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Coming Soon: Smartphones With 16MP Cameras

Posted: 10 Jan 2011 04:04 AM PST

If you look at the batches of new cell phones Japan’s leading mobile carriers have been presenting in recent months, you’ll notice the high-quality cameras some of the models have. And now major Japanese chip maker Renesas (which merged with NEC last year) is even promising [JP] 16MP cameras in future handsets.

The company claims its new image-processing system chip, the CE150, will make it possible to produce 16MP phone cameras for the first time, up from the maximum 13MP that are currently available. Renesas says the new chip paves the way to five times faster continuous shots, too.

Users will also be able to shoot full HD video (Renesas unveiled a full HD video processor for cell phone cameras as early as December 2008).

The chip will be mass-produced as early a March, with Renesas planning to churn out 1 million units monthly. Sample units are already available for $48 apiece.

Nintendo Wants To Sell 4 Million 3DS In First Month

Posted: 10 Jan 2011 02:12 AM PST

As you probably are aware, the Nintendo 3DS is just around the corner: it will hit Japanese stores on February 26, followed by the US and European markets in March. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata gave an interview in The Nikkei (Japan’s biggest business daily) yesterday, in which he stated some ambitious goals for his company’s new product.

Iwata said that he expects the 3DS to sell a total of 4 million times by the end of March, namely 1.5 million times in Japan alone plus another 2.5 million times elsewhere. This means the US and European versions of the system are likely to go on sale relatively early in March.

According to Iwata, his company is currently doing its best to ensure continuous supply when the 3DS starts shipping to retailers in order to avoid the shortages seen when previous versions of the DS launched.

He wasn’t asked when exactly and for how much the 3DS will sell in the US and Europe.

CrunchGear Week in Review: CES Memories Edition

Posted: 10 Jan 2011 12:00 AM PST

Glycine Incursore II & III Watches

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 10:23 PM PST

The popular Incursore collection from Glycine returns with a model II and model III. Relatively inexpensive, these watches comes with a few dial styles and with automatic or manually wound movements. Actually, the price of the pieces with a manually wound Unitas 6498 movement is the same as the watch with an automatic ETA 2824. So why would someone opt for a manually wound movement. Well, I guess some people prefer it... but really the only difference is a central seconds hand (in the automatic) versus a subsidiary seconds dial in the manually wound version. Oh, and the view through the watch's exhibition caseback is gonna be different.


Streaming CES: How We Did It

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 03:28 PM PST


As the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show wraps up today, we’d like to share a few secrets. The CrunchGear writing team, with support from TechCrunch TV, provided more than 20 hours of live CES video coverage, taking our viewers right to the industry and media access only exhibit floor. For a look at video highlights, check out ces.crunchgear.com. Hundreds of Twitter questions were answered in real-time, giving our viewers a chance to interact with the company reps and win some giveaways.

We also got a lot of questions on how we did it. Here’s an in-depth look at our process.

Continue reading…

The Star Wars Re-Release: Much We Have To Learn

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 03:15 PM PST


As we saw teased before CES, the Star Wars Trilogy (along with those other ones) is indeed to be re-released on Blu-Ray in September (you can pre-order now). The fan relationship with this franchise is perhaps the most complicated one in the entertainment world, for various reasons, and while I have no doubt that the new release will see millions of sales, it’s a legitimate question to ask whether this is the film my parents watched in 1977, and which I have perhaps never seen.

I mean, I’ve seen all the movies, but the process of keeping a movie alive for 30, 40, 50, or more years is a complicated one, especially for one that pushed the technical boundaries of filmmaking at the time. In contemplating this, I ran across this somewhat old but absolutely fascinating article about the preservation and restoration of the series.

Not everyone is sensitive about the poorly-tweaked colors and added special effects we saw in the re-releases and DVDs (I am). We all know that Han shot first, and that the Sarlacc isn’t supposed to look like Audrey II, but the restoration was more than that. The actual film was cleaned, awkward optical effects were smoothed and aligned, minor errors were corrected, and the film was re-scanned. It was an expensive and labor-intensive endeavor, not just an ego trip by Lucas.

The re-releases for other major films, like the Godfather, have been more painstaking and preservative, scanning the original film at a seemingly excessive 8K resolution, while the last major scan of Star Wars, for HDTV, was scanned at 1080p. Observe the following chart:

For preservation purposes, it makes sense now to scan at high resolutions, since storage is done digitally and it is costly and damaging to the original film to re-scan. It’s not clear whether Lucasfilm has actually done this, because, as the article I link above notes, the source is not just a few reels sitting somewhere, but the work of several decades and many mediums.

What Star Wars fans want, and almost certainly will not get, is a sort of HD chimaera of the theatrical original trilogy with the minor changes and tweaks that didn’t bother them, minus the major and incongruous updates Lucas shoehorned in.

The ability in digital media to seamlessly change the language, cut, and so on of movies should not be disregarded, though I suspect it will be for this release. What if you could switch on the fly between the “absolute theatrical,” with dirt and old effects intact, the “restored theatrical,” with all the clarification, rebalancing, and effects fixes in, and the “enhanced” version, with new effects, scenes, and so on? Not only would people buy that, they would buy it for quite a large sum, and beyond that, it would show that Lucasfilm is not the soulless media machine people take it for these days.

The chances of this happening are not good. Lucas has taken every chance for re-re-re-releasing the films, and a “complete” edition might simply be a precursor to a more complete “definitive” edition with the aspects I’ve suggested. This new release may be worthwhile either way, since the capabilities of Blu-ray more closely match ideal theatrical conditions, but I wouldn’t expect Lucasfilm to put a cap on this money geyser just yet.

Hey, at least they’re not converting it to 3D. Oh, right.

Post-CES Palate Cleanser: Ocarina Of Tetris

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 01:41 PM PST


Visions of 3D TVs and prototype tablets clogging your brain? This little mash-up (slightly more melodic than my own take on the theme) should help clear your head, and maybe even send you running for your N64 to give this a shot. [via Reddit]

First Look: HTC EVO Shift 4G

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 01:02 PM PST


Evolution seems to be a bit less violent this time around. The just-announced HTC EVO Shift 4G attempts to build on the brand started with the much-hyped EVO 4G superphone that launched back in 2010′s summer. Instead of fordging a new path with a fresh form factor and top-tier specs, the HTC EVO Shift 4G does things a bit more low-key.

That’s not saying the Shift 4G isn’t a quality kit. It’s not. Inside the somewhat thick body is the same speedy 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7630 CPU found in the fast G2 and myTouch 4G. Up front is a 3.6-inch 800 x 480 LCD which makes the HTC Sense skin running on top of Android 2.2 look bright and crisp. Of course the Shift 4G rocks WiMAX 4G for Sprint’s network along with EVDO Rev A.

As with many mobile phones, proper reviews cannot be written overnight and seeing how we just got home from a long week at CES, what follows is more of a first-impressions. We need to see if this EVO packs a better battery life than the first model and that’s something that’s best tested with real life experiences and long-term benchmarks.

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Five Ways The Verizon iPhone Will Change The Mobile Landscape

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 09:35 AM PST

It has been a litany akin to prayer in certain circles: “Everything will be better when Verizon gets the iPhone. I’ll buy it then.” But what will a Verizon iPhone really change? Let’s think this through.

First, expect iPhone sales to surpass Droid sales for a brief period and then level off. My friend the former Hell’s Angel told me how a Verizon rep sold his niece a Droid X explaining that it was as good as the iPhone. After seeing my her uncle’s iPhone, however, she was gravely disappointed and repeated the litany to herself, albeit with some trepidation as the rumor of iPhone’s apparition on Verizon has been a long time coming. This time, however, we’re almost certain that the prayer will come true. Before you Droid-heads start flaming, accept that, at least until Honeycomb, when Verizon has the iPhone its Droid sales will dip.

Continue reading…
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