HTC EVO 4G – Coverage Map

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The HTC EVO 4G smartphone was announced yesterday on the Sprint network as previously mentioned at gadgetvenue. SlashGear decided to collect some data about the 4G network that it is available on in the US to figure out exactly where you are going to see benefits of having a 4G phone and where you can fully utilise the fast connection.

The phone it’s self looks fantastic and has a number of powerful features built in allowing it to run fast with the 1GHz Snapdragon CPU as well as show crystal clear images on it’s large 4.3 inch display. The phone it’s self runs the Android 2.1 operating system.

The 4G network that is used is built by Clear and currently covers 27 markets in the US with further expansion this year to allow for 120 million people to connect by the end of 2010.

If you are getting the phone and use it out of a WiMAX area there’s nothing too much to worry about as the device automatically switches to EVDO Rev.A networks. The 27 markets right now covers around 30 million people, so if they plan to achieve 120 million people by the end of the year, they need to quadruple their network size essentially. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones

HP EliteBook 8740w Announced

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

HP have made the HP EliteBook 8740w official now by making an announcement. The new laptop built by HP is quite a beast of a laptop in terms of processing power.

The HP 8740w is powered by either an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor. Has either an ATI FirePro M7820 or an NVIDIA Quadro FX GPU installed which both have 1GB of DDR3 memory installed. A 320GB hard drive spinning at 7200rpm can be found inside. The display on the 8740w measures 17 inches and is classed as a Dreamcolor display (although that is an optional upgrade). DreamColor is capable of displaying more than 1 Billion colours which HP say is 64 times more than other screens.

Support for up to 16GB of memory is available for the laptop. A USB 3.0 connector can also be found on the laptop allowing for highspeed transfers between compatible USB 3.0 devices. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Laptops

Google Voice for Android gets Faster Notifications on new Update

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Google [GOOG] have released an update for their Android based Google Voice App which now brings more speed to notifications of messages. Previous versions of the Android Google Voice app had updates set to arrive every 15 minutes by default. The quickest you could get notifications was 5 minutes if configured that way, or manually if you wanted to tap an update button every minute on the screen.

The new version now uses push to notify you with in seconds of receiving a text message or voice mail to your Google Voice number. The new feature is called Inbox Synchronization.

The service does need to be activated in the Google Voice settings for it to work. To make the change simply go to G Voice, hit settings, refresh and notification where you have the option of instant updates. When the option is disabled Google Voice will also automatically disable SMS forwarding to prevent you getting messages at the same time on your phone. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones

Gigapixel Resolution Interactive Wall Demoed

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Students from Tromso have created a very impressive interactive wall display. The display comprises of 28 projectors that can display a large image with 7168 x 3072 pixels in total. The setup also allows for multi-touch usage (without touch) where you can simple put your hand towards the wall and drag to the side to move objects around.

The multi-touch (maybe multi-touchless it should be called) system functions by a number of cameras sitting on the floor in front of the display that can detect the distance between an object and the flood in 1D. Mixed with a second camera also scanning the area a 2D location can be found in front of the wall and the computer can calculate exactly where the hand is in front of the screen.

The system is capable of displaying a 13.3 Gigapixel image of Tromso and can be zoomed in and out of real time as well as dragged easily around the screen. To process that many pixels on the 22 Megapixel screen requires that 30 computer nodes are attached to compute all the data being processed. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Displays

HTC HD2 Now Available – Bad Timing Considering HTC EVO 4G Announcement

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The HTC HD2 is now available to buy (officially) on the T-Mobile network in the US. Considering yesterdays announcement of the HTC EVO 4G phone yesterday I don’t think T-Mobile could have planned it any worse. That aside, the HD2 is still a nice phone and on the T-Mobile network it has a number of features such as connectivity to Blockbuster and other channels bundled in.

The HD2 is a Window Mobile 6.5 device that unfortunately won’t be getting updated with Windows Phone 7 Series due to it lacking in certain areas in regards to the criteria set forwards by Microsoft [MSFT] in what hardware specifications are required to run the new OS.

Early reviews of the HD2 on T-Mobile (when it was sold early) indicate that the screen is very nice and better than the iPhone due to it’s sheer size and how clear it is. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones

Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search iPhone App Lets you Draw for location based Search

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Sketch-a-Search is an application built by Yahoo! that allows you to search for restaurants nearby by drawing a line on a map around the area you want to search in.

By using your GPS or cell tower co-ordinates the application searches within the area you draw around. The restaurants once listed can then be filtered by distance, type of restaurant as in romantic/family/casual/formal and also by it’s 1 – 5 star rating in terms of how much of a recommendation the restaurant is.

Switched managed to do a brief hands on of the application and although it worked relatively well, it did feel a little laggy in points where drawing was concerned. Also the filtering wasn’t up to scratch due to the lack of data in certain areas. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones

Instapaper iPad App Unveiled

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Instapaper is an application already available for the Apple iPhone and Kindle from Amazon. The company behind it have modified the application to better suit the Apple iPad and have submitted it for approval to the app store.

Due to having a larger screen, the application looks far better than on the iPhone due to more screen estate and being able to show more information on the larger screen.

For those of you unaware of Instapaper, it’s an application that allows you to bookmark articles that you come across on the internet and save them to read later. The system works by using a bookmarklet in your computer browser and if you want to read something later you simply click on it, where the article is then sent to your iPad for reading at a later date. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Computer Gadgets

Eye-Fi Pro X2 Launched

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Eye-Fi have launched their latest memory card called the Eye-Fi Pro X2. The new cards feature more speed and more capacity making them more attractive options for consumers to buy.

Each of the new Eye-Fi cards in the X2 range feature an 802.11n allowing data to be transferred at a higher speed than previous models. Also the new cards fall in to the Class 6 category of memory cards making them faster and moving data to and from the camera or computer.

The X2 range includes the Eye-Fi Connect X2 and the Explore X2 along with the Pro X2. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Camera Gadgets

T-Mobile to offer Dell Mini 10 Netbook for $200

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

T-Mobile have announced that they are offering the Dell Mini 10 netbook with a built in T-Mobile compatible 3G service.

The netbook is going on sale today for $199.99 on a 24 month contract in various select areas in the US which includes Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Los Angeles. It will also be available through the website and through T-Mobile’s sales number.

The Dell Mini 10 appears to be slightly modified from the standard ones available on the Dell website in that it runs an Intel Atom N450 processor that is clocked at 1.66GHz. The battery has six cells and can store 56WHr of energy allowing for up to 8 hours of usage on a single charge which we assume was tested with all features switched off such as Wireless as well as a fairly dim screen. Either way you should at least get 6 hours from a single charge. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Laptops

Samsung Galaxy i9000 Android 2.1 Smartphone Announced

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The Samsung Galaxy i9000 has been announced. The new smartphone when launched will run the Android 2.1 operating system, feature Samsung’s own Super AMOLED screen in a WVGA resolution of 800 x 480 pixels that measures 4 inches. The Samsung Galaxy will also run a 1GHz processor to keep things running smoothly.

The new Galaxy is what Samsung are aiming to be their flagship smartphone to tackle the likes of the Google [GOOG] Nexus One and the Motorola DROID in terms of features and an almost matching operating system (still waiting for that DROID 2.1 update).

Feature include assisted GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0 as well as wireless connectivity that sees the phone connecting to wireless 802.11b/g and n networks. Storage capacity can be increased by utilising the built in microSD card slot. Standard storage is optional at 8GB or 16GB with the microSD card slot allowing a further 32GB of data to be stored which provides quite a bit of space for music, photos and video to be stored. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones

StyleTap iPhone Launched – Brings Palm OS to the iPhone

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

StyleTap iPhone has finally been released. The StyleTap application is designed for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch and allows you to run the Palm OS interface on your Apple [AAPL] device.

Before you go ahead and purchase/install it you need to note a few things. First off, it requires you to jailbreak your device (if you haven’t already) and needs virmware v3.x or above to run. Also note that if you are running iPhone OS 3.1.3 then you can’t currently jailbreak your device. Also if you decide to install an official update you’ll also loose the jailbreak and loose access to the software. With that in mind lets take a look at what it does…

SkyleTap Platform allows you to run 30,000 applications that were written for Palm OS on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Applications that were written for the Palm OS 5.2 platform or earlier are compatible with StyleTap and this includes programs that use native ARM code (PNOs or ARMlets). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones

HTC EVO 4G Sprint Phone Announced – formally known as HTC Supersonic

March 23, 2010 by 2 Comments

The HTC EVO 4G has been announced today. The new EVO was formally known as the HTC Supersonic that we have mentioned a few times in the past.

The phone will be launched on to Sprint’s 4G WiMAX network and has some impressive specs. To start off with it has a huge 4.3 inch TFT screen that is capable of showing 480 x 800 pixels. The processor inside is a Snapdragon running at 1GHz. From looking at the specifications and the device it’s self, it looks to be the HTC HD2 Android equivalent.

Other features include 1GB of memory and 512MB of RAM allowing for more applications to be stored. The device is capable of 720p video, has a front facing 1.3 megapixel camera and also has a camera on the back that has an 8 megapixel sensor. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cell Phones