Hasta La Gadget!

While we weren’t busy kicking up dust on the CES floors, we sat down with Taiwan-based Yantouch to have a fiddle with its latest product, the Black Diamond. When not in use, it really is just a gorgeous spherical black diamond, or at least its faceted front half is; but slip in an iPhone 4 with the Black Diamond app enabled, and you get a funky sound sensitive mood lamp. On top of that, the dock also charges up your iPhone while it shows off its colors, and somewhere at the bottom there’s some black magic that channels out amplified audio from the phone, although actual speakers would be even nicer.

Ultimately, Yantouch sees the Black Diamond as a developing platform for potential applications like an outdoor temperature indicator, or some sort of caller ID color tagging tool for seeing from afar who’s calling. If all goes well, Yantouch will even consider making an Android version, but we’re not sure if the $79 price tag will immediately catch on. Anyhow, check out our hands-on video after the break.

Continue reading Yantouch Black Diamond 3D ambience iPhone dock hands-on

Yantouch Black Diamond 3D ambience iPhone dock hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over the years we’ve seen loads of Arduino hacks and mods — a DIY kit that lets plants tweet, a robotic iPhone, and even touchscreen GBA SP. All of these impressive, heartwarming and otherwise inspiring projects were made possible by the Arduino platform. Just in case you’re unfamiliar with what Arduino actually is, let us remind you that it’s an open source project geared toward students and other humans who wish to delve into the wild, wacky world of do-it-yourself electronics hardware and software coding. We’d encourage you to check out the documentary in full — you know, to get the skinny on the company’s inception and watch as the Arduino folks talk about their movement and its future — but we doubt you need our elbowing. Check out all 28 minutes of footage after the break.

Continue reading ‘Arduino The Documentary’ now available for your streaming pleasure

‘Arduino The Documentary’ now available for your streaming pleasure originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Open source software enthusiasts might see another version of Android as soon as this summer.

A new Android OS version, codenamed Ice Cream, is scheduled for a release some time in June or July says Pocket-lint, citing “multiple sources familiar with the matter.” Pocket-lint’s sources say Google will announce Ice Cream at its I/O developer conference this May in San Francisco.

News of Ice Cream’s speculated launch date comes shortly after posts from the same site yesterday, which claimed that one of SonyEricsson’s Xperia Arc smartphones shown at CES appeared to be running a new version of Android. That tip was based on a picture taken of one of the phone’s sub-menus that displayed the Android version number as 2.4. The latest official Android OS release is Gingerbread, version 2.3.

“We are launching with Gingerbread for the Xperia Arc,” SonyEricsson Head of Marketing Peter Farmer told Wired.com in an e-mail. “Nothing has been announced to date on anything beyond that.” SonyEricsson employee Rikard Skogberg expounds on this in the company’s product blog, citing the number error as a “misconfiguration in some samples” and “nothing to get too excited about.”

Pocket-lint’s sources and rumors are yet to be substantiated. The timing of the supposed release date, however, seems to fall in line with Google’s staggered, two-to-three Android product launches per year.

Confused about Cupcake, Gingerbread and Ice Cream? The table below gives an idea of past Android releases.

Although no specific details have been given on any upcoming product debuts, Ice Cream predecessor Honeycomb is anticipated to appear sometime in the spring, accompanying the Motorola’s Xoom tablet launch. Honeycomb will run on that device.

Photo: sociotard/Flickr

[via Pocket-lint]

Sony Ericsson announced the latest addition to its high-end Xperia series of smartphones last week at CES with the debut of the Xperia Arc.

It’s a slick little number, and I got to spend a bit of time playing with it on the show floor.

The Arc’s screen measures in at an expansive 4.2 inches, a screen size proving to be very popular in smartphone announcements this week. The 849 x 480 resolution on the capacitive touchscreen highlights visual media well, and Sony is doing all it can to play up the entertainment-hub aspects of the Arc. HDMI-out lets you hook up to an HDTV with an HD cable — which comes included with the phone, saving you another trip to Best Buy.

And much like Motorola’s new Atrix, when hooking the phone up to a TV-out, the Arc’s UI is replicated on the screen, even rotating depending on the position of the phone. Essentially, you can turn your TV into a wireless device and start web browsing or watch YouTube videos through the phone to your big screen.

The 8.1-megapixel back-facing camera is easy to shoot with, especially on the Arc’s very bright screen. It’s also capable of recording video at HD 720p, which looked and ran smooth in playback on the Arc itself.

While many of the phones we saw announced last week will be running Froyo, the Xperia Arc has a leg up on its competitors with the latest Android OS release, Gingerbread 2.3. At a show where many of the big manufacturers are showcasing two or three new Android smartphones with none of them running Gingerbread, it was a refreshing change of pace to see Sony Ericsson’s up-to-date offering.

Most striking about the Arc is its titular shape, measuring in at a very slim 8.7mm at the phone’s waist. While the shape of the Arc is a nice fit for resting in the hand, it’s essentially an exercise in creating attractive industrial design, and I think it works. The metallic-blue finish on the back cover and the silver sheen on the phone’s sides give it a damn fine look.

I was a bit concerned with the plastic construction, as there wasn’t a lot of metal composing the outside of the phone casing. On the plus side, it keeps the phone light and not too bulky, but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that it might not hold up to a good drop from a high-enough spot.

The Xperia Arc is indeed a high-end phone, and though Sony Ericsson didn’t give any exact details on pricing, the company “anticipates a premium smartphone price” upon its release. We should start to see the Arc pop up globally some time in the spring.

Photos: Jon Snyder, Mike Isaac/Wired.com

It may seem like 3D sprung from the ashes of discontentment — not to mention red / blue glasses — but Nintendo never stopped believing. It’s been secretly refining stereoscopic tech for years in the likes of the Game Boy Advance and GameCube. And while president Satoru Iwata already mentioned early last year that the GameCube had hidden 3D circuits, he recently revealed that the 3DS’s autostereoscopic panel actually dates back to the clamshell Game Boy Advance SP. Which, as you might recall, also once sported a touchscreen. At the time, his story goes, LCD resolution was too low to generate a sharp image, but the optometrist-friendly glasses-free tech was already in place. Of course, if you truly want to consult the history books, you can consider Nintendo’s entry into the market to be the Famicom 3D System shutter glasses pictured above… which hit stores in Japan way back in 1986. Yeah, we know.

Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance SP once had an autostereoscopic screen originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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