all applications before we could proceed with using the phone. Clearly there is work to be done.

Continue reading Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!)

Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Jayson, who loves the flexibility of RAW but doesn’t always feel like lugging around a DSLR. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

“I’m wondering if there’s a point and shoot camera that would be recommended for shooting RAW. I have a DSLR , and as much as I love it, it’s not really fun to bring that when I go out in the evenings. I read somewhere that Canon has one available, but I can’t remember which model it is. I prefer to shoot in RAW to give me more options when editing them later. Thanks!”

We know there aren’t too many non-DSLR cameras that shoot in RAW, but for those out there crazy enough to own one or two, why not throw your impressions below? Go on — it’ll be fun, we promise.

Ask Engadget: Best point and shoot camera that does RAW? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to ‘This day in Engadget’, where we crack open the archives and take a whimsical look back at the memories and moments of our storied past. Please join us on this trip down random access memory lane.

On February 6th, 2007 Apple CEO Steve Jobs published his “Thoughts on Music” letter. iTunes was by then the major player in online distribution, and the iPod had become the widely recognized face of portable music. DRM was controversial and pretty much universally disdained, and Jobs took the opportunity to write a letter pinpointing what he thought were the three options moving forward in the digital music distribution model. Essentially, he felt Apple (and the rest of the music loving world) had three choices: stay the course (DRM intact), move to the company’s FairPlay licensing model, or envision a future which was DRM-free. Jobs made no bones about it: he and Apple hoped to “embrace” the end of DRM (under pressure from the EU, of course). Arguing that DRM hadn’t stopped piracy, he conveniently called for the major labels to license their music to Apple DRM-free. On January 9th of 2009, Apple did announce that some of the music in its iTunes store would be purchasable DRM-free, though it still makes use of FairPlay for apps and video. Jobs will have to continue fighting the good fight, we suppose.

Also on this date:

February 6th, 2009: The Kindle 2 seemed like it might be leaking (it was), Roku moved into private beta with Amazon Video on Demand, and Microsoft denied it was making a phone.

February 6th, 2008: Ford announced it would offer its F-150 with an in-dash computer (amongst other things), a bunch of undersea cables were reportedly cut leaving much of the world with no internet and no Engadget, and the Xbox 360 HD DVD player hit an all-time low price of $130.

February 6th, 2007: Apple asked the FCC to keep its iPhone secrets confidential until the 15th of June, Hasbro recalled nearly a million Easy Bake Ovens to the dismay of little girls everywhere, and Sony Ericsson officially outed its W880 (Ai) Walkman musicphone.

February 6th, 2006: The PSP was www.engadget.com/2006/02/06/psp-officially-getting-email-and-gps/officially rumored to be getting both email and GPS, LG outed its F3000 cellphone which went ‘vroom vroom’ whenever you got a text, and Mobile ESPN went live.

February 6th, 2005: The world was a flutter with the news of how to unlock a GSM Treo 650, while signing up for a year of Napster to Go brought with it a free iRiver H10.

February 6th, 2004: Hey, Engadget didn’t exist yet!

This day in Engadget: Steve Jobs calls for an end to DRM originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Felix, who would feel a lot better about his situation in life if he had one certain gadget that could do two certain things. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

I am looking for a NAS — 1TB would be good — preferably with WLAN built in, and multi-download BitTorrent capabilities are a must. I’d like a unit that doubles as a media streamer (music and videos), and while I’d prefer to stream over WiFi, I definitely need an HDMI port. If there’s an option with a display on the unit itself, I would love to know about it. Thanks for any input!

We know these multifaceted devices exist, but we also know they aren’t exactly everywhere. For those who’ve bought in, we’d love to hear about your experiences. Do you prefer yours? Are you disappointed with its performance? Don’t lead our man astray, okay?

Ask Engadget: Best NAS / media streamer combo device? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nikon’s D300S isn’t exactly tailor made for D300 owners, but for those waiting patiently to jump into the semi-pro DSLR game, it offers up a pretty delightful array of specs. Boasting SD and CF slots, a 720p movie mode and 12.3 megapixels of sharp shooting goodness, this here cam received overwhelmingly positive reviews late last year. Strategically positioned between the full-frame D700 and the lesser-specced D90, we’re sure the D300S found its way into quite a few hearts (and under quite a few trees) between then and now. If you’ve been firing off snaps with one of these for a few months now, we’re curious to know how you’d tweak things if the power were yours. Does the “S” really add enough to the D300 package to warrant the boost in price? How’s the image quality? Is the video mode a-okay for your purposes? Spill your heart out in comments below — we’re here to hold your hand if necessary.

How would you change Nikon’s D300S? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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