Hasta La Gadget!

It usually takes a very particular type of personality to buy a crystal-encrusted object of any sort, much less something that you’d drape across an exposed body part like your wrist. That said, the pure novelty of the movement in Phosphor’s Reveal line of watches might be enough to change your mind: it uses some sort of patented black magic to flip between two different colors of crystals to form digits that indicate the time.

We’ve had a couple of the watches in our possession this week, so we’re able to personally confirm the cool factor. What surprised us a bit is the amount of time it takes for digits to change: depending on how many crystals need to flip, we’d estimate it can take as long as a quarter second or so, because the crystals flip in sequence rather than all at once (perhaps to limit current draw). Like E Ink — another one of Phosphor’s specialties — this “display” is bistable, meaning it’ll stay put without any power consumption once a time is set. Of course, we don’t know exactly how much power it takes to be flipping all these crystals every minute, so it’s an open question how often you’ll need to be replacing the coin cell. The most understated men’s style is — in our humble opinion — simple enough to wear even if you can’t stand the thought of donning dozens of Swarovski crystals, thanks in part to the fact that the bezel is a clean dark metal; of course, if you don’t mind the crystals, Phosphor is happy to help you bling it up. Follow the break for some video of the watches in action!

Oh, we almost forgot: we’re giving two of these away. Right now. Here’s what you need to know!

The rules:

• Leave a comment below. Any comment will do.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winners will be chosen randomly. Two winner will each receive one Phosphor Reveal wristwatch. We choose which style you get. We can’t honor requests — sorry!
  
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
• Entries can be submitted until Friday, March 11, 2011, at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

Continue reading Phosphor Reveal wristwatch hands-on (and giveaway!)

Phosphor Reveal wristwatch hands-on (and giveaway!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, you were worried Sony wasn’t going to release its new VAIO S ultraportable in the US? Okay, so it has taken the company a bit longer to prep the 13.3-inch laptop for its American debut, but it’s here and it looks like it was well worth the wait. While Sony is holding that it will not replace the VAIO Z Series, which has just recently gone out of stock on Sony’s website, there’s no denying that it fills a similar high-end ultraportable spot. Don’t be fooled by its inch-thick profile, it packs a serious amount of horsepower — like the UK version, it will be configurable with Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6630 graphics with 1GB of VRAM (sadly, there’s still a physical toggle for switching), Blu-ray, and a range of SSDs. As you can tell from the image above, the design drops the circular hinge of previous VAIOs, but the 3.8-pound machine is still made of magnesium and aluminum, has a backlit keyboard, while also sporting the option of a unique slice battery that meshes with the overall aesthetic.

However, that $150 extended cell isn’t just any old battery — it’s said to provide a total of 15 hours of battery life when latched onto the bottom of the system and additionally it comes with its own adapter so it can be charged separately from the entire rig. Yep, this one is filled to the brim with the latest and greatest, and even better it doesn’t seem terribly overpriced — the $979 starting model packs a Core i5-2410 processor, those aforementioned AMD graphics, and a 320GB hard drive. It should be available for pre-order later today and we’re hoping to bring you a full review of it soon, but until then we have a few hands-on shots of the laptop back at CES below.

Continue reading Sony VAIO S arrives stateside, brings along an advanced extended battery

Sony VAIO S arrives stateside, brings along an advanced extended battery originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Would you pay $100 to control the outcome of a movie with the power of your mind? That’s what NeuroSky and Triete Labs are banking on with MyndPlay. Simply put, it uses NeuroSky’s $99 Mindwave headset with a custom video player that monitors your mental activity during critical points in specially designed films, and offers multiple outcomes depending on your focus and relaxation levels. For instance, in Paranormal Mynd (above), you play an exorcist who must drive a evil spirit away — if you don’t focus intently, this woman will choke to death. Another gangster film has you dodging bullets and sports multiple endings; depending on how relaxed and concentrated you are, you could come away clean, take a bullet to the head, or dodge poorly and have the projectile strike your friend dead instead. MyndPlay plans to produce a raft of such short-form content for $0.49 to $1.99 per episode, and also let you shoot and share your own, scripting sequences with a tool to be released next month called MyndPlay Pro.

We gave Paranormal Mynd a try at GDC 2011, and came away somewhat impressed — you definitely can control the outcome of a scene, but it doesn’t work quite like you’d expect. Since NeuroSky’s technology is still limited to detecting the mental states of concentration and relaxation, you can’t “will” the movie to go the way you’d like with your thoughts — in fact, thinking about anything rather than what you’re seeing on screen seemed to register as a form of distraction, and lowered our scores. Instead, the ticket to success seemed to be focusing intently on processing the images on screen and clearing our head of all thought or emotion, making us feel totally brain-dead even as we aced the scene. If that sort of zombification sounds like fun, watch a couple video teasers after the break!

Continue reading NeuroSky shows off MyndPlay, we control movies with our brainwaves (video)

NeuroSky shows off MyndPlay, we control movies with our brainwaves (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What might Android gaming look like on a Samsung Galaxy S II? You’re staring it in the face right now. We spotted Samsung’s Orion / Exynos 4210 at GDC 2011, showing off the power of its dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU and Mali-400 graphics on a nice big 1080p television screen — with a completely playable asteroid obstacle course that ran at a butter-smooth 60 frames per second in stereoscopic 3D. ARM representatives told us the chip actually has even more headroom, but was actually constrained by its HDMI 1.3 port, and could push stereoscopic content at up to 70fps if their reference board had HDMI 1.4. When we asked if there were any plans to publish the TrueForce space shooter demo, ARM said it might indeed be done; the company’s thinking of releasing it on the Android Market as a benchmark of sorts.

Samsung’s Exynos 4210 flexes 3D gaming muscle at GDC 2011 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may have heard of the PowerVR SGX543MP — you know, the GPU behind Sony’s NGP and possibly on its way to the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 — but chances are, you’ve yet to see it working up close. Well, feast your graphics-hungry eyes on this: that’s Futuremark’s Tai Chi benchmark running on a tellingly sheathed device at GDC 2011, working the MP2 (dual-core) iteration of the processor, and that fine smartphone to its right is the Nexus S, sporting the PowerVR SGX540 you’ve come to know and love. As you can tell, Imagination Technologies’ promises of 4X the performance aren’t just baseless boasts — the lady on the left moves with grace and fluidity, while her counterpart on the right is all sorts of herky-jerky. Think that’s fast? Check out what the GPU can do with two more cores.

Sean Hollister contributed to this report.

Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX543MP2 really is faster, better, stronger (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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