Hasta La Gadget!

The problem with the future is that it’s always 3 to 5 years away. Nevertheless, what you’re looking at is what Philips and Dimenco, a small company of ex-Philips engineers, say will be coming to the consumer television market as early as 2013 — earlier if you’re in the professional advertising business or just want to view your family photos on a small 3D photo frame. Just remember that Philips has been showing off variations of the glasses-free technology behind this prototype lenticular lens television for years, so we’re not getting our hopes up. Nevertheless, Dimenco assured us that the path to the consumer market for its 3D display is clear.

So how did it look? Well, it was ok, we guess. It doesn’t have that in-your-face pop of the current generation of 3D televisions that require 3D glasses. The effect is more subtle (or maybe the content was). Our biggest problem was with the sharpness of the display. Although the 56-inch prototype CCFL LCD was 4k (that’s 4 times the resolution of your Full HD TV) the image we saw was coarse in appearance due to the lenticular lens required to refract the left and right images for each eye. Having said that, the lenticular lens technology used is certainly better suited for non-stationary viewing. While the border around objects on the screen tended to shift quickly and blur (see the video after the break) when looking at the panel frombetween any of its 15 viewing angles (spread across a 120-degree arc), at least it didn’t exhibit those horrible dark vertical bands seen when changing your angle even slightly while viewing 3D panels based on the parallax barrier method of glasses-less 3D. Still, it was hard to find the viewing sweet spot and honestly, given the option to sit in front of this display and a 4k panel “limited” to 2D, we’d have to opt for the latter. Get back to us in 3 to 5 and see if we feel the same.

Continue reading Philips Dimenco glasses-less 3D TV of the future, hopefully our future

Philips Dimenco glasses-less 3D TV of the future, hopefully our future originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OLED’s failure to do anything for the mainstream so far outside of phone and camera displays is only bittersweet: sure, we don’t have millimeter thick TVs yet, but LCD has gotten slim enough that it hardly matters. So, in keeping with tradition, LG has stolen its own OLED thunder today. In line with earlier rumors, it will be showing off a 0.11-inch thick 31-inch 3D OLED display prototype at IFA this week, but that poor little OLED-that-would will be sharing a booth with a ready for retail 0.35-inch thick LCD that comes in big people sizes. Despite our undying affection for OLED, we know which one we’ll be (theoretically) taking home in the windowless van we (theoretically) plan on parking out behind the Messe Berlin.

LG’s 31-inch OLED prototype to slice through IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Moving away from buttons on phones has lead to a higher level of design purity, but has also made life a lot more difficult for the blind or seeing impaired — or anyone who doesn’t want to look at their phone while texting. We’ve seen how solutions like the Brailliant-32 can let users interact with mobile devices, but that’s hardly portable. Guust Hilte’s device is. Looking like a cross between an egg and a rubber stamp, or perhaps the abdomen of a Cyclocosmia spider, it features a series of what Hilte calls gullies on the top that users can trace over with their thumb to enter letters, shown after the break (complete with chill Röyksopp soundtrack). However, that’s just a prototype, a Masters project at the Eindhoven University of Technology, with the ultimate goal to integrate the thing into the back of phones. Hilte’s vision is users flipping over their celly, entering their message, and then sending away without looking. We think the same could be done without flipping, instead using your index finger, and finally making use of all that wasted space ’round back.

[Thanks, Fabian Hemmert]

Continue reading Guust Hilte’s tactile texting device solves the ‘every pixel feels the same’ problem (video)

Guust Hilte’s tactile texting device solves the ‘every pixel feels the same’ problem (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell’ mobile division can’t seem to keep a secret so get ready for a peek into the company’s next Android phone codenamed ‘Thunder.’

‘Engadget got its hands on two prototype Thunder phones, the yet to be released  smartphone that Dell  is working on. The phones have a 4.1-inch OLED touch display, a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a 8-megapixel camera. One of the phones runs Android 2.1 and the other has version 1.6 of the Android operating system.

Despite being an early engineering unit, the hardware is impressive in its finish, says Engadget.

Dell got into the smartphone business last year with the launch of its first Android phone in Brazil and China. This year, the company struck a deal with AT&T in the U.S. to introduce its phone called ‘Aero.’ So far, AT&T and Dell have not announced a launch date for the Aero. Meanwhile, Dell has launched the Streak, a device with a 5-inch screen that it bills as a ‘tablet.’ The Streak will cost $300 with a two-year contract on AT&T and $560 without one.

Thunder could help Dell move deeper into the smartphone business. The leaked Thunder prototypes, though, don’t deliver a complete sense of what could be on the phone. For instance, the bootloader and debug software on the prototype units reference features such as FM radio support, dual microphones, HDMI output and a hardware dock connector that aren’t there on the early units.

Dell is also reportedly testing both GSM and CDMA versions so it’s not clear who will eventually steal the Thunder.

Meanwhile, if you want to see how the Thunder prototype works and get all the details, check out the video.

See Also:

• Teardown Shows That Resilient Dell Streak Is Easy to Repair
• Dell’s Tablet Aims to Stick It to Apple’s iPad
• Dell’s Streak Tablet Is Priced Like a Phone
• Bloatware Creeps Into Android Phones

Photo: Dell Thunder prototype/Engadget

Its been a few years since we last checked in on NASA’s All Terrain Hex Limbed Extra Terrestrial Explorer rover — aka, Athlete. Now a half-scale working prototype standing 15 feet tall, weighing 2.5 tons (about 2,300 kg), and capable of a 1.25 mph (2 kmph) top speed has been set loose for testing by its Jet Propulsion Laboratory creators. Its first task, set to begin next month in Arizona, will be to complete a test circuit of at least 25 miles (about 40 km) in two weeks under its own power. Failing that, we hear Woz is looking for a dance partner. See what we mean in the video of Athlete demonstrating a flare for cargo transport after the break.

Continue reading NASA’s Athlete Mars rover does a little dance, gets down tonight (video)

NASA’s Athlete Mars rover does a little dance, gets down tonight (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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