Hasta La Gadget!

Motorola just went official with its WiFi-only Xoom headed to Europe along side its 3G and WiFi cousin in the second quarter of 2011. Besides that little detail, it’s still the original 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet built upon a dual-core 1GHz processor and 1280 x 800 pixel resolution display. Oh, and look at what we spotted here in Barcelona. Yup, a Xoom decked out in silver just for your viewing pleasure in the gallery below.

Continue reading Motorola Xoom gets Q2 European launch, WiFi-only and silver models now extra official

Motorola Xoom gets Q2 European launch, WiFi-only and silver models now extra official originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson’s MWC presser today may have been all about its new Play, Pro and Neo members of the Xperia family, but the CES debutant we know and love as the Arc was out in force as well. So, we thought, why not throw together our thoughts on this phone and splice them with a gallery of delicious new images plus some video action to boot? The first thing to note is that the Xperia Arc will be shipping globally in March and Sony Ericsson is aiming for the broadest possible operator coverage. Focusing on the handset itself, we’ve been wildly impressed by its design since first laying eyes on it, there’s something fundamentally attractive about the Arc’s look, something less tangible than its ridiculously slim profile. Sony Ericsson has used a similar plasticky material on the back as it does in the Neo, which doesn’t overwhelm us with any sensations of reassurance or quality, but seems to do the job. Guess some corners had to inevitably be cut along with the fat on this phone’s body.

The 4.2-inch screen is bright and lucid, though we’d warn against expecting too much from the Bravia Reality Display marketing. As we’ve mentioned before, the display enhancements only kick in when you’re consuming multimedia. Still, general performance looks more than satisfactory. Hard buttons around the body are well arranged and designed, a contrast from the fiddly keys we found on the Xperia Pro. What was consistent with the rest of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia crew, however, was the Arc’s inability to execute its pinch-to-zoom widget summary screen. It’s an ambitious function — gathering all your widgets from each screen into one cohesive overview — but, basically, it’s laggy as hell. Aside from that, general UI responsiveness could also stand some improvement, but we like where Sony Ericsson is going with the whole thing. If it keeps up its promise to repent from last year’s sins with relation to Android updates, the company has a very good chance of striking it rich with the Xperia Arc. It’s a phone that can truly get by on its looks alone. Video after the break!

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc video preview (video)

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc video preview (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve spent extensive time with our prototype of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, but how’s it feel to use the real, near-finished model? Quite a bit better, actually. The phone looks identical, to be sure, but the hinge is much sturdier. The speaker quality has gone up, too, although in the crowded room it was much too noisy to really make a solid judgment call there. The screen attracts fingerprints like no other, but it’s basically on par with other Xperia models. Its skinned Android Gingerbread UI was snappier, to be sure, and the customizations obviously a lot more complete, but really our biggest concern here was the games. (Check out our Pro, Neo, and Arc previews for more thoughts on the interface.)

We were able to play three titles: Star Battalion, FIFA, and Asphalt. All were found via the applications pane amongst all the other software, but they were also highlighted by the eponymous Xperia Play app. (There was additionally the infamous PlayStation Pocket app, but more on that later.) The former title, very much a StarFox ripoff, had tight controlling via both the gamepad and optional accelerometer option. The trackpads wasn’t supported, however, but when we swapped over to FIFA, we found the left “pad” could be used for moving the player. Though definitely usable, it felt rough under our thumbs and we couldn’t smoothly slide about as we would with an analog nub. It is large enough to do varying degrees of a direction like an analog stick, but you won’t really be fine-tuning your shot so much. The indents work really well to help gauge your thumbs’ position without having to look down. Both titles took quite a while to load, crashing a few times in the process; we were told multiple times this was largely due to early software. Multiplayer was not an option at the show, but we did make it through Asphalt far enough to notice it was being run still by Gameloft and not via Sony servers. As for Xperia Play (the app), we couldn’t help but notice the Get More Games section, no matter how simple, does a much better job at highlighting individual games than the Android Market currently does.

The PlayStation Pocket app on most demo units was as barren as our own model, but we found at least one running Crash Bandicoot for PS One (the “legendary pre-installed title,” as referenced in the press conference) at a smooth 60 frames per second. To compensate for only two L and R triggers, the settings menu offers six different button layouts where you can use the trackpads as secondary shoulder buttons (which prevents their use as analog nub replacements) or have L2 / R2 on screen virtually. Thankfully, jumping out of the app saves the game’s state, and you can return by clicking on the app. An additional confirmation screen confirms you’re really ready to play, which though we can see being a nuisance to some, will be welcome to others who often mis-click. The rep told us no multiplayer, but still you can toggle between the game pad being seen as controller one or two. We also heard that the PS One library will likely be rolled out on a weekly basis and not be available all at once.

What we needed to convince us of the Xperia Play’s viability as a game platform was the games itself, and we will say that Sony and SE are doing well to assuage our concerns there. The form factor is still sleek despite the slide-out gamepad, which feels great to use. The initial PlayStation Suite launch line up is… promising, but we hesitate to give it higher marks without more flagship original titles. What it’ll take to attract more developers is a larger reach for the platform, which ironically will take more PlayStation Certified devices — and as for when that’ll happen, no one’s saying yet. We’ll have hands-on video of the Xperia Play later tonight; meanwhile, find hands-on pictures of the phone (and dock!) in the gallery below!

Update: Fleshed out impressions — looks like Crash Bandicoot will come pre-loaded!

Xperia Play MWC 2011 hands-on! (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 15:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Would sir like some Gingerbread with his Sunday lunch? Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Neo just became official — having already graced these pages thanks to sneaky leaksters and prying mobile reviewers — and it is pretty much what we thought it was: a downmarket alternative for those not keen or able to afford the Xperia Arc. It has an 8.1 megapixel camera round the back, Sony Ericsson’s “human curvature” design, and the same Bravia screen technology as the Arc. The sides are extremely shiny and there’s an abundance of plastic on show. In simple physical terms, you can just feel the difference in (likely future) price between the Neo and its more reputed siblings. We also found the multitouch widget-summoning feature extremely laggy. We’ll have video of that and more for you very soon. Don’t go anywhere!

Update: Video’s in!

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo first hands-on! (updated with video)

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo first hands-on! (updated with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the worst-kept secrets of MWC this year — the Galaxy S II — is finally official, and we’d say it definitely lives up to its name as a proper successor to the original Galaxy S that lit the Android marketplace on fire last year. Major (and largely expected) features include a 4.27-inch 800 x 480 Super AMOLED Plus display, an 8 megapixel primary camera with 1080p video capture accompanied by a 2 megapixel cam up front, Gingerbread with TouchWiz 4.0, integrated NFC support (on some versions), and a shell measuring just 8.49mm thick, making it likely the thinnest smartphone ever to roll off an assembly line — in fact, it’s over 0.2mm slimmer than the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc’s thinnest point. The biggest news here, though, might be that Sammy’s going with an NVIDIA Tegra 2 core — the same as the LG Optimus 2X, Motorola Atrix 4G, and Droid Bionic — despite the fact that its own Exynos 4210 was just announced for March production.

Update: We were originally told that the Galaxy S II would be using an NVIDIA Tegra 2 SOC, but have been informed that was incorrect — the phone will indeed have a dual-core 1GHz Samsung chip, and quite possibly the Exynos. There’s also 1GB of RAM.

We were able to spend a little bit of time with the Galaxy S II today, and we can conclusively say that this is one gorgeous device. It shares the Infuse 4G’s aspirations as an ultra-thin Android device and arguably shares most of its industrial design elements, but interestingly, the Infuse steps down from 4.5 to 4.3 inches — either a nod to the fact that 4.5 is too big for a mainstream smartphone, or a sign that the 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus component simply isn’t ready yet. You totally notice how ridiculously thin the phone is as it rests in your hand, and the effect is amplified by the fact that it’s got so much surface area — the screen-to-edge ratio is off the charts. Though we still prefer the stock Android experience, TouchWiz 4.0 (as it’s being called) on top of Gingerbread is clearly Samsung’s most refined custom Android skin to date; a new Game Hub in ROM has potential to do battle with Sony’s PlayStation Suite and allows developers to bypass the download size limits of the Android Market, but we weren’t able to test it on the preproduction unit we were given.

Owing to a lack of time and connectivity, we weren’t able to put the phone through a suite of speed tests, but the entire UI felt perfect fast and smooth, a testament to the processor’s chops. As at CES, we were blown away by the clarity and brightness of the Super AMOLED Plus display — picture the already-excellent Super AMOLED technology amped up on steroids, and you’ll have a good sense of what we’re talking about here. All told, this seems like a great upgrade to the Galaxy S; if anything, we’re a little concerned that it’s going to be a smidge too big for people that were perfectly happy at the 4-inch tier, but odds are good Samsung will continue to crank out smaller devices for those folks. It’ll be on the market in parts of Europe and Asia as soon as this month; no word on North America, but as always, there’s little doubt Samsung has some plans in the works. Follow the break for our quick video and the full press release.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S II official: dual-core 1GHz CPU, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus, coming this month (hands-on with video)

Samsung Galaxy S II official: dual-core 1GHz CPU, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus, coming this month (hands-on with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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