Hasta La Gadget!

Russian mobile-making startup Yota Devices has just unveiled the next generation of its dual-screen smartphone, the YotaPhone. As with the current first-gen model, which went on sale in Russia and select European markets last December, the handset’s flagship feature is that it’s two-sided, with a full colour touchscreen display on the front and a low-power consuming e-ink display on the rear. Read More

A while ago, HTC came up with this silly phone called the Bliss, which had a little charm that hung out of a purse and notified women when they were getting a phone call or alert.

The idea — that purse-carrying females need something besides their phone, packed deeply in their black hole of a purse, to alert them to incoming notifications — wasn’t all that bad. The execution, however, was abysmal.

Which brings me to Memi.

Memi is a stylish bracelet created by Leslie Pearson that is meant to be worn by ladies with purse-bound phones. Through Bluetooth and an accompanying app, users can select certain people to “let through.” That way, when a child or boyfriend or boss calls, the Memi bracelet buzzes to alert the user of an incoming call or text message.

But it doesn’t buzz for every little thing, allowing users to “unplug,” as Pearson puts it. Memi also buzzes for calendar event reminders, and comes with three distinct vibration patterns to let you know if you’re getting a call, text, or reminder.

The Memi can hold a charge for up to five days, depending on use, and charges via a discrete micro USB port. It also packs an LED indicator light to let you know when it’s on, paired, and working.

“Other devices (namely smartwatches) on the market are looking to get people more plugged into their phones,” said Pearson. “They seek to repeat as much phone functionality as they can on the user’s wrist. We are looking to help people actually unplug while staying connected to the people that matter. We want to help women be able to focus more on the moment and reduce the noise and distraction in their lives.”

Memi beat its $100K Kickstarter goal and has gone on to raise $700K from friends and family. The company has received over 500 pre-orders, with shipments planned for the summer. The team is currently in the process of raising a seed round of $1 million.

In the interest of expanding our general knowledge of all things hardware, I present another of my occasional weekend watch reviews, this time featuring Marvin’s Malton Military Cushion watch, an automatic three-handed timepiece made by a fairly small brand based in Vaumarcus, Switzerland.

I’ve been following Marvin for a while and I’ve been impressed with the understated styling and acceptable pricing of this brand. This piece, for example, retails for about $1,500 which is more than acceptable for a hand-made, Swiss watch. It uses a non-manufacture Sellita SW 200 movement (Sellita is the AMD of watch movements, with ETA being the Intel) and features a nice, solid steel case and “camo” strap.

First, a bit on movements. This watch uses a very standard “ETA clone” Sellita movement with a seconds hand and hour/minute hands. ETA, a watch movement manufacturer, is owned by the Swatch Group and has slowly been cutting the stock it sells to outside manufacturers (it’s also why most watches cost so much because the ready-made movement industry is essentially a quiet monopoly). Sellita, then, is a relative upstart in the industry and makes attractive, nicely finished watch movements in relative bulk.

To be clear, there’s not much going on here mechanically. It’s an automatic three handed watch with no bezel – you won’t want to dive with this thing – and it features a date window at 6 o’clock. It has a 42mm face and guilloché dial. The entire case is PVD-coated and has lumed hands. The watch face has very bold numerals at the five cardinal points and is very readable.

What makes it expensive? Mostly the hand work that goes into prepare each of these for sale as well as the stainless steel and the sheer expense of acquiring the movement. This, not unlike many nicer things, is hand-made from stem to stern.

Like other personal favorites, Xetum and Bathys, I like this brand because it costs far less than similar three-handed watches yet offers superior build quality and movement. Like Tissot, Marvin is a quality watch vendor in the low end of the scale and that means it uses pre-made, popular workhorse movements and depends a lot on styling and marketing. That said, there is little in this watch to dislike and, if you like the style, it can become a solid first timepiece for a novice collector.

As a chronograph fan, however, I found the piece a bit modest. The military motif obviously a style play and there’s little new other than the colors. Marvin’s Cushion model has been around for a while (this particular model was announced in 2013 and is just now shipping) but it’s sufficiently unique and doesn’t look like the average Rolex. However, it’s nice to see a solid watch with clean lines come in at under $5,000 and it’s definitely worth a look if you’re looking to spend some of your liquidity.

With hardware suddenly all the rage, accelerators devoted entirely to the genre are popping up all over the place. And that includes the far-flung regions of Russia.

The Navigator Campus will be the first private hardware technology park in Russia’s Kazan region. If you’re unsure where that is, well, it’s at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. Ok, nevermind. Suffice to say that the Navigator project will focus on consumer robotics, 3D-printing, smart electronics for “smart home” systems and wearables. And we are talking hard-core Russian tech expertise here.

Navigator is launching with $4 million in backing by founders Ramil Ibragimov (Runa Capital) and Vasil Zakyev (shtrafy-gibdd.ru, Ohmymentor.ru). It may not sound like much, but you can do quite a lot with $4 million in Russia. And they are not stopping there. The GRAVIZapp angel fund, specializing in hardware startups, will co-locate there. And they plan to build a network of hardware hackspaces and accelerators in the region, hoping to raise that funding to top $30 million spread across the region. Thus, neighboring cities like Ufa and Perm will get their own Navigator spaces.

Serguei Beloussov, Runa Capital senior partner and Acronis CEO, believes that access to scientific and business experts, VC mentors and hardware industry players like Dell, Samsung, IBM, Cisco, Intel and Foxconn will mean “we will soon see more venture-backed hardware deals in Russia.”

Some 93 out of 120 spots have already been taken by startups, covering various fields including 3D printing, robots, healthcare hardware, and consumer electronics.

A few hardware projects located there have already raised early money:

• iBlazr – a crowdfunding startup from Kiev (with $150K+ raised on Kickstarter previously) is building a ‘smart’ LED-flashlight for smartphones and tablets.
• Krisaf – robotized gym equipment for accelerated rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy.
• ENNOVA – a startup manufacturing NOVA 3D printers.

“Our ambitious aim for the next 5-10 years is to launch this kind of projects in each and every Russian city with up to 1 million citizens in order to create a powerful hardware-community based on the Russian engineering history,” says Ibragimov, of Navigator.

It sounds like they might just do it. The Russians are coming…

The mobile market may still essentially be a two horse race, with Android and iOS enjoying a significant lead, but there are lots of upstarts trying to make inroads, too. One of those is Firefox OS, Mozilla’s attempt to bring a web-first focus to smartphones. Geeksphone has been an early Firefox OS hardware supporter, and now it has put the Revolution up for sale, a higher-end device than its earlier efforts, complete with the ability to dual-boot to both Android and Firefox OS out of the box.

If you’re used to working in a corporate environment but also being cool during evenings and weekends, then you might be familiar with dual-booting: I’ve been known to have my Macs run Windows on a Boot Camp partition for when I need to pierce the veil and travel to the Microsoft realm. It’s actually a pretty common scenario in desktop computing, and there are a number of products including virtualization software designed to facilitate it. But is there the same kind of utility in the mobile world?

Firefox OS is definitely still an outlier when it comes to the mobile platform landscape, and as such, there’s very little in terms of pressing reasons to have it as an option. That said, the eternally curious and those who sympathize with Mozilla’s approach to software, open source and the web will probably find plenty to love about Firefox OS on a device with decent mid-range specs (it appears mostly on lower-end hardware, in keeping with Mozilla’s target market for the OS).

Specs for the phone include a dual-core Intel Atom processor at 1.6GHz, as well as HSDPA cellular support, and an 8 megapixel rear camera with a 1.3 megapixel front shooter. The Revolution retails for €222, and is sold direct from the Geeksphone website. Shipments start going out March 4, so eager shoppers won’t have to wait long before they start acting like mobile chameleons.