Archive for December 2nd, 2009

Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today’s bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season.

Continue reading Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: Smartphones

Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: Smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s ‘Remote‘ application was a good start, but we’ve known for some time now that the platform was capable of far, far more. ThinkFlood is stepping up today and proving our assumptions right, as the RedEye universal remote control system effectively converts your iPhone or iPod touch into a remote for any IR-equipped component. The app itself is completely free to download, though it’s the $188 base station that really makes the magic happen; your handheld talks to said dock via WiFi, and if you’ve got an AV device, home automation system or pretty much anything that responds to IR signals, your iPhone can now control it. The setup supports multiple rooms, controllers and users simultaneously, and we’re told that it “controls a virtually unlimited number of devices and can store a virtually unlimited number of commands.” Heck, this thing even reacts to multitouch gestures and accelerometer controls. Don’t believe us? Check the vids just past the break.

Continue reading RedEye turns your iPhone and iPod touch into bona fide universal remote (video)

RedEye turns your iPhone and iPod touch into bona fide universal remote (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well well, maybe we can all get along after all: AT&T and Verizon just dropped their various advertising-related lawsuits against each other. We can’t say we’re surprised, considering AT&T lost its request to have Verizon’s ads pulled down for the holidays — spending money to litigate this further would have have simply been a waste, and generated even more bad PR. Now let’s just hope these two suck it up and battle it out over service quality and pricing, like they should have been doing all along. Or AT&T can just make some more nonsensical Luke Wilson commercials, whatevs.

AT&T and Verizon drop lawsuits, make nice for the holidays originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Phone-O-Scope brings SLR lenses to the iPhone the hard way

Phone-O-Scope brings SLR lenses to the iPhone the hard way originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wait a second — a business-centric laptop… with style? Dell‘s 15.6-inch Vostro 1015, which was announced alongside the still-unavailable (in the US, anyway) Vostro 1014 and Vostro 1088 back in August, has just emerged for purchase, and the relatively attractive case and low starting price definitely has our attention. Granted, the $429 base model gets saddled with a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor, but $629 buys you a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo T6670, Windows 7 Professional, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, a 320GB (5400RPM) hard drive, dual-layer DVD burner, 2 megapixel webcam, integrated WiFi, GMA 4500MHD graphics and a 6-cell battery. Anyone down for stroking their inner suit?

[Thanks, Peter]

Dell Vostro 1015 now on sale in America: starts at $429 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever heard of Cyber Wednesday? Yeah, same here. But seriously — when’s the last time you heard us kvetch over a deal? Effective today only, Peek‘s email-only handhelds are being offered up with lifetime service for half of the normal price. Buy any Peek handheld and you’ll get service for just $9.99 per month for as long as you keep the device, which is certainly a bargain compared to the $19.99 that’s typically charged. In other news, Wally World has announced that from December 5th through the 12th (while supplies last, obviously), a $50 gift card will be handed over when you purchase a Wii console in-store. Just think — Walmart is actually incenting you to buy a Wii. Man, how the times have changed.

Cyber Wednesday brings half price Peek service, discounted Wii originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you didn’t feel you got the whole Story yesterday, here’s a pleasing helping of seconds, this time in the form of a full-on review. The PC Pro team rates iriver’s Kindle emulator as a “serious contender,” and places its readability on par with Sony’s touch-less Readers. While congratulations are also meted out for a decent integrated MP3 player, 3.5mm headphone jack, and the wide variety of supported formats, two issues stood out for the reviewers. One was that the support for Word, Excel and Powerpoint files was somewhat hit-and-miss, with zooming sometimes not working and rendering some files unreadable. But the major gripe related to the asking price of £230 including taxes (around $380), which the Story was not considered capable of justifying. Hit the link below for more — even if your interest is purely academic.

iriver Story reviewed, incites rebellion over price originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s Nokia Capital Market Day again which means that boys from Espoo are fawning over investors and giving them a reason to stick around in 2010. And you know what? It sure sounds promising for gadget nerds. Why the optimism? Easy: Nokia is hell-bent on redefining the user experience of its Symbian devices. To quote CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, “In 2010, we will drive user experience improvements, and the progress we make will take the Symbian user interface to a new level.” To bolster this proclamation, the very first bullet point listed under Nokia’s Devices and Services operational priorities is “improve our user experience” — something that would thrill us to no end if it happens.

The revamped Sybmian UI is set to deliver on two “major product milestones” in the first and second halves of the year. Nokia will also deliver its first Maemo 6 “mobile computer” in the second half of 2010 flanked by a significantly increased proportion of “touch and/or QWERTY devices” in its smartphone portfolio. Developers will be happy to hear that Nokia will also continue to scale services geographically while continuing to enhance its developer tools like QT4.6 announced yesterday. Financially speaking, Nokia expects to see the erosion of its average selling price slowed compared to recent years. That’s good as Nokia attempts to grow its margins. However, while Nokia expects mobile device volumes to be up approximately 10% in 2010 across the industry, it sees its own mobile device volume market share as flat in 2010, compared to 2009.

Be clear on this though: our incredibly frustrating S60 5th user experience was by far the biggest complaint we had when reviewing Nokia’s flagship N97 — having the most bullet points on a list of features is not what it takes to lure consumers anymore (if ever). If Nokia can better the best in class experiences carved out by Apple, Palm, and HTC with its Sense UI then consumer mindshare, and our hearts, will follow.

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia promises to take “Symbian user interface to a new level” in 2010, we hope they’re right originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If early sales reports are anything to go by, Activision’s DJ Hero franchise won’t be hosting too many impromptu Christmas tree raves this holiday season. Many gamers have been shunning the idea of yet another plasticy peripheral cluttering up their otherwise fastidiously neat abodes, but, for those with storage space to spare and would-be turntablist friends, the controller is now available separately for $70. That’s just $40 less than the package with the game and still a bit of an ask if it wants to match the popularity of its faux-stringed predecessors. The best things in music never go mainstream, yeah?

DJ Hero controller goes rogue, now available separately originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In one year alone we’ve seen robots shaking things up in such far-flung fields as fashion and interpretive dance. That said, our concerns are generally more prosaic — that’s why we’re most excited by the industrial strength autonomous sweepers developed by the likes of Fuji Heavy Industries, Sumitomo, and Subaru. Like last year’s model, their latest sweeps the floor, picks up the trash, is able to operate modded elevators, and comes equipped with laser sensors for avoiding obstacles and may even be outfitted with a camera. In addition, this new guy has slimmed down to about half the size (better for slipping into tight corners) and sports a twenty-four volt battery that gets about 2.5 hours per charge. The best news, however, is that it’s finally for sale! It should hit the streets of Japan by the end of next year for a price somewhere in the $35,000 to $46,000 range. We’ll take two. [Warning: PDF source link]

Elevator operating robot janitor goes on sale in Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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