Hasta La Gadget!

It’s hard to believe that nine months have elapsed since we first wrote about Pebble. The smartwatch quickly became one of Kickstarter’s most successful campaigns — raising $10 million in a few short weeks — only to miss its original shipping date. We knew things were looking up when the device recently cleared the FCC and today at CES 2013, Allerta confirmed that Pebble will be shipping to its backers on January 23rd.

We spent some time with the smartwatch here in Las Vegas and came away extremely impressed with the level of polish the company’s achieved. Pebble’s most visually striking feature is its colorful multi-layer polycarbonate face / bezel, which looks fantastic. The device is incredibly light (just 38.2g / 1.35oz) but still manages to feel solid. Build-quality is top-notch — Allerta’s clearly put a lot of care into the hardware. The sides and back are black and completely sealed (Pebble is water-resistant to five atmospheres). On the right side you’ll find the up, select and down buttons, while the left side is home to the back button and a magnetic power connector, à la MagSafe. Speaking of which, battery life is rated for a lofty seven days per charge.

Continue reading Pebble smartwatch hands-on (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile, Apple, Google

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We’ve seen our share of cool devices and ideas here at SlashGear, but this one might just rank up with the best of them. Today at ShowStoppers we got to take a look at a new technology called Tethercell, which incidentally went live on crowdfunding site Indiegogo earlier today. Tethercell has received a significant amount of funding in its first day, due to the simple fact that it allows you to control your battery powered devices from your smartphone.

Specifically speaking, Tethercell is a AA-battery adapter that will fit your device in place of one battery. The adapter itself is powered by a AAA-battery, and when it’s been inserted into your device, it lets you switch it on and off using an app installed on your smartphone. That’s pretty cool, but of course, there are plenty of other nifty features to go along with this technology.

Using Tethercell, you can track the amount of juice you have remaining. The app will let you know when your batteries are running low, and you can even set schedules for your devices. Is there one battery powered toy your kids love but you absolutely hate? Set a schedule to only let them play with it for an allotted amount of time, and enjoy peace for the rest of the day. The app connects to the adapter using Bluetooth 4.0, so this technology could one day be applied to any smartphone with Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities.

Tetherboard, the company behind this technology, says that Tethercell should begin shipping in late 2013 (provided everything goes well with its Indiegogo campaign). At first, Tethercell will only support AA-batteries and iOS, but the team promises that Android and 9-volt support will be following soon. This is just the beginning for Tethercell, so expect to hear more about it in the coming days and weeks. While you wait for more details, be sure to stop by our CES portal for all of the trade show news you could ever want.

Tethercell lets you control battery powered devices from your phone is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While Apple keeps up the mobile hero action with their iPhone 5 all around the world, Lenovo brings forth a massive beast of a device known as the IdeaPhone K900. These two devices are just about as different as two phones can get, the iPhone working with a 4-inch display, the IdeaPhone K900 bringing on a beastly 5.5-inch display, but the similarities are there: both companies want the world to understand that they want to push forth a hero made not only to destroy the competition with specifications, but as a solid project that’s more than the sum of its parts.

You can get the full details of the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 in our original hands-on from just a bit earlier tonight, but the key bits appear to be this: a solid thought-out bit of hardware surrounding Lenovo’s unique brand of Android and an Intel Atom Z2580 (Clover Trail) processor. The iPhone 5, compared in those aspects, is of course also a solid thought-out bit of hardware surrounding Apple’s own entire mobile OS (iOS) and an Apple A6 chip.

At the moment there’s really not a whole lot we can compare between the two because of the prototype stage of the Lenovo device, but the approach appears to be very similar. Of course Lenovo’s device runs Google’s mobile OS instead of their own in-house software, but they seem to want to move forward with a single device as a hero. We’ll see this year if they stick to their guns.

Have a peek at the couple of real simple photos we’ve got of the two of these devices side-by-side and let us know if you feel like the two are going to be hitting the same person’s pocket any time soon. Be sure to see our CES portal as well as the ShowStoppers 2013 tag to see more action throughout the night and forward through the rest of the week, and keep an eye tuned for more sweetness from all angles!

Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 vs iPhone 5 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve heard of such a rumor, but it’s back and ready to get people to speculate yet again. The Wall Street Journal is claiming that 2013 is the year of a cheaper iPhone, which will sport a less-expensive body, perhaps being made out of tough plastic instead of a mixture of glass and metal.

It’s said that the idea of a cheaper iPhone has been a part of discussions for several years, which explains all of the relevant rumors that go back to as early as 2010. Essentially, the cheaper iPhone will resemble its current design, but will just be made with cheaper materials and may sport slightly slower internals.

The cheaper iPhone could also come as soon as later this year, and while it may seem that Apple would never release multiple versions of the iPhone, due to Steve Job’s focus on profit rather than scale, but under Tim Cook’s reign, the company released the iPad mini alongside the full-size iPad, so it’s very possible that Apple is moving in a similar direction with the iPhone.

Of course, we still remain skeptical, and Apple has never catered towards the budget crowd before, and it would be difficult to believe that they ever would, giving that they never bought into the budget netbook trend a couple years back, and instead released the MacBook Air, which was essentially the company’s answer to the slower and smaller notebooks that eventually died out. Then again, WSJ has a pretty good track record with the accuracy of its Apple rumors.

[via Wall Street Journal]

Apple rumored to release cheaper iPhone in 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

One of my most favorite games of 2013 has got to be The Walking Dead from TellTale Games. Each episode had some of the most amazing scenes that will certainly stay with me for years to come, and that’s something rare seeing how many games I play on a regular basis. It seems I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the game as TellTale announced quite the feat for its The Walking Dead game.

In total, The Walking Dead sold 8.5 million episodes within seven months of its first episode being published digitally in April 2012. The Walking Dead game has been available on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iOS, with the latter performing the best out of all platforms.

The best months for The Walking Dead’s sales were in November and December thanks to a combination of the actual game itself, game of the year awards and The Walking Dead being available in retail stores.

It’s rumored a new season of The Walking Dead game will be published in 2013, and seeing how this series has been the most successful for TellTale Games, we’re sure the company is planning something Walking Dead related in the future.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Valve Teams Up With Xi3 For Steam-Powered ‘Piston’ PC, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Revolution Map Pack Announced; Available Starting Jan. 29,