Hasta La Gadget!

Cobra’s taking a step back from its usual array of radar detectors to make a showing down in Orlando, and as such, today’s announcements are all about mobile. The company’s Cobra Tag system — which popped up initially back at CES — has just been given a price and release date. The Bluetooth tagging system will be keeping track of your car keys (and other miscellaneous items) starting in July, with a Bluetooth key fob linking up with a smartphone app in order to constantly monitor the position of anything it’s connected to. All’s that required from you is a BlackBerry or Android smartphone, $59.99 and a mindful personality. In related news, the outfit’s also making available the previously announced iRadar application for Android, which is used to link your smartphone and radar detector, as well as the PhoneLynx for Android, which enables users to use a landline handset while tapping into Android voice minutes. Hit the source links if you’re hungry for more.

Cobra Tag Bluetooth key tagging system to ship in July, iRadar and PhoneLynx coming to Android originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Carphone Warehouse, known under the brand name of Phone House across Europe, has revealed its future pricing for a quartet of Android Honeycomb tablets in the latest version of its device catalog. The 7-inch Acer Iconia A100 scoops the prize for being most affordable with a €349 sticker, while the 10-inch Xoom’s €699 price is confirmed and the 8.9-inch Optimus Pad gets its lowest pricing yet, at a still unaffordable €849. The Eee Pad on display here isn’t explicitly named, but we suspect it to be the 10.1-inch Transformer, packing a dual-core Tegra 2 and running version 3.0 of Android — just like all the others in this group. Oddly enough, these are all detailed in the March version of the document, but unless we’re sorely mistaken, none of these tablets has yet reached the stage of general availability in Europe. Well, at least it lets us know how much each one will cost when they do eventually hit retail.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola Xoom, LG Optimus Pad, Acer Iconia A100, and ASUS Eee Pad get Euro retailer pricing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The smart cookies at the Social Science Research Council have spent three years researching media and software piracy in so-called emerging economies — countries like Brazil, Russia, India and Mexico — which has this past week resulted in a comprehensive report aimed at establishing the trends and causes of the unauthorized consumption of intellectual property. The major theme of the report is that ever more stringent enforcement of IP rights has proven ineffective in countering the growing tide of content piracy, and it is instead a problem of “global pricing” that needs to be tackled first. Content distributors’ primary concern is argued to be the protection of existing pricing structures in the honeypot nations of Western Europe and North America, which has resulted in prices in locales like Eastern Europe and South America being artificially inflated relative to the purchasing power of their population. Consequently, squeezed out of buying media the legal way, consumers have found themselves drawn to the, erm, grayer end of the market to sate their entertainment needs. There’s plenty more to this report, including a proposed solution to fixing these broken economics, but you’ll have to check out the links below for the full scoop.

Piracy is a problem of ‘global pricing,’ not enforcement, claims new report originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shocking as it might be, we still haven’t had a Galaxy Tab from Samsung that rocks nothing but the WiFis, though that seems about to finally change. The 3G-deprived 7-inch Tab, promised for Q1 2011, has slipped on its schedule a little and looks set to now hit retail in the first week of April, at the admittedly appealing price of $399. Now, we all know the tablet market of April 2011 is shaping up to be extremely rich on machines with high specs, large screens and inflated opinions of themselves, but there could still be a fine little niche for an affordable, well built slate, even if it does only run on Froyo.

Samsung Galaxy Tab’s WiFi-only version rumored to cost $399, arrive on April 4th originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 05:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Sony hacked $50 from the PSP Go’s price earlier this week, it didn’t exactly trumpet the news, and now it’s looking like a permanent $150 MSRP for the UMD-less handheld was too good to be true. Text across Sony’s website has silently been changed to reflect a $199.99 price point for both colors of the sliding-screen system, and there seems to be no remaining evidence that Sony ever dropped the price at all. Still, we imagine it’s only a matter of time before such a price cut becomes officially official, as the PSP-3000’s the no-brainer choice if you’re buying a PSP right now — it’s a full $70 cheaper than the less-capable Go.

[Thanks, Phil F.]

PSP Go price cut quietly slinks away, now priced at original $200 MSRP originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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