Hasta La Gadget!

The HTC Evo’s 1-GHz processor is one of the fastest in smartphones today, but there’s always room for improvement.

An Android developer at the xda-developers forum has overclocked his Evo 4G phone to run at 1.267 GHz, nearly 30 percent faster than the standard issue. The developer Michael Huang, who posted the hack under the nickname ‘coolbho3000′, says he’ll try and push the processor to do even more.

“Right now, it’s a proof of concept,” Huang told Wired.com. “I built a version of the kernel that’s running on the phone to overclock it and found it worked fine.”

The hack is pretty technical but the idea is to let advanced Android users and programmers see the potential of the device.

HTC introduced the Evo earlier this month as the first 4G Android phone. The Evo, available exclusively on Sprint, has a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen, a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing and a 8-megapixel camera for shooting photos and videos. It costs $200 with a two-year contract.

The phone has become the bestselling device on the Sprint network and at Best Buy Mobile.

Overclocking the HTC Evo is not the first such attempt developers have made with an Android device. Earlier, Huang says he has tried to overclock the Google Nexus One, which has the same 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as the HTC. But that hack pushed the speed of the processor to only about 1.1 GHz.

The HTC Evo overclocking has resulted in speeds of a little more than 1.2 GHz for most users on the forum who have tried it.

But, a few words of warning for those who might attempt this at home: It isn’t a DIY project for just anyone. The files necessary to overclock the HTC Evo are posted online but you need to know what you are doing with it.

“If you have a rooted phone, you can get an update.zip file to apply to that phone,” explains Huang. “What I have done is packaged the special overclocked kernel into the file.” Huang used an Android app called SetCPU available in the Android Market to adjust the overclock.

Huang says he doesn’t have access to the full source code of the HTC Evo OS, which has limited some functions in the phone.

That means the sensors and camera on the phone do not currently work with the hack.

The overclocking also affects the phone’s battery life — despite Huang’s attempt to tweak the voltage piped to the processor.

“If you put less voltage on the processor, then the phone will use less battery, so my Evo kernel is running at a lower voltage than normal,” he says. “But because the processor is at a higher speed, the battery life is lower than usual.”

Once the overclocked device gets running, it also heats up a fair bit, say commenters on the forum. So, try this one at your own peril.

If you don’t want to go through all that, just enjoy the video of the overclocked HTC Evo.

See Also:

• Oops! Sprint Says it Overstated HTC Evo Phone Sales
• HTC EVO 4G $200, on Sale June 4
• Wired Video: HTC Evo 4G Dissected
• Storage Bug Hits HTC Evo 4G Phone Just Before Launch

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

[via Android Guys]

Canon isn’t the only game in town when it comes to hacking camera firmware. The famous CHDK firmware hacks now have a rival, at least if you are shooting with a Panasonic GH1, and especially if you are using the Micro Four Thirds camera to shoot video.

The hack, called PTool, doesn’t add nearly as many features as the Canon hacks, but what it does is startling. With PTool, you can up the video bitrate of the GH1 from a pedestrian 20Mbit to 32MBit in AVCHD. If you opt for Motion JPEG (MJPEG), you can shoot at an astonishing 50 Mbit/sec at a full 1080p. This, according to testers, offers better quality footage than you get from the EOS 5D MkII. Above you can see an example. To view it in its full HD glory, click through to the Vimeo page

There’s more. You can choose to encode at a frame-rate of 24p (24 fps) for footage that looks like film. This works without “pulldown”, which is a way of finagling the amount of frames you have by doubling some of them to convert to different frame rates.

You can also, if you are feeling brave, enable short shots to encode at a crazy 100Mbit/sec, which further decreases compression from the raw sensor data. And you will need to be brave. These hacks are still experimental and choosing settings is a balance between quality and stability.

There are other tweaks to be made. The 30-minute limit on video shots has been removed (although this is probably moot as no movie has shots of more than a few minutes anyway), you can change the language of the camera interface and you can use third party batteries: the Panasonics actually perform a check to see if you have an official battery, forcing you into paying high prices (I paid €80, or almost $100, for a spare battery for my GF1).

How do you perform this magic? Following the instructions on the GH1 hackers wiki, you download the Windows PTool software (which works on the Mac under emulation). Then you download the latest official firmware from Panasonic and load it into PTool.

This gives a simple list of possible tweaks, and you just check the boxes next to the ones you want and then save the new firmware to an SD card. Next, the scary part begins.

This is where PTool hack differs greatly from the Canon CHDK. With the CHDK, the custom firmware remains on the SD card ind is loaded in every time the camera starts up. If you decide you want to revert, you just format the card, or swap in another, and you’re back to normal. It is completely risk-free.

With the Panasonic, you actually have to flash the firmware onto the camera, completely replacing the official firmware. You cannot revert to a clean, factory-fresh status, although you can re-apply the PTool firmware with all of the tweaks switched off. This has the side effect of giving you a non-standard firmware version number, a tell-tale sign that you have been up to no good. This may or may not invalidate your warranty.

Good news for owners of the Panasonic GF1, too, the awesome little mirrorless compact that you and I both love. This hack will work on our camera, too, although with one difference. The GF1’s sensor is physically incapable of shooting at full 1080p resolution. Everything else should work, though.

Beginners GH1 Custom Firmware Guide [EOS HD Wiki]

PTool FAQ, including feature list [DVX User forum. Thanks to Paul Weber]

The PTool Manual [DVX User forum]

Why the (hacked) Panasonic GH1 is a better video camera than the Canon5DMk2 [Jay Shaffer]

3rd Party firmware transforms wimpy GH1 into Optimus Prime [Philip Bloom]

Video [Andrew Reid/Vimeo]

If you have $400 and a serious case of nostalgic yearning, may we then suggest you spend the money on a wonderful USBTypewriter? Described as a “groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence,” the typewriter can hook up to any machine with a USB port and lets you clickety-clack your way through your latest novel, e-mail or even spreadsheet.

The Typewriter Dock, seen in the video above, is an even better version. It holds an iPad in its carriage whilst simultaneously inputting typed letters. All it needs is a Bluetooth component to replace the cable, and a writing app that can use the accelerometer to detect a carriage return and move you to a new line. Ding!

UPDATE: Creator Jack Zylkin emailed to say that the USBTypewriter can detect carriage returns all by itself using a magnetic sensor.

Inside there is a sensor strip under the keyboard which detects the key-presses that hit it, and this pulse of electricity is then passed on to an Arduino circuit-board, whereupon it is translated into a standard USB key-down event. All you need to do is plug it in and type.

$400 buys you a pre-modded typewriter, but Jack Zylkin, the man behind the USBTypewriter, will sell you the electronics to make your own for just $75, or you can send him your typewriter and have him fix it up for you. For true geeks, the design can be had for free under a Creative Commons license, and you can roll your own from scratch.

For those who really love typing on a typewriter, this seems to actually be better than paper: you no longer have to retype whole pages, and white-out will be a thing of the past. For everyone else, using one of these for a few minutes will be a reminder of just why books used to be so much shorter than the word-processed novels of today.

USBTypewriter product page
[USBTypewriter via Etsy]

See Also:

• Steampunk Keyboard MkII: Now with Built to Order Option
• iPad Keyboard: Pricey and Awkward, But a Must-Have for Productivity

Considering that it uses a fat-tipped felt-tip pen, this Lego printer makes a surprisingly detailed image. That’s really missing the point, though: This is a frackin’ Lego machine that can draw!

It was built from scratch by Squirrelfantasy, a member of the B3ta forums. Here’s his description from the YouTube page:

Lego felt tip 110″ printer connected to an Apple Mac. This is not a kit you can buy and does not use mindstorms. I designed/built/coded it all from scratch including analog motor electronics, sensors and printer driver, the USB interface uses a “wiring” board.

That’s pretty bad-ass, and the little lego figures operating it are a great final-touch. What I like most is that it is so slick to use, showing up in the OS X printer dialog just like any Epson or HP printer. Better still, this one will never give you a low-ink warning: if the pictures start to fade, you can lick the tip of the pen, or pull out the inky insert and use that instead. That should work just as well as it did when you were a kid (ie. not at all).

Lego Printer [B3ta via Geekologie]

See Also:

• Robotic Spider Melds Legos and 3-D Printing
• Lego, Motorola Droid Combine to Solve the Rubik's Cube
• Video: Walking Lego Mecha

It’s pretty easy to trim a miniSIM card down to fit into an iPad (or, presumably, the upcoming iPhone 4G). You just need to trim away the excess plastic from around the chip until it fits inside the iPad’s SIM-tray. If I can do it, anyone can.

But what if you want to go the other way? Perhaps you want to use your iPad data plan in a cellphone, or – like me – you chopped up the card from your MiFi to fit the iPad but want to put it back into the wireless router to share your internet. Sure, you could take the plastic from an old credit-card and carve it to fit, using a hole-punch to get started. Or you could spend €6 (around $7) on a pre-made adapter.

The German microSIM adapter is a tough piece of plastic cut to hold your tiny SIM and let you load it back into a regular miniSIM slot. It does one thing, and it does it well. Push your microSIM home and it clicks firmly into place. I tried it both with the AT&T microSIM that came with the iPad and my custom-cut Vodafone SIM that I trimmed myself. The adapter held both nice and snug and I was able to slip the Vodafone card back into the MiFi. It connected in seconds without trouble.

Apart from laziness, the only real advantage of buying this adapter over making your own is that this one, as I said, holds the card in place thanks to some tiny triangular “shelves” in the corners of the cutout. These stop the card from pushing all the way through. A piece of tape across the back of a home-made card would do the same, though.

You choose whether you need this or not. If you are the kind of person who has already trimmed his own, it seems a little odd that you wouldn’t make the adapter. After all, you can’t break anything if it goes wrong — you just start over.

MicroSIM Adapter [MicroSIM Shop. Thanks, Eliot!]

See Also:

• Why You Can't Use Your Phone's SIM in the iPad
• Apple iPad's Tiny SIM Is Just There to Mess With You
• SIM-Trim: Cutting Card Down to MicroSIM Size