Hasta La Gadget!

Apple has just made its second-generation iPad official! It features a 1GHz dual-core A5 chip and, finally, cameras, both on the front and rear. The new CPU is said to be up to twice as fast, with graphics performance up to nine times better than on the original iPad, while power requirements have been kept the same. Battery life is, consequently, unaltered, with Apple promising 10 hours. Pricing, too, has been left unchanged, starting at $499 for a 16GB WiFi-only iPad 2 and stretching up to $829 for a WiFi + 3G SKU with 64GB of storage. The new tablet will come with an HDMI output capable of 1080p — which will set you back $39 for the requisite dongle, called an Apple Digital AV Adapter — but there will sadly be no rumblings of Thunderbolt connectivity here. What you will get is an enlarged speaker grille on the back, as expected, and the same 1024 x 768 resolution and IPS LCD screen technology as on the original iPad.

Update: We’ve gotten our first hands-on with the iPad 2 and, boy oh boy, it’s fast!

720p video recording at 30fps will be on tap from the rear-facing camera, which can also do a 5x digital zoom if you’re into that kind of thing, whereas the front-facing imager will record at a more modest VGA resolution, also at 30fps.

There’s a new cover for the device, which is best defined by Steve Jobs himself: “We designed the case right alongside the product. It’s not a case — it’s a cover.” Basically, it’s a magnetic flap that protects the front and automatically wakes and puts the device to sleep according to whether it’s open or closed. Guess we know what that proximity sensor was about now. These Smart Covers will cost $39 in plastic or $69 if you opt for leather.

The iPad 2 is 33 percent thinner than its predecessor, at a mind-melting 8.8mm, and a little lighter at just over 600g, while paintjob options have been expanded: you’ll get a choice between white and black. It’ll be available on both AT&T and Verizon, and all variants start shipping on March 11th. Apple Retail Stores will start sales at the unusual hour of 5PM, which will probably make online pre-orders the fastest way to get yours.

In terms of new software, Apple’s launching iOS 4.3 alongside the new iPad and bringing with it much improved Safari performance as well as FaceTime, Photo Booth, iMovie and GarageBand (the latter two costing $4.99 a piece) apps specifically for the newly camera-enriched iPad. Personal Hotspot capabilities are also arriving in the latest version of the OS, but they’ll be exclusive to the iPhone 4, so you won’t be able to share your 3G iPad’s connection. The minimum compatible version of iTunes for the new iPad 2 will be the freshly released 10.2.

You’ll find Apple’s official PR and some slick promo videos below, or you can keep your mouse clicking and check out our first hands-on with the iPad 2.

Continue reading The iPad 2

The iPad 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Putting Pathpartner and Ittiam right beside one another may not have been the best idea if these two were hot-headed, but shockingly, they were treating each other with a great deal of respect within Texas Instruments’ MWC booth. All jesting aside, the former’s 720p HD videocalling solution is aimed at an entirely different market than that of the latter. Rather than arranging for a four-way video conference, Pathpartner has concocted an Android app that enables 720p video calling over Skype — you know, that VoIP application that you’re already obsessed with. Currently, the company’s working with Skype in hopes of getting it ‘Skype-certified,’ and like Ittiam, it’s also chatting with a number of handset makers in hopes of getting it embedded on the phone’s software stack from the get-go.

Alexy Mathew Joseph, the company’s senior technical lead, was on hand to showcase a demo running on a pair of OMAP 4-based development boxes, and the low-bitrate technology that he has helped create enabled smooth, high-def streaming of the call. We should mention that this particular demo was done over an Ethernet network, but he affirmed that it would operate on 3G and 4G networks as well. Also of note, the new software is capable on running on more than just TI equipment, though he wouldn’t elaborate other than saying that NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 was a platform he hasn’t tested on just yet. Just think — 720p Skype videocalls could be hitting your phone prior to the dawn of 2012, and the carrier’s have to be weeping at the mere mention. Vid’s past the break, per usual.

Continue reading Pathpartner demos 720p HD Skype videocalling using Android and OMAP 4 (video)

Pathpartner demos 720p HD Skype videocalling using Android and OMAP 4 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 23:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When you read the words “World’s largest touch-screen”, you may be forgiven a sigh, or even a yawn. What’s the point? you ask. Well, take a look at this:

The dramatic (and royalty-free) music certainly helps, but a touch-screen of this size changes the experience completely. This is no giant iPad, as you can see from the galactic swirlings that the users shoot across the screen.

The screen is the key to the immersiveness of this setup, a project designed and built at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. It wraps around the users so that everything they do seems to surround them. I can almost imagine two people hurling fireballs at each other, Street Fighter-style.

The screen is in fact the existing 3mm thick acrylic screen from the university’s existing 3D theater, rigged up with six Optitrack v120 cameras and 1,000 infra-red LEDs. The cameras are behind the screen Almost no light make it through, but when a person touched the other side, enough IR light is reflected back to be detected by the cameras.

Three aging PCs each control two cameras, and these feed their outputs to a third computer which combines the detection data. This allows the system to detect up to 100 separate touches.

It’s unlikely you’d ever get much work done on this screen, even if you were a Tom Cruise-like future-cop, but for games and pure spectacle, its hard to beat a lot of human-shaped silhouettes throwing around images created by six full-HD projectors.

Reality Touch Theatre [University of Groningen via Earth Times. Thanks, Yogesh!]

See Also:

• Monstrous Mechanical Marvels: 9 More Enormous Gadgets
• Video: $50 Big Screen Multi-Touch Hack
• Video: MOTO Labs Shows Large Screen Multi-touch Prototype
• Big-ass Table
• 'Table Connect' Turns iPhone into (Fake) Big-Ass Table

If you have a Roku player with a USB port, like the XDS above, you’ve been able to play media directly from USB storage for some time now using third-party channels. For whatever reason it’s taken Roku this long to get an official USB playback channel on there, allowed in the latest firmware (2.9 build 1529) and finally available for download in the Channel Store. We’re told that MKV playback has also been added, which might make watching those downloaded Top Gear episodes a little easier.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Another firmware update grants Roku owners USB channel, MKV containers come along originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 07:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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JVC’s new in-dash GPS navigation systems won’t whisper soothing reassurances in your ear when traffic gets bad, but they can offer some easy listening (if you’re into that sort of thing) for your daily commute. The KW-NT50HDT and KW-NT30HD, which JVC debuted at CES 2011, sport 6.1-inch displays and come equipped with HD radio and iPhone connectivity via USB. Using ClearChannel’s iheartradio app, you can view song and artist information and scan channels from either the navigation device or the iPhone. The NT50HDT also comes with a free lifetime subscription to the Total Traffic HD+ Network, which provides data like traffic reports, news, and weather information. Both devices come equipped with WAAS navigation, map coverage of all 50 US states, as well as Canada and Puerto Rico, and voice guidance in English, French, and Spanish. The musically inclined navigators hit the market in March, with the NT30HD running $1,000 and the NT50HDT coming in at $1,200.

JVC KW-NT30HD / 50HDT navigation systems offer iPhone-controlled HD radio originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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