Hasta La Gadget!

Unless you’re press or a booth worker, major industry trade shows can be educational, enlightening, relaxing… dare we say even fun events that actually don’t fill you with dread at their mere mention. Of course, the trade-off is that you (or your employer, if you’re lucky) are then responsible for fronting the hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars that organizations command for passes to those events. So what do you get in return apart from a few days of schmoozing with some of the most important people in your line of work and the opportunity to play with cool stuff and steal as many promotional pens and USB sticks as you possibly can? In the case of GDC this March, attendees who sign up for either the Mobile / Handheld Summit, the iPhone Summit, or the Independent Games Summit will be gifted with their choice of a Droid or Nexus One, representing the hottest, latest Android gear from Motorola and HTC, respectively — potentially prime targets for the yet-to-be-tapped 3D gaming market on the platform. With Palm onsite, it should make for some interesting dynamics — but then again, they’re giving these things to people at an event called the “iPhone Summit,” for crying out loud.

GDC attendees getting free Droid or Nexus One, perfect for Palm’s training session originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This generation of Android phones is faster, more powerful and generally awesome-er than anything before. But for whatever reason, they don’t have one thing other smartphones take for granted: multitouch. Here’s how to fix that, and so much more.

Google’s Nexus one and Verizon’s Motorola Droid are, in a sense, miles ahead their competitors in terms of hardware specs, but moreso because they’ve got much newer versions of Android’s software, with 2.1 and 2.0, respectively. In the midst of a slew of new software features and despite base-level hardware and software support, Google, who has always been cagey about the multitouch issue, continues to leave it out of their core apps.

This is especially weird in the cases of the Droid and Nexus One, which don’t just support multitouch on a hardware level, but fully support it on an OS level, too. It’s really just the apps, like the browser, the photo gallery and the maps app, which exclude support for multitouch gestures such as pinch-zooming. Why can’t all Android users have use the same gestures that iPhone, Pre and HTC Hero owners can, if their phones can already accept multi-finger input? Only Google knows. But there’s something you can do about it. Actually, there are two things:

Rooting

Rooting is most intensive method, and can actually do a lot more than add multitouch to your phone. What this does, basically, is give you deep, system-level access to all your phone’s software and parameters, which lets you run unsanctioned tethering apps to writing apps to your SD card (by default, Android phones restrict you to the device’s limited, onboard memory), modify the device’s stock apps, and most importantly, swap your phone’s software out completely, with what’s called a new ROM. To get native multitouch apps on your phone, you can opt for an entire flash ROM, or just a more narrow set of hacks. But you will need to root your device.

So here’s how to get multitouch on your new Android phone, natively:

• Google Nexus One

• Verizon Motorola Droid

Now, if the above instructions seem like overkill for a relatively minor feature, don’t have any need for the other goodies that rooting promises, or aren’t satisfied with the current state of Nexus One and Droid homebrew, you have another, easier option:

Downloadable Apps

As I mentioned before, the Droid and Nexus One’s shared dirty secret is that they support multitouch out of the box, but don’t support include the gestures necessary to get any use out of it. This means that unless you’re willing to hack your phones, as seen above, you’re not going to be able to get multitouch in your native browser, or for that matter any of your native apps. The easy solution? Download Dolphin, a browser that include multitouch gestures (and a lot more cool stuff, like swipe gestures, RSS feed subscriptions and a built-in Twitter client.

For photos, try Multi-Touch for Gallery, which is a full photo gallery replacement, or PicSay, which is a combination gallery/photo editor. All you’ve got to do is search for these apps in the Android Market, install them, and designate them as your default web and photo browsers.

There are other mulitouch apps in the App Market, from games to utilities to simple tech demos. Drop your favorites in the comments, and I’ll add them to the post.

That’s pretty much it! If you have any tips to tricks for getting the most out your phone’s hardware, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy pinch-zooming, folks!

Electronic-book readers are red-hot. After a blockbuster 2009, during which an estimated 5 million devices were sold, a new batch of e-readers are waiting to burst into the spotlight.

The latest generation of devices are easy on the eye, lightweight and packed with some nifty features such as the ability to take notes, make lists and — for some — even watch video. They also offer far better battery life than any netbook or notebook, often come with an unlimited wireless connection for downloading new books, and give you access to libraries of e-books that can top a million titles. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, there were so many e-readers that they had their own special section carved out on the show floor.

But will the category remain as hot as it is now?

E-readers, as we know them now, are at a crossroads. Next week, Apple is expected to announce a new tabletlike device that could also be used to read digital books. It’s expected to have a color screen, not the monochrome E Ink display found on most e-readers. Apple is reportedly talking to publishers to bring e-books and magazines to the device.

Meanwhile, other computer manufacturers are showing tabletlike devices, which are also based on color LED or OLED screens.

A device with a color screen could really change the landscape. Add the ability to watch video, play games or download apps — which most e-readers can’t do — and e-readers could start to look pretty primitive by comparison.

Still, e-reader manufacturers have made a lot of strides in recent months. Amazon has even added an app store to the Kindle.

But before you decide to buy a Kindle, Nook or Sony Reader, flip through this gallery to see what will be in stores this year.

And keep in mind that an array of touchscreen tablets just might render the entire category obsolete overnight.

Above: Plastic Logic

The Cadillac of e-book readers, Plastic Logic’s Que proReader is a gorgeous but expensive device that promises to give you a “paperless briefcase.” The Que, which is targeted at business users, has an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle a range of documents such as Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers.

The Que can even sync with your Microsoft Outlook account to pull in e-mails and calendar for display on the device. Feature-wise, it’s difficult to beat the Que. But the price tag is enough to make most people gasp.

But if you want one, be prepared to open your wallet wide.

The 4-GB version of the Que with Wi-Fi and storage for about 35,000 documents will retail for $650, and an 8-GB version, which includes 3G connectivity from AT&T, will cost $800. The Que will start shipping mid-April.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

RAZR. KRAVE. MOTOROI. SHOP4APPS? We think — nay, we hope — that we’ve at long last reached the nadir of Motorola’s naming convention and are finally on our way up from the depths of marketing hell now that the company has announced its new Android app store for China. We’re not totally clear on why these guys need this on top of the Android Market and China Mobile’s own Open Mobile System initiative, but for what it’s worth, Chinese buyers of the XT701, MT710, and XT800 will have yet another way to find, buy, and store purchases for their phones.

Perhaps the more interesting part of the announcement, though, is that Motorola is adding the capability to choose a non-default (read: non-Google) search provider on these phones. For all practical purposes, Baidu is China’s Google, anyhow, with a commanding market lead — so it probably makes a lot of sense for locals to be able to route searches through them, never mind the fact that it gives Moto an escape hatch for sidestepping the drama going on right now. An Android phone tightly integrated with Google search isn’t so useful if Google leaves the country, right? Look for both of these services to be available via over-the-air updates in time for the Chinese New Year — January 26.

Motorola bringing SHOP4APPS app store 2CHINA, adding workaround for Google spat originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos 5 gets Android 1.6 update, for real this time originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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