March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
Pentax has gone large with the new 645D medium-format DSLR. The 40MP monster has a 33×44mm sensor to fit all those pixels comfortably, and round the back has the DSLR standard-sized screen, a three-inch, 921,000 dot LCD. For a camera of this type the 645D is cheap, at ¥850,000, or $9,400.
Pentax has traditionally offered good cameras at low prices, and the original Pentax 645 film cameras were good entry level bodies for medium-format shooters (although second-hand TLRs were the cheapest way to go). The new 645D looks a lot like the old film body, a cube-shaped box with the protruding handle. In fact, all your old 645 lenses should work.
This camera is about studio work, and you won’t find fancy face-recognition gimmicks. There are still some unusual features, though. Built-in HDR, the choice of SD cards (dual slots) over Compact Flash and an in-camera HDR mode which will combine three images into one.
A size comparison of the 645D sensor next to a full-frame 35mm sensor
The exposure modes are great, and I want them in my camera. Alongside the usual shutter and aperture-priority modes, you get sensitivity-priority mode, which lets you set the ISO and the camera picks shutter speed and aperture. Also included is a shutter/aperture-priority mode, which lets you pick the shutter and aperture settings and tweaks the ISO to fit. Pentax is finally [...]
March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
If there’s one thing we’re pretty sure Windows Phone 7 Series will be worse at than its Windows Mobile precursor it’s in the running of various and sundry other operating systems. We’ve seen Android running on seemingly every WinMo handset ever created and more recently Ubuntu has been receiving the mobile treatment. Last month it was on an Xperia X1, now an HTC Touch Pro2 is getting a taste. A modder who goes by the handle sebbo90 is the one responsible for this, running basically the same technique as used earlier on the X1. It looks quite easy: just download a 200MB zip, extract it to your phone, then run an exe within. A few moments later you’ll be in open source heaven, and, from what we can tell looking at the video below, it works remarkably well. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to hit up eBay to find a used handset and get hacking.
Continue reading Ubuntu hits HTC’s Touch Pro2, is any Windows Mobile handset safe? (video)
Ubuntu hits HTC’s Touch Pro2, is any Windows Mobile handset safe? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / 1 Comment
Great news for bikers: the nerds at Google have added bicycling directions to Google Maps. It appears right alongside the other options, walking, car or public transit. It doesn’t work everywhere yet – I tried to find a way from my apartment to the local bike-polo court and Google Maps just told me it couldn’t calculate a route.
In San Francisco, though, everything is fine. I plugged in Wired HQ and the nearby Moscone center and got a straight three-block route. Too easy? Fine, what about Wired to Pier 39, tourist central (and home of a surprisingly good crab restaurant)? This, too, shows the same route for bikes and cars, but the alternative routes presented below are different. I guess that you get the most efficient route first, which is usually the same as you’d take in a car, with slightly more pleasant alternatives.
The service is, of course, in beta, and Google is soliciting feedback on the suitability of roads for biking. You can of course still do it the old-fashioned (and somewhat quicker) way: use the walking directions, which ignore road-rules and one-way streets.
Google Maps [Google]
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March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
We have some news on the app store that Meizu announced for the M8 a while back. The official name is apparently MStore, and it is indeed open for business with its first paid app, Mr. Jelly, going for about 29 cents (we believe it’s a productivity tool for managing your, um, jelly). If that sounds familiar, it is — the game is a port of an iPhone App Store gem. Regardless of its somewhat KIRFish nature, we do wish Meizu (its app developers) all the best. Now, when are we going to get Super Monkey Ball for this thing?
Meizu MStore open for business, Mr. Jelly on sale now for 29 cents originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
Quirky’s new crowd-sourced widget, the Cloak, is a rather clever and good-looking iPad case. The rubber and plastic construction goes with the already established book-cover metaphor, and adds a few twists.
We predict a huge market for iPad cases. That may seem obvious, given the amount of protective sheathes out there for iPods and iPhones, but the iPad seem to need a little more coddling than these smaller machines. I’m a strictly commando kind of guy: I slip my gadgets bareback into my pocket, but even I will be buying or making an iPad case. First, it’s bigger, and you can’t reserve a key-free jeans pocket for it. Second, this device begs to be propped up, either for watching movies, typing or just listening to podcasts in the kitchen.
The Cloak’s front cover flips around to the back to prop the iPad up in landscape mode, and when upright, the inside of the same front-cover has a u-shaped plastic kick stand that flips out. The main hinge actually has click-stops, controlled by a button on the spine, which lets you set an angle without the iPad slipping and falling flat.
That’s quite a lot to pack into one case, and the price isn’t bad, either, at $36. As always, you commit to order, the productions lines spin-up when the minimum order is reached and you are charged when the product ships. Hopefully you’ll have yours in time for the April 3rd iPad release.
Cloak [Quirky. Thanks, Tiffany!]
See Also:
First iPad Stand [...]
March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
While Motorola’s vanilla-Android Droid has become the most recognizable Android device on the market — thanks in part to a bombastic ad campaign — Motorola’s primary focus has been on its own custom Blur UI. At least, if quantity of devices are any indication. Hitting Verizon just as the Blur-powered Backflip heads to AT&T, the new Motorola Devour is an odd cross section of the “consumery” Backflip and Cliq, and the high-end Droid slider. We’ve been playing with the phone for a week or so (you can find our initial hands-on, video walkthrough and unboxing here), so follow us after the break as we walk through the triumphs and tragedy that is this device.
Continue reading Motorola Devour review
Motorola Devour review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
We just sat down with Palm here at GDC and fished out a few more details on the PDK beta front. Firstly, and most interestingly, Palm has confirmed that the PDK now works on all of its handsets (instead of just the Pre and Pre Plus), which means Pixi buyers can stop hating themselves pretty soon. Apparently the level of performance degradation should be comparable iPhone 3G vs. 3GS, which doesn’t sound too horrible. This is functionality that wasn’t available even to Palm’s early PDK partners like EA and Gameloft, so we should be seeing versions of existing games make the jump to the Pixi when the time for PDK beta-developed apps to hit the Palm App Catalog. When will that time come, you ask? The “middle of the year,” or “a few months,” whichever sounds more promising to you. Palm’s not saying whether this new era for the App Catalog (anyone being able to release PDK apps, and those apps working on the Pre and the Pixi) will accompany a full-on webOS update, but it seems logical to us.
On a more technical front, we’re told the PDK supports the Linux standard SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) to ease in porting and development (Unreal for Linux runs using SDL, for instance), and that developers could even build apps like an audio processor that rely on PDK components but don’t show up in the UI at all, or OpenGL-empowered things that aren’t necessarily games or in 3D. Also, existing developers [...]
March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
Guys, guys, look: unboxing is our job. We know it’s fun and we know it brings eyeballs to your site, but we think your customers would be better served if you just concentrated on shipping the mighty X10 rather than teasing them with a product they can’t yet have. Apparently, Sony Ericsson just took delivery of its first commercial samples of its inaugural Android device, so to kick off the occasion in style, a couple staffers have unboxed them in glorious high definition for us — both the white and black versions, mind you — using none other than their own Vivaz to maximize the meta factor. There’s not a lot to the video, really (even the captions are disappointingly accurate), but if you’re truly desperate for X10 eye candy as you wait for the retail launch, it’s worth a gander. Full video after the break.
Continue reading Sony Ericsson X10 unboxed by — who else — Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson X10 unboxed by — who else — Sony Ericsson originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
Whether you covet your Irish friends’ ability to make in-flight cellphone calls or value your aerial naps too much to care either way, you must admit that the promise of in-flight SMS, MMS, voice messaging, and text email is tantalizing. To this end, the kids at Asiq have announced a little something called the Bluetooth Access Point. This device uses the aircraft’s satellite link to send data to your respective carrier, eliminates the need for a picocell, and boasts up to 3Mb/s speeds. Now let’s see how quickly this bad boy gets approved for use! (Or not.) PR after the break.
Continue reading Bluetooth Access Point brings text messaging, voice messaging, email to the friendly skies
Bluetooth Access Point brings text messaging, voice messaging, email to the friendly skies originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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March 10th, 2010 / Gadget-News / gadgets / No Comments
Alright, we’re going to be straight with you: you’re not going to like this. See, Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0, but wouldn’t let us nab a single photo or video of the process. What we can tell you is that they exist, they work, and at least Microsoft tossed us some screenshots to wave in your face. The two titles are The Harvest (pictured), a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks, a less impressive one-on-one sword fighting Facebook game by Gravity Bear that’s being ported over. We didn’t get to see any full motion 3D camera moves, since Battle Punks is just composed of two characters duking it out, and The Harvest has a fixed camera and some pre-rendered elements, but there were indeed some real polygons being crunched before our eyes at a full resolution (no upscaling), alpha-rev, choppy framerate, and we were assured that full screen 3D was possible. We also got to see one of our first glimpses of universal notifications on Windows Phone: Achievement unlock notices (also pictured above) that slide down from the top of the screen in a black bar and then slide back, and can’t be interacted with. Follow after the break for some more nerdy details, along with a video of VisualStudio in action, and screenshots of the two games [...]
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