Hasta La Gadget!

Guess it’s official, yanks: HP loves the old continent more than you. A mere 24 hours after beginning sales of the Pre 3 — still unavailable to US folk — comes wind of another treat for residents of the EU. Making an appearance on HP’s French website is a 64GB permutation of the WiFi TouchPad, which curiously makes do with the faster 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon we first saw in its 4G brother. The supercharged variant will set Europeans back €599 (or roughly $860 including tax) and will also be available in “lacquer white,” when it ships in “one to two weeks.” Will the company have the audacity to launch another Euro-first device tomorrow? It won’t take long to find out, but in hindsight, July’s leaked memo is looking pretty legitimate right about now.

HP unveils 64GB TouchPad, spurns America (and freedom) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Mazaa’s awarded in dev contest, winners promptly splay (and auction) them to world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 06:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is the world’s next showstopping Gingerbread smartphone seriously coming from Huawei? The same company that shocked us all with the S7 Slim tablet (and pulled a similar stunt with the MediaPad) has just taken the wraps off of its newest handset in Beijing, and the curtly-titled Vision offers quite the stat sheet. While it still falls short of Samsung’s Galaxy S II and HTC’s EVO 3D in terms of raw horsepower, it’s still more than capable of holding its own. Within the unibody frame, you’ll find a 3.7-inch capacitive touchpanel, a five megapixel autofocus camera (with LED flash and 720p video recording), 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8255 processor and a 1,400mAh battery.

Moreover, there’s 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, 512MB of RAM, 2GB of ROM, a microSD slot capable of holding 32GB, and a micro-USB 2.0 socket to boot. Per usual, A-GPS, an FM radio tuner, proximity sensor and light sensor are thrown in, and for those with varying moods, you’ll likely appreciate the availability of silver, gold and charcoal back covers. The chassis measures 9.9 millimeters at its thinnest point while weighing 121 grams, which Huawei curiously points out is “less than a bottle of perfume or aftershave.” We’re told that it’s loaded with a “3D interface,” but given that we’re not hearing anything about a “3D display,” it’s probably little more than spruced-up 2D. We’re still waiting to hear back on a price, but “select markets” can look for it to land in September.

Continue reading Huawei Vision smartphone: Android 2.3, 1GHz CPU, unibody construction

Huawei Vision smartphone: Android 2.3, 1GHz CPU, unibody construction originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day — we dig deep into each topic’s history and how it benefits our lives. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com.

My, how times have changed over the last eight months. At CES 2011, we ecstatically witnessed the introduction of mobile devices with dual-core CPUs and drooled over the possibilities we’d soon have at our fingertips. Now, we look down at anything that doesn’t have more than one core — regardless of its performance. Not only are these new chips quickly becoming mainstream, Moore’s Law is in full effect with our handheld devices since tri-core and quad-core systems are just over the horizon. We can’t even fathom what’s in the pipeline for the year 2015 and beyond (we don’t think we’re too far away from that 3D shark seen in Back to the Future 2).

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, however. After all, we first need to wrap our puny human minds around the idea of what this newfound power can do, and why it’s changing the entire landscape of smartphones and tablets. In this edition of Primed, we’ll focus on why multicore technology makes such a difference in the way we use our handheld devices, whether we should even consider purchasing a handset with a single-core chip inside, and why one-core tech is so 2010. Check out the whole enchilada after the break.

Continue reading Engadget Primed: are multi-core chips worth the investment?

Engadget Primed: are multi-core chips worth the investment? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s superior to a shiny new Snapdragon, blazing all sorts of benchmarking trails in your next tablet and / or smartphone? Why, a Snapdragon with a pinch of IP from GestureTek, of course! Qualcomm has today announced its intentions to acquire “certain assets” from GestureTek, a long-standing developer of gesture recognition technology. We’ve seen the aforementioned outfit touch the mobile (and not-so-mobile) realm before, but now it looks like it’ll be more aggressively touching devices with Qualcomm silicon. It’s a strange move, indeed, but it could be one that signals a shift in the way chip makers are looking out for themselves. OEMs have long tried to skin their Android devices in a way that’ll breed loyalty to a brand (rather than an OS), but loyalty to a CPU? According to Qually (yeah, what of it?), the buy will give it access to “key engineering resources,” and while GestureTek will maintain “other assets in continuation of its gesture-controlled public display and digital signage business,” we suspect the consumer-facing aspects will soon have a new master. We’re told that the tech will be woven into current and next-gen Snapdragon processors, but only time will tell what sort of seamless wizardry will result. Hope your digits are ready.

Continue reading Qualcomm acquires gesture recognition IP from GestureTek, aims for Snapdragon integration

Qualcomm acquires gesture recognition IP from GestureTek, aims for Snapdragon integration originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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