Hasta La Gadget!

Freeplay‘s ZipCharge has already made its debut, but it’s showing itself once more at Mobile World Congress now that it has a definitive ship date and price. For those out of the loop, this here power stick can charge up in just ten minutes, and the supplied cable provides all sorts of tips to juice up whatever random gadget you have laying around (Palm’s Foleo notwithstanding). The device is expected to splash down on store shelves this April for around £60 ($85), and you can peek a few more hands-on shots in the read link below.

Filed under: Peripherals

Freeplay’s ZipCharge spotted, priced and dated originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung sure has made some high claims about its OmniaHD supermegaphone, and now we’ve got some HD footage and stills to put those claims to the test. The camera does seem pretty stellar for a phone, and the video is undoubtedly HD, but we saw pretty sluggish performance in the HD recording mode, both in the on-screen preview and in the finished product. We’ll chalk that up to the super-early build of the device software, but hopefully this will be resolved before the phone ships. The phone also does ultra-slowmotion video, which is awesome, but seems similarly inconsistent and stuttery in frame rate. We’ll shut up and let you see it all for yourself, both in the gallery below and the videos after the break. Again, this is all from a pre-production phone, and we’re really expecting (or at least hoping for) the frame rate to smooth out by launch. The video was shot in 720p, but it was downsampled for web playback — it looks pretty sharp in native form, and the first image in the gallery is a screencap from the video in full resolution for your perusal.

Continue reading Samsung OmniaHD’s camera put to the test

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras, Handhelds, HDTV

Samsung OmniaHD’s camera put to the test originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s mansion at Mobile World Congress contains — among other things — a playground of recent Windows Mobile-powered models designed to show off its licensees’ collective design and manufacturing prowess. By and large, the models were nothing we haven’t known about for days, months, or years, but one stood out for us: this here Samsung Valencia. We’ve heard of this sucker through Expansys as the C6625 with a $365 sticker price — but Samsung doesn’t seem to know anything about it and it’s only being shown by Microsoft, so we suppose they’ve opted against an unveiling here at the show. Microsoft’s spec sheet indicates that it’s got 3G (which jibes with Expansys’ details), GPS, 128MB each of RAM and ROM, a totally pedestrian QVGA display, and a 393MHz processor — slow for a Professional device, yes, but this sucker’s Standard with some minor UI mods. One thing that’s got us a little confused is the line item indicating 20GB of storage — something tells us that a phone with these kinds of specs wouldn’t be packing 20GB on board, so it might refer to a theoretical max of 20GB with the microSD maxed out. We’re not losing sleep over the missing announcement with this one, guys, so don’t sweat it or anything.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Samsung Valencia outed by Microsoft, not Samsung originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to the 8-megapixel club, Nokia. Nokia joined Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson today by introducing an 8-megapixel camera phone, the relatively petite N86 8MP.

The N86 8MP is in many ways like Nokia’s N85 Symbian-powered smart phone, including having a super-bright 2.6″, 320×240 OLED screen. The N86’s star feature is an 8-megapixel camera with a wide-angle Carl Zeiss lens on the back, that also captures 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. The camera has a two-LED flash, which is much brighter than a single LED.

Otherwise, the N86 is a Symbian phone with 8GB of internal memory and room for a MicroSD memory card. It runs on AT&T’s 3G network, T-Mobile’s 2G EDGE network and Wi-Fi. It has a TV-out port, stereo Bluetooth, A-GPS and an integrated FM transmitter. Like all Symbian phones, it comes with a top-notch Web browser, plays music and video, and supports a range of e-mail accounts, including Microsoft Exchange.

The Nokia N86 8MP will ship by June for around 375 euros ($473). US consumers should expect to be able to buy it through Nokia’s flagship stores and Web site. Find out more on Nokia’s site.

As is so often the case, details are scarce here, but Engadget Spanish got word from LG that, as expected, they’re planning to put out an Android phone by June, and two more of ’em by the end of the year. 2009 is certainly looking to be the year of the Android, and it seems like every month that goes by without Windows Mobile 6.5 on the market gives truly finger-friendly OSes like Android a chance to shine — now to see what a manufacturer that isn’t HTC can make of it.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

LG plans Android phone by June, two more by end of year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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