We’ve grown familiar with getting drawn in by an alluring piece of ultramobile computing hardware and then realising it’s unlikely to make it outside of Taipei, so it’s almost a surprise to be writing about a new British UMPC company. PsiXpda’s eponymous UMPC packs a sliding, tilting 4.8-inch 800 x 480 resistive touchscreen display, full QWERTY keyboard, Atom Z510 1.1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, and runs Windows XP.
We’ve had two QWERTY Nokia smartphones on the SlashGear test-bench this past week, and the surprising thing is how differently the respective user experience is. Our Nokia E72 review went live earlier today; now we turn to the Nokia N97 mini, viewed by many – for better or for worse – as the Finnish company’s second attempt at the N97. Second-time lucky or still well short? Check out the full SlashGear review after the cut.
The Tony Hawk: RIDE controller may be clever, but it sure is expensive; happily those who couldn’t help themselves will soon have more gaming options to use it. During an interview with Develop, Robomodo CEO David Michicich revealed that “We’re doing a game with Activision and we’re not allowed to talk about it right now”. Although it’s unclear what the game itself might be, the nature of the controller does suggest some sort of snowboarding, skating or similar title.
We’ve seen it teased and we’ve seen the first photos, but today Dell is finally giving us the skinny (pun intended) on the thinnest notebook ever – the Dell Adamo XPS. The 9.99 mm thin notebook, which will be shipping in time for the holidays, will inevitably be compared to Apple’s Macbook Air and no doubt it is thinner, but the starting $1,800 price tag won’t make it cheaper.
After the cut: Dell Adamo XPS hands-on impressions, gallery, and video
Remember how Sony launched a PS3 at a BRAVIA flat-panel TV pretty much just for the fun of it? Well, they seem to have triggered a new trend of firing gaming hardware at solid objects, as French gaming magazine Amusement have included a photo-shoot involving Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP Go being fired through walls.
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Acer has become the latest manufacturer to announce a multitouch-capable LCD monitor suitable for use with Windows 7. The Acer T230H is, at 23-inches, slightly larger than its Dell and HP counterparts, but offers the same Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution. It recognizes one- and two-finger gestures, such as pinch-zoom and chiral-rotate, and has VGA, HDMI and DVI inputs.
We’re not entirely convinced by the idea of naming your autonomous webcam “The Mole”; after all, when it comes to eyesight moles aren’t especially known for their 20/20 vision. Still, we’ll overlook that since Astak’s Mole is pretty nifty: a motion-activated IP webcam, with WiFi and wired ethernet connections, that can automatically upload footage to YouTube together with sending out email and Twitter messages.
It’s all go in Nokia N97 land this week, with the double news that not only have the Finnish company released the much-anticipated 2.0 firmware update for the original N97, but that the Nokia N97 mini would be arriving on shelves. The N97 mini – officially announced at Nokia World back in September – has a smaller chassis than the N97, but uses the same touchscreen-friendly S60 5th Edition OS.
Tempt you with a difficult-to-pronounce acronym, sir? No? Well how about a wireless head-mounted embedded Linux wearable computer? The work of Pascal Brisset, the WXHMD takes a pair of Vuzix VR920 video eyewear and straps to them a Gumstix Overo Fire computer-on-module stick, making for – with some wireless networking, a battery and a few other gizmos – a self-contained heads-up display ideal for telepresence work and augmented reality guidance.
It’s the biggest all-in-one Apple have ever offered, not to mention the fastest and most media-centric, and it’s pretty much guaranteed to hypnotize anybody wandering into their local Apple Store. The hyperbole practically writes itself, but at the end of the day is the 27-inch Apple iMac more than just a desktop trophy? Check out the full SlashGear review after the cut.
SlashGear Japan
