Hasta La Gadget!

Rick Karr is a journalist and frequent contributor to The Engadget Show.

If you’ve stayed with friends who live in European cities, you’ve probably had an experience like this: You hop onto their WiFi or wired internet connection and realize it’s really fast. Way faster than the one that you have at home. It might even make your own DSL or cable connection feel as sluggish as dialup.

You ask them how much they pay for broadband.

“Oh, forty Euros.” That’s about $56.

“A week?” you ask.

“No,” they might say. “Per month. And that includes phone and TV.”

It’s really that bad. The nation that invented the internet ranks 16th in the world when it comes to the speed and cost of our broadband connections. That’s according to a study released last year by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society on behalf of the Federal Communications Commission.

Continue reading Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s safe to say that most of our readers are accustomed to phone shops that are well lit, fairly spacious, and not peppered with KIRF products. But if you’re feeling adventurous and want to take a dip in the deep end of the pool, then Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei district should satisfy your strange curiosity. As we’ve shown you in our previous trip, our gadget paradise covers an extensive range of products, including phones, computers, cameras, all the way down to circuitry components like LEDs, chips, and resistors. Our latest discovery, however, is an entire building dedicated to mostly mobile phone products. Read on to find out what this madness is all about — a video tour awaits after the break.

Continue reading Shenzhen mobile phone market: going deeper inside Huaqiangbei

Shenzhen mobile phone market: going deeper inside Huaqiangbei originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the midst of fiddling with tablets and laptops at Computex, we haven’t been thinking much of eye-tracking technologies until we saw Utechzone’s booth. What we have here is the Spring, a TW$240,000 (US$8,380) eye-tracking rig that was launched in March 2010 and is aimed at users with limited mobility. The package consists of an LCD monitor, a computer, and an external sensor that utilizes infrared to track our pupils. Also included is an eye-friendly software suite that lets users play games, browse the web and media files, send emails, communicate with caretakers, and read PDF or TXT files.

We had a go on the Spring and quickly learned how to control it with our eyes: much like the Xbox Kinect, in order to make a click we had to hover the cursor over (or fix our eyes on) a desired button until the former completes a spin. The tracking was surprisingly accurate, except we had to take off our glasses for it to work; that said, the other glasses didn’t exhibit the same issue, so the culprit could be just some coating on our lenses. Another problem we found was that it only took a quick jiggle with our eyes to cancel the spinning countdown, so full concentration is required to use the Spring. This shouldn’t be a problem outside a noisy event like Computex, anyway, and if you need more convincing, we were told that a disabled Taiwanese professor managed to hit 100,000 Chinese characters within three months using phonetic input on the the same rig — he’s planning on releasing a new book soon. Have a look at our eyes-on video after the break for a better idea on how the Spring works.

Continue reading Utechzone Spring eye-tracking system hands-on (video)

Utechzone Spring eye-tracking system hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, 30-pin dock connector on the other

PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, 30-pin dock connector on the other originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While combing through the show floor at Computex, our fortunate selves stumbled upon a new phone-tablet duo at Leadtek’s booth. Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t yet another phone-in-pad design; but actually a VoIP / home phone docked next to an Android tablet. Dubbed AMOR Multimedia Phone 8218, the idea here is that the docking station acts as both a DECT base and a WiFi router, but also packs ZigBee radio to relay data from compatible devices (for healthcare, home surveillance, home automation, etc.) to the web.

Alas, there’s no direct interaction between the phone and the tablet, but we were still intrigued by the latter’s specs: Android 2.3 (although this demo unit had 2.2), Tegra 2, 7-inch 1,280 x 720 LCD, HDMI-out, and a front-facing camera for video calls. For a home device, this is actually a pretty powerful package and certainly a significant upgrade from the AMOR 8210 announced earlier this year. No word on US availability, but Taiwanese buyers will be able to grab hold of an 8218 starting in September.

Leadtek AMOR 8218 DECT phone with Tegra 2 Android tablet hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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