Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve heard rumblings of BYD coming to America before, but it seems it won’t be making a big deal of its Stateside entrée — at least not yet. According to the Los Angeles Times, China’s sixth-largest car maker is quietly making its presence known in the US, occupying the offices of Cars 911 — a dealership in Glendale, CA — and solidifying plans to open 10 American dealerships by the end of 2011. BYD is also in the process of building its US headquarters in downtown LA, and has been servicing a fleet of its F3DM hybrids, leased to the city’s housing authority, from the Cars 911 lot. BYD’s e6, which is slated as a Leaf competitor, is suspected to appear on the American market, alongside the F3DM, by year’s end. Considering the Leaf’s recent woes, this might be just the right time for BYD to strike.

BYD Motors sneaks on to American market, could make US debut official by year’s end originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you a developer seeking the widest and most profitable distribution for your mobile software? The traditional platform for achieving such goals over the past couple of years has been Apple’s iOS, but Android’s rabid ascendancy has recently turned that into a legitimate question. A question that OpenFeint is looking to sway even further in Google’s favor by announcing it will fund the porting of games from “other app stores” to Android with the help of Chinese online game operator The9. The specially selected games will of course get saddled with OpenFeint integration and the whole effort does have the waft of a publicity grab to us, but hey, it’s another few pennies thrown into the bottomless well known as “Android gaming.” Surely something worthy will eventually come out of it, no?

[Thanks, Calvin]

Continue reading OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash

OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jack Wong is a very lucky guy. Or you can say he’s very unfortunate. On one hand, his eight-year-old Meizu label — literally meaning “the captivating tribe” — has rapidly become one of the most popular brands amongst Chinese gadget lovers, yet all he’s producing right now is just the one phone: the M9. On the other hand, the now-discontinued M8 had notoriously caught unwanted attention from Apple, and even the recent M9 launch saw accusations of Meizu hiring people to stand in line. But the latter points are irrelevant for now — what we’re really interested in is how a teensy MP3 player factory managed to outpace its numerous competitors to become a reputable smartphone maker with a huge fan base. To help us understand what drives the company, we decided to pay Meizu a visit. Go on, you know where to click.

Continue reading Exclusive: A day trip to Meizu’s factory (video)

Exclusive: A day trip to Meizu’s factory (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 11:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How far we’ve come. It was only a couple of years ago that Lenovo was closing a deal to sell its mobile phone business, but a quick re-acquisition in late 2009 and some recent heavy flirtation with the tablet form factor have led to the creation of a whole new unit in the company’s hierarchy, one dedicated to the development of smartphones, tablets, TVs, and other internet-connected devices. Headed up by Liu Jun and working out of Beijing, this squad of designers and engineers will focus on harnessing the “tremendous growth potential of the mobile internet.” Cloud computing will be a major feature of Lenovo’s plans moving forward, which places its goals for the future right in line with just about everyone else’s. Still, it’s good to see one of the big desktop computing players diversifying its portfolio with gusto.

Lenovo setting up a specialist unit for tablets and smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are run-of-the-mill KIRFs, above-average KIRFs, and this. While we’ve definitely been privy to a few comical iPhone / iPod knockoffs over the years, there’s a certain layer of hilariousness to this one that just can’t be beat. The iPod nano watch isn’t even a genuine Apple product; in fact, it’s simply a mod that’s so easy, your mum could probably pull it off with minimal effort. That clearly hasn’t stopped the factories in Shenzhen from churning out an iPod nano watch knockoff, complete with a 1.8-inch resistive touchscreen, inbuilt SIM card slot, Bluetooth, a microSD slot, FM radio tuner, a side-mounted camera sensor and a speaker for good measure. You’ll even get a fancy “Slide to Unlock” screen before being able to dig into the underlying UI, but that chintzy plastic wrist strap all but destroys any respect it was hoping to garner. Thankfully, the unit you’re peering at above is being dubbed an “engineering prototype,” with the final version expected to boast a 3.5mm headphone jack and a modicum of self-worth. We’ll see, won’t we?

iPod nano watch gets knocked off, has little to worry about it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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