Jack Wong is a very lucky guy. Or you can say he’s very unfortunate. On one hand, his eight-year-old Meizu label — literally meaning “the captivating tribe” — has rapidly become one of the most popular brands amongst Chinese gadget lovers, yet all he’s producing right now is just the one phone: the M9. On the other hand, the now-discontinued M8 had notoriously caught unwanted attention from Apple, and even the recent M9 launch saw accusations of Meizu hiring people to stand in line. But the latter points are irrelevant for now — what we’re really interested in is how a teensy MP3 player factory managed to outpace its numerous competitors to become a reputable smartphone maker with a huge fan base. To help us understand what drives the company, we decided to pay Meizu a visit. Go on, you know where to click.
It’s been confirmed, Super Bowl XLV will not be the first one with a full HD 3D broadcast (no gimmicky 3D commercials this year either, you can put the paper glasses away) despite featuring a halftime show by James Cameron’s BFFs, the Black Eyed Peas. Still, considering what happened the last time they tried 3D at the House That Jerry Jones Built it’s probably for the best. Still, just because you don’t have one of Cowboys Stadium’s record breaking HD screens you should still enjoy the game in style. In 2011 that means going beyond just the screen, the sounds and the seats — we’ll tell you how after the break.
It’s been a few months since Leo Apotheker took the top spot at HP following the Mark Hurd debacle, and it sounds like he’s got some big plans for the company — speaking to the BBC, he says he hopes “one day people will say ‘this is as cool as HP,’ not ‘this is as cool as Apple.’” How does he plan on doing that? By speeding up ship times, for starters — unlike the year-long wait for the HP Slate, Apotheker says that “when HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship,” and that the new webOS products announced on February 9 will ship just a “few weeks” later. Speaking of the February 9 event, Apotheker said the new product line of tablets and mobile phones will have a new name that falls under the HP brand, which sounds like the Palm name is done for. (If we had to guess, it’ll be HP webOS, but that’s just a guess.)
On top of all that, the BBC calls February 9 just the “starting gun,” because Apotheker’s “secret answer” and “vision of what HP is capable of in the future” will come on March 14, where he’ll try to pull together HP’s vast product portfolio into a cohesive narrative. According to Apotheker, HP’s size is its “basis of strength,” and no other company sells everything from servers to phones the way HP does. Sounds extremely exciting — and if Apotheker can pull it off, there’s a chance we’ll remember Mark Hurd’s dalliance as the best thing that ever happened to HP.
Oh yes. After all the unbearable teasing since we unveiled the first ever photos of the PlayStation Phone, we’ve finally managed to get hold of the real deal for an in-depth preview. Honestly, we couldn’t wait any longer with this thing floating around in China; we’d otherwise have to wait until MWC, where we expect the phone to be launched as the “Xperia Play” (and we shall refer to this name henceforth). Before you pop the cork for us, do bear in mind that what we’re seeing here is subject to changes, so don’t be alarmed by any missing features or exposed cables in our preview. When you’re ready, head right past the break to find out what Sony Ericsson’s cooking up.
Yes, it’s the Dell Venue, and no, you still can’t buy one outside Hong Kong or South Korea just yet. All we can speculate is that this Android phone is facing the same manufacturing issues as its WP7 cousin, but hopefully we’re wrong. Anyhow, what matters is that we’ve finally gotten our hands on a retail unit of the Snapdragon-packing Venue. So is it worth the wait for Androiders distanced from the Far East? And will this handset be the answer for our love-hate relationship with the Streak? Head on right past the break to find out.
Oh, there’s no need to act like you’re surprised, fellow Brits. As promised, HTC’s going to dish out its latest budget Froyo Android and flagship WP7 slider to the UK next month. Just a quick recap: the “pearl white” Gratia — which is the international version of the Aria — sports a humble 600MHz processor, along with a 3.2-inch 480 x 320 LCD and a 5 megapixel camera with VGA camcorder. As for the 7 Pro, it packs the bog standard WP7 specs (1GHz Snapdragon, 8GB storage, and 5 megapixel camera with 720p recording), as well as a slide-and-tilt 3.6-inch 800 x 480 display that reveals a landscape QWERTY keyboard underneath — the tilting part still a first for WP7. Sadly, it doesn’t look like any carriers have picked up either handset yet, nor has HTC shed light on their standalone costs, but hey, patience is priceless.
As you might have heard a little while back, Windows Phone 7 is the latest smartphone OS to have joined the SlingPlayer gang, meaning WP7 fanatics like Ballmer can be couch potatoes wherever they are. Well, assuming they have data connectivity — be it 3G or WiFi — and some battery juice on their phones. For better or for worse, the latest SlingPlayer Mobile app is very much like its other flavors — same easy preparation, a familiar interface, and a similarly tear-inducing $30 price tag. There is, however, one nice addition: a new “Zoom” button on the menu page, which actually chops away a good portion of the black border around the picture. Another noteworthy difference is the more stylish interface in comparison to the Android and iOS versions, but of course, some might think otherwise.
Also on the menu page is a “Quality” button for toggling between standard video quality and high video quality. Annoyingly, said switch is always set to standard at every launch. We can’t help but to think that this is for covering up the app’s shortfall — we noticed while high quality streaming does indeed have good picture quality, the frequency of buffering increased over time. Similarly, response time to our button and gesture inputs also got longer and longer — at one point it took about 20 seconds for us to change a channel on our Freeview box, and that’s with our HTC 7 Mozart sitting on the same network as our Slingbox Pro HD! Needless to say, it took even longer over 3G. We then double-checked using our iPhone and Nexus One but failed to reproduce the same bugs. Thankfully, a simple restart of the app eased our frustration, but we expect Sling Media to actually deliver a fix soon. Anyhow, there’s a video walkthrough after the break while you wait for the update.
Look, let’s be real: our Palm tablet scoop today was awesome. For its part, though, HP wants to remind us all that it’s got other news in the pipe for its event early next month, going so far as to tease invitees that they haven’t seen the latest on Engadget.
Not to say that we won’t be trying very, very hard to ensure that our readers do see the latest right here… but point taken, HP. See you in a couple weeks.
International jet-set elite, your new phone is here! That’s right, Vertu and Ferrari have teamed up yet again to produce the phone that serves two important purposes: showing the world that you own a Ferrari, and showing the world that you don’t need a phone that does much besides receiving calls from your accountant. Essentially the recently announced Ascent refresh, this bad boy features a 2-inch QVGA sapphire crystal display and quadband 3G. The case itself is constructed from forged titanium with a matte black PVD finish and the same hand stitched leather as the interior of the car it’s inspired by. But you better be fast! Only 2,011 will be made. (Get it?) Hit the source link to order three or four for yourself.
Energizer has released a portable travel kit that finally works with your iPod Touch or iPhone; and after testing it out we can say it is extremely handy. To charge the actual batter pack you can either use an AV wall outlet or fix on the DC attachment for your automobile.
This kit also charges phones via their micro and mini USB ports. The “energi to go” battery pack will give around 14 hours of extra talk time on your device and should give you enough time to find a power outlet to charge up your device. Another useful feature is a LED indicator built-in to let its user know when the external pack is almost out of juice.
It’s been a few months since Leo Apotheker 
