Hasta La Gadget!

A new patent granted to Apple today by the USPTO (via AppleInsider) describes an invention called “microslot antennas,” which would integrate cellular and wireless radio antennas directly into case materials, which could both reduce the size requirements of internal elements of a device, and also make it so that there’s no evidence on a gadget’s external case of the antenna’s presence, to the naked eye at least.

If you’ve been paying attention to Apple over the past decade or so, then you can probably tell that the company likes a certain design ethic (all-aluminum case construction) that it hasn’t been able to achieve with the iPhone. From plastic backing, to glass with an antenna built into a strip along the outside of the phone, to glass “windows” top and bottom, the iPhone has always been an exception to this preferred design aesthetic, owing to the need for radio communications to flow freely.

The patent was originally filed in 2007, which likely explains why all the example drawings depict a notebook computer instead of an iPhone or portable device. But the tech, which allows micron-wide antennas (of varying lengths, depending on needs) to be built into a device housing, would be able to communicate over cellular, Wi-Fi GPS, Bluetooth and other wireless frequencies, making it ideal for use in an iPhone design. The slots cut into the case are filled with epoxy or plastic to help prevent dirt and other material from getting in, meaning they should fare just fine in a purse or pocket, too.

This tech likely isn’t as easy as it sounds to implement, since otherwise we’d have seen it used already in iPhone and iPad models released to date. The black bar on the back of iPad models with cellular connectivity, and the windows on the back of the iPhone 5 at the top and bottom stick out like sore thumbs on otherwise unbroken surfaces, even though with the iPhone Apple managed to make it mostly work in its favor. But if Apple can bring this to shipping products, it could significantly help their ability to push the envelope with design. An iPhone carved out of a single block of aluminum? Yes please.

Top image source link: iPhone Pro

The war for your living room rages on, and Microsoft has no intention of yielding any hard-fought ground to its gaming rivals. Rumors of a new Xbox have been flying around for months now, but Kotaku has put together the mother of all next-gen Xbox (a.k.a. Xbox 720, a.k.a. Durango) posts thanks to a secretive-but-chatty source known as SuperDaE — if the moniker sounds familiar, he’s the guy who tried selling what he claimed was a Durango developer rig on eBay a while back.

First up, the hardware — Kotaku claims that the final, retail-ready Durango console will sport a eight-core processor clocked at 1.6GHz, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a “800mhz DirectX 11.x graphics processor unit.” Other reported components include a 500GB internal hard drive (mostly for installing games, which is now said to be required upon a game’s first launch), as well as a Blu-ray drive. That info matches up rather nicely with earlier reports about the Durango’s internals, so it’s becoming very clear that whatever Microsoft has up its sleeves should have no trouble pushing pixels over the months and years to come.

And for better or worse, there will be more Kinect in your future. Apparently, its days as a pricey peripheral of questionable value are over — an updated version is said to be included with every new Xbox going forward. To top it all off, it’s being reported that the new Xbox simply won’t function correctly unless the Kinect is connected and has been set up. The Kinect’s appearance at CES and Kotaku’s new report illustrate that Microsoft strongly believes in the promise of motion and gesture control that the Kinect brings to the table — even if some gamers just don’t see the value. Surely I can’t be the only one who has trouble calibrating a Kinect to work well in tiny rooms.

While the new Kinect has been updated considerably (it can apparently track more discrete points on more people’s bodies), that certainly doesn’t mean that the Xbox will suddenly go without a traditional controller. While Kotaku wasn’t able to figure out exactly what the thing will look like, the new model is expected to be “a natural evolution” of the design used for the 360′s controller, albeit with a new and largely unexplained way of connecting wirelessly to the console itself.

Google’s Nexus 4 wireless charger has been a creature only of legend up until today, even though the phone itself shipped months ago, late in 2012. Now, though, American buyers can get their orb orders in for $59.99 for the Qi-based inductive charger for Google’s latest Android reference smartphone.

Estimated shipping for the Nexus 4 Wireless Charger, as it is so blandly named, is listed as being at under one week as of this writing. The charger takes around four hours to charge the Nexus 4 from empty to full and ships with a micro USB cable, and a plug designed for use in North America (we suspect other regions will see different plugs). It weighs 130 grams and props up the Nexus 4 at an angle to provide easy viewing.

The Nexus 4 has a dock mode when used with the Wireless Charging Orb, which displays photos, Currents articles and other info, including the battery charge level. Judging by how quickly Google has been selling out of Nexus phones, there’s no telling how long these will last, so get your orders in if you’ve been waiting.

A handsome man pulls out a Microsoft Surface Pro from his bag. He’s wearing a well-cut suit (he’s at work). He’s a hipster, but a serious one. While putting the Surface Pro on the table, two attractive women stop their conversation to look at this unknown and remarkable computer. Or is it a tablet? Either way, they’re ready to dance.

But let’s focus on the man’s hand for a second. He takes a stylus from the side of the Surface Pro and stretches out his arm. Then everything goes crazy. It turns out that everyone had a Surface Pro, starting with the two women who were wondering what the Surface Pro was a few seconds before. They’re hooked. Everyone just took ketamine and they’re ready to roll.

Everybody starts dancing around the conference-room table. They all circle a chart on an Excel spreadsheet using the stylus. Is the meeting over? Because everyone is standing up now. Apparently it’s not over, because in the next shot, everybody is still sitting. Doesn’t matter. Got Excel.

Oh, but the main character is now dancing on his knees in the middle of the table, Surface Pro in hand. But wait, two new characters enter the conference room! It’s the sourpuss boss. What in tarnation? Are his employees insane? No, man, he’s here to drop the break. More dancing, more drawing on an Excel spreadsheet.

The main character is back, still dancing with the Surface Pro on the conference table. Now he’s using it over his head. Maybe he has a Wi-Fi-coverage or screen-glare issue.

We finally jump back to the first shot. The handsome man is sitting at his chair in front of his Surface Pro, ready for the hypothetical meeting that we just experienced. “Introducing Surface Pro.”

Once again, Microsoft produced a TV ad that doesn’t show much of the product or its intended uses, which is very reminiscent of the Surface RT ad. Sure, it’s full of energy and Excel spreadsheets, but the Surface Pro is a newcomer. You have to educate the viewers, show them what they can achieve with a Surface Pro. Circling Excel spreadsheets and plugging in a microphone are not enough. And what was with the beat-boxing?

Doesn’t matter, had dubstep.

HTC’s new flagship phone is likely called the HTC One, and will probably debut later this month ahead of MWC, and now we have an image of what looks like a render of shipping hardware courtesy of EvLeaks. The HTC One image published today by the well-regarded source of pre-release Android info resembles earlier images but with an active home screen. This weekend also saw an image posted to Flickr with “HTC One” listed in its EXIF data, contributing to speculation that that is indeed what the phone will be called.

The HTC One image posted today potentially reveals a bit more about Sense 5.0, which in earlier leaks looked to have borrowed some design influences from Microsoft’s Windows Phone mobile OS in that it adopted a grid-style interface. Judging by the image posted by EvLeaks, that could be populated by content from social networks, as the photos on the homescreen seem to originate from Facebook contacts. Other noteworthy features include only the presence of a back and home button on the device bezel – curious both because Android moved to soft keys only on stock devices with the latest update, and because it lacks an app switcher button.

That could be a feature particular to Sense, but I wonder whether it’ll be compensated for somehow in the OS itself. Either way, the hardware looks solid; it’s somewhat of a departure for HTC, with what look like chamfered edges that might awaken feelings of familiarity in iPhone 5 owners, and top and bottom panels that look somewhat similar to those on BlackBerry’s new Z10 smartphone. But the speaker grills and screen size look like they could set this far enough apart to keep it unique, despite similarities with other OEM hardware.

In related news, this photo posted to Flickr supposedly comes from a camera in an “HTC One” device, boast a 2.0 aperture and coming in at around 4.1 megapixels, which is in keeping with reports that the HTC One will have a camera that uses three stacked 4 megapixel sensors to deliver better sharpness, dynamic range and depth of color. The image does indeed deliver a pretty good rendering of text for the in-focus area, and fairly low amounts of noise considering that it looks to have been taken in a low-light environment.

The Ultrapixel camera could be one of the features that takes center stage at HTC’s February 19 event in NYC. We’ll be on the ground live to cover the unveiling as it happens next week, so we don’t have long to wait to find for sure out what’s fact and what’s fiction.