Hasta La Gadget!

Even Apple’s formidable legal team might have trouble shutting down the Plug Bug

I can hear you. “What?” you say, “Another damn power adapter? What’s wrong with you, Sorrel?” But before you nod off, give me a second. This power adapter is very, very clever.

It’s called the PlugBug, and it charges both your iPad and your MacBook at the same time. That sounds easy, but the problem is that Apple won’t let anyone else make MagSafe adapters. So TwelveSouth, the company behind the PlugBug, didn’t even bother to make this part of the charger. Instead, the little red unit replaces the removable two-prong adapter unit on your existing MacBook power brick.

Ingenious, right? I have always liked Apple’s chargers because it’s so easy to swap in the correct set of prongs when you travel, but this makes it even more useful, especially at trade shows like CES where plug-space can be hard to come by.

The PlugBug can also work as a standalone 10-watt USB charger, and comes with its own cover so the innards aren’t exposed while you use it.

The PlugBug is available now, for $35.

PlugBug product page [TwelveSouth via Chris Herbert]

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Say what you will about Nokia’s smartphone lineup, there’s no arguing the company can coordinate an international press launch. Just mere hours ago, Nokia president Stephen Elop announced his company’s comeback products, the Lumia 710 and 800 smartphones, in London. And now here I sit in Nokia’s Northern California headquarters, enjoying some hands-on time with the new handsets to deliver my quick-and-dirty first impressions.

First off, the Lumia 800 is indeed a doppelganger of the N9 smartphone that I played with last week. But where the N9 comes loaded with the soon-to-be-obsolete MeeGo operating system, the Lumia 800 runs Mango, the latest version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS — an OS that Nokia hopes will save its smartphone platform from a slow-burn into irrelevance.

Like a toy made for the child of an industrial design snob, the 800 is elegant, sleek, and a far cry from the company’s clunky 8000 series phones of yesteryear. Just like the N9 that preceded it, the 800 will be available in three shades — cyan, magenta and black. All process colors!

The 800’s slightly-curved 3.7-inch AMOLED display looks fantastic at its 800×480 resolution, just as it did on the N9. Also included is the fantastic Carl Zeiss Optics back-facing camera, capable of snapping gorgeous photos with its f/2.2 lens, and at an especially fast rate.

Under the hood, the 800 runs a single-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor backed by 512MB of RAM. Together, the silicon combo kept us smoothly humming through the phone’s menu screens. While Nokia acknowledges there are phones that come equipped with faster, dual-core processors, it says a close relationship with Microsoft throughout development enabled better hardware/software integration, and the phone will perform just as well (if not better) than competitors.

The 800 comes with 16GB of internal storage, but no SD card support. Nokia says this was intentional, to keep the smooth outer polycarbonate shell as eye-pleasing as possible. No cracks, no lines, no unnecessary ports. To mitigate the lack of an SD card slot, Nokia provides 25GB of SkyDrive cloud-based storage with the purchase of the 800.

The star of the show, of course, is the Mango OS. The 800 is the first Nokia device to run Windows Phone 7.5, one of many promised WP7.5-laden handsets to come in 2012. We’ve enjoyed Mango since we first saw it last month. Because the user interface is so drastically different than what we’re used to with Android and iOS, it comes as a refreshing change of pace.

With the Lumia 800, you get most of what you’ve already seen in other Mango-powered Windows Phone models, along with a few added perks. Nokia worked with Microsoft to develop Nokia Drive, a voice-powered turn-by-turn navigation system that works in more than 100 countries, and is exclusive to Lumia phones. There’s also Nokia Maps, which is exactly what it sounds like. Both services were previously unavailable to Windows Phone-powered devices.

Nokia claims up to 13 hours of talk time battery life, with 265 hours of stand-by power, and 55 hours of music playback.

And, yes, there was another Lumia model announced today, the 710. Although the 800 and 710 share many similarities — same 1.4GHz processor, same custom-made Nokia apps like Drive and Maps, same Mango OS — the 710 trails the specs of the 800 in two key areas: Its rear camera is just 5 megapixels (not the 8-megapixel stunner), and onboard storage tops out at 8GB.

Both displays measure 3.7 inches, but the 710’s is a regular-old TFT instead of the 800’s fancy AMOLED. Side-by-side, the two phones reveal markedly different display quality. The 800 is bright and crisp, and makes the 710 seem dull by comparison. If you’re a screen snob, you’ll want to go with the pricier model.

Lastly, the 710 comes with attractive rubberized back covers in five different colors, all of which are interchangeable. That’s not the case for the 800: Once you choose one of the three 800 model colors, you’re sticking with it till your next phone upgrade (for better or worse).

OK, now here’s the really bad news: The phones are currently available for pre-order in Europe only, and won’t arrive stateside until after the holiday season. Nokia reps told us “early 2012,” and they’re shooting for sooner rather than later. No U.S. carriers announced yet, either. Expect the Lumia 800 to cost around $600 retail, while the 710 will cost around $380 (sans contract subsidies, of course).

This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of October 17, 2011:

• The HTC Rezound (codenamed the Vigor) started showing up in Cellebrite systems, just another indicator of its impending arrival — and likely name. [Droid-Life]
• AT&T’s current lineup of Windows Phones, such as the Samsung Focus, LG Quantum and HTC Surround, are now showing up as EOL — End-of-life — likely in preparation for the trio of incoming devices we saw earlier this week. [WMPowerUser]
• Cricket added another ZTE feature phone to its lineup this week, called the Memo (shown above). It’s got a full QWERTY keyboard and is available for $100. [Cnet]
• Google Maps for Android was the beneficiary of yet another update. This time, version 5.11 makes one critical feature change: it offers different-sized maps for phones with different screen resolutions. Thus, if you have a 3.5-inch HVGA screen, you’re not forced to download a map designed for a 4.3-inch qHD display, saving space on your phone in the process. [MobileBurn]
• Vodafone 360, launched in 2009 as a LiMo-based cloud synchronization and backup service, will be officially closed by the end of the year. The carrier stopped developing handsets that took advantage of the plan last year, so it really was a matter of time before this happened. [Wall Street Journal]
• Toshiba Mobile Display announced this week that it’s working on a new type of mobile display optimized for wide-angle viewing. Dubbed the “Soludina,” it’ll be shown off at next week’s FPD International in Japan. [Nikkei]
• Sprint announced a new plan called Wireless CapTel that’s designed for those who are hard of hearing. The service, which can be used on Android devices, allows the caller to view conversations in real time as word-for-word captions on their phone’s screen. [BusinessWire]
• Telus will officially launch the 4G Samsung Galaxy S II X on October 28th, according to its website. [Unwired View]

Mobile Miscellany: week of October 17, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google first teased its Ice Cream Sandwich software update at its annual I/O developer conference in March, seen above. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

After months of anticipation and leaked software screen shots, Google finally unveiled Android 4.0, also known as “Ice Cream Sandwich,” the latest update to the search giant’s Android mobile platform.

The new operating system should eventually merge Android’s tablet OS (version 3.0, aka Honeycomb) with the platform’s smartphone OS (version 2.3, aka Gingerbread). Dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, the unified OS isn’t an incremental update, but rather a complete OS makeover with changes that range from the elimination of physical navigation buttons to the creation of an entirely new font, “Roboto,” for user interface menus.

“We want to go beyond smart,” said Android head honcho Andy Rubin at Google’s press conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday morning. “We took all of the innovation that’s available at Google, and put it into developing this phone.”

Among other improvements, Ice Cream Sandwich brings a slew of enhancements to Google’s proprietary applications, including incognito browsing and Chrome bookmark syncing on your mobile phone. An improved Gmail app boasts better auto-completion of e-mail body text, auto-programmed quick responses for when users are busy, and nested e-mail sub-folders for easier organization.

“We asked ourselves for the first time, what is the soul of Android?” said Android head of user experience Matias Duarte at the event. Duarte outlined three key design initiatives that went into the creation of Ice Cream Sandwich: It should feel “enchanting,” it should “simplify” users’ lives, and it should “make [us] feel smart.”

In one of the most innovative new attributes nestled inside Ice Cream Sandwich, Google offers “Android Beam,” a new feature specific to the Near Field Communications technology found in a handful of Android handsets. Beam allows Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone users to share content between their phones, simply by tapping the devices together.

So, for example, if you’re reading an article on your browser, tapping your phone to another Galaxy Nexus brings up the same page on your pal’s phone. And Android Beam communication even extends to apps: As Android product manager Hugo Barra showed off in a live demo, if one user is playing a game of Minecraft on his phone and taps his Nexus to a second Nexus, the receiving phone’s U.I. will spawn a download link for Minecraft on Android Market.

Google also debuted an exciting (if not a bit scary) OS feature for enhanced security: Face Unlock. In theory, the new OS uses facial recognition technology to recognize whether a phone’s owner is actually holding the phone. So, if a thief tries to open your phone’s lock screen, the camera will recognize his or her face as that of an interloper, and shut out the would-be intruder. Google’s on-stage demo of this feature didn’t work as planned, so it’s yet to be seen how well Face Unlock will function once Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus phones are deployed.

As has been the case with earlier Android software releases, Ice Cream Sandwich will launch strapped to a flagship “Nexus”-branded device manufactured by Samsung. And thus we have the new Galaxy Nexus.

“Our close alliance with Google has played a major role in Samsung becoming the number one Android smartphone manufacturer in the world,” said Samsung president J.K. Shin at the event. Currently, the Korean company sits at the top of the heap of Android smartphone makers, selling over 30 million Galaxy devices to date.

In addition to the fresh version of Android installed on the phone, the Galaxy Nexus spec sheet checks off all the important boxes. The new phone is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor backed by 1GB of RAM, and coupled with 16GB of on-board storage (expandable via microSD to 32GB).

In terms of its displays, Samsung errs on the side of massive: The Galaxy Nexus comes equipped with a 4.65-inch, 1280×720 super AMOLED screen — supplied by Samsung, of course. “Android 4.0 was designed specifically to work with this resolution,” said SVP of mobile product innovation at Samsung, Kevin Packingham. Not too shabby, Samsung.

The Galaxy Nexus will also come in a 4G LTE version, though no information on which U.S. carrier support was announced. Samsung president Shin says that if consumer demand warrants it, the Nexus Galaxy will also come in an HSPA+ version.

The new device also comes equipped with the usual image-capture suspects: front- and back-facing cameras at 5 and 1.3 megapixels, respectively. Packingham says the camera should shoot pics with “zero shutter lag,” and is capable of taking shots in low-light settings. Bluetooth capability, an accelerometer and GPS are, of course, all standard features in the Galaxy Nexus as well.

The Android announcement comes on the heels of multiple recent software updates across competing mobile platforms. On Tuesday, RIM announced the next generation of its BlackBerry smartphone software, BBX. HP also recently issued a software update to its webOS customers — despite expressing that the company would no longer continue producing webOS-powered hardware in the future. (Bizarre? Yes. ) And, of course, Apple just released the much-anticipated update to its mobile software, iOS 5.

Compared to the RIM and HP announcements, Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich release is relatively monumental, and brings a host of new enhancements to the platform’s interface, including a number of features seemingly borrowed from other platforms. Android “Beam” is highly reminiscent of webOS’ “Touch to Share” feature, while a simple screenshot-snapping function was perhaps inspired by a similar iOS feature that debuted long ago. Even Android’s revamped tile-based organization for contacts seems to be inspired by Microsoft’s Windows Phone Mango.

The Galaxy Nexus will launch in the U.S., Europe and Asia this November (just like the Motorola Razr, which debuted the day before), and will roll out globally gradually.

For the first time in six years, Apple’s quarterly earnings missed analyst estimates. Apple’s explanation? iPhone sales slowed down as consumers entered a holding pattern in anticipation of Apple’s next smartphone release. In an earnings call Tuesday afternoon, Apple blamed rumors for the drop in sales, saying that product speculation “reached extreme highs.”

Apple reported profits of $6.62 billion this quarter, or $7.05 per share. Analysts predicted that Apple’s profit per share would reach $7.31, making this the first “disappointing” quarter in the company’s past 64. Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones during the quarter, notably short of predicted sales of about 20 million.

During the call, CEO Tim Cook said, “We can’t tell you with precision how many units we would have sold without the rumors, if people hadn’t been expecting a new iPhone. But I would say it’s substantial.”

When a new iPhone didn’t make an appearance at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in June, current and prospective iPhone customers became antsy. Rumors began flying about Apple’s upcoming device. Supposedly an iPhone prototype was lost at a San Francisco bar, but because it never made its way into the public eye, Apple’s next iPhone largely remained a mystery. The iPhone 4S finally made its press debut on Oct. 4, and has since shown record-breaking sales: one million sold in its first day available for pre-order, with four million sold during its opening weekend. Unfortunately (for Apple), iPhone 4S numbers didn’t make it into this quarter’s figures.

And the iPhone wasn’t the only Apple product to see less-than-stellar sales.

iPod sales continued on a downward slope, falling 27 percent from this time last year to 6.62 million sales. iPads fared well, but fell just below estimates at 11.12 million units. Mac computers, meanwhile, posted a record-breaking 4.89 million sales, likely bolstered by the popularity of the latest MacBook Air, which was released in July.

Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer at First Empire Asset Management, wasn’t too perturbed by Apple’s quarterly earnings. Obuchowski told Bloomberg, “That the company can maintain the growth rate that some of the analysts envision is not very realistic.”

Apple expects to hit new company records for both the iPhone and the iPad as the holiday season begins. With a successful iPhone 4S launch under its belt, those expectations don’t seem far-fetched.

Image: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

UPDATED October 19 at 8:17 a.m. PST: Apple’s quarterly revenue was $28.27 billion, quarterly profit was $6.62 billion.