Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 vs iPhone 5

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.

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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.

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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.

VivoPlay from Evado Filip hands-on

Here at Showstoppers 2013 during CES 2013, Evado Filip is showing off its new device called VivoPlay. The device has one very important goal: keep your children safe without suffocating them. Parents can link the VivoPlay to a companion iOS or Android app, keeping tabs on their child while letting them still be a kid.

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There are a number of potentially life-saving features Evado Filip is focusing on with the VivoPlay. The first of the features is location, with the device being able to keep an eye on your child’s location using GPS, GSM, and WiFi. Using those three technologies at once means that there’s a better chance your child will be able to be found if they go missing, so naturally, it’s a winning idea.

Parents will be able to designate five different numbers that can communicate with the VivoPlay, and outside of those, the device won’t be able to contact anyone else. Children only need to push a single button to make a call, so if they ever need help, they won’t need to go through menu after menu to make a call. Parents will also be able to send text messages up to 16 characters long to their child’s VivoPlay, which is an added bonus.

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One particularly nifty feature is the ability to create safe zones. If your child wanders outside of the safe zone you’ve designated, you’ll be alerted with a text message, and in turn you’ll be able to contact your child and see what’s up. It’s a very cool little device and it even comes with a built-in emergency feature that a child can use to get help quickly. The VivoPlay will be available soon, but while we wait for more details to come out of Evado Filip, be sure to check out our CES portal for all of our news from the show.

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VivoPlay from Evado Filip hands-on is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 vs Samsung Galaxy Note II

With the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900, the company enters in the race for a real live hero phone for the whole world, here reminding us instantly of the other massive smartphone in this warring market – the Samsung Galaxy Note II. What we’ve got here is a real live fight for a dominant beast, a massive machine made to rule them all, starting with displays – and Lenovo takes the cake with resolution right out of the box. Samsung, on the other hand, has the physically larger display (though it is a bit less dense in its pixel distribution.)

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The thing about the IdeaPhone K900 right this minute is that it’s still in its prototype phase, not actually coming out until somewhere around April of this year – and the initial plan is to release it in China alone. The Samsung Galaxy Note II is already out in quite a few countries around the world, including the USA and Europe. The prospect of the IdeaPhone K900 is great though, regardless of its release range, simply because it’s working with the relatively rare Intel Atom Z2580 Clover Trail SoC.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note II works with the Samsung Exynos quad-core processor we know works to great effect even across its massive face. The IdeaPhone K900 has a display that’s 5.5-inches and 1080p resolution with IPS technology while the Galaxy Note II’s face is a 5.5-inch 720p display working with Super AMOLED – bright as can be.

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Some of the items we’re really not able to compare at the moment are the Android OS versions, as though the Note is up to Android 4.2 in some places, the Lenovo offering has not yet been shown with a full working version of Android as of yet. We’ll be sure to see a whole lot more in the very near future from the company as the device hits the market. Have a peek at our hands-on comparison images above and below and let us know which one you’d choose if given the chance!

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Also be sure to check out our giant CES portal to see all the CES 2013 content your heart can handle, and check our ShowStoppers 2013 tag to see everything we’ve seen today!

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Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 vs Samsung Galaxy Note II is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

OtterBox Armor series hands-on

OtterBox is making a big appearance here at ShowStoppers during CES 2013, and they unveiled their new Armor series of smartphone cases. The company is known for durable and indestructible cases, and the Armor series definitely skimp on that. In fact, the Armor series is OtterBox’s most toughest case yet, and we ended up getting our hands on the new case.

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OtterBox says that new Armor series case is waterproof, drop proof, dust proof, and crush proof. It can withstand water as deep as 6.6 feet for up to 30 minutes before it’ll give. It’s drop proof from up to 10 feet and it can withstand up to 2 tons of pressure. Plus, completely dust proof, and the company says that “zero” dust will get into your phone.

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Actually, the phone is so dust proof that they put screens over the speaker ports so that sound will still come out of the phone, but no dust will get inside. We have to say that it’s really impressive, and users who want complete protection of their phone will no doubt benefit from OtterBox’s new Armor series case.

The case will be available for the iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, and the Samsung Galaxy S III. Technically, OtterBox says that the case is still a prototype, but it’s “very close” to being a finished product. It’ll be available starting February 22 at a reasonable price of $99.

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OtterBox Armor series hands-on is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 hands-on

This week the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 has been revealed: a massively powerful smartphone working with Android and a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display with an Intel Atom Z2580 processor (that’s Clover Trail, mind you) under the hood. This smartphone is super slim at just 6.9mm and weighs in at just 162g, both of these specifications rendered extra impressive by the fact that you’re working with the features you’re about to read all about. This machine feels just as nice as it sounds, looking ready for the market in the very near future.

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The Lenovo K900 is the company’s new hero phone, working with a composite of stainless steel alloy and polycarbonate in a Unibody mold – sleek and robust. The phone remains thin due to work Lenovo’s done on optimizing both the thinness of the camera setup and the layout of the internal battery. The front of this device is covered with top of the line Corning Gorilla Glass 2 for scratch protection as well – their newest solution.

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Though as Lenovo mentions, Intel has not released full specifications on the chipset as such, Lenovo will be bursting forth with this SoC sooner than later – April in China, in fact. Pricing, if you’re wondering, has not been announced at the moment. Then there’s the camera technology behind this machine’s lovely 13 megapixel shooter.

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You’ll be working with a Sony Exmor BSI sensor as well as an F1.8 focal length lens. This camera has the widest aperture of any smartphone-based camera in the field today, and the front-facing camera has been given a boost as well. With a fabulous 88 degree viewing angle on the front-facing camera on this smartphone you’ll once again be working with the best of the best – no front-facing camera on a smartphone has a wider angle than that.

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Have a peek at the hands-on look we’ve got above and below to get a handle on what this phone will mean for you in the very near future. At the moment it is, in fact, only announced for China – but we can dream! Stick around our CES 2013 portal all week long as well to make sure you’re into the fold with all of our up to the minute news bits and hands-on adventures.

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

P2i aims to bring waterproof smartphones to the mainstream

We’ve seen our fair share of smartphones and devices that claim to be “water-resistant” or something close, but the folks from P2i aim to deliver the full experience to all smartphones. Yesterday we showed you guys Liquipel that will treat and waterproof your device for a fee, but P2i wants our OEMs to launch phones already fully protected.

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The technology, product, and option isn’t really anything new at the moment. It features the same process that will treat your smartphone or tablet on a molecular level. Essentially coating every aspect of the device in a waterproof film invisible to the eye. This covers the electronics inside, speaker grills, cameras and everything else.

We’ve already been enjoying P2i’s technology in some of our favorite Android smartphones. The “Splash Guard” feature that Motorola introduced with their DROID RAZR and RAZR HD is all P2i. The difference between them and other companies is P2i wants our device to be protected out of the box, rather then ship them off for a water-proofing process.

Shown off here at CES 2013 is their brand new technology that builds on Splash Guard to make the entire device 100% waterproof, or what they call “dunkable” to the point where we can drop our smartphone in the tub for hours at a time without harm. As you saw in my image above they featured the Samsung Galaxy S III resting at the bottom of a tank completely unharmed. So while this technology is slowly becoming available to end users, hopefully we’ll just enjoy future smartphones that are 100% waterproof thanks to technology from P2i. They’re working with multiple partners and will be launched inside millions of smartphones throughout 2013.


P2i aims to bring waterproof smartphones to the mainstream is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

OtterBox Defender with iON Intelligence hands-on

OtterBox is here at ShowStoppers at CES 2013, and they’re just unveiling some new, updated iPhone cases. The Defender series is the company’s most popular product, and they just revealed an updated version that comes with an extra battery, as well as an accompanying mobile app that provides a user interface for monitoring the extra battery.

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The case provides the same great protection that the Defender series has always provided, but this updated version, which OtterBox is still calling a prototype, comes with some extra new features, including an extra 1450mAh battery, which will provide double the power of the iPhone 4/4S, which comes with a 1440mAh battery on the inside.

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The case also has ten LED indicators on the front, and each one represents 10% of the battery life, and clicking a button below the LEDs will turn on the indicators for a couple of seconds so that you can see what level the external battery is at without having to open up the OtterBox app.

Speaking of the app, OtterBox introduces iON Intelligence technology with this new Defender case. The app tells you how much juice you have left in both your iPhone and the external OtterBox battery, and will automatically determine when your iPhone battery needs more juice. Again, this is still an experimental sample, so some things may change, but the company said that we should expect it to arrive before the summer.

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OtterBox Defender with iON Intelligence hands-on is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Eink CST-01 world’s thinnest watch hands-on

This week we’ve gotten the opportunity to have a talk with Sriram K Peruvemba, Chief Marketing Officer of Eink, showing today what’s now the world’s thinnest watch. This is the CST-01, a Kickstarter project at the moment, coming from the folks at CST (aka Central Standard Timing) and Eink itself, a partnership that’ll be delivering the watch to users this year. Have a peek at our talk with Peruvemba in video form here at Showstoppers during CES 2013.

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What we’re seeing here is a watch that takes the best features of a regular watch, that being low power, readability, and an overall pleasing experience and made it as thin as its ever been. This watch is more than just rugged, too, able to be punched directly in the face (so to speak) without having its usability altered at all. The watch itself is actually only 0.80mm thin – miraculous, really.

The watch is charged through a base station that’ll be coming with the device when users receive it in the mail (or in stores in the future) and you’ll be able to choose from two different time displays, 24 or 12 hour formats. The whole weight of the device is 12 grams – that’s less than 5 pennies, imagine that! From what we’ve heard from Peruvemba right here live and in-action at Showstoppers, this machine is going to be a real fashion hit (as well as a tech hit for nerds of all kinds). See it soon!

The watch is in the process of being funded by a Kickstarter where the first 500 users will be able to own it for $99 (if you fund it, of course). After that you’ll be paying for the watch for a total of $129 USD. The watches we’re seeing here are right off the assembly line, prototypes right out of the factory, literally. Check the photos above and below and see it all in your hands soon!

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Eink CST-01 world’s thinnest watch hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Kingston 1TB USB 3.0 Thumb Drive Hands-on

Earlier this week we mentioned the folks from Kingston unveiled the worlds first USB 3.0 thumb or flash drive to also have a full 1000GB of storage. We’ve certainly seen 1TB flash drives before, but none support USB 3.0 at the moment. Today here at CES we managed to quickly get some hands-on pictures with the new flash drive so check it out.

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1TB of storage just slightly bigger than the size of a thumb rocking USB 3.0 speeds. That’s just crazy. I want one already. Sadly as I’m sure many of you know, the price tag is pretty ridiculous. Now like mentioned above, we’ve seen 1000 GB flash drives before, so lets talk about the speed in this crazy fast thumb drive.

Kingston has added this to their HyperX Predator series for the simple fact that it’s blazing fast and they didn’t compromise on speed when building this device. Kingston’s Predator doesn’t skimp on speed, at all. Promising read/write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160MB/s, respectively. Nice right?

It might not be as fast as many SSD’s available today, but then again this this is relatively small and fits in your shirt or pants pocket. Then as usual Kingston’s popular wireless storage WiDrive was updated and their new model features removable storage — instead of the integrated versions available today. Add this 1TB thumb drive to that and you’ll have your own 1TB of sweet sweet storage. Almost your own personal cloud as the storage is all accessible over WiFi. The 1TB HyperX Predator will be available later in Q1, and while the price hasn’t been disclosed yet, the 512GB version is available for a staggering $1,750. Tough pill to swallow right there. Expect a rather steep price when they reveal all the details later this month. Start saving those nickels.

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Kingston 1TB USB 3.0 Thumb Drive Hands-on is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

iRobot Scooba 390 and 290 hands-on

This week we’ve had the chance to catch up with the folks at iRobot who have let us in on several new robotic cleaning machines in their Scooba and Roomba lineups. In our interview with the group we started out with the iRobot Scooba 390, a device that works with a four-stage cleaning process for a scrub-tastic cleaning of your large flat floor – toss out your mops! We had a peek at the iRobot Scooba 290 next, made much tinier to make with the small bathroom cleaning – gotta get behind those porcelain thrones, after all.

The iRobot Scooba 390 uses a four-stage cleaning process that starts with preparation step, moves on to washing, follows up with a scub, and finishes it all off with some squeegee action. This unit is said by iRobot to remove up to 98% of your common household bacteria and is, in the end, the best item in your home to destroy your mop in a robot battle. You wont need a sweep with this device either, just set it down after you’ve added the necessary components inside (like clean water), and let it roll.

This interview filmed at Showstoppers during IFA 2012!

Next is the iRobot Scooba 230 which is, again, made much smaller to get in your smaller areas where the 390 never could. This unit is another floor washing robot that’s made to take the place of your mop. It’s able to clean around your toilet, under cabinets, and on tile, linoleum, or sealed hardwood floors. Like its bigger brother, the Scooba 230 uses a multi-stage cleaning process, this time just three required to take out 97% of common household bacteria. This time you DO have to sweep, mind you, but it’s just so cute!

The Scooba 230 will cost you $279.99 from iRobot’s online store, and the 390 will run you $499.99 USD – with free shipping, even! Also check the tail-end of the video out for the hero line of iRobot’s Roomba line – getting better all the time! Then make sure to head to our iRobot tag portal to see the rest of our iRobot coverage from the past and keep on picking up robots for your home!


iRobot Scooba 390 and 290 hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.