Archives for December 2009

Google Phone – Nexus One Hands-On

Gizmodo managed to get to spend some time with the Google Phone AKA Nexus One. The N1 is built by HTC and is described by Gizmodo as being a Motorola DROID killer in all ways. The phone has no physical keyboard making it very thin. It’s fast and managed to beat both the DROID and iPhone in web page load speeds consistently.

The screen on the Nexus One (N1) measures the same as the DROID but has been described as looking amazing. The blacks are blacker and the colours are more vibrant making the whole visual experience far better.

The Nexus One currently runs Android 2.1 and overall it runs faster than the DROID. There are no official numbers on the CPU at the moment but Giz believe it to be a 1GHz processor inside providing a more snappy user experience. [Read more…]

OLPC XO-3 Concept Tablet

A designed cammed Yves Behar has designed a next generation OLPC called the XO-3 that shows an ultra thin tablet surface computer that has an 8.5 by 11 inch touchscreen. According to the designer and OLPC it seems that they want to introduce the OLPC tablet by 2012.

Also according to the designer the tablet will have an 800MHz processor and use induction based charging to keep it running. Before the XO-3 concept is launched though Nicholas Negroponte mentioned to Engadget that two other versions will be launched first. [Read more…]

Win an LG 42″ LCD at Coolest Gadgets

Our friends over at Coolest Gadgets have a fantastic competition running at the moment for those of us in the UK. They are giving away a 42 inch LCD TV from LG to one lucky winner. The competition is running till 12PM on Christmas Eve (that’s tomorrow) where the lucky winner will be announced.

There are a few easy rules that you need to obey to join the competition which simply have you become a fan on the CG facebook page and a follow on twitter as well as answering a simple question. Full details and the competition rules can be found here. Make sure you enter soon though as it does close tomorrow. Good luck!

ASUS ECleaner Robot Vacuum Revealed

A few robotic vacuums have shown up this last week with LG creating the RoboKing, Neato creating the Neato XV11 both of which are set to tackle the Roomba. ASUS have also revealed a new robot vacuum called the ECleaner which also is aimed at tackling the automatic home cleaning section of the market.

The ECleaner ads another feature to automated vacuuming by adding a 6000 hour UV light that is used to disinfect the floor and emit fragrances. [Read more…]

ASUS Eee 1005HA Still Top of Amazon Charts

When we first wrote about the best netbooks available a few months back the ASUS Eee 1005HA was at the top of Amazon’s netbook charts. Another check today shows that the netbook still holds the top spot firmly without any signs of shifting from the top spot. A lot of this is due to it being a good all-round netbook that has a fantastic battery life, good sized screen and looks great.

The ASUS Eee 1005HA can run for 10.5 hours on a single charge. It runs the latest Windows operating system (Windows 7 Starter), had 1GB of RAM along with an Intel Atom N280 processor running at 1.66Ghz. [Read more…]

Portable Handheld Scanner

This is a portable handheld scanner. Think of it as the guts of any standalone image scanner that either glides from left to right or top to bottom (depending on the scanner model). It allows the user to scan the contents of any books, letters, recipes, bank statements, receipts and much more by gripping the the scanner in one hand and gliding it smoothly over the surface of the page (don’t worry though, you won’t have to go at a snails pace – images can be scanned very quickly at around 4-5 seconds). Though instead of having it constantly hooked up to a PC while you scan your various images and text, the portable handheld scanner houses a microSD card slot in which you can connect an SD card and copy those images and text directly from the page and download them to the card memory. Note also that many of these portable handheld scanners hold an internal memory of around 8mb

The scanner pictured is able to capture these images up to 8.5 inches by 50 inches in length and is also capable of capturing data at either high definition at 600dpi or standard definition at 300dpi then store them as standard jpeg files to your chosen destination folder. [Read more…]

Official F1 Game coming to iPhone

Codemasters have released a new game for the iPhone that allows you to take the seat of an F1 car and race around official F1 tracks. The F1 iPhone game brings 17 circuits used in the 2009 season to the iPhone and as it’s official meaning you get the real team names along with it.

The game costs £3.99 to download via the App Store although for some reason there is no championship mode, so there will be no point collecting here. What you do get is time trial mode and endurance mode allowing you to try beat your best times as well as race for a long time to test consistency while racing. [Read more…]

Acer Olympic Edition Notebooks Revealed

Acer are launching a number of Olympic edition notebook computers shortly that are built from othe Acer Aspire 1810T, 4810T, 1410 and G245H LCD devices. However, there isn’t too much to get excited about spec wise as the notebooks have exactly the same hardware specs.

The only difference with the Olympic edition notebooks is the 5 ring Olympic logo that will be put on the lid as well as the palm rest area of the devices. [Read more…]

New Panasonic Battery is Higher Capacity and Less Explosive

Panasonic have designed and built a new battery designed for laptops that has an increased capacity and is less explosive. The new battery uses a form factor numbered 18650 that see’s the battery measuring 65mm in length with an 18mm diameter making them just the right size to be built as laptop batteries.

The batteries are lithium-ion and have a larger capacity allowing 3.1Ah of capacity to be stored vs the standard batteries which generally reach 2.9Ah. [Read more…]

Bluetooth Keyboard for iPhone

If you have a jailbroken iPhone then you can now connect up a bluetooth keyboard to it so you can more easily type while on the move.

To get a bluetooth keyboard working you’ll need an iPhone 3G(S) and the bluetooth driver as well as a keyboard of course. All you need to do is install the driver on your iPhone and then pair the keyboard to the phone.

The driver is based on the open source BTstack project and is available in Cydia. There is one problem at the moment though in that the BT keyboard will only work with in the application although the developers of the app have said that compatibility with other apps (running the program in the background) will be available soon. [Read more…]

Dell Mini 10 Gets Intel Atom Pine Trail Platform

Earlier today we reported on the latest Intel Atom series that saw the launch of a few new processors as well as express chipsets. Dell have announced that the Dell Mini 10 will be getting an upgrade to the new Intel Atom series by launching a new Mini 10 netbook running an Intel Atom N450 processor.

The new Dell Mini 10 will be launched on January 5th and will have a starting price of $299. The Jan 5 launch is initially just the US with a worldwide launch following 2 days later on January 7.

The Dell Mini 10 will ship running Windows 7 starter edition with the option of choosing Windows XP instead if you prefer. Other options will follow a month later seeing Linux being made available. [Read more…]

Artopz ION-Based Nettops Revealed

If you are looking for a more stylish nettop for your home office then perhaps these new nettops from Artopz will be good for you. Artopz are a company based in San Diego and have created some NVIDIA ION based nettops that function both as a computer and a desk lamp. The desk lamp side of things is made possible by using fibre optic light panels.

Three designs of this nettop are being made available called Romanz, Lavaz and Deluxz and they have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 dual-core CPU inside along with a nice amount of memory at 4GB along with a fast 128GB SSD.

Each nettop runs Windows 7 Home Premium in the 64-bit variety. [Read more…]