Hasta La Gadget!

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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Canon’s put WiFi into a boatload of its cameras and camcorders here at CES 2013, so why not some point-and-shoots as well? That’s just what it announced earlier today with the teeny Powershot ELPH 130IS, a $200 compact camera that offers wireless sharing capability with otherwise innocuous specs: a 16-megapixel sensor, DIGIC 4 processor, 8x optically stabilized zoom lens and an f/3.2-6.9 28mm wide-angle lens. We had a chance to play for a bit with the new model, along with the freshly launched A2600 and A1400 models sans WiFi, and although we couldn’t snap any photos with the new models, we can affirm that they all seem like decent offerings for budget-minded vacationers or casual shooters, with the latter two at a miserly $150 and $100 respectively. To see for yourself, check out the galleries below.

Filed under: Cameras, Canon

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Samsung may have focused on Smart TV in its CES 2013 press conference, but the company also had a pair of new lightweight notebooks – the Series 7 Chronos and Series 7 Ultra – to announce. Packing a 15.6-inch and 13.3-inch display respectively, the two new laptops offer up to 11hrs runtime and Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution displays, while throwing in a touch layer for 10-finger action, too.

The Chronos – shown below – runs Windows 8 on a Core i7-3635QM processor with up to 16GB of RAM and AMD Radeon HD 8870M 2GB graphics. There’s up to 1TB of internal storage, a 720p webcam, backlit keyboard, and 4Wx2 JBL speakers.

The whole thing is surprisingly lightweight, given it’s a 15-inch notebook, and the keyboard feels crisp and responsive. The brushed metal finish is suitably premium, but the display is incredibly glossy; true, we were playing with the Chronos in a well-lit hall, but even sunlight from a nearby window could prove more than distracting. It only gets worse when you start to add in greasy fingerprints, too.

As for the Series 7 Ultra, shown below, that runs a choice of Core i5 or i7 processors with AMD HD8570M 1GB graphics and up to 16GB of RAM. It opts for a 256GB SSD rather than an old-school hard-drive, though the smaller form-factor means it makes do with half the speaker power. Samsung will offer both touch and non-touch variants; both will have a backlit keyboard, which is usable despite the smaller size.

It’s a lightweight machine, with easily accessible ports – including USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 – and both HDMI and mini VGA. Samsung reckons up to eight hours can be squeezed from the battery, and there’ll be optional 4G LTE. The portability box is ticked straight off, then, and Samsung’s quoted 178-degree viewing angles work out to a screen you can see clearly, without inversions or blurring even if you’re sat off to one side of the notebook.

Unfortunately, Samsung isn’t talking pricing or availability for either the Series 7 Chronos or the Series 7 Ultra.

Samsung Series 7 Chronos and Series 7 Ultra hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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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Polaroid may not be the first name you think of when you imagine cutting-edge cameras, but the new Polaroid iM1836 joins a rarified club of Android-based snappers. Pairing Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with an interchangeable lens system of Polaroid’s own devising, the iM1836 shoots up to 18-megapixel stills and up to 1080p Full HD video, and does the same sort of wireless uploads – minus 4G – as Samsung’s Galaxy Camera.

In fact, the Galaxy Camera is the obvious comparison to make, though the two products do differ in key ways. First of all is price: Polaroid is asking $399.99 for the iM1836, unlike the $549.99 you’ll pay Verizon for a Galaxy Camera, and of course Samsung’s shooter doesn’t have swappable lenses.

However, the Polaroid’s screen feels a tad pokey in comparison to the expansive Samsung panel, being as it is 3.5-inches, and the prototype the company was showing showed a little lag at times. Nonetheless, it’s a full – and official – install of Android, so you get Play market access, Gmail for when you’re desperate to email from a camera, and Google+ with its useful auto-uploads.

As for the lenses, they twist off as you’d expect, and Polaroid will include a 10-30mm zoom lens in the box; a pancake will be the other initial option. The company actually includes the sensor in the lens itself, rather than in the body of the camera, which it says reduces the likelihood of damage when swapping, as well as producing better quality images as the sensor is closer to the lens. It also expects them to cost the same as the equivalent Micro Four Thirds lens, and they’ll be compatible with other Polaroid cameras that don’t run Android.

Expect the Polaroid iM1836 to hit shelves in Q1 2013.

Polaroid iM1836 Android interchangeable lens camera hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.