Nuu Mini Key Offers The iPhone 4 A Physical Keypad
Apple might not have an iPhone 4 with a sliding QWERTY keyboard, but that doesn't mean that accessory makers out there aren't interested in capitalizing on that market. The Nuu Mini Key case for the iPhone 4 offers just that - a sliding QWERTY keyboard add-on for the iPhone 4. It'll be going up for sale before the end of the year, and you can expect to pay around $60 for it. Too bad it doesn't include a built-in battery for additional juice, eh?
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Nuu Mini Key Offers The iPhone 4 A Physical Keypad
Google Prepping iTunes Competitor, Reuters Reports
It should come as no shock that Google wants to take on the iTunes ecosystem directly. As our portable devices continue to converge, smartphones are increasingly performing music playback duties. Whereas Apple has a tightly integrated iTunes store and app package, Google has... well, nothing really. There's an Amazon music store app on most Android phones, but Google wants in on some of the hot digital audio action. A dedicated service for syncing or streaming music to Android handsets would also help close the gap (a product that Google suggested would be coming with Android 3.0, Gingerbread, back in May).
Reuters reports that Google wants to have the music store and streaming/syncing service in place for Gingerbread's launch later this year, but there's one problem: Google has yet to sign a single licensing deal with the major record labels -- though Reuters says companies are eager to partner with the Web giant. With only four months to go before 2010 comes to a close, Google will have to work quick to get the labels on board and a product out the door. With the purchase of Simplify Media earlier this year, we know the company has at least some of the streaming technology in place, but that service piggybacked off your existing music library. Building a store from the ground up is going to take a lot more work.
Google Prepping iTunes Competitor, Reuters Reports originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
3D Blu-ray Release of Avatar Will be a Timed Panasonic Exclusive [TVs]
The long-awaited 3D Blu-ray release of Avatar will arrive before 2011—but you'll need a Panasonic Viera 3D TV if you want to own it this year. More
Live from Samsung IFA 2010 press event
The room is utterly packed at Samsung's IFA presser, and it's not hard to figure out why: Samsung typically goes wild at this show, and with the Galaxy Tab leading this year's lineup, it looks like we've got another winner on our hands. Follow along after the break!
Continue reading Live from Samsung IFA 2010 press event
Live from Samsung IFA 2010 press event originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Exclusive: HTC F8181 is AT&T’s Brew MP-equipped dumbphone
We'll admit, we'd kinda figured that HTC's venture into the seedy underworld of dumbphones with the introduction of the Smart earlier this year was a non-starter and that it'd quietly fade into the night before 2010 was out, but apparently not -- at least, not if you ask AT&T. We've been slid a couple shots of a new handset from HTC for Ma Bell going by the model number F8181 (it'll have a fancy name like "Bacon," "Double Rainbow," or "Nilay Patel" by the time it launches, obviously) that runs the Brew MP platform Qualcomm has been pushing this year for the sub-smartphone category; of course, it seems to us that smartphone hardware is getting cheap enough to push through nearly every price segment, but if we can expect this to be free on contract, we suppose there might be a market here. No word on dollars or dates just yet, but naturally, we'll keep you in the loop.
Exclusive: HTC F8181 is AT&T's Brew MP-equipped dumbphone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The Future of Screens, Circa 2014 [Concepts]
The ever-impressive Swedish interface gurus The Astonishing Tribe just posted a new video envisioning what kinds of screens we'll be using in the year 2014. They stretch fluidly and share seamlessly, and I want to use them right now. More
As IFA Nears, Expect Nothing But Tablets & 3D TVs…sigh
IFA is upon us; think CES but bigger. The showfloor doesn’t open until September 3rd, but most of the news should drop this week as companies try to steal 15 minutes of fame before the flustercuck begins. And this year it’s all about Android tablets and 3D TVs. I know, exciting stuff.
You could almost feel the excitement at CES 2010 back in January. It felt like the whole CE market was on the verge of something big. Tablets and 3D TVs were the buzzwords but only the big players where showing off prototypes and first-gen models. All the mid-level consumer electronics makers had ereaders instead of tablets. But IFA should be a bit different now that the Chinese OEM factories are already pumping out slates and 3D TVs are commonplace. But you might not wanna get too attached to any of the products announced in the coming days; they might not be for you.
LG kicked off the their IFA releases with a slender, 2.9mm 31-inch OLED 3D TV. It’s supposed to be the “world’s thinnest” or something along those lines. The rest of LG’s news is predictable with 3D Blu-ray players and a full array of 3D TVs. While LG didn’t announce pricing or availability just yet, chances are they’re only for the Euroland market and not the States. Instead, we’ll get similar models with different pricing schemes.
Tablets are going to have similar story as well, but where most of the 3D TVs will have a US counterpart, many of the tablets won’t find their way over here. Instead, they’ll be sold in markets where they have a chance against the iPad with lower prices and open architecture. Of course some familiar brands will have their own tablets as well. ViewSonic announced the UK availability of its ViewPad 7 today, but failed to mention anything about a US release.
That’s going to be the trend over the next week. CE companies are staying away from the US tablet market. The iPad is simply too dominate and it honestly doesn’t make much sense for many companies to directly compete against the market leader when they can’t offer any real hardware or user experience advantages — yet.
But 3D TVs are different. Technically, 3D isn’t that big of a feature for companies to add to their models. It’s simply a different hertz mode combined with the proper firmware. It’s easy enough that 3D will be a standard feature over the coming years and the capability can already be found in most company’s high-to-mid-level sets. No doubt the vast majority of the TVs announced at IFA will be 3D. Now if there was something to watch…
Chances are there won’t be any blockbuster products announced at this year’s IFA. The iPad started the tablet revolution a few months back, but the real competitors probably aren’t ready just yet. Wait for CES 2011 for those. IFA instead should feature a more tablets than we can report, along with the standard assortment of random gadgets, HDTVs, and clock radios. Sigh.
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As IFA Nears, Expect Nothing But Tablets & 3D TVs…sigh
Death of Google Wave Clarified [Google]
Writing on the Google Wave blog yesterday, Lars Rasmussen from the Wave team spoke of its scheduled death, confirming that Wave.google.com "will be available at least through the end of the year," and that "there will be ways to export your waves before the end of the year." Those 28,000-odd fans of the "Save Google Wave" site can sleep (slightly) easier tonight, knowing they'll be able to export their content elsewhere. [Google Wave blog] More
If You’re a Future Time Traveler Stuck in 2010, Here’s the NYC Loft For You [Architecture]
It's hard to believe that this loft exists in Manhattan, the city in which I currently live, in 2010, the year in which I currently exist, but the space age pad is very real, and OH MY GOD this bookshelf: More
There Will Be No iPad Killers This Year
Shanzai performed some decidedly sober analysis of the tablet market and came away with one simple conclusion: no matter how much LG boasts, no matter how much Samsung leaks, no matter how many Notion Inks ship, the tablet market is sewn up this year. Why? Because no one will have product in pipeline for the holidays and thus the only things selling in the slate form factor will be the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, in that order, and you’ll note that two of those items aren’t tablets.
First, here is Shanzai’s money shot:
For a single product to be a true iPad killer it would have to achieve at least one if not all of the following goals.
1. Sell more units than the iPad
2. Have better performance than the iPad
3. Create a bigger oooh, aaaah and buzz than the iPadTime constraints alone will prevent any of these products from selling more units than the iPad in 2010 (even if they were purchasable tomorrow) and most of them won’t even be available for purchase this year.
Shanzai is at the epicenter of the junk tablet world being based in Shenzhen where manufacturers are flogging all sorts of tablets. I trust them and I trust what I’m seeing in the market on this.
Contrary to popular belief, I’m not against competition in the tablet space. What I am against is Balkanization. The iPad is successful because it is a monolithic entity. It has a rich ecosystem of content and applications and it works well. My fear, then, is a plethora of tablets that run various and sundry versions of Android or a stripped-down Windows 7, that offer little in the way of productivity or entertainment benefits, and, in the end, will follow the trajectory of the much-vaunted netbook – rash exuberance followed by virulent justifications for purchase and then slow acceptance that the form-factor is a dud. I was bearish on netbooks for the same reason I’m bearish on tablets and cheap ereaders: companies have, for too long, rushed garbage to market and we’ve sucked it up.
Hardware companies are in the business of releasing hardware. To not release hardware is anathema to their business model. Therefore, they will release garbage until they potentially hit a winner and then copy that over and over again until the next thing comes along (see Motorola RAZR). In this way, most hardware companies are less about being creative than about aping their competitors.
I don’t trust most manufacturers to produce good products. I trust most manufacturers, including Apple, to produce “good enough” products.
That is not to say there are not good tablets out there or coming. The Dell Streak is really nice, which is kind of like saying it has a great personality. It’s good enough, and I don’t think that’s enough to propel sales and support the create a tablet ecosystem worth a damn.
The top it off, manufacturers are currently quite skittish. They’ve realized they can’t release garbage. Creating a good tablet is hard and they want Google and Android (and probably Chrome OS) to do most of the heavy lifting for them. Burned by years of failed, homebrew OSes (TouchWiz, anyone?) manufacturers want Google to take the blame when the OS is junk.
Why am I so down on the production of product? After all, the gadget hound in me should revel in more devices, right? Wrong. Of late manufacturers have been able to do little more than push product out the door and every product that isn’t used ends up in a landfill. We don’t need resources spent on “iPad killers.” We need resources spent on good devices for business and leisure. In many cases, these devices already exist – they’re called thin-and-light laptops and media players. There is room in the world for a good tablet, but no one tablet will be “good” this year. They will be acceptable at best. I’ll be the first to lead the parade if someone comes up with a good tablet idea, but to push good money and plastic after bad ideas is an affront to us as consumers of technology.
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There Will Be No iPad Killers This Year