We’ve had only tantalizingly brief (or is it briefly tantalizing?) chances to see LG’s glorious OLED television, but each and every time it’s left us with the feeling that our lives are poorer for not having one in our homes. Sure, that says as much about our tech addiction as it does about the 3mm-thick displays, but at least the deep-pocketed among us won’t have to wait too much longer to sate the need for 10,000,000:1 contrast ratios and 0.001ms response times. LG has announced it’ll be bringing it’s 15-inch OLED panel to Europe this May (to be swiftly followed by summer availability in the US) with a hefty MSRP sticker of €1,999 ($2,725) for the Austrian market. Nobody ever said the cutting edge was gonna be a cheap place to live.
Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman just pulled off a little surprise here at The Engadget Show: he brought out LG’s Windows Phone 7 Series pre-production prototype! The QWERTY slider is the first branded Windows Phone 7 Series device the world’s ever seen, and while the hardware and software are both obviously early, we can tell you a few things about it: it’s just a hair thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, there are dedicated hardware camera, volume, and power buttons in addition to the back, home, and search buttons dictated by Windows Phone 7 Series, and we noticed a five megapixel camera with a flash on the back, along with a headphone jack. Can’t say much apart from that right now, since things are so early and everything is subject to change, but things are certainly moving along. It’s all going down on the show right now — see it on video after the break!
The HP 2740p is part of the Elitebook series and is a premium convertible tablet PC, with magnesium alloy rugged case and is compliant with military grade MIL-STD 810G standard for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude and temperature resistance plus has a chemically-strengthened glass display panel.
From the loops of it HP Elitebook 2740p doesn’t look like a road warrior, but once you get your hands on it you get the feeling of strength and quality build. It’s what you would expect from atablet starting at 1599$, but you’ll definitely want to beef up the standard configuration with a normal voltage Core i7 CPU (default is Core i5), add some RAM, up to 8 GB, add a 320 GB hard drive, or 160 GB SSD, add another expansion battery or travel base that adds some expansion ports.
You can even pick up a better screen specially build for outdoor use. Both options are capacitive screens, offer multi touch and pen input and offer 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. Connectivity options are also top notch: WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1, EVDO/HSDPA and even GPS. The whole package is 1.25 x 11.42 x 8.35 inches and weighs from 3.8lbs with the 6 cell battery that’s good for up to 5 hours of use (so expect 3 t0 3.5 hours with it). You can add another slim battery that’s attached at the bottom of the laptop which increases overall thickness by a few millimeters and also adds another 6 hours to the original 5 hours estimate. There’s even a LED on the screen that’s used to illuminate the keyboard.
If you’re crazy about connections you can add an Ultra-Slim Expansion Base that supports DispalyPort, an eSata port and includes a DVD+/-RW drive for 299$ but I bet you could live without those if you have a fully loaded desktop at home. Even if it weights 3.8 lbs it doesn’t seem that heavy, at least compared to the Lenovo X201T we’ve presented earlier. Below there’s a hands on video from Slashgear:
