Hasta La Gadget!

At this point we’re pretty close to calling Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform vaporware — sure, we’ve seen a lot of clunky prototypes, but the company’s been promising a commercial launch forever, going so far as to say that it had lined up 30 reference designs by the likes of HTC, LG, Samsung, and ASUS. Sure, ok — but all it’s got at CES are the same old gigantor testing devices and lonely Linux convertible. Oh, but now there’s Android. Very impressive, guys — too bad Android was also running on the actually-interesting GiiNii Movit Mini parked next door. At least the whole thing wasn’t faked liked last year, we suppose. Shots in the gallery, of course.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Qualcomm tries to distract from Snapdragon fail with Android originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just spent some quality time playing with GiiNii’s Movit Mini WiFi Android tablet, which might be one of the best things we’ve seen at CES so far — think of it as the Android version of the iPod touch and you’ll get why we’re so stoked. The unit features a 4.3-inch, 480 x 272 resistive touchscreen (sigh), and it’s got a soft keyboard for text entry — they couldn’t tell us if it’s running Cupcake or not, but the keyboard worked just fine as we were playing with it. A built-in mic and front-facing camera lend themselves to out-of-the-box Skype support, there’s also Bluetooth and a built-in speaker. Sadly, there’s only 256MB of internal storage, but there’s an microSD slot for expansion. All we got for pricing was “less than the iPod touch” — we’ll see how close GiiNii gets when this guy and the planned 7-inch Movit Maxx hit sometime in the middle of the year.

Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

GiiNii’s Movit Mini WiFi Android tablet hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Sony’s OLED TV is little more than a beautiful, 11-inch novelty, LG is swaggering dangerously close to a respectable kitchen TV with this 15-inch AMOLED TV prototype. On display here at CES and planned for a production run sometime this summer, the image is absolutely stunning — every bit as impressive as the Sony’s XEL-1. Nothing else compares to the incredible contrast achieved by these OLED displays. Have a look in the gallery — we’ve got the prototype pictured with and without its chubby TV bezel. It’s credit-card thin (0.8-mm) and only on Engadget.

Filed under: Displays

Eyes on with LG’s near-production 15-inch OLED TV: come on summer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just had a chance to get our hands all over Logitech’s G-series peripherals, including the G19 keyboard, G9x mouse and G13 gameboard. The G19 keyboard feels very responsive if not a bit hefty, but the real catch here is the 320 x 240 LCD. You can navigate through YouTube using adjacent keys, and the Britney Spears video we ended up watching was particularly crisp. The rep told us it’d be able to play anything compatible with Windows Media. The G9x mouse is what you come to expect from earlier Logitech entries, with a very responsive scroll wheel. As for the G13 gameboard, the right side-mounted joystick felt very comfortable and all they keys well-placed. Programming the keys for the G13 and G19 was a fairly straightforward process with software. We also got some time with the Harmony 1100, but unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to see how well it interacted with the computer. The device itself is surprisingly lightweight and the screen very bright. Hit up the gallery below for pics.

Filed under: CES, Gaming, Peripherals

Hands-on with Logitech G-series peripherals, Harmony 1100 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The last time we ran into SMART Table, they were demoing a very sturdy multitouch table to a group of schoolkids in Chicago, but they’re here at Macworld with some sexier tech — 50-inch and 65-inch multitouch plasma screens that interface with any OS X machine. The tech allows you to use the screen just like the built-in multitouch trackpad on newer MacBooks, so it works in basically any app, and while it’s super-pricey (they just smiled and said “thousands” when we asked), the main cost is the screen and not the touchpanel, so we could see it come down to earth sometime soon. Check the video after the break.

Continue reading Video: SMART Table 50-inch multitouch Interactive Display Panel

Filed under: Desktops

Video: SMART Table 50-inch multitouch Interactive Display Panel originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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