Hasta La Gadget!

Look, you can’t expect a cheap, touchscreen media player to cut through polygons like a hot knife through butter. That’s just not how it works. And that 3.0-inch screen on Creative’s new X-Fi2? Resistive. We had a chance to go hands on with Creative’s little stop-gap (until the Zii can make it to product) touch-screen player here at IFA and it’s pretty much exactly what we expected… or maybe a little worse. The touchscreen responded so poorly to touch mashes that we asked Creative to reshoot the video out of embarrassment on their behalf. We’re not exaggerating. Still, it’s not a final product (there’s still tweaking to be done to the firmware) and you do get a lot of play for the buck (32GB for $230) if that’s all you’re looking for when it drops later this month. Watch the demo after the break — do it!

Continue reading Video: Hands-on Creative X-Fi2, you get what you pay for

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Video: Hands-on Creative X-Fi2, you get what you pay for originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Ladies and gentlemen, our long, global nightmare is over. Alright, that’s a significant overstatement — but Nokia’s lack of capacitive adoption has unquestionably hurt opinion of its 5800 and N97 models, the first to use its touch-ready S60 5th Edition platform. Happily, afterdawn.com is reporting — and we’ve been able to independently confirm — that the X6 will indeed be using a capacitive display, something that we suspect will significantly improve usability if you’re not interested in using a stylus (or plectrum, as the case may be) to navigate your way through the interface. For the record, Samsung’s already proven that S60 5th is totally doable with capacitive tech on its i8910 HD, so we’re sure Nokia’s going to be able to pull this off with aplomb — the real question might be whether this signals a wholesale abandonment of resistive across the range. Since resistive’s cheaper, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it continue to hang around on the low end for some time to come, but at least we’ve now got the choice. Sadly, it’s too late to save the N900’s screen — but now that Maemo’s made the bold leap into GSM telephony, maybe we’ll see some worthy capacitive action the next time around.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia X6 confirmed to sport a capacitive display, we can finally exhale originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

We know you just can’t wait to get typing on the Pre’s lush touchscreen, and the folks at WebOS Internals must feel the same way as they’ve been hard at work making their on-screen keyboard a functional reality. Installation has been made a breeze thanks to the Preware app, and usability seems to have improved markedly since the pre-alpha version, but a few kinks remain that need to be ironed out. Still, if you’re willing to put up with some buggy behavior and the potential for your Pre to melt into a puddle of fiery lava, then slide past the break to get educated on the how, what and where to download.

Continue reading Video: Pre virtual keyboard developing rapidly, gets easy install method

Filed under: Cellphones

Video: Pre virtual keyboard developing rapidly, gets easy install method originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Medion has never really been our go-to manufacturer for new hotness, but we’re really digging this new X9613 all-in-one model it’s showing off. Even better than the sexy, the computer is fronting a 24-inch multitouch display, a miniature SideShow screen, a gloriously large physical volume knob, and a bunch of convenient media controls along the bottom. Internals aren’t bad either, with a Core 2 Quad Q9000 processor and GeForce GT240M graphics. The price range, unfortunately, is rather steep at 1,499 to 1,900 Euro (about $2,142 to $2,714 US). Lucky for us, US prices are usually quite a bit lower than straight-up conversion, though there’s no promised roll-out just yet to bank on. Video hands-on is after the break.

Continue reading Medion’s 24-inch X9613 multitouch all-in-one PC actually looks pretty hot

Filed under: Desktops

Medion’s 24-inch X9613 multitouch all-in-one PC actually looks pretty hot originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Fanboys have been running Ubuntu on Sharp’s deceased Zaurus lineup of PDAs for years. Now Sharp makes it official with the launch of this 5-inch, 1024 x600 TFT LCD touchscreen NetWalker smartbook, aka the PC-Z1. It’s not a Zaurus per se, but the compact 161.4 x 108.7 x 19.7 ~ 24.8mm / 409g device certainly resurrects its ghost. Underpinning the device is an 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 CPU built around the ARM Cortex-A8 architecture, 512MB of memory, 4GB of on-board flash storage (with microSDHC expansion for another 16GB), 802.11b/g WiFi, 2x USB, and QWERTY keyboard going 68 percent of full-size. Sorry, no 3G data. The PC-Z1 features a 3-second quick launch, non-removable 10-hour battery, and is purposely positioned by Sharp as a taint — it ain’t quite a smartphone and ‘t ain’t quite a laptop. Good luck with that Sharp. The device is expected to hit Japan on September 25th for ¥44,800. That’s about $479 whenever it might come Stateside.

It’s worth noting that the current US ban on the import of BGA-packaged products like Freescale’s i.MX processors should not affect the import of the PC-Z1 as Akihabara News contends. As we understand it, that ban affects the import of the chips, not the systems using them and assembled elsewhere. Otherwise, Amazon wouldn’t be selling its Kindle, dig?

[Via Akihabara News and Engadget Japanese]

Read [warning: Japanese PDF]

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Sharp’s 5-inch PC-Z1 NetWalker honors Zaurus legacy with touchscreen Ubuntu originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments