Hasta La Gadget!

“Bullet time” – the magical moment in a movie where everything slows down, and you get a 360 degree view of what’s going on. It did seem like magic as bullet time went mainstream and captured the imagination of the masses with the release of the Matrix at the end of the last century. In order to shoot a bullet time scene, one would need a rig of cameras in a circular configuration that are shot all at once, allowing it to capture the same shot of a particular subject from multiple angles.

This particular Qualcomm rig that does bullet time at a public photo booth is highly impressive, too, as it carries a whopping 130 HTC One smartphones which will be able to cover 540 degrees of movement. At the end of it, an animated GIF will simulate movement around the subject that was shot while it remained in the center of the rig. Do give the video a watch, while the quality is nowhere near that of the movies, it is still a pretty impressive video. There are fire breathers in there, a person who showcased his dog catching a frisbee in mid air after jumping off his back, as well as simulations of Force powers.

130 HTC One Handsets Form Bullet Time Photo Booth original content from Ubergizmo.

Reports have surfaced this week indicating that HTC CEO Peter Chou is giving up some of his current duties having to do with the daily operation of the company. The duties Chou is getting up will reportedly fall on another HTC founder named Cher Wang. With his daily operational duties reduced, Chou will reportedly focus […]

Today the Financial Times reported that HTC’s CEO Peter Chou will relinquish some of his daily operational responsibilities to Cher Wang, another of the company’s founders. Chou will use his now freer schedule to focus on HTC’s smartphones.

HTC is a company in trouble. Ascendent during the early boom times of the Android ecosystem, HTC has suffered from bleeding market share, sliding revenue, and a recent nine-figure quarterly loss (USD). Its much-hyped One handset has failed to turn its fortunes. The company is losing money for the first time in its more than decade-long history as a public company.

For the three-month period ending August 30, 2012, HTC had around 12.3 percent market share. During the same period in 2013, HTC had roughly 6 percent market share. The market might have expanded, lessening the implied unit decline, but HTC is certainly struggling to connect with consumers.

Better focus on product could salvage its position in its current war with Samsung.

Is Chou being fired? The Financial Times intimates that he is not, describing his move as “temporary.” Chou provided comment to the newspaper, stating that he had taken on “too many things.” Now, he is “very focused.” Without phones that can compete with offerings from companies that control their own platform (Google, Apple, and Microsoft), and produce their own hardware (Google, Apple, and [soon] Microsoft), HTC has little chance of rebound. So, the focus on product is a step in the right direction.

If Chou is on the way out, it likely won’t be voluntary. He said in June: “There are a lot of rumors that say I would quit, but I never said that. I’m not going to find another job.”

Top Image Credit: Kārlis Dambrāns

Given that Canada and the US are considered North American markets, usually devices released in the US are usually released in Canada as well. Unfortunately this is not always the case as HTC’s Canadian arm has basically confirmed that the recently announced HTC One Max will not be making its way into Canada, at least not anytime soon. According to the folks at MobileSyrup, the official statement by HTC Canada reads, “HTC devices differ from country to country, we work closely with carrier partners in each region to determine what is best for their consumers. Every market is different and has specific needs and demands. We consider a number of factors such as, the HTC devices currently available, the competition etc. At this time the current HTC line up of devices is sufficient for the Canadian marketplace.”

Given that HTC isn’t exactly enjoying financial success at the moment, one would think that the company would try to cover as many markets as possible, but we guess this is their current strategy for now. In the meantime for our Canadian readers who would love to get their hands on the HTC One Max, you guys will need to cross the border or keep an eye out for grey imports if you wish to own the device on an unofficial basis. No word if HTC plans to introduce the handset later, but for now you guys would be out of luck.

HTC One Max Will Not Be Headed To Canada original content from Ubergizmo.

For those of you who happen to reside in China, here is something that might just interest you if you are a huge fan of all things HTC – the HTC Desire 709d. The HTC Desire 709d does seem to shape up to be a China-only handset, and it remains to be seen whether it will be introduced elsewhere or not. What can we expect from the HTC Desire 709d in terms of its hardware, so that we would know just where it stands in the general scheme of things in the smartphone hierarchy?

Well, the HTC Desire 709d would arrive with a 5″ qHD Super LCD2 display and will be powered by a Snadpragon 200 chipset with a quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A5 processor, Adreno 203 graphics and 1GB RAM. It certainly does not sound like much where its processing muscle, or rather, the lack of it, is concerned, but at the very least the camera department seems to fare a whole lot better. We are talking about an 8-megapixel shooter at the back that is also capable of 1080p video recording, in addition to a front 2.1M-megapixel front-facing snapper that can also handle video chats of up to 1080p resolution, 8GB of internal memory, a 2,100mAh battery, and stereo BoomSound front speakers. Expect Android Jelly Bean as the operating system of choice with Sense UI, although we have our reservations as to whether this will be Sense 5.5 or not.

HTC Desire 709d Hits China original content from Ubergizmo.