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Philly officially closed off its city-wide wifi in May 2008 for reasons clearly stated in the link. When it was up, it was practically unusable anyway. I lived within a block of an access point, and I could never hold a consistent signal. But truth be told, I only used it towards the end of its life.

I'm somewhat of an Android-handset nerd, so I have been following a few recently.
This has the advantage of being perhaps the second QWERTY phone since HTC Dream/Dev Phone, but..
It doesn't look very good to me. Just seems to be missing the "slick" sort of interface RAZR has.
I see what they are trying to do (MOTOBLUR being like HTC's Sense UI), but it just looks like a less nice version of Hero's Interface, and the handset sort of looks chunky/ugly and the T-Mobile and Motorola logo seems like one too many to me.
The backup stuff (All contacts, log-in information, home screen customizations, e-mail and social network messages are backed up on the MOTOBLUR secure server) seems nice but, I seem to already have all of this apart from Home Screen customizations on my Dev Phone (Contacts, Emails all synced with Gmail).

Seems like it has both a D-Pad and trackball, which is good. The track ball being on the left is probably a bad idea, as anyone with a HTC Dream will know that its placed in a good position to quickly scroll and type (albeit; the track ball being hard to use and mostly useless anyway).

Anyway, the only reason i'd buy this over a HTC Hero (/Sense UI) is the QWERTY. I'll be keeping an eye out for the DEXT (and the Motorola Sholes which has rumors floating around about it being the flagship phone for the Android 2.0 release). Still waiting for a good looking QWERTY phone to replace my ugly Dev Phone (but if these images of Sholes are real, Motorola will have my attention: http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/30/motorola-sholes-android-phone-headed-for-verizon/)

Apple is adding features much more quickly than any of the other providers. Yes, it's true, some of those should have been in the first version. But that's besides the point, the issue is the velocity of change.

Uhh, SenseUI is a brand new UI developed by HTC and released within the past 6 months. Words more dramatic people than I have used include: "revolutionary", "dreamy", "masterpiece", and so on. Maybe you're just not paying attention to the other side of the competition?

The Zii EGG, although it's not being marketed by Creative directly to consumers, is already available to purchase as a developer product. There are videos of people using it that ordered it from Creative.

The Zune HD is also available for pre-order, being released on the 15th. There are countless videos demonstrating its use.

Do you even know what vaporware is?

Seeing as how the iPhone 3GS can play 1080p video and now they've released this new iPod Touch with a faster processor and all that, I would say the new Touch can most likely output 1080p video as well, which is a dead giveaway that it's more powerful than the 720 Zune HD.

I'm not really serious about the "dead giveaway" part, I just think there are more things to consider than the bullet points on the Zune HD's box. Obviously, since Apple hasn't officially unlocked this HD playback, it's not actually a distinguishing feature, but still we know the device is capable of it.

By the way, an engineer I know had a Zii in his office the other day. I picked it up and looked at it, and it felt thick, plastic, and cheap. It's also currently just a development platform, there are no consumer-level products based on it yet. I wouldn't be using the Zii as a comparison point against a device that's slicker, thinner, and has been shipping for 2 years already.

The problem for you is probably that you don't change the depth that you focus for purely stereographic 3D displays. If you try to focus on an object that would be further away the effect is lost.

Computer generated holograms are getting better, but compressing holographic video is still a long way away. http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/31/researchers-develop-a-360-degree-holographic-display/

Ask anyone who has used an OLPC, and they will tell you that not only is it possible to use an LCD in full, direct sunlight, the image quality actually improves; the stronger the light, the better. The OLPC's limitation, however, is that daylight-readable version is monochrome only.

The 3Qi is the commercialized next generation of the same screen technology. It adds EPaper, color, and video to the line up. Mary Lou Jepsen, the engineering genius behind the company, is trying to get the power requirements down far enough to allow 20-40 hours of run time, using current battery technology. The current version of the 3Qi is apparently not able to achieve that kind of power management without changes to the motherboard, but is still able to reduce power requirements by 20%.

Engadget did a series of side-by-side video comparisons with the Kindle earlier this year, and the results are very impressive.

I'm just waiting for one of the thieves to return to the same store trying to get service for one of the stolen computers.

Yes, the 360 is a "success", but also has terrible flaws. For one is its 50% failure rate (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/17/game-informer-xbox-360-at-54-2-percent-failure-rate/ http://kotaku.com/5339555/report-xbox-360-failure-rate-over-50-percent http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/24/microsoft-responds-to-xbox-360-54-2-percent-failure-rate-report/ ). While XBL is fine for gaming, buying stuff with "Microsoft Points" is odd, unlike Nintendo Points or buying gift cards with Sony, theres no easy way I can find out what everything costs in US dollars. Etc.

The end of the video talks about hacks. These things sort of remind me of LED walls..

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/20/giant-cowboys-stadium-led-wall-caught-playing-xbox-360-during-do/

That's going to be insane to see a 25,000 square foot goatse staring up at you.

Are you honestly claiming to have read every review ever?
Those are all reviews with praise OTHER than "It's better than vista".

In other words: [citation needed].

> Symbian is more a device controller than an O/S

I beg to differ. Nokia's S30 and S40 are operating systems which run on feature phones, and are much, much simpler than Symbian.

Symbian is a full fledged multitasking (threading) OS with a full driver model, virtual memory, all the bells and whistles, that you could even run on a netbook:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/20/symbian-foundation-boss-talks-up-symbian-for-netbooks-and-more/

Only the current S60 UI would need a little help (same as Android for example, UI also lacking for that). This should be addressed with the new QT UI, coming soon. See Symbian^4 here:
http://blog.symbian.org/2009/04/30/reviewing-the-release-plan/

Microsoft demonstrated a similar application at CES 2008, although they called it "software camera recognition" (Bill Gates in fact did the demo at the keynote). There are pictures at Engadget

Looks like Apple and the iPhone are beating them to the punch for RTM!

SixD

500, in October..

That works out to $712 USD as of this post (click for a more up-to-date rate), but that will probably be European style - unlocked and with no contract.

It will be up to carriers in countries like the US to decide how much to subsidise the phone, over what contract term.

That's not retro; it has a CPU in it. Look at this all vacuum tube digital clock where all the logic is tubes. 103 tubes.

My Palm Pre already runs an interface that looks like Andriod.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/21/palm-pre-android-port-already-in-progress/
http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/androidapp

Why would I want to switch? It's Linux, I can root the phone, it outshines the iPhone, has a ton of homebrew apps and games (most are free), awesome display, it can multitask, and the hardware is awesome.

As a side note, wouldn't it be nice if you could buy any cell phone and choose the provider you wanted. Instead, they lock it down to a phone and this has been the #1 reason for the 'Google phone's' failure.

Crap. That first link means to say:

Sprint says they're getting Android phones this year.

Sorry.

- Abject AC

Perhaps I can supplement your speculation with some substantial rumors...

Sprint says they're getting Android phones this year.

The sexy HTC Hero looks closest, possibly October 11. The CDMA version of the Hero has received FCC approval.

The Samsung InstinctQ looks to be the other one, probably arriving closer to the end of the year.

Perhaps I can supplement your speculation with some substantial rumors...

Sprint says they're getting Android phones this year.

The sexy HTC Hero looks closest, possibly October 11. The CDMA version of the Hero has received FCC approval.

The Samsung InstinctQ looks to be the other one, probably arriving closer to the end of the year.

Perhaps I can supplement your speculation with some substantial rumors...

Sprint says they're getting Android phones this year.

The sexy HTC Hero looks closest, possibly October 11. The CDMA version of the Hero has received FCC approval.

The Samsung InstinctQ looks to be the other one, probably arriving closer to the end of the year.

Perhaps I can supplement your speculation with some substantial rumors...

Sprint says they're getting Android phones this year.

The sexy HTC Hero looks closest, possibly October 11. The CDMA version of the Hero has received FCC approval.

The Samsung InstinctQ looks to be the other one, probably arriving closer to the end of the year.

Perhaps I can supplement your speculation with some substantial rumors...

Sprint says they're getting Android phones this year.

The sexy HTC Hero looks closest, possibly October 11. The CDMA version of the Hero has received FCC approval.

The Samsung InstinctQ looks to be the other one, probably arriving closer to the end of the year.

Verizon Android Phones Are Officially Coming.

There exists a pretty strong misunderstanding that Verizon "locks down" their phones. They did, yes. But in the past year, they've stopped disabling GPS on their phones (including the Omnia, Storm and Tour), said that all future Blackberries will have Wifi, and launched their Open Development Initiative to get data devices (among other things) on their network.

Oh, and their next generation network (which is launching 2+ years before AT&T's) is LTE, based off the GSM standard.

But I don't blame you, they've definitely had restrictive tendencies in the past.

You're thinking of their MID: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/19/nokias-maemo-5-rx-51-n900-tablet-gets-exhaustively-previewed/

I'm eagerly awaiting for this unit to come out, since it looks like the only thing worth upgrading to from my elderly Palm TX.

Haven't been impressed much by any of the iPhones, Android, the Pre, and especially not any of the Blackberries I've been issued through work. I would have bought an N810 some time ago if it didn't look like the N900 was close on the horizon.

...cluster of these. ;-/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/18/ps3-slim-sized-up-smaller-deeper-no-linux-or-ps2-compatibilit/

Even more than on "the big three" and desktops/laptops, hardware decoders are essential on mobile hardware.

Apparently an iPhone 3GS can unofficially decode 1080p30 h264, and the ZuneHD can do 720p (and even officially supports it). That's just insane; some modern non-hardware accelerated, or even partially accelerated, desktops and laptops still have trouble playing back 1080p smoothly. Being able to do so on a cell phone, and to do so without killing the battery within seconds, is a big deal.

Lack of hardware decoders on the desktop is a minor annoyance, but for mobile hardware it's a deal breaker. And mobile is a big and rapidly expanding market.
If open source codecs are going to get widespread adoption going forward, they're going to need to get built into hardware codecs.

I actually have some hopes that Google is moving in the direction of radically improving OSS codec quality and providing hardware support via their recent purchase of ON2. If they can release VP8 as open source, along with finishing and releasing a good hardware decoder for it, they'll have put OSS codecs within spitting distance of h264 on most issues.

Engadget has the filings from all three of the involved companies.

I love how the speculation gets posted here when the official statements from all three companies are readily available. The only major redaction is Google's side of the story on why GV and other apps were rejected.

where exactly is the ps3 a top seller? not here: http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/npd-1108-a.png

M$ "me-too" entry in the console market continues in last place, sixth out of six as of August 2009:

• 01 Nintendo Wii - 95,357
• 02 Nintendo DS - 85,737
• 03 PlayStation Portable - 33,049
• 04 PlayStation 3 - 8760
• 05 PlayStation 2 - 3617
• 06 Xbox 360 - 3552

PS2, PSP, and PS3 fluctuate a bit, but Wii keeps climbing albeit not steadily.

The Red Ring o Death we all passed in the stores whenever Xbox was on display is only minor compared to the quality and duration of the eipc failure. The M$ console hardware failures have been around forever, on about as long as the unit has been on the market. It's not just bricked units and years of scotched discs. It's been four or five years of property damage and even occasional injury and death, with fires in many countries.

But, hey, if defective M$ hardware burns down your family, it's your fautlt. To be fair M$ is right about that: The buyers were warned in prior to purchase by the M$ brand clearly marked on the packaging. C'mon, M$ hardware is as poor as M$ software. The fault lies with those who decided to deploy xbox instead of one of the top-selling game consoles like Wii, PS2, or PS3.

Games are optional. Other activities are not. At some point families will ask the courts to ask how hospitals decided to deploy M$ products like C#-based gewgaws or for-novelty-purposes-only systems like XP on the desktop or server instead of functinal Java- or Python-based applications or systems actually designed for a networked environemnt, such as Solaris and Linux. The Microsofot brand is a warning, those who ignore that warning and deploy the product anyway are in the wrong. Multiple counts of { voluntary | criminally negligent } manslaughter. Who goes to the gas chamber, the techs deploying the known defective technology or the administrators who bullied them into doing so? "Just following orders" is not a valid defense for any politically motivated group, even one with heavy marketing and lobbying.

I found this antenna, take a look. http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/2 Might be worth a try.

Seeing as how heat is the predominate cause of these machines giving up the ghost (whether it be heat killing components, heat changes warping solder, or cheap solder being affected by predictable heat), it would be interesting to compare the failure rate of small form factor computers, laptops, or pre-built gaming computers.

We've all known for a long time what happens when you let a computer run for 3 years and let the case fans get caked up...

It's not just the quantity of the epic failure of the M$ console, it's the quality and duration of the failure. It's been four or five years of property damage and even injury and death.

To be fair, the buyers were warned: The boxes did have the M$ brand clearly marked on the packaging. The fault lies with those who decided to deploy xbox instead of one of the top-selling game consoles like Wii, PS2, or PS3. It's a can of worms to be sure, just wait till courts ask how hospitals decided to deploy M$ products like C# or XP on the desktop or server instead of Solaris / Linux or Java / Python. Who goes to the gas chamber for multiple counts of { voluntary | criminally negligent } manslaughter, the techs deploying the known defective technology or the administrators who bullied them into doing so? "Just following orders" is not a valid defense.

I put my 360 in the box and shipped it back. Two weeks later...new XBox! Total cost: about $1.05 to $1.15 billion.

there, fixed that.. or not, for you :)

The HDD is user-upgradeable as confirmed by engadget

There is an unboxing here. No external power supply, just a 2 prong AC cord instead of the 3 prong version.

I'm quite certain the Volt is in fact in production at this point, and yes I'm speaking of series hybrid drives but that doesn't invalidate my point at all.

My point was simply about using hybrid drives at all, and the choice to use parallel hybrid drives for gasoline engines stems precisely from inefficiencies.

As another person replied, a series hybrid will never be more efficient than a straight engine, but that's ignoring the charging of the batteries through third party options like regenerative braking, solar collection and wall sockets.

This is the contents of the special pack that the military used to destroy sensitive equipment. It was in some cases attached to the equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

It's trivial to set up a system so that even with Hotplug you can still trigger it.
http://www.engadget.com/tag/forensics

This small gadget can do a number of interesting tasks by itself and is very cheap. It has enough inputs and outputs to set up a variety of sensors and can even be used with Zigbee and GPS devices.
http://www.arduino.cc/

Atom "SoC" pine trail is Atom + 945. Being on the same chip saves only 1 watt... but they're bumping up the 945 mhz, so it will draw more power despite still sucking. So no change really... the Atom + GN40 will be 17 watts; this version will get demolished by AMD Neo.

See:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/09/intel-slide-shows-atom-n280-with-945gse-and-gn40-chipsets/

I have been raptly awaiting Pegatron's $200 arm netbook with an 8 hour runtime:
from January
from July

If Dell is willing to ship what is practically the same device, then this competition can be nothing but good for everyone who wants one.

Because I was just reading about Symbian being cancelled.

Then you should buy an AMD Neo notebook

It's actually aimed at thin notebooks rather than netbooks. It's an underclocked Athlon so it's a full desktop class chip with out of order execution and the like -

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/06/amd-kinda-sorta-takes-aim-at-atom-with-athlon-neo/

I think it's a great idea - a bit more power than an Atom but lots more performance. AMD are good to have around when Intel builds something that is hyped but low performance like the Atom or the P4. Actually I think I'll buy one to replace my Core2 duo notebook. Core2 is an excellent chip and easily outperforms its AMD equivalent on the high end. Still most of what I do with it is emailing and browsing the net. Atoms seem obnoxiously slow to me but I think a Neo would be fine. They're also supposed to be not that much more expensive than an Atom based netbook too.

Actually I had an of these

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Fujitsu_Siemens_LifeBook_S6010__5376461

It's a great form factor - big enough to be usable, small enough to be portable. This is where I think the sweetspot for ultraportables is, i.e. a fair bit bigger than a netbook where you have space for a decent sized keyboard and screen and can afford a few more watts in TDP to make performance bearable. And this is the form factor Neo is aimed at. If you wait Intel have Core2 ULV aimed at the same thing too.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/10/silicon-mountains-allio-42-inch-hdtv-with-built-in-pc-blu-ra/

As opposed to this pathetic post by an obvious Apple hater describing behavior of the best support system available from a computer vendor as "Megalomaniacal"

You've posted a link to an article speculating about Apple switching to the nvidia platform. I, on the other hand, actually own a MacBook pro, and can tell you that I have to logout to switch modes. And there's this article too.

Talk to Apple Computers about it. They started that whole thing.

That's harder than you think.

Interesting assertion, because at least the PS3 doesn't enforce region locking for games. Do you only know people with modded xboxes?

http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/23/playstation-3-to-ship-region-free/

Android never ran on x86.

But it will. Read about a coming Acer laptop that dual-boots Android and Windows XP.

Conservatively, 40% of Seagate's high-capacity (1TB+) drives have suffered from a firmware bug which bricked the drive. Seagate has promised free data recovery + firmware fix on affected units - not many people know this! So if your SATA or external Seagate has failed recently on boot, you may be able to recover the drive and your data free. Customer support is very sketchy but if you keep trying for the free data recovery you will succeed. http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/19/seagate-offers-fix-free-data-recovery-for-disks-affected-by-fir/2

I noticed they placed a "SM" (Service Mark) not a "TM" (Trade Mark) next to "The Shack", which implies they will be selling services, not goods under the new brand.

Don't have much info, just saw this post on engadget. There's also this one.

Your first link says that RIM will have a Mac version of their BlackBerry Desktop Manager software, and that it can sync with iTunes. IMHO I don't think this really counts as making iTunes from scratch, since the article didn't say RIM now has their own music store/application that syncs with BlackBerries. The second link "confirms" the September release date of the Mac native application.

Don't have much info, just saw this post on engadget. There's also this one.

There is apparently a firmware bug.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/27/bios-password-snag-subdues-intels-34mn-x25-m-g2-launch-party/

Mine, and a bunch of other folks who ordered from the egg got an RMA sent. Mine never made it out of shipping. Others got a return label.