Taiwanese flash memory specialist PQI had quite a big presence at Computex, and luckily for us, it also brought along several new products to show off. The biggest bunch from the lot were the company’s new Connect 200 and Connect 300 series micro-USB OTG dongles, most of which offer memory expansion that will come in handy for microSD-less devices. Do bear with us while we go through all six of these products.
Filed under: Peripherals, Storage
At Computex, Taiwan-based In Win has once again brought out its funky-looking desktop cases, but this time there’s a new star on the stage. Dubbed the Tou (meaning “transparent” in Mandarin Chinese), this ATX full tower features several 3mm-thick tempered glass panels that are screwed onto an aluminum structure. And since the coated glass is semi-transparent, you can just about see the desktop’s innards if you switch on the LEDs inside, which can be controlled via the touch panel above the two front USB 3.0 ports. When the internal lights are off, the desktop is pretty much just a mirror, but you’ll want to degrease your fingers before touching any part of it.
Sadly, at the moment the Tou is still at concept stage, so we couldn’t squeeze a price or date out of the reps. When the chassis does become available, you’ll know as soon as we do.
Filed under: Desktops
Augmented reality is the future, or at least the proliferation of AR apps and hardware seems to indicate that’ll be the case. Meta revealed its own augmented reality device, called Meta 1, in January and is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to ramp up manufacturing and get it to the people. If the headset looks familiar, that’s because its hardware is: it’s comprised, in no small part, of Epson and SoftKinetic gear. It utilizes the 960 x 540 binocular 3D displays from Epson’s Moverio glasses and the depth sensor sitting atop them comes from SoftKinetic. Of course the glasses you see are but a first generation and are wired to a battery pack worn around the waist — the company’s currently working on slimming things down with customized eyewear that’ll be revealed later this year, however. For now, the dev kit and the still-in-development Unity-based SDK are slated to ship in September, but we got to see some of what Meta 1 can do a bit early.
Filed under: Wearables
After checking out SoftKinetic’s embedded 3D depth camera earlier this week, our attention was brought to a similar offering coming from Germany’s PMD Technologies and Infineon. In fact, we were lucky enough to be the first publication to check out their CamBoard Pico S, a smaller version of their CamBoard Pico 3D depth camera that was announced in March. Both reference designs are already available in low quantities for manufacturers and middleware developers to tinker with over USB 2.0, so the two companies had some samples up and running at their demo room just outside Computex.
Filed under: Misc
The popular to-do list manager Any.DO is getting a new addition. The company just launched Cal in beta form today, a new calendar app for iPhone that seamlessly integrates with the Any.DO app. Users will be able to use the app as a traditional calendar, as well as add tasks and to-dos that you’ll be
No, we’re not making this up. We’ve always thought the Aspire R7 bore an uncanny resemblance to the USS Enterprise, and now it appears that Acer’s officially in on the fun, too. Our friends at Engadget Chinese stumbled upon a new version of the starship-esque convertible at Acer’s Computex booth today — the company manufactured just 25 of these special-edition notebooks, one of which it plans to offer up on eBay from June 14th through the 24th, with all proceeds going to charity. This variant is unique enough for us to look past the device’s shortcomings, and perhaps place a bid of our own. Star Trek (and industrial design) fans can get their fix in the eyes-on gallery just below.
Sanji Feng contributed to this report.
Source: Engadget Chinese
Sure, you love the HDR pictures coming from your point-and-shoot, smartphone or perhaps even your Glass. But what if you want to Hangout in HDR? An enterprising grad student from the University of Toronto named Tao Ai — under the tutelage of Steve Mann — has figured out how to shoot HDR video in real-time. The trick was accomplished using a Canon 60D DSLR running Magic Lantern firmware and an off-the-shelf video processing board with a field programmable gate array (FPGA), plus some custom software to process the video coming from the camera. It works by taking in a raw feed of alternatively under and over exposed video and storing it in a buffer, then processing the video on its way to a screen. What results is the virtually latency-free 480p resolution HDR video at 60 frames per second seen in our video after the break.
When we asked whether higher resolution and faster frame rate output is possible, we were told that the current limitations are the speed of the imaging chip on the board and the bandwidth of the memory buffer. The setup we saw utilized a relatively cheap $200 Digilent board with a Xilinx chip, but a 1080p version is in the works using a more expensive board and DDR3 memory. Of course, the current system is for research purposes only, but the technology can be applied in consumer devices — as long as they have an FPGA and offer open source firmware. So, should the OEM’s get with the program, we can have HDR moving pictures to go with our stationary ones.
Your every moment, documented. That’s the Memoto concept, a tiny wearable camera that snaps a shot every thirty seconds to digitally augment your memory. Early doubts as to whether enough people would want to record each waking moment were quickly squashed when the Memoto Kickstarter saw 11x the expected pledges, though the challenge of bringing
Okay, so we didn’t quite know what to make of Gigabyte’s lamp / Ultrabook hub. But what about its new smartphones? The company is showing off three handsets here at Computex 2013 — the Maya, Sierra and Simba, in ascending order of impressiveness — all of which have dual SIM slots, IPS displays, 1GB of RAM and a stock build of Android 4.2. To tell the truth, none of them are exactly high-end (even the top-tier Simba runs just a dual-core Snapdragon 400 processor), but we were impressed by the quality of those IPS screens, which offer wide viewing angles even under harsh lighting.
They’ve all got thick, plastic builds too, but some are at least nicer-feeling than others. The 5-inch Sierra has a slightly metallic finish that could possibly pass for metal at a glance. The 5-inch Simba is done up in a trendy white, but with a glossy, tacky sort of look. And the lowest-end Maya (4.5-inches) is made of plain, drab plastic. Not much to see there. On the inside, as we said, the Simba has a Snapdragon 400 (Krait) SoC, while the other two make do with a 1.2GHz, quad-core processor from MediaTek. As for screen quality. the Maya has QHD resolution whereas the Sierra and Simba step up to HD; either way, no 1080p flagships here. That’s about all we have to share at this point — Gigabyte hasn’t announced pricing or availability — but a company rep did tell us these phones should at the very least be headed to Asia and Eastern Europe. For now, head past the break for a quick video tour.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
It was only a few hours ago when Fujitsu announced its UH90, the first laptop to feature a 14-inch 3,200 x 1,800 IGZO display. While the device won’t hit Japan until June 28th, we were lucky enough to stumble upon the panel itself at Sharp’s Computex booth. In fact, the company also had a 15.6-inch IGZO panel with the same qHD+ resolution, 400 nit brightness plus 1000:1 contrast ratio, and both looked super crisp to our eyes. Alas, IGZO is still a bit behind LTPS panels when it comes to viewing angle, but we had absolutely no problem when looking at the displays straight on. With the UH90 rolling out soon, we should see more devices shipping with these panels very soon.
Gallery: Sharp’s QHD+ LCD screens eyes-on
Mat Smith contributed to this report.
Filed under: Displays
Via: Engadget Chinese
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