Hasta La Gadget!

This is the future, we tell ya! Not the immediate future, mind you, as it’s a humble prototype with no commercial intentions behind it, but it sure looks like the right direction for us to be moving in. SK Telecom has somehow fit a processing chip, memory, a gigabyte of flash storage and Google’s Android OS onto the SIM you see above. The concept is pure genius — you store your entire mobile environment on the SIM card, including your contacts, operating system and customizations, which should then allow you to switch up your handset hardware as often as you like without the need to set it up anew each and every time. We’ll head to SK Telecom’s booth at MWC later today for a closer look, but for now you should click past the break for a video.

Continue reading SK Telecom’s Android SIM prototype combines CPU, storage and OS into one (video)

SK Telecom’s Android SIM prototype combines CPU, storage and OS into one (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Despite being launched at Mobile World Congress, VoxOx has yet to make a mobile version of its Universal Translator. That said, the desktop version is still quite useful for those with Windows or OS X-based rigs who attempt to communicate with friends — particularly with friends who speak a different native language. The new software build enables real-time language translation for SMS chat, social media and email, and so long as the VoxOx client is pulled up, you can send and receive any of those messages in your own tongue while receiving translated messages in return. Granted, we get the idea that some phrases will be quite literally lost in translation, but this sure beats accessing Google’s Language Tools for each questionable phrase. Hit the download link below to grab a copy, and head on past the break for a video demonstration of what’s on offer.

Continue reading VoxOx Universal Translator makes multilingual communication a breeze

VoxOx Universal Translator makes multilingual communication a breeze originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Samsung announced their Wave phone on Sunday, they called out the 1-Ghz processor but they didn’t mention the graphics performance. Maybe they shouldn’t have been so coy. In a panel here at Mobile World Congress yesterday, they slapped up this slide, claiming that the Wave does 89 million triangles per second.

That’s insanely good graphics for a phone in 2010. The Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset that you see in top-of-the-line phones today only does 22 million triangles per second. NVIDIA’s Tegra and the Marvell Armada 610 both do around 45. The new Tegra 2 chipset which NVIDIA unveiled at CES last month does 85-90, but we haven’t seen it in any phones yet.

Way to hide your light under a bushel, Samsung. If the Wave can actually crank out 89 million triangles, that’s going to make for some eye-popping mobile gaming experiences

What, you thought Home was the only project in the pipeline for these guys? The mobile UI experts at Sweden’s TAT are in the house at MWC this week showing off a couple other nifty developments that are keeping them busy these days: a dual-screen UI concept utilizing TI’s next-gen hardware, and an app that makes good on a concept it had demoed before. First up, they’ve been using a TI Blaze to demonstrate their vision of a phone with two displays, likely in a slider configuration (in fact, they showed a Droid to represent how they think the form factor could work) with a screen where you’d normally expect they physical QWERTY keyboard to be. It’s slick and wicked smooth on the brutally powerful OMAP4 core, but realistically, this is something unusual enough so that we’d need to play with a unit for a good, long while before drawing any usability conclusions. TAT believes we could see devices with this kind of setup by years’ end, but we don’t know what carriers, manufacturer, or time frames would be involved at this point.

Next up, Recognizr is the realization of the Augmented ID concept it showed off last year that lets you tag your face (it sounds weird, but it’s quite literally true) with icons representing services that you use, each of which exposes information about you that you want others to know; then, other users with the system can put you in their viewfinder and see the same icons. It’s not flawless — in fact, TAT readily admits that they probably need better camera tech before it can be commercialized, and they had quite a few issues during our demo time — but it’s a clever concept that’s better watched on video than explained, which is convenient considering that we’ve got videos of both of these goodies in action after the break. Check ’em out, won’t you?

Continue reading Hands-on with TAT’s dual-screen phone concept and augmented reality app

Hands-on with TAT’s dual-screen phone concept and augmented reality app originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s just the beginning of the year and already HTC is on a roll. The company has announced three new smartphones — two of those will run Google’s Android operating system — and a redesigned user interface that aggregates social networking feeds.

The three new HTC phones are HTC Legend, a Nexus One clone called HTC Desire and HTC HD Mini, the only one in the pack to run Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. The phones have been designed by One & Co, the San Francisco-based design firm that HTC acquired in December 2008.

“HTC Legend and HTC Desire take Android to another level in both substance and style,” said HTC President Peter Chou in a statement.

Thanks to its close partnership with Google, HTC has emerged as a powerhouse maker of Android devices. The company designed the first phone to run Android, the T-Mobile G1. In January, HTC’s Nexus One became the first smartphone to be sold by Google.

Last June, HTC introduced Sense, a user interface that allows users to set up profiles for work and play and has widgets that bring in data from different social networking streams such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Since then, the idea of aggregating all those feeds and offering them to customers through a single window has popular among cellphone makers. HTC rival Motorola got a jump on the idea with MotoBlur, an interface that aggregates Facebook and Twitter feeds and debuted on the Cliq.

HTC has tried to mimic that with its HTC Friend Stream that organizes updates from different online sources into a single flow. Friend Stream also lets users organize their contacts into different social circles such as groups of friends, colleagues or even high school friends.

All three of HTC’s phones announced Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Spain, will include the updated Sense interface.

HTC Desire Takes On Nexus One

Yet another Android phone from HTC, the Desire, with its 3.7 inch OLED display, is closest to the Nexus One in terms of its technical prowess and features.

The Desire uses the same Qualcomm 1-GHz Snapdragon processor that we have seen in the Nexus One phone. It has a 3.7-inch display and weighs about 4.7 ounces. It also runs Android 2.1, the latest version of the Android operating system, first seen on the Nexus One.

The Desire, formerly known as HTC Bravo, supports Adobe Flash 10.1. It has a 5-megapixel camera with flash and geotagging capability, digital compass, FM radio, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.

The phone has an optical joystick surrounded by a narrow button instead of a trackball in an attempt to ostensibly improve usability.

Desire will initially be available in Europe and Australia before the second half of the year, says HTC.

HTC Legend Builds on the Hero

HTC Legend ups the ante in terms of design, says the company. The smartphone’s design is an extension of what we have seen with HTC Hero. The difference is in the softer look and the smooth surface milled from a single aluminum block also known as unibody construction.

It includes a 3.2-inch, OLED display and weighs 4.4 ounces (compared to 4.8 ounces for the iPhone 3G S and 4.5 ounces for the Nexus One). The Legend’s 600-MHz processor, though, is slower than the 1-GHz processor seen in the Nexus One.

Otherwise, the Legend mimics the Desire in terms of what it offers: a 5-megapixel camera, flash, geotagging, digital compass, FM radio, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.

The Legend will also run Android 2.1 operating system.

The Legend will initially be available in Europe through Vodafone around April, says HTC.

HTC Mini Dials It Down

The HD Mini is the only device in the batch to be based on Windows Mobile 6.5, a signal that HTC, despite its focus on Android, is not yet entirely abandoning the Microsoft platform. With its 3.2-inch LCD screen and 3.8-ounce weight, the Mini is a compact phone that shares almost all the same characteristics as the Legend. What is missing is a digital compass, flash in the camera and geotagging.

There’s also an unexpected design twist that seems to be of questionable value. Once the battery cover is removed, the inside of the phone is a bright yellow.  The bad news is that the Mini might not support the newly announced Windows Mobile Phone 7 operating system.

The Mini will be initially launched on Vodafone’s network in Europe.

See Also:

• Strapped to Android, HTC Takes a Dizzying Ride to the Top
• Now, a $100 Android Smartphone in the HTC Droid Eris
• Motorola Introduces New Android Phone, the Backflip

Photos: HTC