News Archive for 07/11/30
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Japanese device maker Radius finished its week with the launch of the radStrap NOISE CANCEL, a unique set of earbuds for owners of the third-generation iPod nano. The lanyard headphones hang around the neck like the official Apple lanyard earphones but are driven through the dock connector rather than the minijack. This both increases the output volume but also lets the radStrap achieve its namesake active noise canceling through its attached in-canal earbuds: up to 82 percent of outside noise is blocked, by Radius' estimates.
Having only yesterday won $140 million in damages from Microsoft, Z4 Technologies has today renewed its legal assault, filing another lawsuit. The second suit is an extension of the first, charging that the same product activation patents found to be violated earlier were also broken in the creation of Office and Windows Vista. Microsoft insists that it has done nothing wrong, and is now reviewing the case; the company's odds may not be good however, as legal precedent is already on Z4's side.
Sigma, best known as a maker of third-party lenses, has at last issued an explanation as to why its long-awaited DP1 camera has yet to go on sale. The compact was first revealed at Photokina 2006, and had actually reached the pre-beta stage by early this summer; testing revealed however that the image pipeline was badly optimized, reducing image quality in favor of speed. As such Sigma decided to completely re-engineer the pipeline, as well as other specifications. The revised camera has just recently entered alpha testing, and as such is still an unknown distance away from release.
Sprint has rejected a bid from Korean telecom provider SK Telecom, say reports. The American provider has reportedly declined a $5 billion investment in exchange for sharing the same phones and network knowledge. The change would have resulted in a change of management, however. This potential investment is widely believed to be connected to SKT's controlling stake in Helio, the latter of which piggybacks on Sprint's network for its youth-oriented phone service.
One of the important features for Microsoft's upcoming Windows Mobile refresh will be its first support for multiple display resolutions and allow more iPhone-like output, says a leak from UberGizmo. Though the current version of the OS has typically locked the resolution to 320x240, the new version will not only support a much sharper 640x480 but also very small displays and widescreen ratios: a touchscreen device using Windows Mobile 6 Professional will support better-than-DVD resolutions of 800x480, Microsoft says.
HTC's Libra smartphone, already in service with various regional carriers, is at last reaching the national level through Verizon, a leak suggests. There the phone will most likely be known under its other name, the XV5800, and support broadband via EVDO Rev. A. Little other information is available, but it should have a 400MHz processor, and approximately 162MB of internal storage. The Libra's key feature is its slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which has larger-than-average buttons that make for easier typing. [via Engadget]
NEC today revealed a technology it vows will help English travelers in Japan understand the country with little effort. The electronics giant has developed translation software for cellphones that the company claims is the first true real-time translator at this size and should make the process virtually automatic: speaking Japanese into the microphone converts the phrase first into Japanese writing and then into English writing a moment later.
MetroPCS on Friday boosted its unlimited-access cell plans with the release of the unusual Samsung R410. A handset with a horizontal slide-out QWERTY keyboard like many high-end smartphones, the Samsung is built for a younger audience more concerned with text messaging, instant messaging, and basic e-mail: the cost is trimmed to more affordable levels by using a VGA camera and legacy 1XRTT data in place of more expensive EVDO. Bluetooth with stereo audio support is present and adds rare support for wireless headphones and speakers to the device class.
A considerable number of Xbox 360 consoles were sold during Thanksgiving week, Microsoft has announced. The company says that slightly more than 310,000 360s were bought during the period, which is typically devoted to sales for Christmas and Hanukkah shoppers. While this number is still less than the 350,000 Wiis quoted by Nintendo, it represents an amount greater than what Microsoft might normally sell in a month. Microsoft also says it expects to sell more games this holiday season than the figures for the Wii and PlayStation 3 combined.
Following through on its pledge to provide more details, Microsoft today published the full list of details for its Fall 2007 Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360. In addition to the Find Old Friends feature and the ability to download some original Xbox titles already confirmed by the company, the upgrade will also include the DivX support leaked earlier this month as well as an Inside Xbox feature that provides updated news from the console's website, similar to Sony's recently introduced PS3 Information Board.
Motorola today revealed that Ed Zander is leaving his position as chief executive of the company as of the start of 2008. The executive is leaving the electronics producer after four years to move on to the "next phase" of his life and spend more time with his family, he says. Zander will be replaced by the newly elected chief Greg Brown, who previously headed up four different businesses at the company before assuming the top spot. The outgoing Zander will remain as chairman until an annual shareholder meeting in May.
The FCC has just given its seal of approval to a previously unknown HTC device, simply called the Clio. The unit supports GSM, EDGE and HSDPA, and most critically, can operate on the 850 and 1,900MHz bands used by AT&T's 3G network. Other connectivity options should include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0, while the presence of two cameras implies that one is meant for videocalls.
The positioning of the FCC label in the Clio's schematics, meanwhile, has unusual significance; it indicates that the device is longer horizontally than it is vertically, which in turn implies that it is most likely a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard. This could make it an import of the Athena, or else the final incarnation of the Omni, which has languished in development if it has ever had factual basis. HTC has, in the meantime, asked the FCC to withhold photos of the Clio. [via Wirelessinfo]
The next generation of NVIDIA's graphics cards will roll out early next year with a few key feature upgrades, video card producers in Taiwan claim today. The GeForce 9000 will be the firm's answer to AMD's Radeon HD 3800 and will bring the enhanced antialiasing as well as high-dynamic range lighting of DirectX 10.1 and newer versions of OpenGL 2. The series will mark the first high-end cards to be built on the same 65-nanometer manufacturing process as the GeForce 8800 GT, running cooler and also potentially faster than today's 8800 GTX parts.
Research in Motion's previously leaked BlackBerry 9100 will race to beat Apple in technical features ahead of an upgrade to the iPhone, BGR claims in an alleged leak. The device will have a touchscreen with the same 320x480 resolution as the iPhone's and will have 3G cellular Internet over HSPA -- a feature that is not only absent in the Apple phone until sometime next year but which is new to any BlackBerry, the alleged leak's source points out. Internally, the 9100 will reportedly have both real GPS and Wi-Fi. It may similarly be slightly faster with a 624MHz Intel XScale processor instead of the 620MHz ARM chip from its Cupertino challenger.
Hoping to inject some further energy into its music phone line for the holidays, Verizon today rolled out its LG Chocolate Blue Ice. The new version is close in keeping to the spirit of the original version but comes in a more attention-getting light blue color that sets off the red trim lighting around the wheel and buttons, according to the cell carrier. It also includes darker blue accents around the keypad.
Creative has once again unintentionally confirmed its plans to launch a 32GB ZEN player, this time according to an unintentional slip-up on the company's US website. The jukebox maker directly references to 32GB of flash storage both at its overview and specifications pages and explains the impact of the extra memory: the unannounced model will hold up to 8,000 songs or 120 hours of video, Creative says. It would continue to support SDHC cards for more than 4GB of extra storage.
Google today confirmed its bid for the FCC's 700MHz spectrum auction, validating a late leak in the press of the company's intentions. The maneuver will give Google an opportunity to use and license the airwaves for services such as cellular calling or Internet access, both of which are likely to occur given the company's purported secret testing of its own mobile services at its Mountain View, California headquarters. It was important for Google officials to live up to their espoused values of open and fair competition and "put our money where our principles are," according to the company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt.
While only just having been confirmed as a 2008 release, the second-generation iPhone may already have experienced its first delay, according to an analyst from Friedman Billings Ramsey & Company. Mehdi Hosseini claims that among information gathered in "recent checks," it was learned that the next iPhone may have originally been planned for launch in March or April, but is now anticipated for mid to late summer. As a result, Hosseini expects demand for NAND memory to drop in the first half of 2008, despite opposite predictions by Samsung.
LG today brought an apparent end to the speculation that a cellphone explosion was responsible for the death of a Korean construction worker, calling the fire an attempt to disguise an accidental death. The 33-year-old victim had been accidentally hit with a 15-ton hydraulic drill rig that dealt the fatal blow; the cellphone had been set on fire to make it seem as though that was the actual cause, LG claims. The coworker who falsified the cause has since been charged with manslaughter.
Google is prepared to announce today that it will bid in the FCC's upcoming auction for the 700MHz spectrum to establish a new wireless network, the Wall Street Journal claims. The search engine developer has hinted that it has been willing to bid Since July but until now has refrained from making any kind of definite commitment to a bid, which would cost the company at least $4.6 billion. The company has nonetheless been under some pressure to take action after successfully negotiating open access rules that would force any winner of the bid to allow any device and any program to run on a network it might establish with the new frequency space.
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