Hasta La Gadget!

Can someone ring up Lucifer and check that his heating’s still working? Hitachi has achieved the unthinkable in bringing together the high precision and input flexibility of resistive touchscreens with the finger friendliness of capacitive panels. It’s graced this year’s FPD trade show with a new prototype that offers the capacitive functionality we’re all used to by now, augmented with the ability to recognize input from a stylus or, perhaps more importantly, gloved hands. We’re sure we can hear the sound of cheering coming from the chilly shores of Scandinavia right now. If all goes well, Hitachi should be able to bring them (and you, and the rest of the world) this finger-saving innovation at some point in late 2011, after production gets going in the second half of that year. Video demonstration after the break.

Continue reading Hitachi displays a capacitive screen capable of accepting stylus input (video)

Hitachi displays a capacitive screen capable of accepting stylus input (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That fish sausage stylus might improve your cold weather accuracy, but it’s not the wacky accessory of choice to reliably pull off that Ultra Combo in Street Fighter IV. For that, you need buttons, and a niche Japanese product has your back — the Tactile+Plus, a set of translucent nubs you stick right on your capacitive touchscreen to get a tactile feel for your game. ¥630 (about $7.75) buys you two packs of the screen protector bubbles and directional pad equivalents, which Japanese publication Impress Watch says work well enough in Street Fighter that they could keep playing without looking down at the screen. They’re not as useful in Sonic the Hedgehog, apparently, where the virtual D-pad is a slightly larger size, but if all you want is a perfect ego-destroying-uppercut on the go, you can’t beat the price.

Tactile+Plus brings buttons, of a sort, to your capacitive touchscreen games originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Nov 2010 18:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are already gloves on the market with holes in the fingertips or special material around the fingers that allow you to use capacitive touch-screens while keeping your hands nice and warm in cold weather, but what makes the Agloves special is the special silver-coated nylon the gloves are made from, and the price: they’re available now for only $17.99 per pair.

The silver-coated nylon means that you don’t have to have the fingertips of your gloves exposed and you aren’t limited to only using the very tip of your fingers with your touch-sensitive display. The material makes the entire glove a conductor, so you can use multi-touch gestures with all of your fingers or your whole hand if you choose to. Best of all, the uniform knitting means your hands stay nice and warm while you use your phone.

Somewhere in the world, Creative just announced a pair of 7-inch (480 x 800) and 10-inch (1024 x 768) Ziio tablets running the Android 2.1 OS. Both feature a ZiiLabs ZMS-08 processor, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, WiFi 802.11b/g, and microSD expansion. They’re slated to ship in December with the 7-incher costing €229 (8GB) or €259 (16GB) and the 10-incher demanding €289 (8GB) or €319 (16GB). And somewhere, somebody must be jonesin’ for these resistive touchscreen tablets (China?), just not here.

[Thanks, Yutaka]

Creative Ziio 7- and 10-inch Android tablets say ‘me too’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Barnes & Noble just unveiled its all-new Nook Color, an Android tablet fronted by a 7-inch color touchscreen… so long, e-ink! (Not really, the $149 original Nook is sticking around for now, owns 20 percent of the e-reader market, and is about to get a major software update). B&N is billing it as a hybrid of e-reader and tablet device, and has beefed up its software with a full-on tablet-style UI, along with Facebook and Twitter integration. There’s built-in WiFi (802.11b/g/n) and 8GB of storage, but no 3G at this point. Thankfully, the price stays aggressive as a result: $249. You might think that means the screen is going to be weak, but B&N has managed to put an impressive-sounding “VividView,” 16 million color, 1024 x 600 IPS display in this thing. Interestingly, there’s a “full lamination screen film” on top of the LCD to reduce glare, apparently from the backlight, not just from external light sources.

Build-wise, there’s that striking corner handle we saw before (smacks of the XO-3, doesn’t it?) and a microSD slot, with a 0.48-inch thick body and a 15.6 ounce overall weight. Battery life takes a notable hit, of course, with a rating of 8 hours of reading with the WiFi off. Of course, underneath it all is still Android, and Barnes & Noble is launching the Nook Developer program to allow third party apps on the device, and it even ships with a few favorites like Pandora and Lonely Planet. The color screen also enables a new library of “Nook Kids” children books, full-color magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and video playback if you’re in the mood. The Nook Color ships on November 19th, pre-orders are available now.

Looking for more? Check our hands-on video, photos, and impressions of the Nook Color!

Continue reading Barnes & Noble Nook Color revealed

Barnes & Noble Nook Color revealed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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