Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video
We got all down and dirty with DoCoMo and Fujitsu's prototype "
Separated phone" today at
CEATEC, and we can confirm that the device does, in fact do what they say it does. As reported earlier, the device uses Bluetooth to communicate between the phone's two magnetized halves, enabling configurations in everything from standard clamshell to gaming landscape formats. Perhaps the most compelling configuration is one that allows the phone to be held to the ear while one accesses data on the another half, complete with neck cramps. The touchscreen, Symbian S60-based UI was easy enough to use (albeit in Japanese) and features a hearty media playback element, but we were unable to squeeze any commitment to a launch date, price, or probability of seeing the unit on the market. That all said, the demo units were very much operational as you can see for yourself in the video after the break.
Continue reading DoCoMo's separated phone hands-on and video from CEATEC
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Filed under: Cellphones
We got the low-down (well, at much of a low-down as one can get from thematic designers) on KDDI's latest au concept phones here at
CEATEC, and the themes are -- are you sitting down? -- space and soup atomic elements. No, we didn't make that up. If you're still with us, hit the break for some pictures and explanations.
Continue reading KDDI au concept phones explained and pictured
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Filed under: Digital Cameras
While JVC Victor hasn't promised us a review unit just yet (cmon, we're still begging here), we did get a chance to get up close with its
SDHC concept camcorder today at CEATEC. Designed for the more sophisticated user (as opposed to family users, they tell us), the camera will shoot both high-quality HD video and stills, something they say has yet to be done in a device. The upcoming Everio is slated for release in the first half of 2009 at an undisclosed price, but JVC promises the unit is, indeed, coming. In the meantime, we'll have to make do with these new shots in the gallery below.
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Filed under: Cellphones
Japan is drenched in arcades with female-only purikura (photo booth for you gaijin) corners in which aflutter girls take pictures, bless them with sparkly decorations, and print them to book cover friendly stickers for all to see, for better or worse, to the horror of their moms, to the delight of their potential boyfriends. Let's say
Sharp was to take the purikura phenomenon and fuse it with to the teenage girl's number one obsession: the cell phone (keitai for our Japanese readers). That's exactly what it did with this concept phone and software, complete with a shared art space that can be collectively decorated over wireless networks. Scary? Perhaps. Cool enough to snap some video in awesome disbelief? Most definitely.
Continue reading Sharp's tegakichat concept phone brings the purikura booth to girls' pockets
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pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/homeentertainment/" rel="tag"Home Entertainment/a, a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/networking/" rel="tag"Networking/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1701084amp;tstart=0"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/09/itune8express.jpg" alt="" //abr //div
span style="float: right; margin-left: 4px; margin-bottom: 4px;"scriptdigg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/iTunes_8_kills_AirTunes_iPod_touch_causing_BSOD';/scriptscript src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.js"/script/span We were all excited to stream Genius-generated playlists from a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/09/apple-launches-itunes-8-nbc-comes-back-tv-shows-at-1-99/"iTunes 8/a to our Airport Express last night when -- poof -- "-3256 Unknown Error Occurred." This cryptic error, along with another under the equally descriptive name "-15000," has been keeping iTunes 8 upgraders from using their Airtunes on remote speakers. Turns out the issue is one of Firewalls and Firmware. The solutions come from users at Apple's discussion boards. Basically, you need to either turn off your Firewall and / or allow iTunes to accept incoming requests or update your Airport Express to the latest (7.3.2 as of this post) firmware version via AirPort Utility 6.3. Meanwhile, Windows-based a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/09/ipod-touch-2g-first-hands-on/"iPod touch/a users are seeing Blue Screens of Death when plugging in their players due to some other undocumented problem. The solution there looks to be a reboot with the touch plugged in to force the system to recognize the device, run a sync, and turn off photo syncing (not the most elegant solution, clearly). Let's hope Apple at least updates this with something more descriptive than "-3256" in the future. Customer service reps at Apple say they're aware of the problems and are working on a fix.br /br /a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1701084amp;tstart=0"Read/a - iTunes 8 amp; Airtunes/Airport Express br /a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1701559amp;tstart=0"Read/a - blue screen comes up when plugging in ipodbr /br /[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/itunes-8-kills-airtunes-ipod-touch-causing-bsod/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1310019/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/itunes-8-kills-airtunes-ipod-touch-causing-bsod/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a
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Filed under: Gaming
By now we have all heard of (or experienced) the infamous Xbox 360
Red Ring of Death, and we also pretty much know what causes it. Heck, we've even seen ways to avoid it by spending more money on
fixes instead of going through Microsoft's replace / refurbish / replace process. In what he calls his final chapter on an extensive bit of investigative journalism,
Dean Takahashi uncovers the early quality control-absent rush to market that resulted in a massive number of Xbox 360s being sent to market despite known design flaws. Dean goes on to propose that all this has kept Microsoft from winning this round of the console wars, as costs to keep the consoles working crippled Microsoft from aggressive marketing measures such as
price cuts. In the end, he concludes (via an anonymous quote) that Microsoft treated the Xbox 360's launch like a software company would, as if some future patch would cover up the inherent problems with the console's design.
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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
Sure, you may have your fancy
vibrating controllers and
liquid-injecting touch screens, but Takayuki Iwamoto wants you to play with the air. Iwamoto and some of his buddies at the University of Tokyo have come up with a way to use focused ultrasound to create manipulable virtual objects in space. Using multiple transducers, the "Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display" creates an acoustic radiation pressure field. Holding your hand in the field allows you to "feel" the object, manipulate it, and feel response. Right now, the system only creates a vertical field, but you had better bet that Iwamoto is working on that. As for suitable applications, interest has already been shown from both industrial and gaming developers. No word on the
hentai industry taking note, but that can't be too far away. Check the video after the break to see this tech in action.
[Via
BBC News]
Continue reading Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display creates haptic 3D objects you can poke
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Filed under: Gaming
It's been at least an hour since Sony has released a new
PlayStation 3 SKU, so our friends at Joystiq took the time to take a breath. In that moment, they came up with a handy -- and somewhat startling -- chart that explains which PS3 model has what, including Cell chip size (the more efficient and
quieter 65nm vs the older 90nm), USB port count, pack-in freebies, and which ones have PS2 backwards compatibility. It's charts like that that remind us that no currently-shipping PS3 comes with HD video cables or PS2 backward compatibility, for better or worse. Hit the read link for the breakdown, and start your fanboy engines.
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Filed under: Digital Cameras
Last we heard from Ricoh, they were erecting
enviro-friendly billboards in New York. Now that that's done with, Ricoh is back in the camera game with the R10. This shooter sports a 10-megapixel sensor, and 28-200 wide-angle 7.1x zoom lens, 3-inch HVGA LCD screen, CCD-shift image stabilizer, and in-camera image editing. Some of its more esoteric features include an adjustable flash intensity, electronic level to match up with horizons, and easy shooting mode for beginners. It comes in black, silver, and bronze, but US release date and price info aren't up just yet. Look for it to run around the same as its predecessor, the
Ricoh R8 -- around $400.
[Via
PhotographyBlog]
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Filed under: Digital Cameras
If there was any doubt that the Nikon D90 D-SLR was coming your way, and a
Best Buy stock record wasn't enough after a
Circuit City inventory screen didn't sway you, then perhaps a snapshot of the product UPC will convince you? This code showed up on UPC database last night and, well, let's just say that it's time to start saving your pennies for this $1300 wonder.
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