LGs Solar Powered E-Book Reader

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E-Book readers are already inherently green, right? After all, using one reduces the number of trees that have to be chopped down to satisfy your reading habits. Still, there’s the whole issue of electricity–you don’t need a lithium ion battery for that paperback. LG is greening up the space with a new solar powered reader.

The new reader features a solar cell measuring 10 CM x 10 CM, with an energy conversion efficiency rate of 9.6-percent. Four to Five hours of sunlight should give you about a day’s worth of charge.

There’s not much info on the device beyond that, save for a fairly stiffly worded press release from the company.

LG’s Solar Cell e-Book goes an extra day for every 5 hours of sunlight

Funny thing going on in the marketplace right now: reading for pleasure is on a rapid decline yet the choice of e-reader devices grows weekly. That’s good news for those of us not spending our down-time in front of a television, mouth agape — awkward for manufacturers testing the waters of this unproven niche. LG’s showing off its Solar Cell e-Book reader anyway, in a bid to flex its thin-film solar muscle. The prototype features an energy conversion efficiency of about 9.6 percent giving it an extra day’s worth of power for that 6-inch TFT-LCD after about four to five hours in the sun. LG is working towards boosting its thin-film solar cell energy conversion efficiency rate to 12% by 2010 on up to 14% by 2012. We say bring it LG, if you can.

[Via OLED-Display]

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LG’s Solar Cell e-Book goes an extra day for every 5 hours of sunlight originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG’s 5.1 HB954SP Blu-ray HTIB system makes room for your iPod or iPhone

If you’ve somehow managed to hold out from joining into the HTIB revolution, the time for caving is upon you. LG has just tapped Sir Mark Levinson to engineer the acoustics behind its latest bundle, the HB954SP. Packing a 5.1-channel sound system that includes 1,000 total watts of power, a quintet of oval drivers and a ported subwoofer, the system gets direction from a BD-Live-enabled Blu-ray player that’s actually a fair bit more stylish than the tried-and-true black rectangle. You’ll also find a pair of HDMI inputs, an iDock function for charging and controlling your iPod / iPhone right from the BD deck, 1080p upscaling of traditional DVDs, touch sensitive controls, a USB port for loading up external media and an optical audio input. There’s nary a mention of price, but it should splash down this November for a hefty premium.

LG’s 5.1 HB954SP Blu-ray HTIB system makes room for your iPod or iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Details on Verizon’s Holiday Phone Lineup

A reliable source just sent us this list with the 12 new phones that Verizon will release this shopping season, along with an approximate timeframe. It includes Android and other phones from HTC, Motorola, LG, RIM, Casio and Pantech:

• RIM BlackBerry Curve 2, before Black Friday
• RIM BlackBerry Storm 2, before Black Friday
HTC Imagio, on October 20
Samsung Saga 2, early November
Samsung Omnia 2, early November
• Pantech TXT8030 Razzle, early October
• Casio C731 Rock, mid-November
• Casio C741 Brigade, late October
• Motorola V860 Barrage, “soon” (it’s already available online in Verizon)
LG VX8575 Chocolate Touch, first or second week of November

On the Android front:
HTC Desire, which will be available before Black Friday. Note: This may be the Verizon Android phone sighted today, though Boy Genius says that might be called the Hero.

Motorola Tao or Droid (possibly the phone currently codenamed Sholes?) will also be available before Black Friday.

Motorola Sholes to launch by holidays, along with the BlackBerry Storm 2 and Nokia Booklet 3G

Well well, it looks like the Android-powered Motorola Sholes will be out on Verizon by the holidays. That’s at least the impression we’re getting from a bunch of leaked Verizon retailer documents posted up by Boy Genius Report, which also indicate the BlackBerry Storm 2, Curve 2 and LG Chocolate Touch will hit Big Red in time for eggnog, along with an unspecified netbook — we’re guessing this Gateway number. Speaking of netbooks, a similar document from Best Buy Mobile also leaked over the weekend, and it looks like the Nokia Booklet 3G will be exclusive to Best Buy and compatible with AT&T 3G. Oh, and the Pixi is coming, but you already knew that. Here’s the real mystery, though: “There are multiple Android launches across multiple carriers, along with some new technology that doesn’t exist today.” That’s certainly open for interpretation, so we leave it to you — is Best Buy Mobile about to start selling teleporters, or what?

Read – Sam’s Club and Target Verizon docs
Read – Best Buy Mobile docs

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Motorola Sholes to launch by holidays, along with the BlackBerry Storm 2 and Nokia Booklet 3G originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SciPhone smells success with Android-powered clones, orders up an army

You know that N12 we were thrilling about back in June? After faking Android with the Dream G2+ as a skin over its regular OS, SciPhone decided to put real Android on the N12 much to our surprise. Now in the works are the N16 (a phone that looks so much like the Magic that SciPhone just stole the real Magic’s press shot instead), the LG-styled N17, and a Storm-esque N19 (pictured). At least the N12 and N16 have 624MHz Marvell processors and 3G, while the N19 sounds to be a non-3G phone running a mere 400MHz chip and 128MB or RAM. The N12 is due this month wherever clones are sold, no word on when the rest will follow.

[Via PMP Today]

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SciPhone smells success with Android-powered clones, orders up an army originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG GW620 Android phone spotted in the wild, on video

We haven’t heard much from LG about its new GW620 Android phone since it got official with it back in mid-September (and at IFA before that), but it looks like it’s now made an official outing in France, where plenty of folks were on hand to get an up-close look at it. As expected, LG hasn’t followed the route of HTC or Motorola with some heavy Android customizations, but the handset itself should still turn a few heads nonetheless with its brushed aluminum look, and what appears to be a better than usual QWERTY keypad (or AZERTY in this particular case). Unfortunately, that gets paired with a resistive touchscreen, but the rest of the specs are thankfully less disappointing, including a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, a microSD card slot for expansion, and a standard headphone jack. Still no indication of this one making its way over here, but you can get a closer look at it by hitting up the link below, and check it out on video courtesy of the folks at Le Journal du Geek after the break.

Read – CNET France hands-on
Read – Le Journal du Geek

[Via android.hdblog.it]

Continue reading LG GW620 Android phone spotted in the wild, on video

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LG GW620 Android phone spotted in the wild, on video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget HD reviews VUDU on the LG BD390 Blu-ray player

VUDU on the BD390

With the update that’ll bring VUDU to owners of the LG BD390 Blu-ray player on schedule for next week, the crew over at Engadget HD managed to get an early look. As you might expect, those HD snobs at EHD are hard to please, so that combined with the comparison to Blu-ray and Netflix’s Watch Now, makes for an interesting read that you’ll just have to click on through for. The bottom line though is that new features on existing hardware is always appreciated and if you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on a Blu-ray player, this might just be the feature that’ll make your finger twitch.

Continue reading Engadget HD reviews VUDU on the LG BD390 Blu-ray player

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Engadget HD reviews VUDU on the LG BD390 Blu-ray player originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: LG GD510 touchscreen ‘Pop’ is heavy on hype, light on specs

Gotta hand it to LG, it pulled out the big hitting hyperbole with the launch of its otherwise simplistic GD510 touchscreen phone. LG begins with a reminder that it launched “the world’s first full touchscreen phone” — the Prada — back in January 2007. A claim that Ericsson, Nokia, and others would rightfully dispute. LG then calls the brushed-aluminum GD510, or “Pop,” the “most compact 3-inch full touchscreen phone ever made,” while boasting of its simplicity. That latter claim is achieved by removing “unnecessary features” that apparently include burdensome WiFi and 3G radios since modern consumers want to browse the internet over GPRS/EDGE. Spec-wise, you get a WQVGA (note the “Q”) display, 3 megapixel camera, 8GB of internal memory, and a single home key that glows green to call or red to hang-up / cancel. They’ve also ditched the S-Class UI in favor of something that’s presumably less convoluted. There’s even an optional solar-panel battery cover which we hear is the number one requested feature on touchscreen phones… right. It does look pretty though, which is saying a lot for a phone packing a solar panel. Hitting Europe in mid October and the US at the end of October if the Bluetooth SIG entry is to be believed. Video promo after the break.

Read — Bluetooth SIG
Read — LG press release

Continue reading Video: LG GD510 touchscreen ‘Pop’ is heavy on hype, light on specs

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Video: LG GD510 touchscreen ‘Pop’ is heavy on hype, light on specs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG’s BL20 Chocolate gets official with €269 price tag

LG’s BL20 Chocolate — the younger sibling of the insane BL40 Chocolate Touch — has recently been making a real splash around these parts. Ever since we got our hands on it, we’ve been wondering when we’d hear some official pricing and launch information, and the wait seems to be coming to an end. It looks like the slider is going to run in the neighborhood of about €269, according to LG’s own website, which has also thrown up a few never-before-seen shots of the handset. That’s about all the news for now, but hit the read link to check out a few more snaps of this beauty, and be sure to have a gander at our own hands-on gallery below.

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LG’s BL20 Chocolate gets official with €269 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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