Hardware Laptop

Filed under: Cellphones

Word on the street (and by “street” we mean mysterious corners of the internet) is that Garmin’s upcoming Nuvifone will actually be manufactured by the ubiquitous and varied ASUS. According to “industry sources” — that rare breed never seen yet often heard — the two companies have been working on the device for the past two years, with the computer-maker lending a hand in the RF technology department amongst other things. The sources further claim that the Nuvifone will be the first in a series handsets, with plans to roll out new models through 2010… the year we make contact. More on this breathtaking bit of news as we get it, faithful readers.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Chalk this one up as just another rumor for now, but whispers around the Chinese web have it that China Unicom could be netting Apple’s latest handset (yeah, that 3G one) this August. If you’ll recall, Steve had issues in the past getting Chinese carriers to buy into his demanding revenue sharing model, but now that those days are gone, we suspect talks may go a little smoother. And c’mon, Apple didn’t add in Chinese character recognition for kicks and giggles, now did it? As of now, China Mobile has yet to make a peep on the rumblings, but we’ve only got a few months before finding out either way.

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Filed under: Laptops

It looks like the current ranks of green PCs are soon going to have some pretty daunting competition for the low-power throne, with upstart CherryPal announcing that it’s about to bust out a cloud computer that’ll consume a mere two watts of power. To hit that mark, CherryPal opted for Freescale’s new 400MHz MPC5121e mobileGT processor, and eliminated all the moving parts normally found in a PC, which means no optical drive and 4GB of NAND flash memory in place of a regular hard drive. Otherwise, you can expect to get 256MB of RAM, built-in 802.11b/g WiFi, two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and a VGA port, with a “tweaked version” of Debian apparently serving as the OS. No word on a price just yet, but the company is boldly proclaiming that it’ll be the “most affordable on the market.”
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Filed under: Gaming

We’d already seen some hints that Nintendo was working on adding USB devices to the Wii, which seemed to open up the possibility of USB storage devices, but Nintendo Europe’s Laurent Fischer has now come out and dampened that notion while also opening up another option. As GamesIndustry.biz reports, he says that Nintendo is in fact “working on a solution” to the Wii storage issue, but that there are “definitely there’s no plan to issue hardware,” such as an external hard drive. As Joystiq notes, that would seem to indicate that the big N is working on a firmware update to allow downloaded games to be played directly off an SD card, but we obviously won’t know for sure until the company decides to let a few more details slip, which Joystiq speculates could maybe, possibly come at the fast-approaching E3.
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Filed under: Displays

Ah, the onset of InfoComm. Getting the presumed onslaught of new projectors rolling is Toshiba, which has just dished out its 4.8-pound, filter-free TDP-XP1U and TDP-XP2U. As for the former, you’ll find 2,200 ANSI lumens, a 700:1 contrast ratio, XGA (1,024 x 768) resolution, VGA / S-Video / composite inputs, DLP BrilliantColor technology, an integrated speaker and a three-year warranty. As for the eerily similar XP2U, it steps things up ever-so-slightly with 2,500 ANSI lumens and a 2,000:1 contrast ratio. Both beamers are expected to offer up whisper quiet operation (30bD in low mode) and see store shelves this July for $779 and $899, respectively.Read

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Let’s get real honest with one another here: if folks are legitimately arguing that a $700 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player is overpriced, there’s absolutely no way a DVD player is worth over four times as much. That being said, the folks over at Sound & Vision put the pricey pair through the paces, and they were actually quite pleased with the results. In a nutshell, it seems that reviewers found the best upscaling DVD players this planet has to offer, and while all the fawning over their pristine reproduction of colors was fine and dandy, it’s the value proposition here that’s absurdly out of whack. In fairness, it’s good to hear that the bundled Gennum VXP video processor chip lived up to the hype, but all the upconverting in the world won’t make us believe these things are worthy of the stratospheric prices.Read

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Filed under: Storage

Thanks to an overzealous e-tailer, we already knew that Sammy’s Spinpoint M6 was ready to be ordered en masse, but Samsung has finally put out some official verbiage to substantiate the obvious. The outfit’s 500GB Spinpoint M6 ($299) and 250GB Spinpoint MP2 ($199) are both shipping as we speak, and that curious sound you hear over there is your current laptop begging for a storage upgrade. On a slightly related note, the company is also announcing that its 7200RPM Spinpoint F1 RAID-class (F1R; pictured) 3.5-inch SATA drive has hit mass production, meaning that you can bulk up your enterprise storage solution 1TB at a time for $299 each.

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Filed under: Storage

We first heard about Toshiba’s plan to increase NAND flash capacities by building “3D” memory chips with “pillars” of stacked cells in January of 2007, but it looks like the effort is getting revived — Tosh and SanDisk have entered into an agreement to jointly develop and cross-license 3D memory tech. SanDisk was once rumored to be developing write-once 3D flash chips, so both companies have experience building the stuff, but it sounds like it’ll take another three or four years for the partnership to produce actual products, as high-yield production is still difficult.Read

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Filed under: Networking

With DOCSIS 3.0 (and the corresponding 50Mbps download speeds) being deploying in varying parts of America, Verizon understands what it’s up against. Reportedly, the carrier is gearing up to push its 50Mbps FiOS internet — which is currently only available in a few of its more favored states — to its entire US footprint. Best of all, we’re hearing that all 16 FiOS-enabled states could have access to the service as early as next week, and if you’re anxious to sign up, just know that it’ll run you $139.95 per month with an annual contract. Thankfully, Verizon is also planning to boost speeds in the basic and middle tiers as well, with the former going from 5Mbps to 10Mbps and the latter going from 15Mbps to 20Mbps. Yeah, we like where this is headed, but we’ve still got aways to go before we can even sniff Sigbritt L

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It doesn’t sound like Qualcomm has all of its legal woes here in America worked out just yet, but apparently that won’t stop fat-walleted USers from snapping up the forthcoming HTC Advantage X7510 real soon. Both Dynamism and On The Go Solutions are expecting stock any day now, and they’ll be shipping to your US-based address so long as you’re willing to accept a $1,299 charge on your preferred piece of plastic. Before you brush this off as absurd, listen to that devil on your shoulder whispering things like “5-inch VGA display” and “HSDPA.” Hmm.

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