Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we’ve got our optical viewfinders set firmly on digital cameras — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of the month we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — and hit up the hub page right here!

Time for us to open up chapter two of this year’s Back to School advice compendium. Up for discussion today are digital cameras, which have been in the gym all year working on their processing prowess and return today with 720p HD video as an almost standard feature. We’ve got a good cross-section of young pretenders and finely aged veterans for your perusal, so why not give your mouse a little exercise as well and click past the break?

Continue reading Engadget’s Back to School guide: Digital cameras

Engadget’s Back to School guide: Digital cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve just heard directly from HTC regarding that hotly anticipated upgrade to Android 2.2: it’s happening this weekend for lucky Euroland owners of the Desire. Provided your Sense-laden 3.7-incher is not carrier-locked, you should be receiving your serving of Froyo by the end of the week, together with a new 720p video mode and iTunes sync for your music. HTC is also throwing in its App Share widget that it first introduced with the Wildfire, along with its smart Caller ID feature. Very nice, though it’s quite a shame that operator-specific versions of the update are still stuck in testing and are expected “in several weeks’ time.” Ah well, guess that’ll teach us to buy our gear unlocked.

Continue reading Official: HTC rolling out Android 2.2, 720p video, iTunes sync to unlocked Euro Desires this weekend

Official: HTC rolling out Android 2.2, 720p video, iTunes sync to unlocked Euro Desires this weekend originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What you just heard was the sound of five new FinePix cameras popping out of Fujifilm’s doors. Yippie! If all goes well, we’ll be seeing these SDHC-loving / xD-hating babies from late August. Let’s start working through the list: the 12 megapixel, 720p-video (24fps) F300EXR boasts auto-focus speeds that are “as good as” DSLRs, all thanks to the camera’s hybrid auto-focus system — a combination of Contrast AF (as used on most compacts) and Phase Detection AF (as found on most DSLRs). Other goodies include a wide 15x (24-360mm equivalent) “low noise” zoom lens, 3-inch high contrast 460k-dot LCD on the back, ISO settings up to a staggering 12,800, face detection and recognition (the latter lets you store optimum exposure and focus settings for up to eight faces), 360˚ panorama shooting mode, HDMI output, and image stabilization on the second-gen Super CCD EXR sensor. The price? You’ll have to cough up $329.95 for this bad boy.

Read on for the rest of the family.

Continue reading Fujifilm shoots out five new cameras: F300EXR, Z800EXR, Z80, JX280 and S2800HD

Fujifilm shoots out five new cameras: F300EXR, Z800EXR, Z80, JX280 and S2800HD originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Verizon and Motorola are coming clean with the Droid X a little earlier than planned — it just appeared on the official Droid page, complete with confirmation of that 4.3-inch screen size. Interestingly, rolling over the image reveals a box that says it has a “720p screen,” which would be crazy — especially since the Droid X prototype we played with had what looked to be the same 854 x 480 resolution as the original Droid, although we couldn’t confirm it at the time. A true 720p screen res would also be far denser than the 800 x 480 panel on the EVO 4G, so we’re thinking Verizon actually means 720p out over HDMI, not anything else. We’ll see though — the official launch event is still set for June 23, and we’re still waiting to find out about the slider Droid 2, so there are a lot of potential surprises still to come.

Update: We just confirmed that the Droid X prototype we saw had an 854 x 480 display, so we’ll have to see if Motorola and Verizon have a serious surprise for us come Wednesday — we know at least one Engadget editor who’s crossing his fingers.

Update 2: Sure enough, Verizon has changed the ad to read “Captures 720p” instead of “720p screen,” so that would basically confirm the 854 x 480 display. A nerd can dream, though! See the revised site after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading The Droid X gets real on Verizon (update: 720p video capture, not display)

The Droid X gets real on Verizon (update: 720p video capture, not display) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you live in a constant (and expensive) state of being way ahead of the curve, you’re already pining to get yourself a 3D camcorder and, as we reported last week, Aiptek’s i2 will do your budget the least harm. Now we have word that formal release for the US happens in August and it’ll be cheaper here than expected: $200. For that you get a device that can record 720p video in stereo and play it back on the integrated parallax barrier 3D LCD, which our intrepid reporter Andy Yang said looks awful thanks to a very small sweet spot that must be perfectly positioned in relation to your eye holes. Thankfully, things should look much better when piped out over HDMI to that 3D HDTV of yours — first in the neighborhood, of course.

Aiptek’s 3D i2 camcorder now up for pre-sale, cheaper than expected originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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