Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a calculator. It’s a wireless mouse. It’s a Bluetooth numeric keypad. It’s… really bizarre. Canon’s X Mark I Mouse Lite takes everyone’s favorite desktop rodent and tries to make it all fancy like, filling that wasted space below the mouse buttons with a calculator — monochrome LCD and all. Except that the unused space below the mouse buttons isn’t wasted at all — it was designed for resting palms, not poking fingertips. The result is a mediocre mouse paired with a mediocre calculator, for $60. Sadly, it’s not nearly as elegant of a solution as it may appear to be, and after a couple days of use, we were ready to switch back to our boring old single-function mouse. So what exactly left us so unimpressed? Jump past the break to find out.

Continue reading Canon X Mark I Mouse Lite hands-on impressions

Canon X Mark I Mouse Lite hands-on impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not enough anymore to simply cram a single-octave keyboard into the bottom of a Nintendo DS, effective piano instruction requires at least twice as many keys — and an iPad. The Ion Piano Apprentice (when coupled with a compatible iDevice and companion app) offers aspiring Tchaikovskys octave-selectable free play, lessons on reading sheet music, and even a view of award-winning piano instructor Scott Houston’s handsome hands. If those mitts are too distracting for you, just follow along with the light-up keys, you’ll be fine. This mini keyboard / iPad dock will land this fall to the tune of $100 — — it’s either that, a real instructor, or a pair of haptic robot gloves. Your choice, really. Hit the PR after the break for a peek at Mr. Houston’s official nickname, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Continue reading Ion Piano Apprentice plays nice with your iPad, lights up your life

Ion Piano Apprentice plays nice with your iPad, lights up your life originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s giving us a patent application peek into its post-PC future, and it looks like hard keys will be so 2008. The recently revealed filing shows off a virtual, flat keyboard concept for Cupertino’s line of non-iOS products that flirts with metal, plastic and glass form factors. Using a combination of piezoelectrics, haptic feedback and acoustic pulse recognition, these prospective designs will be able to detect your finger-pounding surface input. If you’re the fast-typing kind, you’re probably wondering how your digits will recognize the keys sight unseen. Well, there’s a few workarounds for that. In its metal and plastic iterations, Jobs and co. plan to stamp or micro-perforate the layout into place, while their glass counterpart would receive a graphical overlay. The application also promises an LED-lit display for hard to see conditions and the inclusion of capactive sensors to enable multi-touch functions, so you avoid e.e. cummings-style emails. Of course, applications aren’t necessarily indicative of a surefire product, but those interested in tickling their imagination can give the source link a look.

Apple patent application takes the hard keys out of the keyboard, promises a flat surface solution originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For many smartphone users, a quality keyboard is the only feature that truly matters. These passionate devotees will proudly live and die with their thumbs blazing, and for of all RIM’s recent troubles, it’s currently floating on a life preserver: a compelling handset with a portrait QWERTY keyboard doesn’t exist for Android. The HTC Status ($50 on contract) attempts to succeed where others have failed, and — if it’s any good — could entice many BlackBerry-toting teens that want a new handheld fixation. They rarely bother with email, as text messages and Facebook reign supreme for communication. To that end, the Status promotes itself as the perfect phone for Facebook users, but is the integration truly useful, or simply a chintzy add-on? More so, can HTC successfully marry Gingerbread with an upright keyboard? Join us after the break to learn whether we “Like” the HTC Status.

Continue reading HTC Status review

HTC Status review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After plenty of hands-on time with SwiftKey X, we reckon it’s probably the best virtual keyboard you can get for Android phones. And, for the next 21 hours or so, it’s even better than that — because it’s free at Amazon’s Appstore. So, if you’re brandishing Android 2.1 or higher and you type in one of the 17 supported languages, then the source link below beckons. Come back quickly, though, or we’ll miss you terribly. (The tablet version of the app is still $4.99, mind — but there’s always tomorrow.)

SwiftKey X keyboard app is free today on Amazon, be swift or pay $3.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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