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If you’ve kept a SpareOne cell phone in your car for emergencies since Xpal announced them at CES last year, congratulations! You still have 14 years of power left on that one AA Energizer battery. https://gizmodo.com/an-emergency-phone-with-a-15-year-battery-life-is-defin-5874309 Those late to the party, though, can consider this year’s upgraded model, SpareOnePlus, which still comes with a waterproof…
Everyone dreams of an electronic display they can roll up and shove in their pocket—but now it’s closer than ever. These flexible e-paper tablets are the stuff of dreams. Developed by Queen’s University, Plastic Logic and Intel Labs, the displays look pretty much like sheets of paper. Actually, though, they’re 10.7-inch plastic displays which are…
Over the past few years, pico projectors stuffed into smartphones and tablets have seemed like novel concepts with little real world application—yet. But the little projectors may finally evolve from novel to practical, especially with DLP’s latest pico chip architecture breakthrough. The new pixel architecture packs a 30% brightness increase and doubled resolution into a…
We all know size matters. As, seemingly, does 3D Systems, because its latest desktop 3D printer is a whopper, with a build platform that can handle designs of up to 1,030 cubic inches. Yes, that is big enough to recreate a basketball. The CubeX—which 3D Systems modestly refers to as “the ultimate desktop 3D printer”—offers…
The Apple App Store just hit 40 billion downloads with almost half in 2012 alone. That’s a lot of Angry Birds.
Swype, the sliding keyboard that dramatically speeds up typing on Android, just got a little more clever. As well as offering a more fluid typing experience, it now crowd-sources your autocorrections—which should (hopefully) make for fewer embarrassing mistakes. The new feature, called Living Language, essentially crowd-sources its dictionaries. Opt-in, and you join a population which…
A few weeks ago, reports trickled down from the mount that Acer was prepping a $100 7-inch tablet with specs that were juuuussssssst decent enough to be usable. The Iconia B1-A71 seems to fit the bill. Except, well, for the bill. https://gizmodo.com/you-wont-be-able-to-buy-the-first-decent-100-tablet-5970992 The Iconia B1-A71 has a 1.2GHz processor, a 1024×600 display, 8GB of storage,…
Do you remember when GPS units were things people wanted to buy? Yeah, that’s probably when you had a RAZR. But Magellan isn’t willing to give up on its bread and butter quite yet, with its new SmartGPS, it thinks it can get you away from Google Maps and start using standalone GPS units (again).…
The new Canon Powershot N includes a lot of the features that Canon (and other companies) been adding to tiny point-and-shoots over the years, like Wi-Fi connectivity and touchscreen controls. What makes it new and refreshing—at least aesthetically—is the new design that’s more square. It’s noticeably different, but does that make it better? Indeed, the…
We like Lenovo’s Yoga a lot, but until now, the 11-inch version was stuck with Windows RT, instead of full Windows 8. That’s fine, more or less, but everyone who wanted the total package at 11 inches was pretty let down. Now, though, the 11-inch is getting the full Intel i-Series treatment. https://gizmodo.com/lenovos-yoga-ultrabook-tablet-hybrid-will-also-come-in-5950382 The 11-inch…
In an attempt to get its screen everywhere, Vizio is planning to launch new 7-inch and 10-inch Android tablets in the coming months—and they look pretty good. Based on the specs and our quick hands on, it seems these slates could be something worth considering. The 10-incher, for instance, will come with Nvidia’s new Tegra…
At last year’s CES, Haier showed off a transparent TV, which never took off for the obvious reason that nobody needs or wants a transparent TV. Today, a great leap forward: a neon, see-through washing machine. This is. The. Future. Haier admits the see-through washer is a “concept piece,” which is more or less an…
Samsung’s announced that the Galaxy S II will get a Jelly Bean update—but it’s a manual, not OTA, update. [SamMobile]
Mad Catz has announced a new range of GameSmart hardware which is designed to work across pretty much any platform. These things will get you gaming on PC, Macs, tablets, phones, TVs—and even consoles. The new slew of hardware includes the C.T.R.L.R. wireless gamepad, the R.A.T.M. wireless gaming house, a F.R.E.Q.M. mobile headset and the…
Windows RT has been hacked to allow desktop apps to run on Microsoft’s ARM-based OS. The trick circumvents a setting which usually restricts ARM-based apps to Microsoft’s built-in ones, so that unsigned desktop apps can also be installed. The Verge explains: Using a method to exploit the setting in memory, the vulnerability could allow Windows…
Despite releasing a handful of stellar handsets, the end of last year brought bad news for HTC. The company’s posted a profit of just $34.5 million for the final quarter of 2012—its lowest ever since 2004. https://gizmodo.com/htc-droid-dna-review-verizons-big-beautiful-beast-5961246 For some perspective, that’s a $99 million drop compared to the third quarter of 2012 and a staggering…
Craigslist has expanded its map-based listings to yard sales and flea markets. Happy hunting! [Tech Crunch]
This teeny portable router from D-Link is everything a human holed up in a hotel room could dream of: Wi-Fi hotspot, emergency battery and wireless media sharer, all rolled into one. The device can take a single Ethernet connection—like you’d find in your hotel room—and turn it into an instant Wi-Fi hotspot to share between…
This sleek, simple HP pebble is more powerful than it looks. The Pocket Playlist is a portable storage device which can store and record media from a host of sources, then stream it to five devices over Wi-Fi, no internet connection required. The stick is capable of streaming unencrypted content—movies, music, images, whatever—to up to…
Like every other old school component audio company in the world, Onkyo is getting into the headphones game. Its first set, the ES-HF300 on-ear folding headphones, even nod to their heritage with earcups that look like volume knobs on Onkyo receivers. That’s cute and clever, but we can’t help but wonder if the expertise in…
