Huawei are another company going in for Android in a big way, already behind several of the operator-branded budget smartphones on the market and hoping to follow up that success with the new Ideos U8150, a Froyo 2.2 smartphone with what’s tipped to be a roughly $150 unsubsidized price tag. As well as playing with the U8150 at IFA 2010 today, we also grabbed a fleeting moment with the Ideos S7 tablet and a (non-functional) Huawei prototype for their idea of a potential gaming MID.
Video demos after the cut
The U8150 is largely what you’d expect from a budget Android smartphone – a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera and relatively bulky chassis – though there are some moderately unusual features. The touchscreen is capacitive, not resistive, and there’s 3G mobile hotspot functionality for up to eight WiFi-connected devices. Build quality is fair, too, with only the D-pad being a little less than responsive, and there was no apparent sluggishness despite the absence of a cutting-edge 1GHz processor.
Huawei Ideos U8150 hands-on:
As for the Ideos S7, unfortunately that had no network connection and so we couldn’t really put the internet tablet through its paces. However, responsiveness of the homescreen alone was mixed, with navigation tabs sometimes requiring two or three taps in order to respond. Had Huawei managed to get the S7 to the market back when it was first announced in May, they could have stood a chance, but with Froyo rivals like the ViewSonic ViewPad 7 and the larger Toshiba Folio 100 fast approaching, it’s hard to see how the Ideos S7 could carve a niche.
Huawei Ideos S7 Tablet hands-on:
Finally, Huawei were showing the Hx, a concept “media terminal” which would supposedly have a modular gamepad/keypad/kickstand attachment. Seeing as it was non-functional, Huawei didn’t have to actually worry about fitting in all the necessary components – it’s as slim and slick as any concept design – but we’d like to see the company turn some of the budget imagination shown in the U8150 to a working model with a similarly low price.
A company like iHome is probably supposed to showcase something that Apple shows off only days before. The company makes a killing off creating some of the best accessories for Apple’s line-up of mobile media devices, so why shouldn’t they showcase a brand new portable speaker, featuring Apple’s just-announced AirPlay feature?
This is the first speaker to feature the wireless media feature. The new feature will be made ready by the release of iOS 4.2, which is set to hit the iPad, and other iDevices, in November this year. As you can tell from the picture, it’s not a complicated piece of equipment. A single-piece design, the speaker is specifically manufactured to accept audio input over a WiFi connection. What you’ll also notice is that the iHome speaker doesn’t have a dock of any kind. It’s meant to proactively promote the WiFi streaming, from your iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone.
It also has a built-in battery, so that means that at particular points in the day, like when you’re not charging it some how, it will be completely wireless. That’s probably where that “portable” aspect comes from. Unfortunately, iHome isn’t saying when the speaker will be released, or how much it will cost. They do say that it will be ready to buy by the holidays, though, so that’s good. It probably won’t be the cheapest speaker out there, but if you’re looking for that wireless home, this is one step towards that goal.
Though Archos’ larger internet tablets grabbed our attention first, we spent some time playing with the French company’s three smaller models too: the Archos 28, 32 and 43. Ranging in size from 2.8-inches QVGA, through 3.2-inches WQVGA, to 4.3-inches FWVGA, the three palm-sized tablets are Archos’ attempt at hybrid PMP/MIDs, hitting price points from $99.99 to $149.99 to $199.
All three support a broad range of video codecs (AVI, MP4, MOV, 3GP, MPG, PS, TS, VOB, MKV, FLV, RM, RMVB, ASF, WMV) and will run Android 2.2 Froyo when they launch in the next couple of months (Archos’ demo units were loaded with a 2.1 test build). The Archos 28 and 32 both use an 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor and the 43 gets a 1GHz version; all have WiFi b/g/n plus USB Host and Bluetooth 2.1. None have Android Market access, instead using Archos’ own AppsLib download store.
The baby of the bunch, the Archos 28, has 4GB or 8GB of flash storage, and feels a lot like a cheap Android smartphone. The display is pixelated and, despite the long list of codecs, the PMP lends itself more to audio playback. Responsiveness is fair, and Archos’ new media app looks good, but we can’t see buyers picking this over a comparably priced iPod.
As for the Archos 32, that’s got 8GB of storage as standard and comes with a 720p-capable camera. The bigger display is low-resolution for its size, however, which undermines browsing and video playback, and makes for a tricky typing experience with the onscreen keyboard.
Archos 43 hands-on:
Of the three, the Archos 43 is the most successful, though the company’s choice of a resistive rather than capacitive touchscreen may lose them sales in comparison to the iPod touch. Still, you get a bigger display than the iPod, larger than most smartphones in fact, and the functionality is packed in too: 720p video recording and playback (with a camera on the back), an HDMI output, up to 16GB of storage (with a microSD slot) and the same processor as in the bigger Archos 70 and 101. That keeps things moving swiftly, and it’s actually a decent browsing experience (and will be improved with Froyo and its Flash Player 10.1 support).
Stealth isn’t a stranger to the tech community, so when they go ahead and introduce something like their brand new rugged keyboard, we hope that they’re not immediately scoffed at and ignored. Even if it is pretty thick, and, well, rugged. Luckily for those who are curious enough to check it out, the new USB keyboard does feature plenty of features, and a very unique optical trackball mouse, right up there near the right corner.
First, we do have to say that that trackball looks like a crystal ball. Now that we’ve got that off our chest, we can move on to the other features. First and foremost, and what you’ll probably notice right off the bat, is the fact that the keyboard is perfectly housed within a nice, stainless steel package. The other thing you’ll notice, are those red keys. They happen to be NVIS-compliant red adjustable backlighting.
But, what about the protection specifications, right? How “rugged” is this “rugged” USB keyboard? Well, it’s NEMA 4, 4X, and IP65 specified, which means (at least in the latter part) that the keyboard will be able to handle dust, and water being ejected at it in powerful jets. We’re not exactly sure when you’ll have your keyboard around powerful jets of water, but hey, at least it will be protected. The keyboard is available right now if you’re interested, and it will cost you $695. Not cheap, is it?
When Steve Jobs stood on stage just a couple of days ago, and announced the upcoming iOS 4.2 update, which is making its way to the iPad in November of this year, one of the features he was proud to show off was wireless printing. Considering the tablet device was missing the feature from the get-go, it’s about time it’s making an appearance in the native Operating System. But, what if you don’t want to wait until November? Then hopefully you’ve got yourself a Pogoplug, because thanks to the app that they’ve just released into the App Store, you can get yourself some iPad printing right now.
Pogoplug officially announced the application, along with its release into the App Store, today. The application itself is a full-featured app, bringing with it all the functionality that you might expect from anything Pogoplug-related. Users can now access and share media, files, and whatever else they’ve got saved right from their Pogoplug-attached storage device. You can turn your 16, 32, or 64GB iPad into a memory juggernaut — the ability to hold media and files into the cloud, and the fact you can stream them from the iPad itself, means that you’ll now have access to Terabytes of storage.
And, as we mentioned above, the Pogoplug iPad will let you wirelessly print. And not just documents, either, but pictures can also be printed. You can view and edit documents as well, right from within the iPad app. And, with the ability to play music by artist, genre, or albums — you can even find songs just by album cover art. It will also show you what’s Now Playing, just to make everything easier for you. You can get the application right now from the iPad App Store. And the best part? It’s totally free.
Press Release
Pogoplug Comes to the iPad
iPad Users Can Now Access Own Personal Cloud Services, Including Printing
Today the Pogoplug iPad app is available for free in the iTunes App Store! The new app offers full Pogoplug functionality on the Apple iPad.
Users can now access and share their files or stream their media from their Pogoplug-attached storage, taking full advantage of the multi-touch surface, immersive high-resolution screen and the extreme ease of portability of the iPad.
Pogoplug is a multi-media sharing device that web-enables up to four USB hard drives, allowing upload and making content accessible to the user both locally or via the Internet.
With the new iPad app, users can eliminate storage limits on their Apple tablet device. In conjunction with a Pogoplug and a large hard drive, the iPad’s effective storage can go from the standard 16, 32, or 64GB to a number of Terabytes. With the Pogoplug iPad App, users can also:
-Print from the iPad: The Pogoplug allows printing pictures, documents, emails and more, straight from the iPad
-Browse and open files, including MS Office docs and PDF files: View and edit docs from your iPad
-Watch movies: stream your movies from your Pogoplug to your iPad
-Play music seamlessly from your iPad: Plays entire genres/artists/albums; shows now playing information and finds songs by album cover art
Share files straight from your iPad:
Share videos, pictures, docs and more to family, friends, and coworkers using the my.pogoplug.com site
The Pogoplug iPad App is available today for free in the iTunes App store. There are also iPhone and Android Apps for Pogoplug. The Pogoplug is available at retail locations such as Frys and Amazon for $99
Sometimes we sit around at Engadget HQ and do informal, anonymous surveys of our favorite gadgets of all time. Cell phones are unsurprisingly always at the top of the list. But the bow and arrow always comes in a close second -- call us closet traditionalists. Anyway, seems like a gang in Sao Paulo trained a 17-year-old to shoot arrows with cell phones strapped to the tips over a prison wall to communications-starved inmates. Apparently the misguided teen got at least four phones in before he fired one at a cop's back. Whoops! Still, dang. We much prefer this practicality of this old-new mashup to, say, steampunk flash drives.
There’s an emulator of every kind on the Android platform right now. Ranging from old-school consoles, to newer (yet still old-school) models, you can find all types of games to play while you’re on the move, without having to get your hands on the old-time console. The Nintendo emulators seem to be some of the most popular, and considering the titles available, that’s not a surprise at all. But, while playing your favorite games of yester-year may be fun, sometimes playing with your fingers blocking the screen isn’t (if you don’t have a physical keyboard, of course). So what would be better? How about the original Nintendo Entertainment System’s controller? Yeah, we thought it might.
Thanks to a promising hacker out there, we can now safely say that it is indeed possible to play your favorite Nintendo games, through your emulator, on your Android-based device. Well, if that Android device happens to be the HTC EVO 4G for Sprint, that is. The specifics mean you need to plug the NES controller into a Sparkfun prototyping shield, which has a BlueSMIRF Bluetooth modem attached to it. Courtesy of the Arduino programming language therein, the controller (connected to that Bluetooth modem) will seamlessly playing nice with the Android device.
There’s a few technical steps needed to get the process finished, but considering the end result, it would be worth it, right? As of right now, the hacker’s project is still in Alpha mode, but if you really want to give this a shot, you can head on through this link, and find the instructions you need. But, enough of us talking about it — check out the video below.
Archos weren’t short of new internet tablets for IFA 2010, though it’s their Archos 70 and Archos 101 which stood out when we stopped by their booth earlier today. Measuring in at 7- and 10-inches respectively, the two Android slates (running 2.1 right now, but set to launch with 2.2 Froyo) are certainly thin and reasonable feature-packed, each toting a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 3D OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator and WiFi b/g/n.
Video demo after the cut
Both use capacitive touchscreens – 800 x 480 resolution on the Archos 70, 1024 x 600 on the Archos 101 – with multitouch (that proved more than a little glitchy in the photo viewer app) and have HDMI outputs for squirting 720p video out to your HDTV. As you’d expect from Archos, there’s plenty of codec support too, including AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, WMV, MPG, PS, TS, VOB, FLV, RM, RMVB, ASF and 3GP.
Archos 101 and 7 Internet Tablets hands-on:
The Archos 101 is an interesting beast; at 12mm thick, it’s very flat and, at 480 grams, surprising light, though the French company’s choice of plastics mean it doesn’t feel cheap. It also doesn’t flex as you hold it, and there’s a two-position kickstand on the back: first, it props it up for video viewing; second, it lowers the angle for more comfortable on-screen typing. Archos demonstrated a number of games on the slate, and the CPU could certainly keep up, using the accelerometer to navigate in racing titles.
As for the Archos 70, that’s a more pocketable model, measuring in at 201 x 114 x 10/14 mm (the 250GB hard-drive unit is thicker than the 8GB flash version); that makes it longer but narrower than the Galaxy Tab, with the Samsung slate slotting in-between in terms of thickness. The touchscreen felt more responsive than that of the Archos 101, though things like webpage rendering and pinch-zooming weren’t as slick as on the Samsung. The Archos 70 lacks the two-stage kickstand, too, only having a single arm for video viewing. Unfortunately, there’s no rear camera on either model, only the VGA webcam.
Unfortunately, Archos has decided to abandon the multimedia docks of previous models, and there’s no DVR dock option for either. That, on early internet tablets, allowed for direct audio and video recording straight to the slate’s internal storage, but from now on you’ll have to sideload content.
Given the pre-production hardware and non-Froyo software, we won’t draw too many conclusions about the Archos 101 or the Archos 70, but we have to say the price tags for each slate are encouraging. The French company expects the Archos 101 to retail for $299.99 when it lands midway through next month, while the Archos 70 will be $274.99. That certainly keeps them competitive against the other Android tablets we’ve seen at IFA 2010 this week.
When robots take over the world, it’s always because a certain robot was created to help mankind, or at least a facet of mankind’s life. That’s what it seems like, anyway, in those Sci-Fi movies that seem more like future told than fictional creation. In the case of Carnegie Mellon’s modular snake robots, which are being create to be helpful to the human race, we’re wondering if creating a(n) (evil) snake robot that can climb up our torso and peer into our soul is a good idea.
In truth, the modular robotic snakes are being created out of Carnegie Mellon’s Biorobotics Lab, and they’re part of a dedicated program that’s completely focused on manufacturing robotic snakes. Making them better. Making them faster, and making them ultimately more useful. Or, as some may think, better equipped to roll over the world. The video below will show that while some can “slink” forward like a snake, others move more like a rolling Sidewinder. That is, until they find your leg, and climb you.
The developers, researchers, and scientists behind the modular robotic snakes say that their inventions will be able to help in search and rescue operations, inspect bridges, and get to other small places that we currently have a hard time getting into. Like we said: it always starts with the best intentions. Check out the videos below, and let us know what you think in the comments.
You may not want to be seen rocking one of these at your next gig, but if you've been trying to juggle your phone and guitar while using some of the endless number of apps out there, you might just want to consider this so-called Guitar Sidekick from Castiv. As you can see, there's not a whole lot to it -- just a bracket that attaches to the neck of your guitar, and an adjustable mechanism that will accommodate just about any smartphone (or even a PSP). No word on an iPad version just yet, but you can grab this one right now for $30.
