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Jun 25

Motorola Endeavor HX1 ears-on

Posted in: bluetooth, Features, hands-on, HandsOn, headset, moto, motorola, Today's Chili

We’ve been playing with Motorola’s recently-announced Endeavor HX1 for the past few hours, and we’re just going to come right out with it: this is the best Bluetooth headset we’ve ever used. Moto claims that the HX1 is the world’s first consumer headset to use “true bone conduction technology,” a veiled (but obvious) reference to the external cheek-resting sensor found on Jawbone’s devices — and indeed, the Jawbone Prime is the most obvious direct competitor to the HX1. Both devices offer decent styling, feature optional earloops and a selection of earbuds for a tighter fit, are being positioned as premium headsets, and — most importantly — pack a ton of innovative circuitry all in the name of cutting noise in harsh surroundings. Head on over to Engadget Mobile for our quick take!

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables

Motorola Endeavor HX1 ears-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 24

Zune HD video hands-on quickie

Posted in: Features, hands-on, Microsoft, tegra, Today's Chili, zune, zune hd, ZuneHd

Sure, we’ve been chummy with the Zune HD in the past, but we just took it for a quick spin on video so you can check out those smooth transitions for yourself. Unfortunately, the unit we were playing with had zero content loaded on it, but you can check out the slick unlock mechanism, swooping screen-change animations and a bit of pre-loaded Zune video on the gorgeous OLED screen. Plus we tossed together a few pics and a shot of the Tegra chip that’s doing all the work into a gallery below. Video is after the break.

Gallery: Zune HD video hands-on quickie

Continue reading Zune HD video hands-on quickie

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Zune HD video hands-on quickie originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 24

Lenovo IdeaPad U350 thin-and-light hands-on

Posted in: Features, hands-on, lenovo, thin and light, ThinAndLight, Today's Chili

A month after Lenovo announced its new IdeaPad U350 the thing is finally ready for the prime time, and let us tell you: it wasn’t hard to spot. While in theory this is “just another thin-and-light” in a rapidly growing, CULV-aided market segment, the craftsmanship and materials used on the U350 make it our favorite bit of Lenovo design since the U110, and very well might set it apart from the budget-minded pack. We’re particularly digging the textured rubber back, but the ribbed metal palm rest also excellently avoids the glossy-plastic-of-death. Otherwise the laptop settles pretty nicely into a thin-and-light groove, with both of those particulars in spades and CULV under the hood. We would prefer some NVIDIA 9400M to Intel’s integrated graphics, but at least there’s HDMI out, and Intel’s chipset tends to be a bit better on the power sipping front. Check out the gallery for some head-to-head shots with Lenovo’s T400s — which is clearly superior in most regards, but goes for double the price.

Gallery: Lenovo IdeaPad U350 thin-and-light hands-on

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo IdeaPad U350 thin-and-light hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 24

HTC Hero hands-on: Flash, keyboard and ruminations (updated!)

Posted in: Android, Features, Google, hero, HTC, sense, Today's Chili, ui

We’re going to need some real time with the device to make a final opinion, but we’re cautiously optimistic that HTC has a winner with its new Hero. Here’s what we’ve got from our first looks at the phone in London and NY:

The beveled edges along the back makes the handset sit comfortably in the hand, and while the teflon coat doesn’t necessarily feel revolutionary, it’s going to make a world of difference after a couple of months riding in our grubby pockets. It’s certainly solid, but much more so than other “brick” phones.
The Sense UI (or as HTC terms it, “user experience”) riding a capacitive touchscreen offers a people-centric approach to managing your information that is absolutely dreamy at first blush — though it shares a lot of TouchFLO heritage. In fact, HTC promises to have a very similar Sense-branded experience for Windows Mobile.
The on-screen keyboard also seems quite useable with a nice simulated haptic forced-feedback bounce when you strike each key in either landscape or portrait mode (which can naturally be deactivated). HTC has built its own touch keyboard from the ground up, and in our brief couple of tests we’d say it’s probably the best touchscreen typing experience we’ve ever felt. It never lags behind, and has great colorful visual cues for its auto-corrected words — green means it’s suggesting a correctly spelled word, red means we’ve gone off the beaten path, and the T9-style multiple suggestions are heavenly.
This intuitive one-hander isn’t shy with the specs either as we’ve already seen in the official press release. Our only concern is possible sluggishness from the Qualcomm processor that cause the graphic transitions to stutter a bit and results in screen rotations that feel dangerously uncomfortable.
We were told that the device we saw was running pre-production firmware so there’s still time to tweak — though not much with a July European launch.
The Hero is not a “Google Experience” device. As such, you won’t find the Google logo anywhere (no big deal) but you also won’t be downloading any firmware updates over the air — sideloading only kids. Not a deal breaker but an annoying and seemingly arbitrary limitation nonetheless. There’s still a small lack of clarity of how updates will work with HTC’s “mods” living on top of basic Android — even if they’re able to port in new Android versions seamlessly, we imagine there will be some breakage.
For a device without a physical keyboard, the Hero seems a little thick up against its HTC Magic, Nokia N97, and iPhone 3G counterparts, but not overly so.
HTC has confirmed that whichever (unspecified) carrier gets the phone in the US will have a modified version, both in software (carrier-specific services) and in hardware chassis tweaks. Just don’t take our teflon away, ok HTC?
Battery is the same larger slab that’s in the myTouch, and HTC also claims to have done some vague, unspecified things OS-side to improve battery life as well. “Heavy users will be able to get through a day.”
The camera is responsive and seems to do a fine job at autofocus, but wasn’t astonishingly great at first glance.
The phone will be available for free on T-Mobile UK — if only we could be so subsidy lucky in the US.

There are four videos for you after the break. The first shows Flash running at full screen on the HTC Hero courtesy of YouTube. The second, however, shows it failing when running a trailer from Yahoo Movies, just like Adobe did — in fact, it crashed all four times that we tried it on what we were told was a Hero running the final build of the OS. Third one is a quickie showing the on-screen keyboard rotating from portrait to landscape and back. Lastly, we demonstrate the hardware a little bit and show off our lightning speed at typing. For the real completists, there’s also a new gallery of hands-on shots from the NY launch event right below.

Gallery: HTC Hero hands-on

Gallery: HTC Hero additional hands-on

Continue reading HTC Hero hands-on: Flash, keyboard and ruminations (updated!)

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC Hero hands-on: Flash, keyboard and ruminations (updated!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 23

HP Mini 5101 cleans up nice, shows the serious side of netbooks

Posted in: breaking news, BreakingNews, Features, hands-on, HP, Mini, netbook, Today's Chili

Just when you thought you were safe from the netbook horde, along comes HP’s new Mini 5101 to tempt you with the same basic specs once again, but this time with a slick aluminum and magnesium chassis to appeal to the “mobile professional” or anyone else with a bit of class. In a crazy twist, HP has **finally moved the mouse buttons below the trackpad (because only professionals like clicking), and has included other perks like a 7200 RPM hard drive, Bluetooth 2.0, 2 megapixel webcam, and options of either a WSVGA (1024 x 600) or “HD” (1366 x 768) 10.1-inch LED screen. There are also options for 80GB or 128GB SSD drives, four-cell or six-cell batteries, with the latter rated at an improbable eight hours of runtime, and of course WWAN. There’s a start price of $449, but with some of these options we could see that shooting up pretty fast — especially if you pick the optional USB-powered external disc drive, external speakers or port replicator. It’s not cheap being cheap. The Mini 5101 goes on sale in July.

Gallery: HP Mini 5101 press shots

We got a quick hands-on with the netbook, and were fairly impressed. The square chiclet keys are much easier to hunt down than Mini 1000-series flush keys, and the proper trackpad configuration is naturally a huge bonus. We’d much prefer multitouch scrolling to the side-scrolling action, of course, but at least it’s an improvement. The overall build quality is near the top of any laptop or netbook we’ve played with in this price range — it’s not perfect, and there’s some of that telltale keyboard flex, but it’s a big improvement over its largely plastic competitors and predecessor.

Gallery: HP Mini 5101 hands-on shots

Filed under: Laptops

HP Mini 5101 cleans up nice, shows the serious side of netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 23

Panasonic DMP-B15 hands-on

Posted in: blu-ray, Features, hands-on, Panasonic, Today's Chili

While we got a quick look at the thing a few months ago, we were finally able to get our mitts all over Panasonic’s new DMP-B15 portable Blu-ray player. With its bigger-than-a-laptop size and wild pricetag (for a consumer device), it’s obviously a niche product, but that’s not to say there aren’t hints of consumer friendliness in here. Overall the hardware is light and strong, and while we felt a bit of heat venting out the sides, it’s not uncomfortable, and the disc operation is virtually silent. Startup time and disc load times are comparable to most dedicated home Blu-ray players — certainly not best in class, but passable — and we couldn’t get the player to skip despite our best efforts. The screen is really great, with a good amount of viewing angle and brightness for the category and plenty of resolution to differentiate HD content. We spotted a bit of pixel crunch in menus and stills, but once the motion started we could barely differentiate pixels. Sure, it’s hard to imagine a reason for most people to pick up a DMP-B15 over a cheapish Blu-ray playing laptop — the thing is monstrously thick, and can’t even handle a traditional laptop-style screen orientation, only everything but — but the hardware is reliable enough for kids to handle on the road, and the single-use makes it a good home Blu-ray player for plugging into that second HD-starved TV. Still, we’re guessing most will wait to see what next year’s (sure to be flush) crop has to offer.

Gallery: Panasonic DMP-B15 hands-on

Filed under: HDTV, Portable Video

Panasonic DMP-B15 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 23

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s hands-on and impressions

Posted in: Features, hands-on, impressions, lenovo, thinkpad, Today's Chili, unboxing

We know a lot of people out there who take any changes to the ThinkPad line very seriously, so it’s easy to see why Lenovo didn’t make any huge revisions to the T400 formula when designing the new T400s. Sure, it’s slimmer, lighter, and all around sleeker than big brother, but it’s still a ThinkPad, and it’s still tough as nails. You might think of it as the internals of the T400 stuffed into a slightly thicker version of the X300’s case — it might not quite fit into a manila envelope, but it’s still pretty easy to forget you’ve got it in your bag. Of course, it’s hard to cut down on size without sacrificing performance, and the T400s is no exception — although our tester’s 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo was more than capable of handling our day-to-day workload, the only graphics option is Intel’s integrated 4500MHD chip, and that means hardcore image processing and most intense gaming are out. Good thing ThinkPad owners are all business, right?

Continue reading Lenovo ThinkPad T400s hands-on and impressions

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s hands-on and impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 23

ASUS Eee PC 1005HA hands-on and impressions

Posted in: feature, Features, hands-on, impressions, laptop, Laptops, netbook, netbooks, review, Today's Chili

ASUS has certainly changed the netbook game a bit with its Eee PC Seashell line, aesthetically-speaking, anyway. Slimmed down and sleek, the Seashell’s one of the handsomest netbooks we’ve seen. When we reviewed the 1008HA just a few weeks back, we had just a few minor issues with it, but overall, found it to boast a solid user experience. The Eee PC Seashell 1005HA is nearly identical to its elder brother, but presents some small changes for the better without sacrificing these now famous looks. Read on for our full impressions and hands-on photo gallery.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC 1005HA hands-on and impressions

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS Eee PC 1005HA hands-on and impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 22

Disney Netpal hands-on (with video!)

Posted in: Features, hands-on, netbook, Today's Chili

We got a quick look Disney’s little Netpal Eee PC rebadge, and found our not-too-high expectations slightly exceeded by the fairly slick skin Disney has slapped on top of XP. The Netpal platform is really Disney’s primary contribution here, since the computer underneath is vanilla Eee PC other than the fairly stylish “boy” and “girl” skinning job. The shell, however, is a locked down environment that allows parents to white list web sites and email addresses for kids to access, along with a list of allowable apps — kids aren’t restricted to just Disney’s set of experiences, little Bobby can master PowerPoint in between play dates if his parents don’t mind. Standard netbook sluggishness is of course a drawback, but the extensive parental controls, kid-friendly interface and $350 retail price are all good omens for rising above the general shoddiness and usual misnomer of “kid tech.” Video is after the break.

Gallery: Disney Netpal hands-on

Gallery: Disney Netpal press shots

Continue reading Disney Netpal hands-on (with video!)

Filed under: Laptops

Disney Netpal hands-on (with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 22

Nokia N97 review: a tale of two bloggers

Posted in: Features, hands-on, HandsOn, nokia, review, Today's Chili

Recently, Engadget editors Thomas Ricker and Chris Ziegler received Nokia N97s just days apart from one another. Already established pen pals, the two immediately began to correspond across the Atlantic via carrier pigeon, discussing their very different experiences using Nokia’s most powerful smartphone to date. This is a recounting of those letters.

Thomas,

I hope this letter finds you well. I understand that you’ve received an N97 from Nokia Nederlands recently and was wondering what you thought of it? As luck would have it, I’ve happened across a unit myself — the US was the first country to get them, interestingly, which is really big deal for a company accustomed to delivering its best hardware early and often to Europe. I’ve been flogging it for a few days now, just enough time to form some opinions.

Gallery: Nokia N97 NAM unboxing