Hasta La Gadget!

We’re calling it: this N900 / Rover / whatever it’s called is the best looking device yet in Nokia’s Internet Tablet line, which is an encouraging thing to be able to say considering we haven’t seen any ultra-polished PR shots yet. Granted, we might be influenced a little by the rumored HSPA support with voice, T-Mobile USA availability, and Maemo 5, but really, what’s wrong with that?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia’s Maemo 5 tablet shows up again, ready to play originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s BH-905 made some serious waves when it debuted back in early June, but what else would you expect from a product that calls itself “the best headset ever made?” The Bluetooth-equipped cans, along with its ten microphones, supple ear cups and A2DP / AVCRP support, are expected to launch globally next month for around three hundred bones, and the fine folks over at NokNok have already managed to score a pre-release model. Aside from visibly gushing all over themselves, they also note that the cans are far smaller than the original press shots made them seem, giving cautious travelers reason to breath a sigh of relief. Hit the read link for a luxurious hands-on look.

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

Nokia’s world-beating BH-905 Bluetooth cans slip into the photo booth originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At a quick glance, you might write off this picture as nothing more than a rehash of recently-launched Nokia models. Look closer, though — way closer — and you might notice that the phone in the front is actually an N97 Mini (check d-padless keyboard, for instance). Going around the table, you realize that we’re actually dealing with a who’s-who of new and unannounced gear: a 6760 (Yanks know this as the Surge), an E72, E52, and a chromed-up touchscreen device that looks like it could be the long-rumored 5900 XpressMusic. Who has access to all this awesome stuff? Some retailer, apparently, who’s got a public Flickr account and a happy shutter finger. We’ll take one of each, please.

Update: At the owner’s request, we’ve had to pull the photograph. Sorry, folks!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Bunch of unreleased Nokias caught chatting amongst themselves originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the phone that Nokia should’ve used to introduce the world to Symbian S60 5th edition, but is it the “hero”-type device that it was marketed as? Nokia’s N97 is undoubtedly expensive, debatably beautiful and thoroughly polarizing (as two of our own found out). While it’s impossible to say the handset was introduced to go head-to-head with Apple’s iPhone (the whole “only sold off contract” thing kind of hampers that), there’s little doubt that this phone was Espoo’s most significant attempt yet to make a name for itself in the full-touchscreen smartphone market. If you handed over the handful of C-notes required to take this bad boy home, why not tell us exactly how you feel now that you’re an owner? What would you like to see changed on Nokia’s next attempt? What measures up? What falls short? You’ve got one shot (maybe two, depending on the mood of our comment system) — don’t screw it up.

Filed under: Cellphones

How would you change Nokia’s N97? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

One of the challenges for companies trying to build across the “three screens” of the television, PC and cell phone is adapting their distinctive technologies to those platforms. Apple showed strong early momentum on the Mac with its widget architecture, but is falling behind some rivals in bringing glanceable utility to other platforms.

Introduced with Mac OS X Tiger, Dashboard widgets (or “gadgets” as Google and Microsoft call them) are small, simple applets intended to convey quick bits of information or provide a quick change of settings. Veteran Mac users recognized them as the reincarnation of desk accessories, which provided functions such as an alarm clock and note pad when the Mac could run only one program at a time. Apple aggregates thousands of widgets on a special web page, and Leopard brought a new feature called Web Clips to provide an easy way for consumers to create their own widgets from part of a Web page in addition to the more traditional Dashcode development tool.

Dashboard earned its own button on the Mac keyboard. It drew some criticism due to its modal nature, but its ability to quickly display or hide a screenful of widgets without having to mess with window arrangements made it more convenient than the gadget implementation in Windows Vista and even Windows 7, which has freed gadgets from the Sidebar and now displays them on the desktop — a throwback to the Active Desktop feature of Windows 95.

Continue reading Switched On: Apple wanes in the widget wars

Filed under: Software

Switched On: Apple wanes in the widget wars originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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