Hasta La Gadget!

How would we like to replace the UI on our Windows Mobile 6.5 phone with the Kin UI? Well, we never really thought about it, we suppose… and frankly, we’re not sure why anyone else did, either. Alas, KinLauncher is here, delivering a pretty authentic Kin-esque home screen but not much else — as soon as you touch anything, you’ll be dumped back into the cold comfort of WinMo (or Sense, as the case may be). It’s available for download, if you’re really into that sort of thing — but if you’d rather enjoy the carnage from a safe distance, there’s a video after the break.

Continue reading Kin skin for Windows Mobile 6.5 leads to more questions than answers

Kin skin for Windows Mobile 6.5 leads to more questions than answers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We had to exercise our neglected patience muscle with this one, but at long last we’ve gotten ahold of a real live HD Mini and put it through its paces. Equipped with the same processor, screen size and resolution as HTC’s Legend, but running the HD2‘s Windows Mobile 6.5.3 under a WinMo-specific Sense skin, the Mini is in many ways an amalgamation of its two better known cousins. You’ll no doubt be aware that we weren’t too displeased by either of those handsets, so what you must be wondering now is whether or not splicing them into one eminently pocketable package delivers an equally compelling device. Read on to find out.

Continue reading HTC HD Mini review

HTC HD Mini review originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Jun 2010 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Eh, those kiddos don’t need no physical keyboards and power cranks, right? Right! In a presumed effort to both keep with the times and take advantage of what’s being served to them on a silver platter, the philanthropic souls over at One Laptop Per Child have teamed with Marvell in order to develop the next OLPC — which, predictably, will be a tablet. The forthcoming range of XO tablets will be based on Marvell’s newly loosed ‘Moby‘ reference design (which we recently toyed with), and given that purported $99 price tag, you can see why the tie-up makes sense. The slate will require but one watt of power to operate (compared to ~five watts on the existing XO laptop), and it’ll include a multilingual soft keyboard with touch feedback in order to serve various regions of the globe. As for specs, we’re told that the device will boast an ARMADA 610 application processor, “gigahertz processor speed,” 1080p encode / decode capabilities, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radio support, a GPS module and the ability to play back 3D graphics and Adobe Flash videos (zing!). There’s also an integrated camera for live video conferencing, not to mention Moby’s ability to support Android, Windows Mobile and / or Ubuntu. All we’re told about battery life is that it’s designed “expressly” to last a good, long while, and scarily enough, there’s no confirmation anywhere that these will actually cost less than a Benjamin whenever they ship. Fingers crossed, though.

Continue reading OLPC sees bandwagon, hops on with XO tablet based on Marvell Moby design

OLPC sees bandwagon, hops on with XO tablet based on Marvell Moby design originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 09:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Phone Guitar, a project by a Dutch developer, places two Android phones, an iPod Touch and two Windows phones next to each other on a guitar frame and uses apps on the devices to play music.

As the video clip below shows, the developer ‘Steffest’ plays a version of Cracklin Rosie and its not the cacophony you would expect.

The original idea was to create the same mobile app on all three mobile platforms, he says. The app would be a small piano and drum sequencer.

That didn’t quite work out.  “Audio latency is a b*tch and building the app from the same source proved to be possible but unusable,” writes Steffest on his blog. “I ended up writing it three times: in Java for Android, in C# for Windows Mobile and in Objective-C for iPhone.”

Instead what he did was combine his homebrewed app with other programs including the Pocket Stompbox for Windows Mobile that’s good for real time effects. There’s also iShred, an iPhone electric guitar app in the mix.

To play them all at once, he taped them on a piece of wood together with a battery powered speaker.

It’s not all that bad on the ears. Listen to it:

[via Make]

Photo/Video: Steffest

After having gone to public beta late last year, Office Mobile 2010 is now available in conjunction with the retail release of the full desktop version of Office 2010, bringing comprehensive Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editing capabilities to the pocket — on Windows Mobile 6.5, that is. Yes, granted, Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s biggest mobile news this year, but there’ll be a huge legacy base of 6.5 users out there for a long time to come, and they’re pretty much the core audience for the sorts of features that Office Mobile 2010 is offering: SharePoint integration for grabbing documents from the office, a nifty Bluetooth controller mode for PowerPoint presentations, and so on… you know, suit-and-tie stuff. The download is available today from Windows Marketplace for users of 6.5 devices with an older version of Office Mobile installed — so go on, Tiger, whip up the hottest quarterly reports the world has ever seen. We know you have it in you. Follow the break for Redmond’s full Office 2010 press release.

Update: Curious what Office 2010 will look like on Windows Phone 7? Get a glimpse into the not-so-distant-future in Microsoft’s video presentation, and fast forward to 52:45 for the good stuff. [Thanks, Kamara B.]

Continue reading Office Mobile 2010 released, free upgrade for WinMo 6.5 users (update)

Office Mobile 2010 released, free upgrade for WinMo 6.5 users (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 May 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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