Hasta La Gadget!

We’re not sure what LG expected when it invited Micheal Bay to speak about the company’s promotional support of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen at CTIA, but let’s be honest — they probably should have known dude was going to blow something up. Unfortunately for the gathered LG employees, this time Mike-Mike delivered a figurative explosion, telling the crowd “I don’t know anything about mobile phones. In fact, look at my phone — it’s a thirty-nine dollar Samsung.” Ouch — that’s roughly the equivalent of throwing a Ford in with the rest of the Autobots. Making matters worse, LG president of mobile products Juno Cho tried to salvage the moment by offering Bay his personal phone, but was rebuffed because “all my contacts are in the other one.” Yeah, that’s probably not the best way to play it — although we’re guessing Samsung’s already angling for TouchWiz to feature prominently in Transformers 3.

[Via Gartenblog]

Filed under: Cellphones

Michael Bay strikes again, pulls out Samsung cellphone at LG promo event originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PCD‘s showed a fun twist at CTIA with the admittedly awkward looking TXT8030 by designing the handset’s lower section to rotate with business up front and party in the back — yeah, like a mullet. One one side is a QWERTY pad and on the other speakers and the music controls. We also hear the display is a 2.2-inch number, memory is expandable via microSD, it packs a 1.3 megapixel shooter, and the tale of the tape registers 4.5 inches long by 2.4 inches wide, and about a half an inch thick. No thoughts on pricing or availability, but this CDMA twistset may show up somewhere someday.

Filed under: Cellphones

PCD tempts with its twisting TXT8030 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CTIA Wireless 2009 has drawn to an anticlimactic close today, concluding one of the less memorable, less action-packed CTIAs in recent memory. Friday was as much about skedaddlin’ out of town as quickly as possible as it was about making news and launching new products for exhibitors, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t unearth a few gems for you. No need to thank us, seriously — click on!

	Wistron’s Snapdragon-powered PurseBook gets demoed NVIDIA is showing that wacky Mini 1000 / Tegra mashup at CTIA, but Qualcomm’s not far behind with its own creative ways to repurpose smartphone silicon into MID and netbook-class devices.		Inventec’s mirasol-equipped V112 smartphone goes on display We couldn’t get the thing to turn on — prototype buffoonery, zapped battery, or a classic case of trade show jitters, we figure — but Inventec’s curious V112 was on display inside Qualcomm’s booth at CTIA.
	Nokia E71x struts its stuff on video We were never able to track down an E71x with a SIM and an active AT&T Navigator account, but it’s pretty clear from our time with the device that AT&T has left its S60 3.2-based core pleasantly untouched.	Also check out: Kyocera G2GO and Laylo hands-on Jabra HALO hands-on

CTIA Roundup, Day Three originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We couldn’t get the thing to turn on — prototype buffoonery, zapped battery, or a classic case of trade show jitters, we figure — but Inventec’s curious V112 was on display inside Qualcomm’s booth at CTIA. Why Qualcomm, you ask? Well, Qualcomm owns Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, which has been pushing its mirasol display tech for several years now; the main draw is that it’s super high-contrast which eliminates the need for a backlight in many situations where a traditional LCD would need a little help, and the WinMo-powered V112 uses a small mirasol strip as a secondary display surrounded by nav controls. Even though we weren’t getting any Windows Mobile action, we did manage to engage the mirasol display (also known as “the cool part”) where we saw an example of what the V112 might be able to do without turning on the battery-destroying LCD up top: show basic status information and the current time. It’s a good idea; we’re not sure that the V112’s implementation is perfect since there’s zero tactility to the d-pad, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and mirasol could use as many commercial implementations as it can get.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Inventec’s mirasol-equipped V112 smartphone goes on display originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those sadistic souls over at Lightning GPS are at it again, making the lives of parents and promiscuous children awesome and horrible, respectively. Just in case NavTrac’s RTV10 PND isn’t enough to keep your mind at ease when Johnny (and his track record of poor decision making) is out and about, there’s the newly announced NavGenius. At first glance, this here navigator is about as vanilla as they come, but underneath the shell is a dedicated tracking module which enables the owner to monitor every turn, stop and donut from the web. Heck, you can even re-route vehicles from any connected computer, and the owner can get an SMS should the driver exceed a certain speed or break a customizable perimeter. All that’s required to shatter the last pinch of trust you actually had with your offspring is $599.95 up front and $39.95 per month for the tracking service — which you only pay until they wise up and take a Louisville Slugger to the device.

Filed under: GPS

NavGenius PND looks like a GPS, is really a covert location tracker originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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