Section: Communications, Mobile, Computers, Netbooks, Trade Shows, CES Okay, so there’s a lot of Android tablets and smartphones to be found at CES, to the point where it’s almost getting commonplace. NEC has something a bit different: an Android netbook. Like the dual-screen Android tablet, this Android netbook is just a prototype. Unlike other Android netbooks I’ve seen, this doesn’t try to shoehorn a mouse into the picture. There is a small trackpad, but it works just the same as the trackpads on Android smartphones. Instead, the screen is a touchscreen, making it familiar to anyone who has used Android. As of now the prototype is running on a Tegra 2 CPU, so it should run great. Unfrotunately, I wouldn’t know because my arm was tired from reaching up to touch the screen too much. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 FROM APPLETELL - At CES 2011, Sphero demoed their upcoming toy: a robotic ball that’s controlled remotely by your iOS or Android device. The Sphero is about the size of a baseball, translucent with an RGB light inside (the color can be changed from the app).
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 FROM APPLETELL - At CES 2011, Sphero demoed their upcoming toy: a robotic ball that’s controlled remotely by your iOS or Android device. The Sphero is about the size of a baseball, translucent with an RGB light inside (the color can be changed from the app).
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 Section: Communications, Gadgets / Other, Trade Shows, CES Android tablets are the norm at CES, and have been for quite some time. Most are simply big slabs with Android shoved onto the screen to make it useable. NEC took a different route with this Android tablet, opting to use two screens to make a slightly more interesting device. The NEC Android Cloud Communicator is just a prototype right now, but shows what could be done with two screens. The device was shown off as an eReader for what looked to be a Korean magazine. On one screen there was a full page, on the other there was a zoomed in shot of that page. Not the best way to read a magazine, but not bad. Moving around the device was a bit slow, but since it had two screens running off a Cortex A8 with 384MB of RAM, that’s not very surprising. Unfortunately both screens were resistive, all but requiring the use of a stylus, I could still use fingers, but had to actually press which felt strange after so long. Again, this is still a prototype, NEC isn’t sure it will ever bring such a device to market. I can’t imaging it doing very well like this, but it’s a nice example of how two touch screens can work in a single device. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Smartphones, Trade Shows, CES Back in November 2009 Motorola started making Android smartphones with the Cliq. The Cliq wasn’t very well received by those who spend a lot of their time around smartphones, but apparently it did well enough to warrant a successor, the Cliq 2. The Cliq 2 is just your average Android smartphone with a 1GHz processor, and a custom skin. The Blur UI is just as annoying as before, but it doesn’t get in the way too much if you don’t want to widgets. The screen is responsive, and it runs apps as well as you’d expect any Android phone to. Angry Birds which was loaded on the booth model worked well. The big difference between the Cliq 2 and other Android phones is the landscape keyboard. Simply put, the keyboard is awful. The keys are designed in a spiderweb-esque pattern, and come off feeling a bit cheap. I could not imagine having to type anything longer than a text message on this keyboard before getting too frustrated. I guess that’s the point with the social aspects of Blur, but only if you really, really despise the on-screen keyboard should you want to use the physical one. Teens that use their phones mainly for SMS may like using this phone, but the keyboard should be enough to dissuade anyone else. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Smartphones, Trade Shows, CES One of the first LTE devices announced for Verizon, the Droid Bionic is also one of the first smartphones to use nVidia’s Tegra 2 CPU. The hardware is still in production, but was out at Motorola’s booth for me to get a few minutes to play with it. The first thing I noticed about the Droid Bionic is that it is pretty buggy, despite being a few months from release. Finger tracking was slow, and non-responsive at times. I tried to add a widget to the screen by holding my finger in the center of the screen, and instead it pulled down the notification tray. Trying to add widgets or change profiles from the settings menu didn’t work either. However, I’m sure these bugs will be fixed by launch. Using a Tegra 2, it’d be expected for the Bionic to have no problem with graphically-intense games. I loaded up Dungeon Defenders, the first Unreal game on Android, to try it out. The game took a while to load, but looked very good when it did load. To be fair, the game also takes a while to load on my iPad, and even then crashes often. I can only imagine that the game looks even better when put onto a 1080p TV via the HDMI output. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 FROM GAMERTELL - MultiTouch was at CES this year and had several of their large-form, infinite touch points LCDs to be played with. The display uses light (LED) to detect each contact point so the surface pretty much just need to remain clear and you don’t need to exert particular pressure to activate… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Apple, Gadgets / Other, Trade Shows, CES For some reason people seem to hate the on-screen keyboard for the iPad. Naturally, because of that, there have been a ton of cases that sport keyboards for the iPad, just in case you have a problem just using a laptop in case. One of the latest examples of these cases is the Zaggmate from Zagg. The Zaggmate is a fairly simple case: it’s simply a very thin keyboard that doubles as a case when not in use. Unfortunately, the case only let’s you put the iPad screen down, so the screen protected, but you can’t use it at all. To use the keyboard, you have to set the iPad to stand up using the rather flimsy plastic stand, and turn on the keyboard. Typing on the keyboard is not fun, at all. I have used netbook keyboards before, I used an Eee PC 901 in class everyday for a full year. Still I was having trouble with this 88% keyboard. The keys responded fairly well, though even typing while looking at the keyboard I was unable to type what I wanted to. It would be nice to have the volume control buttons from the keyboard to use on the iPad, but the rest was certainly not worth it. Zagg said it’s working on a version for the Galaxy Tab, and I can’t imagine that would be fun to use at all. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Audio, Home Audio, Speakers, Trade Shows, CES Over the past few years soundbars have become increasingly popular, as you may have noticed. As with any increasingly popular product, small companies are coming in with various ways to make them better, or at least different. Orbitsound is one of those companies. The Orbitsound T12 is a soundbar with included iPod dock that also works with regular audio jacks or optical input. The idea behind the T12, and all of Orbitsound’s products is that they create a 3D spatial stereo sound. Basically that means that from the sound it can create what sounds like a stereo sound anywhere in the room. it can also produce a mono sound, but there really isn’t a point in that. The stereo sound coming from the T12 is pretty good. It’s certainly a bit better than the speakers you’d find on your average TV. The stereo sound works actually a bit better than I expected it would. I was able to sense two points of origin of the sound coming from the soundbar. As advertised I wasn’t about to discern a specific “sweet spot” for the sound, but it did seem that the sound was always coming from the general direction of the T12. Overall, the sound was good, but might be a bit better in a more controlled environment, or at least one that isn’t a CES show floor. The T12 will sell for $400 in the US, and will be available soon via a direct sale from Orbitsound. I was told they were talking to a few buyers at CES, so perhaps we can expect to see it at Best Buy sometime soon. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 FROM APPLETELL - With Airplay, Apple made is possible to stream your music without wires to your stereo. And now, iHome is going to make your stereo wireless as well. At CES 2011 the company demoed their new iW1 wireless speaker system, which is Airplay enabled.
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 Section: Communications, Smartphones, Trade Shows, CES 
On Thursday Verizon finally announced it’s LTE phones to come out in the next few months. Among those phones was one curiosity: and unnamed smartphone from Samsung. The phone certainly takes cues from the Galaxy S line, but is definitely a bit different.
Keep in mind that all of this isn’t final yet, so the phone could change before it’s officially named and launched on the network. One thing that isn’t likely to change is the Super AMOLED+ screen, which looks fantastic. The big thing that separates it from normal Super AMOLED screen, according to the Verizon rep is that when there’s a black pixel on the screen, the pixel is simply turned off instead. That’s supposed to save a lot on battery life, and should give it a great contrast ratio for watching video. While this phone does seem to be part of the Galaxy S line, it has actual physical buttons, where the ones on other Galaxy S phones are touch sensitive. Even in this early build the buttons felt very good, it would be nice to see them survive the transition to final product. It’s rare to see physical buttons on Android nowadays, and it’d be nice to revisit those days Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Computers, Desktops, Gaming, Accessories, Trade Shows, CES Last year at CES I stopped by the small Razer booth to find an interesting new product called Sixense, that brought motion control to gaming. I’ve seen it since then, always with the same design. At CES 2011 Razer gave the system a new name, Hydra and a brand new design. Whereas previous versions of Sixense were wireless, using a magnetic field emanating from a black monolith to sense where the wands were, the Hydra has wires running from a green and black ball to the wands. The previous wands were black shiny plastic, which admittedly were a very pragmatic way of putting the joysticks and buttons on wands. The new wands are matte, black, and much more angular, looking more similar to the Wii Nunchuck. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to play with these new wands, as they were hand-built models. The Hydra was being shown off playing a specially designed level in Valve’s upcoming Portal 2, which is set to launch around April/March. Razer hopes to have the Hydra ready to ship by that time. The price will be “affordable,” hopefully under $100. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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