Gadgets Future

This bizarre looking mobile phone isn’t, as you might expect, a concept phone, or a prototype, or even some Frankenstein-phone cobbled together from old bits of meccano by a devout Transformers fan. It is, in fact, the new SoftBank 815T PB mobile phone, made by Toshiba, and which is actually going on sale!

As you can see, it’s a genuine Transformer lookalike, but with the addition of full mobile phone functionality - including 3G, QVGA screen and a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera.

More pics and details of SoftBank’s new transformer-phone after the jump.

Now the Transformers movie came out last year, so you might have thought that SoftBank had missed the boat a bit. Not a bit of it, though. The company has released the 815T PB in time for the launch of a new Japanese TV drama (what, you couldn’t tell this was a Japanese phone?!) called Ketai Sousakan 7, which itself is based on the Transformers concept. And just to show off its Transformer-like credentials, you can even glue a complete Transformers kit onto the back of it, turning it into a phone that you can guarantee no-one else in the world (well, outside of Japan anyway!) will own.

Aimed at kids, the 815T PB will undoubtedly get a huge following amongst adults as well. Unfortunately, it’s destined for the Japanese market only, but I reckon this would sell by the bucket-load wherever you sold it!

[Source: Akihabara News]

Posted Mar 2nd 2008 1:02PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Gaming
Alright, things are starting to get really good with these hacks. Just after seeing a GameCube / Wii Tetris, Linux build, SNES emulator, and the first homebrew mp3 player for Nintendo’s money-maker, we’re getting a totally radical, native Genesis / Megadrive emulator for the console. Coder-extraordinaire Eke-Eke has created not only the first of its kind for the Wii (and GameCube), but it’s also the first ever that’s capable of playing Virtua Racing, a milestone in Genesis emulation. This latest feat utilizes the same backdoor Twilight Princess hack, which is proving to be the best thing that happened to Wii development since… well… ever. Hit the read link and check it out yourself.

[Thanks, Craig]

While there still is not a price to be found, the 9@9j has been officially released and with that comes the full list of specs. Of course we have already seen the unique battery system. The 9@9j contains a standard Li-Ion battery that offers 8 hours of talk time and 1 month of standby and a single AAA battery that serves as a backup and offers up to 2 hours of additional talk time and up to one week of standby time.

As for the rest of the specs; the 9@9j features Quad band GSM (900/1800/1900/850 MHz)/GPRS connectivity, a 1.3-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, USB 1.1, stereo Bluetooth A2DP support, an FM radio and a 176 x 220 color TFT display.

The 9@9j has been release (as of now) only in the Asian market. No word if or when this will ever be available elsewhere. The whole backup AAA battery option seems like something that could easily be adopted into other cell phones.

Via [IntoMobile]

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Posted Mar 2nd 2008 5:38PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Transportation
Apparently, Microsoft has plans for Sync that extend beyond the standard voice-activation scheme they’ve got going right now. The company wants to deliver a wider range of network connectivity for in-car use, and they’re debating the possibility of moving away from subscription-based services to an ad-funded scenario. What exactly does that mean? We’ll let Martin Thall, general manager of Microsoft’s Automotive Business Unit explain: “We know where you are and we know where you’re headed,” he says, seemingly unaware of the Orwellian implications. “We could target that advertising directly to your car.” You getting that? Targeted ads. In your car. While you’re driving. Apparently, execs don’t think you’ll mind being bombarded inside your vehicle because you’re, “used to advertising in the car. We hear ads on the radio and see billboards on the road.” Of course, this is speculation on future technologies, so nothing is set in stone — hopefully someone comes to their senses before our hovercar interiors glitter with holographic spam.

Posted Mar 2nd 2008 1:21PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Features, Misc. gadgets
Our sources tell us Hanover is somewhere in Germany, but that’s all we’ve confirmed so far. Luckily, while we might fall short with this whole “geography” thing, we did manage to sneak onto the show floor here at CeBIT 2008. Most booths are still heavily under construction, but we did manage to pick up a few scoops before we passed out from the paint fumes. Check out the gallery below for some quick booth snaps and artistically-framed exhibit hall exteriors.

Gallery: CeBIT 2008: we’re coming at you live from Hannover

In an age where everyone carries cell phones, I tend to wonder why people still wear watches. I’m sure that not everyone wants to pull out their phone whenever they want to know the time, so I guess I can understand. I’m perfectly content with looking at my phone or iPod, so I rarely even consider putting on a watch. If I’m going somewhere important I might put on my trusty pocket watch which was a gift from my wife so I don’t look like a huge dork every time I whip out my iPod to check the time. Somehow I don’t think that putting on this new 8GB Multimedia Watch would make me look like any less of a dork.

Since the days of Dick Tracy people have envisioned watches that can do just about everything. I’ve begun to wonder if I’m the only tech geek that really doesn’t have any desire to have a giant screen attached to my wrist. I keep my phone and ipod Touch carefully hidden away so that I don’t look like a complete dork at all times. However, if you don’t mind carrying around a 1.8-inch screen, you’ll get a massive array of features including 20fps video playback, 8GB of storage and an mp3 player. I think it might even tell you the time. While the giant screen might weigh down your arm, it won’t break your bank with its $86 price tag.

Source: GeekAlerts

Qiao Xing Universal Telephone, Inc. of China has just dropped an announcement that they will be launching a brand new C7000A cardiograph mobile handset pretty soon. Some of the features include :-

• Cardiograph function: Users will be able to perform a basic cardiograph, which they can send to doctors via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) through a GPRS network. Doctors will then be able to provide medical advice by sending a text message back to the mobile phone. If there is a serious problem, doctors can call the patient directly.
• Ultra-Long standby time: The handset can run for over 120 days in standby mode without a recharge.
• Large LCD: The handset offers a 3.0 inch LCD screen.
• Super phone book: The handset offers enough memory to store 500 names in the phone book.

CECT has already supplied two hundred trial units of the C7000A mobile handset to The People’s Insurance Company (Group) of China, and they have plans to offer the handset as a present for their VIP customers.

Mr. Wu Zhi Yang, Vice Chairman of XING, mentions, “We dedicate a large amount of resources to our efforts to develop highly differentiated handsets. The C7000A is a result of these efforts. It represents a breakthrough in the use of mobile handset technology. No longer are handsets only tools for entertainment and communication. We have been able to incorporate a piece of advanced medical technology that could possibly save lives. It is this kind of differentiating handset feature that we continually strive to offer to our customers in China.”

No idea on how much such a handset costs, but it ought not to be too expensive if it were to be adopted by a whole lot of people. Not too sure why they call the 500 number phone book as “Super”, as many handsets these days can already handle that amount of numbers and more. Hopefully we’ll see a phone that can take our blood pressure in the future as well.

Press Release

At present many people prefer portable media players like MP4 players to MP3 players because they allow you not to just listen to the music but watch clips and movies as well. The variety of them is no smaller than that of MP3 players, so new models, performing even more functions, appear everyday. Another novelty of this kind Teclast T50 has been just designed.

The Teclast T50 portable media player might not have arrived on the scene with a bang, unlike those well-known iPods, but this model sure adds something that the majority of its competitors do not have at the moment - a capacitive multitouch display. Unfortunately, the only available information about the T50 includes the aforementioned display, RVVB, FLV and dual independent audio processors. But it’s quite enough to form a general idea of the gadget that seems to be very competitive. As regards the design of the concept I think that it looks great. The main reason for this consists in the fact that due to the touch-sensitive screen given device has just a single button and a big display.

Thus, this gadget looks like one of those easy-to-operate devices, from using which you derive a great enjoyment. Yet the lack of the information gives no opportunity to form a clear picture of this concept. But soon you will be able to find everything out, in case it arrives to the USA and Europe.

China-based OPPO has recently introduce the new OPPO S11, the latest product of their Smart MP4 series. The new S11 features a large 3.0″ 16:9 LCD display. This is a touch screen with resolution @ 480 x 272 pixels.

The new OPPO S11 is probably the first mp3 player to get Wiied. The company has introduce the new 3D Intelligence Control system, where the user may control by just swing it. This function is useful when the user changes track, browses images and of course plays the games.

Stay tuned for more updates

[ via iMP3 ]

OPPO, S11, MP3 Players, PMP

Recently, LG, a large cell phone manufacturer, has come out with a few new phones. However, they only released some information on basically 1 out of the 3 phones, the KF570, which you can see in the above picture. For the second and third phones - the KF240 and the KF300, LG has not released a lot of information on those as of yet.

Let’s begin with what I think is the better of the 2 phones, the KF570. Basically, it comes with 160MB of internal memory, memory expansion via microSD cards, 5-megapixel camera with AutoFocus, unique touchpad design, and a touch screen display. Overall, it is very thin and sports a pretty hot design. If you’re one of those people who care about the look of the phone a lot, then you’ll definitely like this phone as it combines good technical features and well as a nice look. This phone is already up for sale on a Romanian website, however, if you don’t live near there then you’ll probably have to wait for CeBIT for more information on this and the other LG phones. Meanwhile, all that is known on the KF240 phone is that it is a music centric phone.

Via [Boy GeniusReport]

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