Category: Videos

Tromso university students show off an amazing interactive display wall

Posted by ts On 24.03.2010

source – engadget.com/ By Vladislav Savov

Take everything you thought you knew about multitouch and throw it out. Okay, keep the Minority Report stuff, but throw everything else out. What we’re looking at here is a 22 megapixel display, stitched together from the output of no less than 28 projectors (7,168 x 3,072 total resolution), which just happens to respond to touch-like input in a fashion even Tom Cruise would find fascinating. You don’t have to actually touch the wall, floor-mounted cameras pick up your gestures in 2D space and a 30-node computer setup crunches all the computational and visual data to deliver some buttery smooth user interaction. For demo purposes, the makers of this system grabbed a 13.3 gigapixel image of Tromso and took it for a hand-controlled spin. See the mesmerizing show on video after the break.

Nokia Nuron

Posted by ts On 22.03.2010

source – engadget.com/ by Chris Ziegler

When the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was released a little more than a year ago, we thoroughly panned it in our review — put simply, it felt undercooked and uncompetitive in a world where webOS, iPhone OS, and Android were all realities, regardless of Nokia’s existing smartphone dominance through much of the world. More than a year later, we’re now presented with the Nokia Nuron, a pretty close relative of that first S60 5th Edition device from back in the day; it’s simply a carrier-branded version of the 5230, which itself is a lower-end variant of the 5800.

Despite its flaws, the 5800 has gone on to become a global success for Nokia — but can the Nuron do the same in a market traditionally unfazed by Nokia’s advances? More directly, has Nokia’s first volley in the modern touchphone battle evolved enough to become a prime-time player in the States? Let’s find out.

Nokia Nuron for T-Mobile review

As you might be able to gather from its family tree, the Nuron is a dead ringer for the 5230 and for the 5800 before it — it’s the same physical layout (and made from the same materials) all the way around, and the white / silver color scheme that T-Mobile has chosen for its version might be our favorite of the lot. Along the right side you’ve got a one-position camera button (there’s no autofocus to worry about), a volume rocker, and the lock / unlock slider familiar to those who’ve used the 5800, N900, or a number of other Nokia products. On the left you’ll find two slots protected by flaps — one for the microSD card, another for the SIM; getting the SIM in is a simple matter, while getting it out again requires just a little more effort since you’ve got to remove the battery and use a pen or similarly-shaped object to pop it back out through a slot in the circuit board, but it shouldn’t be a big deal unless you do a ton of SIM swapping. Along the top you’ve got a power button that calls up the typical profile menu when pressed, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro-USB port protected by a flap, and — get this — an old-school 2mm power jack. Why’s it there, you ask? Because the Nuron doesn’t charge over micro-USB, which is positively unheard of by 2010 standards, even in Nokia’s own product pipeline. The only possible explanation is that the Nuron’s based on 18 month-old hardware, but that doesn’t make it acceptable.

The volume rocker is deceiving, particularly for those not used to Nokia’s quirky way of handling things. Basically, it does absolutely nothing most of the time, because it isn’t used for adjusting ringer volume — for that, you’ve got to muck around with your profile (to be fair, Nokia does a far better job supporting profiles than most manufacturers, but it still takes a little more effort than we’d like). Instead, the rocker only comes into play when you’re in a call or listening to music, or intermittently as a zoom control for some applications — though we couldn’t figure out a rhyme or reason to how or where Nokia decided to implement it (it doesn’t work in the browser, for example).

read on at engadget.com

Entourage eDGe tested by CNET

Posted by ts On 19.03.2010

source – alltouchtablet.com/ by John Pope

Entourage eDGe: the first of its kind

We’ve wrote quite a few posts about the Entourage eDGe dual screen eReader + Android tablet combo. It seems that more and more samples are getting to pressfor review. Now it’s time for CNET to get their hands on video treatment on the Entourage eDGe.

After watching that video I can positively say that the eDGe is a nice concept, especially for educational purposes, there’s a lot to be improved here, but that’s always the case with the first generation of innovative new products. The eDGe sells for 499$ in 5 color versions, so plenty of choice here for consumers, has 4 GB of built-in memory, just like the Kindle, but is way more heavy, around 3 lbs (5-6 time heavier) thus handling it is not that easy after prolonged periods of holding in hand.

CNET really liked the massive 9.7 inch eInk screen with annotations capabilities, making it ideal for memorizing your ideas while reading an eBook, then print them on paper or share them with your friends. A special journal mode allows taking notes, like you on a blank sheet of paper.

The eReader part of the Entourage eDGe works with PDF files and other formats but not the one used in Kindle. You can copy your own ebooks from an USB flash disk or buy them online from the included shop, or get free Google eBooks (also included in the installed ‘library’). About the Android screen on the right we’ve found out it’s a stripped out version which features things like eMail, Browser, Office suite and eBook store plus some default installed apps without any option to install others from the Android Market. There’s even the option to get it work like a word processor by attaching a keyboard and folding down the eInk screen like a support base for the tablet.

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t review – amazing review by Engadget

Posted by ts On 10.03.2010

source – engadget.com By Joanna Stern

Who says you have to pick between a netbook and the coming onslaught of standalone tablet devices? Okay maybe some (eh hem Apple), but Lenovo’s trying to have it both ways with the IdeaPad U1 and the S10-3t. In clamshell mode the S10-3t looks like any old 10-inch netbook, but swivel around its capacitive mulitouch display and it turns into that slate device you’ve been dreaming of. That’s not all: the S10-3t is one of the first netbooks (or netveritbles) that has the new Intel 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor. But can the S10-3t straddle both worlds and do it well? And perhaps more importantly, is it worth the premium $649 price tag? That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves for the last few days, so hit the break for some answers in our full review.

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t review
Look and feel

There’s nothing too jaw-dropping about the S10-3t’s design, and we’d actually be totally fine with that if it didn’t have the glossiest black lid known to man. While the lid is inlaid with a subtle glitter tint and boxy pattern, you wouldn’t know it with all the smudgy fingerprints it collects. And though the plastic chassis feels solid enough, the lid did collect some scratches from being in our bag so you’ll want to pick up a case to keep the little guy clean and warm.

For a netbook the .79-inch S10-3t is actually rather trim, and it’s noticeably narrower than other 10-inch systems. While it’s obviously thicker than standalone tablets or e-readers like the Kindle DX, when equipped with its four-cell battery the 2.7-pound tablet was light enough to hold up in bed while reading. However, that eight-cell bulging battery version that we saw at CES looks like it would be incredibly uncomfortable to hold in arm.

One of the biggest benefits of the convertible form factor is having access to a full size, physical keyboard, but for a netbook we’re just not that impressed with the S10-3t’s layout and keys. The matte white keys are particularly bouncy and are more cramped than usual. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve gotten used to the chiclet keyboard layout, but our first draft of this review was ridden with typos.

As a result of the S10-3t’s narrower dimensions, its palmrest is thinner, which in turn means very limited touchpad real estate. The rectangular pad with its integrated mouse buttons is about the size of a USB stick, and provides an incredibly cramped navigation experience. While it doesn’t make up for all the backtracking our fingers had to do, we do like the feel of the raised dots on the pad itself. Are we totally crazy for thinking Lenovo should have grabbed a ThinkPad pointing stick and stuck it in the middle of the keyboard?

Screen and tablet performance

Of course, the hope is that you should be able use the capacitive touchscreen to move around in Windows 7 Home Premium, and for the most part it’s a decent touch navigation experience. The 1024 x 600 resolution is actually ideal for the 10.1-inch display – desktop icons are large enough to select with a light finger tap, but getting at the smaller menus requires more than a few jabs at the screen. Lenovo does preload Bumptop, which creates a 3D desk-like view of your desktop, but honestly we find the whole interface rather frustrating and would have just preferred Lenovo put on its SimpleTap software for those larger touch controls to adjust the volume or view the remaining battery power.

Multitouch gestures were responsive; we got in the hang of sticking two fingers on the screen to scroll down the length of web pages or pinching to make text larger. As soon as you swing the display around using the S10-3t’s fairly sturdy, bidirectional hinge, Lenovo’s Natural Touch interface launches. The full screen finger-friendly carousel interface provides large shortcuts to Lenovo’s own photo, music and e-book software. We’re not sure why you’d choose this multimedia software over Microsoft’s Media Player and Photo Gallery, but the e-book software does open PDF or e-pub files and adds note taking and bookmark functions. Though it’s a nice piece of software, we preferred Amazon’s Kindle for PC app to access our collection of already-purchased titles.

While the touch reading experience was smooth and we enjoyed flicking through pages and pinching to zoom in on text, it was our experience reading the New York Times Reader while laying down that brought out the biggest issue with the screen – its viewing angles. Though the extra glossy screen contributes somewhat to the issues, we encountered major color distortion both horizontally and vertically, and at some angles we couldn’t even see what was on the screen. It was especially apparent when we tried to look at an Olympic photo gallery while lying in bed – we had to adjust ourselves and the tablet quite a bit to comfortably flick through the images. Why Lenovo had to use a cheap LCD on this device is beyond us – it craps up a perfectly enjoyable experience.

The device has an accelerometer, but we found it to be a bit flaky; we ended up using the button on the side of the screen more often than not to change the screen orientation, and even when we used this solution we got impatient with the typical five second adjustment period. Lastly, we should mention that Lenovo doesn’t include a stylus, so if you want to take advantage of Windows 7’s handwriting functionality you’re going to need to come up with one of your own or, you know, find a piece of meat.

Performance and battery life

We went into reviewing the S10-3t hoping it would be one of the faster netbooks we’ve ever used considering its new 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor and 2GB of RAM. However, those dreams quickly faded when we were met with the typical netbook performance. In fact, the N470 scored 1,348 on PCMark05, which is actually lower than the N450-powered HP Mini 210’s 1393. That’s sort of a letdown for us, but in typical usage — writing this review and surfing the web — performance seemed snappy. We did notice it taking a bit of time for certain apps within Lenovo’s NaturalTouch to open but we’re inclined to blame the slow 320GB hard drive or software for that. With no change made to the GMA 3150 graphics, the S10-3t was fine for playing standard def video, but couldn’t handle streaming a 720p music video without stuttering.

PCMark05 3DMark06 Battery Life
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t 1348 160 3:12
HP Mini 210 1393 147 5:15
ASUS Eee PC 1005PE 1431 157 8:10
Toshiba Mini NB305 1272 156 6:30

On our video rundown test the S10-3t’s four-cell battery lasted three hours and 12 minutes, but when we actually used the system to write this review and surf the Web we got close to four and a half hours of battery life. In our minds that’s not all that bad considering the battery fits flush with the system, but you can always go up to the chunky eight-cell for a couple more bucks.

Wrap-up

As both a netbook and a tablet the S10-3t leaves a bit more to be desired. Sure, we’re disappointed that the N470 processor doesn’t provide improved performance, but what’s even more aggravating is that $649 buys you a tiny trackpad, sluggish touchscreen software and terrible viewing angles. Maybe you can live with those shortcomings, but we’re personally holding out for a better netbook / tablet combo to come along.

Windows Phone 7 series to support full 3d gaming XNA games

Posted by ts On 10.03.2010

source – engadget.com

Alright, we’re going to be straight with you: you’re not going to like this. See, Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0, but wouldn’t let us nab a single photo or video of the process. What we can tell you is that they exist, they work, and at least Microsoft tossed us some screenshots to wave in your face. The two titles are The Harvest (pictured), a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks, a less impressive one-on-one sword fighting Facebook game by Gravity Bear that’s being ported over. We didn’t get to see any full motion 3D camera moves, since Battle Punks is just composed of two characters duking it out, and The Harvest has a fixed camera and some pre-rendered elements, but there were indeed some real polygons being crunched before our eyes at a full resolution (no upscaling), alpha-rev, choppy framerate, and we were assured that full screen 3D was possible. We also got to see one of our first glimpses of universal notifications on Windows Phone: Achievement unlock notices (also pictured above) that slide down from the top of the screen in a black bar and then slide back, and can’t be interacted with. Follow after the break for some more nerdy details, along with a video of VisualStudio in action, and screenshots of the two games are in the gallery below.

Windows Phone 7 Series XNA screenshots

Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox (though we’re under the impression that most of the similarities end there). What we saw of The Harvest was built in “two or three weeks,” mostly from scratch, and folks who’ve already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn’t have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: “very, very easy,” said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually — though it’s unclear right now if it’ll make it into the upcoming XNA release scheduled for the coming month. Other details are up in the air like support for using a device’s camera in game, along with that fancy pause and resume cross-platform function we saw demo’d at TechEd. One thing that’s clear is that there’s no fast track for porting OpenGL games to the Direct3D environment, but that’s not stopping regular suspects like Oberon, Sega, Glu, EA, Popcap, Hudson Entertainment, Namco, Konami and Microsoft Game Studios from signing on. We’ll have to wait until MIX for more details and hopefully some shareable demos! Below we have a video of that same platforming game we saw from TechEd being demo’d across platforms, though sadly with the save state sending disabled.

HTC’s Touch Pro2 running Ubuntu Linux

Posted by ts On 09.03.2010

source – engadget.com by Tim Stevens

Ubuntu hits HTC's Touch Pro 2, is any Windows Mobile handset safe?

If there’s one thing we’re pretty sure Windows Phone 7 Series will be worse at than its Windows Mobile precursor it’s in the running of various and sundry other operating systems. We’ve seen Android running on seemingly every WinMo handset ever created and more recently Unbuntu has been receiving the mobile treatment. Last month it was on an Xperia X1, now an HTC Touch Pro2 is getting a taste. A modder who goes by the handle sebbo90 is the one responsible for this, running basically the same technique as used earlier on the X1. It looks quite easy: just download a 200MB zip, extract it to your phone, then run an exe within. A few moments later you’ll be in open source heaven, and, from what we can tell looking at the video below, it works remarkably well. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to hit up eBay to find a used handset and get hacking.

First Windows Phone 7 Series partner(LG) device unveiled (with video!)

Posted by ts On 01.03.2010

source – engadget.com By Nilay Patel

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!

see entire post with more photos at engadget.com

HP 2740p, the new Elitebook

Posted by ts On 01.03.2010

source –alltouchtablet.com author – John Pope

Untill yesterday, the 2740p was just a mysterious convertible tablet from HP, but now that it was presented to the press, I know what’s all about it and will share that info with you.

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.

Live shot of HP Elitebook 2740p

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.

HP 2740p is really a nice tablet to have

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.

HP 2740p can look like a laptop

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:

Source: Engadget, Ubergizmo

Astri MyID dual screen tablet will cost 150$ maximum (VIDEO)

Posted by ts On 27.02.2010

source – alltouchtablet.com Author: John Pope

Dual screen tablet prototypes have been shown during CES 2010 by a lot of small manufacturers eager to differentiate themselves from big names by doing something utterly different. Astri was one of them with their MyID eInk + touchscreen combo. I’m glad they managed to catch attention of investors as they’ve just announced the MyID will soon hit production. What’s so important is the price: 65 $ for materials and manufacturing, which translates in 150$ max as retail price, a bargain considering you get a device which can open up to 6 eBooks at the same time and navigate the web on the other screen (powered by Android).

Astri MyID: the innovatorAstri MyID: the innovator

The only downside I see is the diagonal of both screen, which at 4.8 inches isnt’ that much bigger than a HTC HD2 for example (which is much more expensive, I have to say), but resolution is OK at 800 x 480 pixels. Below there’s a short video with Astri MyID showing how it works in real life:

Motorola Devours (video)

Posted by ts On 22.02.2010

source – engadget.com By Vladislav Savov

We’re only a few breathless days away from the Devour hitting some retail locations ahead of nationwide US availability in March, so what better way to fill that gap than with an official teaser video? Moto’s Rick Osterloh is our tour guide in a seven minute hands-on demo of the device, which takes us through the major attractions on offer. He firstly calls out the Qualcomm CPU inside and points to the phone’s responsiveness, which is (quite naturally) followed by a couple of instances of perceptible lag between his input and the phone’s reaction. All the same, it does look like a sprightly little machine, and the inclusion of Blur, Google Maps Navigation with turn-by-turn voice instructions, and Moto Phone Portalmakes for a compelling software package. Head past the break to see them in action and to catch another eyeful of the hardware as well.

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