Hasta La Gadget!

Remember that dual-mode OLED / Binem display from yesterday? Well, then you might want to hang onto those memories, as the company behind it has apparently now gone bankrupt. While there’s no official word from the company itself, French website Actualitte is reporting that the company, Nemoptic, was more than three million euros in debt and has been unable to find a buyer to bail it out. Of course, there’s always a chance that another company could now swoop in and pick up Nemoptic’s IP now that it’s in receivership, though there’s obviously no guarantees.

French display company Nemoptic reportedly goes bankrupt originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 23:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To say we’ve been eagerly anticipating the Dell Lightning would be an understatement along the lines of suggesting Microsoft’s launching a few Windows Phone 7 devices today. Dell’s AMOLED-equipped WP7 debut has just gone official with a cringe-worthy renaming to the Venue Pro for T-Mobile, who has in turn announced its intention to carry the 4.1-inch portrait QWERTY slider “in time for the holidays.” Notably, you won’t be able to purchase the Venue Pro directly from T-Mo stores, as Dell and its choice of handpicked retailers are set to handle the purchasing experience. Don’t look for any AT&T hookups, either — Dell has acknowledged T-Mobile as its “launch partner” for the device, giving team Magenta a second major exclusive, even if this one doesn’t last much beyond the launch period. Needless to say, we’ll seek to confirm the full spec sheet as soon as we can, though the officially known 1GHz Snapdragon chip and 5 megapixel imager agree with the Lightning’s original leak. For more on the fresher than fresh Dell Venue Pro, check out our hands-on pictures and impressions.

Continue reading Dell Venue Pro gives WP7 a 4.1-inch QWERTY slider with Lightning heritage and a T-Mobile future

Dell Venue Pro gives WP7 a 4.1-inch QWERTY slider with Lightning heritage and a T-Mobile future originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness? At a list price of $1,000, it’d be hard to forget — but with a monochrome see-through display, the whole transparency thing was little more than a novelty on a phone that served little practical purpose. TDK might have the solution with its new transparent QVGA OLEDs, available now to manufacturers in monochrome and in a lovely color variant by the end of the year. At two inches, they offer 200ppi pixel density and are more secure than you might think: the light only shines in one direction, so you actually can’t see any data from the back even though you can still see through the display. At a glance, the display’s didn’t seem as vibrant as the best AMOLEDs on the market, but then again, these are passive matrix — and you can really tell in our videos after the break where the refresh scans stand out. Guess that’s the price you pay for transparency, right? We’ve also got some video of the 3.5-inch flexible OLED screens TDK’s got on hand; they’re not transparent, but considering the long, narrow resolution, we can’t help but think they’d make for amazing wristwatches (or high-tech glowstick replacements at raves).

Continue reading TDK’s see-through and curved OLED display eyes-on (video)

TDK’s see-through and curved OLED display eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 02:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Man, it’s got to be tough for the proud guys and gals at Toshiba these days. First the company gets whooped in the optical media format wars, and now it’s having to ingloriously bow out of the OLED race as well. Citing a recent uptick in LCD demand alongside the impact of the recent global economic crisis, Toshiba says its mass production plans for OLED displays have now been “frozen” and will be reviewed from scratch. That sounds like a company cutting its losses to us, which should make our fellow OLED enthusiasts all sorts of unhappy. There had better be some damn fine (and thin) LCDs in Toshiba’s pipeline if it hopes to keep us sweet.

Toshiba shelves OLED production plans, focuses on LCDs and licking its wounds originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At first, SonAt first, Sony Ericsson’s tiny 1.3-inch Bluetooth external cellphone screen seems like a joke. And then you realize that it is designed to work with the giant, slab-like HTC Desire or Sony Ericsson’s own Xperia X10 and it all makes sense.

The LiveView is a small OLED screen the size of a watch-face. It has physical buttons on its corners, and the bezel is touch-sensitive. You can use it to control music, check Twitter, read RSS feeds or do pretty much anything an app wants to do. Applications need to be written to use this monitor, and the most impressive demo in the video below shows a sports app sending stats to the LiveView as you run.

The widget comes with a wrist-strap (of course – wrist-mounted gadgets are the new pocket-watches, or something) and can be clipped onto clothes, just like the iPods Nano and Shuffle. There are a handful of phones that support it already, but you can use it with any phone running Android 2.0 or better by downloading Sony Ericsson LiveWare Manager from the Android Market.

I love the idea. Wouldn’t it be great if Apple did something like this with the Nano and the iPhone? The LiveView will be in stores in the fourth quarter of this year, price as yet undecided.

LiveView product page [Sony Ericsson via Engadget]