Hasta La Gadget!

In what appears to be Aluratek’s latest feat of badge engineering, the company’s outing a familiar pair of slates — a 5-inch reflective TFT LCD e-reader and a 10-inch Android tablet. Aluratek’s calling the former the Libre Air, and says it’s nigh-identical to last year’s Libre Pro save the addition of WiFi, a curved chassis and a $130 price price point. Meanwhile, the spacious capacitive touchscreen at right (which ships with Adobe Flash Lite) belongs to the Cinepad. Last time we saw the Foxconn-sourced tablet, it ran Android 1.6 on a Marvell Armada 100 SoC and a fairly unimpressive screen, so things had better have changed drastically — Aluratek’s pricing it at $300 when it ships next month. PR after the break.

Update: Aluratek tells us the Cinepad now runs Android 2.2 on a 1024 x 600 screen, and has a 2600mAh battery that should last five to ten hours on a charge.

Continue reading Aluratek goes boldly where many have gone before, announces Libre Air e-reader and Cinepad tablet (update)

Aluratek goes boldly where many have gone before, announces Libre Air e-reader and Cinepad tablet (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a couple of years after its initial debut, Yahoo’s Connected TV platform is finally ready to escape the TV, among other things. One surprise shown off tonight during the pre-CES Digital Experience event is a new D-Link box that overlays the widgets on any video signal to any display by way of HDMI passthrough. Also on display are prototype remote apps for Android and iPad, both could act as a remote control, while the tablet app could also search or browse for additional programming and share videos straight to the TV Airplay-style.

On the paying bills end of things however, this year’s big announcement is the ability to tie in with live TV broadcasts, while the company didn’t reveal what information keyed the system, it figure out if a TV program or ad being watched is a compatible one and pop up prompts accordingly. While that could lead to even more annoying ads for consumers, there’s at least a few interesting applications like the one we saw voting on potential winners of a boxing match as it starts on Showtime, one of the initial partners along with CBS, ABC, Showtime, HSN, Ford and Mattel. Check out the press release after the break, we should have a video of the demo up shortly.

Continue reading Yahoo! Connected TV Widgets shows off live TV tie-ins, iPad remote and D-Link add-on

Yahoo! Connected TV Widgets shows off live TV tie-ins, iPad remote and D-Link add-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So, now you know what Motorola’s Cliq 2 is all about, but how does it feel? Much like a cheaper, curvier Droid 2, to tell you the truth — as you’d expect when the device comes saddled with very similar specs. It’s pleasantly weighty like the Droid, and similarly stylish, though the capacitive touchscreen didn’t respond quite as readily to our touch, though that could be the effect of the hefty MOTOBLUR UI layer rather than an issue with the digitizer. The keyboard’s actually a bit more tactile, with domed soft rubber keys, and the hexagonal honeycomb arrangement felt refreshing compared to the some of the buttons we’re used to. We didn’t have loads of time with the unit, but it could be a decent alternative to the T-Mobile G2. We’ll let you know when we find the time for a full review — in the meanwhile, check some snapshots below.

Motorola Cliq 2, first hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In some circles, bigger isn’t necessarily better. But from the look of the new Infuse 4G smartphone for AT&T, Samsung probably doesn’t belong to that crowd.

Measuring in at a whopping 4.5 inches, the Infuse’s Super AMOLED screen is bigger than the 4.3 inch HTC EVO and similar Motorola DROID X, two of the largest Android-running smartphones on the market.

Along with its massive size, it’s also got a few beefy features under the hood. The Infuse has a 1.2 GHz Hummingbird processor running Android 2.2 (Froyo), an 8-megapixel rear facing camera coupled with a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera for video chat.

Pricing info isn’t available yet, and neither is the release date. We expect to hear more as CES 2011 continues.

Photo courtesy AT&T

Edited at 12:09 a.m. to note that the cameras are 8 and 1.3 megapixels, respectively.

Kaz Hirai, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, just twirled a fine dance around the PlayStation Phone. In discussing Sony’s future strategy for offering a coherent and extremely expansive consumer offering, he used the words “tablets,” “smartphones” and “PlayStation” in the same sentence, whetting appetites but never taking the leap to confirm what we all pretty much know his company is working on:

Strategy encompasses driving the development of a variety of new strategic products and services including tablets currently in development as well as smartphones, all the while of course integrating the knowhow and the assets that we’ve accumulated from our PlaySation business.

Oh Kaz, just admit it.

Kaz Hirai non-confirms the PlayStation Phone and tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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