Hasta La Gadget!

When Amazon’s Appstore rolled out last week, we glossed over one detail that merely seemed neat. Today, we’re inclined to say that Test Drive may be the most significant part of Amazon’s announcement that day. Basically, Test Drive allows US customers to take apps for a spin at Amazon.com, with all the comfort that their tried-and-true desktop web browser brings — but rather than sit you down with a Flash-based mockup of the app, Amazon is giving you a taste of bona fide cloud computing with an Android virtual machine.

In other words, what you’re looking at in the screenshot above isn’t just a single program, but an entire virtual Android smartphone with working mouse controls, where you can not only try out Paper Toss, but also delete it, browse through the device’s photo gallery, listen to a few tunes, or even surf the web from the working Android browser — as difficult as that may be without keyboard input. Amazon explains:

Clicking the “Test drive now” button launches a copy of this app on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers. When you click on the simulated phone using your mouse, we send those inputs over the Internet to the app running on Amazon EC2 – just like your mobile device would send a finger tap to the app. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to your computer. All this happens in real time, allowing you to explore the features of the app as if it were running on your mobile device.

Today, Amazon’s Test Drive is basically just Gaikai for mobile phones — its purpose is simply to sell apps, nothing more. But imagine this for a sec: what if you could access your own smartphone data, instead of the mostly blank slate that Amazon provides here?

[Thanks, Ryan]

Amazon.com lets you play with an Android virtual machine, try apps before you buy them originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember that Google Voice integration for Sprint we mentioned recently? Today at CTIA we got to see it in action, and it promises to take us one step closer to our robot overlords — well, those of us who are Sprint customers, anyway. The most exciting feature is that the integration works with almost any Sprint number and device, and is not limited to just smartphones or the newly minted Nexus S 4G. Basically, you can pick your Sprint number or your Google Voice number to be your mobile number, and switch between them if necessary. Either way, this is the number that appears on other people’s phones when you call them, and you still benefit from all the Google Voice perks. See it for yourself in our video after the break.

Continue reading Google Voice for Sprint hands-on (video)

Google Voice for Sprint hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know what just doesn’t understand true feelings enough? Our phones, that’s what. But it doesn’t always have to be like that if you ask Kyocera. Sure, the company had its dual-screened Echo on display at CTIA, but it also had an interesting exhibit of concept phones, including the ones pictured above, which can change shape based on human emotion. The premise is that since the majority of our communications comes through body language, these handsets would physically morph to express the mental state of your caller. Don’t ask us why Kyocera’s future just doesn’t have better mobile video chatting solutions for that sort of thing, but as you could probably creatively imagine, the black slab on the left would represent a good mood while the one on the far right is clearly all worked up about something. Not zany enough for you? How about some phones that morph in your hand to adapt to how you’re holding the device? Okay, that one actually seems pretty awesome, as does the one that looks like a spider web, but we’ll let you wrap your heads around the rest of the concepts the company had on display by hitting the gallery below.

Kyocera pictures a world of deeply understanding phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jabra Freeway Bluetooth in-car speakerphone hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If Amazon were to venture beyond the web in favor of a more tangible medium to peddle its wares, it might consider something like Telepresence Tech’s new telepresence kiosk for the job. We got a surprise demo of the system at a Samsung event today and came away intrigued. The technology renders 2D images that float and rotate in space, giving retailers a way to let customers see their products as if they were actually there, and at a fraction of the cost — about $1.50 per hour — of paying meatbags to man a traditional brick-and-mortar store. A separate touchscreen lets shoppers scroll through available items, speak face to virtual face with customer service, and make purchases. Check the gallery to see more of what our retail future looks like.

TelePresence Tech kiosk to bring virtual shopping to a mall near you, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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