Hasta La Gadget!

Why hello there, Archos. My, what nice Android you have there. Tucked away in a little booth at CeBIT, the PMP maker was showcasing its latest 7-inch Home Tablet. Unfortunately, it was pretty barebones as far as content goes, but the vanilla Android 1.6 was running smooth, and if company precedence indicates anything, the video playback is still fairly solid. The selling point here, really, is a decent screen and that $200 or so price tag. No dice on espying Archos 8, though; we’ve passed by the company’s booth twice now, and both times it had yet to be sent to the show floor. Instead, on hand were the A14VG and AV15VS, but there isn’t a lot to say about music players with the same feature set you’d find in PMPs sold at grocery stores — there’s definitely a market, but it’s targeted at your wallet more than your desire for cutting edge goods. Video of Archos 7 after the break.

Continue reading Archos 7 Home Tablet (and PMPs) hands-on

Archos 7 Home Tablet (and PMPs) hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Well, we just had our first encounter with Samsung’s new Bada-sporting Wave handset. We’ll say this to start… the screen is gorgeous, and the phone itself is super fast. No hesitation almost anywhere, but it’s hard to make a judgment call at this point. A lot of the software seemed unfinished, and we saw a few crashes and weird behavior. Still, it’s clearly a device capable of handling some pretty intense work, and a Samsung rep we spoke to wanted to emphasize its ability to multitask. We were also told that the phone has more than 512MB of RAM, which is notable for a device of this type. We’re going to play with it a bit more and flesh out our impressions, but for now feast your eyes on the gallery… and check the video after the break!

A few more takeaways (with some input from senior editor Thomas Ricker):

• Overall the device feels like a glorified feature phone, and speaking to some other tech folks here, that feeling seemed to be common. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot to it that we haven’t seen in other Samsung devices, especially considering the TouchWiz integration.
• There was an issue with flipping the keyboard from portrait to landscape — as we said the phone is early, so this may change, but we had to leave an app and reopen in the other orientation to get it working. We also noticed that there doesn’t seem to be word prediction in place right now.
• The browser is redirecting to WAP pages, so it was hard to see what the results were. We also thought the buttons were in a very odd place, making it a bit hard to navigate.
• The display wasn’t always responding to touches, and at least one unit completely froze on us.
• For those asking, from the looks of things (and the press release) there is no multitouch on this device. Correction… we just tried pinching and zooming on the phone and while it did create some kind of zoom result, it also kept giving us an error! Furthermore, when we tried to load an image heavy site, it forced the phone into its task manager mode and made us close all applications before we could proceed with using the phone. Clearly there is work to be done.

Continue reading Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!)

Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

By now you’ve probably read more on Apple’s iPad then you ever dreamed possible. In the last few days we’ve covered a lot of angles on the tablet and compiled a lot of data. Still, we felt that we hadn’t given you clear hands-on impressions and collected the myriad details about the device in one, easy-to-reach place. So we’ve decided to bundle all of that info into a single feature, joining our first-hand encounters with the iPad together with all of the data and details you should be aware of — including specs, plans, release schedules, pics, and video. So read on for everything we know (so far) about Cupertino’s first tablet!

Continue reading Apple iPad: The definitive guide (so far)

Apple iPad: The definitive guide (so far) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Now that we’ve heard the big news from Nokia’s London press event, it’s only natural to get our hands dirty with the upgraded Ovi Maps. The preloaded map does indeed load much quicker than its old network counterpart, and hey, did we mention it’s free too? Enjoy the photos and video after the break with your breakfast.

Continue reading Nokia Ovi Maps with free turn-by-turn navigation hands-on

Nokia Ovi Maps with free turn-by-turn navigation hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

We stopped by Ooma’s booth at CES for a quick hands-on with the new HD Telo and some time with the iPhone app. Voice quality on the service was pretty decent, although we did notice a pretty significant bit of lag — we’re assuming things would work better on a quality connection, as opposed to the slammed pipes here on the show floor. The new DECT handset was also quite nice, although it took a second to figure out how to initiate a call. We also played with the iPhone app for a second — it worked as advertised, although once again we were limited by both the poor network connections on the show floor. It’s certainly an interesting concept, though — we’ll have to wait to see how this all works in the home.

Ooma Telo HD, Handset, and iPhone app hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments