Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve already seen plenty of the Olympus E-P1, but when we dropped by Olympus’ booth today at IFA we just couldn’t resist slapping on the biggest lens they had, courtesy of the micro four thirds to standard four thirds adapter, and shooting a bit of dramatic show floor footage. The verdict? It’s totally impractical, especially because there’s no autofocus during video with certain lenses, meaning we’re stuck working the manual focus ring, D90-style. Still, we didn’t expect anything different, and our short film entitled “People Wandering Around, Totally Out of Focus” really made the effort worth while. Oh, and for our money? The white model is about twice as sexy as the gray. Videos are after the break.

Continue reading Olympus E-P1 meets 50-200mm SWD lens monstrosity, hilarity ensues

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Olympus E-P1 meets 50-200mm SWD lens monstrosity, hilarity ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

For all its good looks and lickable icons, the BL40 hardly feels like a “Chocolate” phone — abandoning the featurephone functionality and slider form factors that are usually associated with the moniker. Well, the newly surfaced BL20 (previously spotted as the BL42) is here to solve all that. The slider handset has capacitive touch controls below the screen, but the screen itself is not a touchscreen. The functionality has also been trimmed back from the BL40’s app extravaganza, but the interface looks and actual hardware seem very similar. We had a little trouble getting around in the German interface, but if you can handle our bumblings you can check out a video of the phone after the break.

Continue reading LG BL20 hands-on: putting the ‘slider’ back in ‘Chocolate’

Filed under: Cellphones

LG BL20 hands-on: putting the ‘slider’ back in ‘Chocolate’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

We’ve already gotten a quick look of Optima’s new OP5-E MID, but those really curious about the first non-Nokia Maemo device will no doubt want to check out this new video courtesy of techvideoblog.com, which offers nearly ten minutes of turning, tilting and attempts to decipher a Chinese-language interface. The Optima exec on hand also confirms a few details about the device, including the fact that it does indeed pack built-in 3G, and that it’ll apparently sell for “around $500.” Head on past the break to check it all out for yourself.

Continue reading Optima’s Maemo-running OP5-E MID demoed on video, priced

Filed under: Handhelds

Optima’s Maemo-running OP5-E MID demoed on video, priced originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Aside from the new JournE touch, the other main thrust at IFA’s booth is Blu-ray — at least, one would think. In reality, when we finally found the lone BDX2000, the LCD it was plugged into was off, while numerous DVD players and upscaling tech demos littered the surrounding booth area. Once we got a rep to turn it on for us, the Blu-ray player seemed to work just fine, as should be expected. The new Blu-ray equipped P500, however, wasn’t so successful: our colleagues at Engadget Spanish watched an attempted Blu-ray showing on the laptop go awry, and by the time we’d dropped by the booth, any Blu-ray models of the P500 had been pulled from the show floor due to crashiness. In talking with a Toshiba rep, it’s clear that the company hasn’t abandoned its ideas of internet distribution and other alternatives to the once rival format of Blu-ray. The company is looking into a solution that uses a Blu-ray disc and BD Live to stream internet media to the player, and has packed in decent codec support for playing back media off of the BDX2000’s SD card reader. We’re sure Toshiba will figure out its P500 woes before the laptop ships to consumers, but there’s no lack of interestingness in these first displays of Toshiba’s “commitment” to the Blu-ray format.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Toshiba makes timid Blu-ray showing at IFA, still believes in other forms of HD distribution originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

An NVIDIA Tegra chipset pumping away at the heart of a portable media player is no guarantee of success. See, there’s this little thing called software and Samsung’s YP-M1, aka Beat Player M1, still needs some tweaking. It’s not awful, but the performance isn’t even close to being Zune HD-like. Perhaps Samsung’s using a weaker Tegra system-on-chip. We don’t know. We’re told that these are hand-made engineering prototypes so there’s hope that Sammy can work out the kinks before these players go production.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a real sense for the audio quality from the show floor due to the DJ mixing his decks not 10 feet from our position. What we can say for sure is that it’s a fingerprint magnet, the volume buttons are hopelessly small and far too tightly packed into the upper-edge of the player, and the Gingerbread Man is dead… Fa La la lalalala la, dead. Watch the fatal pummeling from our massive beef hammers in the video after the break.

Continue reading Video hands-on: Samsung’s YP-M1 media player is Tegra-based but no Zune HD

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Video hands-on: Samsung’s YP-M1 media player is Tegra-based but no Zune HD originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments