Gadgety News

Easy tiger!

Seems that Canon couldn’t wait and started before the ‘B’ in ‘Bang!’

They’ve only gone and unveiled a plethora of HD Cams ahead of the CES tomorrow.

The camera company has slipped out no less than five brand spanking new HD VIXIA ‘corders with specs and all.

They read pretty impressive too - upping megapixels and memory.

You can get all the nitty gritty via the link at the bottom.

Head Prefects are the HVS10 and S100 (pictured), who seem to be able to master all with full HD 8.59 megapixel CMOS sensors, face detection tech and 8MP still shots so you don’t have to drag your compact with you.

The difference between these two swots is that as the S10 packs 32GB of internal flash memory, the 100 comes sans storage, so you’ll have to shell out for an SD card of your own.

If you like your long distance wild-life shooting, or you’re a celeb stalker (same difference aint it?) then the HF20 and HF200 will be more up your ally.

They both come equipped with Canon’s 15x HD Video Lens.  

The HV40 HDV is ideal for film making purists as it shoots at a native 24 frames per second, just like those Hollywood movie-maker types use.

The only things that Canon hasn’t let out of the bag prematurely is the pricing but I’m guessing that and the availabilty will be left for the CES.

Canon Press Release

While all here has an idea of Sony’s new netbook’s specs the price was still somewhat of a mystery.

I knew that this mini Vaio wasn’t going to be a budget buy but new leaks put the Vaio Pocket somewhere around the €700 mark (which at the moment is £700 near enough)!

That price point would give it the title of one of the most expensive netbooks on the market.

The leaks confirm the 1.33 GHz processor, and specifies it as a Z250 Atom, as well as the ultra-sharp 1600×768 8-inch screen.

It’ll be packing 2GB of memory as well as GPS, which suggests it’ll at least have an option of Windows Vista.

Please keep in mind that none of these facts are rock solid yet and we all have to reserve judgment until Sony releases the official announcement.

UMPC Portal

While most of the hype surrounding Voodoo right now is all about the Firebird gaming tower - but that source of portable computing news, LAPTOP, have been treated to a different rig from the HP Voodoo camp and it is right up my street!

I heart gaming laptops!!

But first a little caveat - this is only a prototype - apparently.

Righty, now I’ve gotten that out of the way, say yum to the Firefly!

The Firefly has a 17″ screen and a secondary 4.3-inch 800 x 480 display sitting beneath the main screen and weighs in at a just about luggable 13 pounds (around the same as my Novatech machine I think).

Under the hood is that Voodoo DNA’d niceness.  It sports a 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme CPU, 4GB of RAM, two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs and a 250GB HDD.

It is also rocking a multitouch trackpad and a keyboard with customisable backlighting.

No benchmarks were allowed, but Far Cry 2 ran “silky smooth” even with details maxed.

For the full low-down and inside scoop click the link below good people

Laptop Mag

Yet another iPod dock…….and I’ve known about this one for about a month or so thanks to the FCC and their usual leakage

So why should I be writing about this new one from ASUS - just because the AIR3 sound system has gone all official like?

Well, there’s that interet radio that it comes with - that’s pretty cool right?

ASUS is also bigging up the AIR3’s audio prowess, noting that it utilises a Texas Instruments Class-D amplifier and HDSS (High Definition Sound Standard) certified drivers.

The unit is also packing S-Video / composite video outs and supports UPnP (Universal Plug n Play) sharing via 802.11b/g WiFi or Ethernet.

Don’t forget about the useful auxiliary input and built-in weather forecast display that pulls down updates from the interwebsphere.

ASUS state that this dock/radio thingy is fully compatible with all iPods and iPhones except the little Shuffle.

In typical form ASUS fails to mention price or release date - if it is priced realistically then I think they’re on to a winner

Asus AIR3 Specs

Sony Style has leaked some specs of the netbook which is said to be Sony’s big reveal at CES 2009.

Its name is Pocket!

The pic is probably just a mere placeholder but the Pocket is said to soon become the smallest notebook in Sony’s line.

It will be rocking an unspecified 1.33Ghz processor which will likely be an Atom.

More groovy is its “razor-sharp” 1600×768 pixel screen on an 8-inch LED backlit screen  (those that can do maths will conclude that the figure is almost too many pixels per square inch).

It’ll also have the option of either a 60GB HDD or, the quirky offering, a 128GB SSD module.

IS this the first notebook where the optional SSD is larger than the traditional drives?

Battery and pricing are filled in as “X’ and “NaN”, still yet to be determined.  I’m thinking “not cheap” as the price point.

Colour-ways are red, silver-painted plastic (MMmmMmmm - not!) and black.

Sony Style via Sony Insider

Now, this is something that I don’t admit regularly but here is a MID that actually is worth salivating over,

With this Mobile Internet Device BenQ seems to have nailed almost everything on their MID S6.

They have crammed in an 800MHz Intel Atom CPU, 4.8-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display, 512MB DDR2 RAM, a 2GB SSD, Bluetooth 2.0 / WiFi, microSD slot, inbuilt “G-Senser” for “direct touch and free movement to surf on internet,” and support for a myriad of multimedia file formats.

I think it’s a pretty cool looking thing and now that they’ve settled on simply calling it the MID S6 instead of Aries2 I await for further information

I’m getting quite a few questions after my news piece about LG’s qwerty text-a-phone so here’s a closer look and a full spec list just for you

The black and blue front fascia and disjointed D-Pad made up of five round buttons is kinda funky.

Two more round buttons map to the softmenus.

The buttons are kinda small but their raised shaping should mean that they are still quite usable.

Two raised pressure pads give you Call and End features, while two more provide a Cancel function and link to a dial pad

The dial pad is pretty cool.

Once called up, the screen suddenly becomes touch sensitive complete with haptic feedback. It works really well, but the screen is only touch sensitive for this one application.

Nestled away inside the phone is the main selling point - the full QWERTY pad!!

The keyboard keeps the blue vibe.

The embedded number pad keys sit against a grey background as does a diamond-shaped arrangement of embedded cursor keys. The OK and softmenu keys are grey, the Fn key golden, but the remainder of the keys are blue.

When you slide the keyboard out the screen flips into wide format and you are ready to type.

The keys are well spaced but they could be better raised from the backplate.

The camera is a 2mp job but without flash or autofocus.

Here’s the spec sheet:

General 2G Network GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900

Size

• Dimensions 101.5 x 51 x 16.8 mm
• Weight 108 g

Display

• Type TFT, 256K colors
• Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches

- Touch Screen Dialling
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- Downloadable themes
Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3

Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Photocall
Call records 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls

Card slot microSD (TransFlash) up to 4GB
- 15 MB shared memory

Data GPRS Yes
HSCSD No
EDGE Yes
3G No
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port No
USB Yes, v2.0

Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, IM

Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML

Games Yes

Colors Black and red, Black and silver, White and soft pink, Titanium and bright blue

Camera 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels, video

- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3 player
- MPEG-4 player
- FM radio
- Photo/video editor
- Built-in handsfree
- Voice memo

Those people over at Phone Report have listed all the specs of the upcoming HTC Dream and even popped their own comments afterwards.

They also seem to have got artist Neo Carlo Magno, from Neoworxspace to work on a ‘perhaps this is what it will look like’ rendering - looks kinda tasty if you ask me

Here are the highlights but for the full dirt go right over to Phone Report

Ok, so in no particular order……….

• 64MB Internal RAM - Only?
• 128MB Internal ROM - Also very low
• 1GB MicroSD card - Very low
• 5 Row QWERTY keypad - We’ll see how that works
• Trackball - Nice
• Dedicated camera button - Needed
• 3.1MP camera (no flash) 2048 x 1536 - Not a breakthrough camera
• Video playback files - H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and Codec 3GP - It better have that
• Audio playback files - MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, REAL AUDIO, OGG - Nice
• HTTP, WAP Push, xHTML - the usual
• SMS and MMS support (Take that Apple!) - needed
• POP, IMAP, and SMTP, AOL, and GMAIL email - needed
• 3G - which bands?
• 802.11b & 802.11g - nice
• UMTS (1,4), HSDPA, SUPL  - WiFi?
• Screen size is 3.17? with HVGA (480  x 320) - nice
• Handset 117 x 55 x 16mm - we’ll see
• Downloadable content via Android Marketplace - nice
• Google Streetview with built-in compass - well done, where’s the GPS?

There has been a rumbling about the specs of the rumoured USB 3.0 controllers.

Some have said that Intel have been dragging their feet to give themselves more time to design for it.

Today they have set the record straight saying the specs are now available and would be released for free, as planned.

As Intel’s ‘Fall Developer Forum’ is around the corner I’m guessing that USB 3.0 will make its debut there.

600MB/s transfer speeds for the win people!!!!