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Motorola Droid Review

By Vincent Nguyen on Wednesday, Nov 4th 2009 16 Comments

If you can predict a device’s success by site stats then we’d say the Verizon DROID by Motorola is going to be a hit. A week after launch and the DROID is still topping the charts for reader interest, and you’ve been peppering us with questions and comments about the Android 2.0 device. Set to hit shelves this coming Friday, the Verizon DROID is already being heralded as the device that will change Motorola’s fortunes; is that hyperbole, or is the DROID really that good? We’ve been putting the smartphone through its paces, so read on for the full SlashGear review.

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Bizarre, metal and electrically powered, if you thought the Cupcake Cars were too cutesy then The Electrobite might be just up your street.  Otherwise known by its mouthful of a Latin name – Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobiteis – the battery-run bug is the handiwork of Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate and is another ex-Burning Man oddity.

the electrobite

Video after the cut

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wang 2200 540x383I had lunch recently with someone who was a recent transplant to NY from Silicon Valley. They commented on what a great thing it was to finally ditch their car for getting around as it’s a bit of a hindrance to own a car in Manhattan. I thought about this for a while afterward, mostly remembering the few years I lived in NY when I owned a car and kept it in NY. I never drove it anywhere for fear of losing the most sacred of things in NY, my parking space. As a result, it mostly sat unused except to move it from one side of the street to the other, twice a week. (I initially had dreamed of just garaging it until I discovered that for the same money, I could have gotten it three bedrooms and a 2 baths in a nice area in NJ). The key was, I had the potential of using it anytime I wanted to. Today, I live in the NJ suburbs, no more than 15 minutes from Manhattan without traffic. Ask me why, and I’ll tell you it’s to have the advantages of the suburbs but still be close to the great museums, theater and culture of NY. Of course you might want to ask me when the last time I went to one of the great museums or saw a show on Broadway. There’s an aspirational theme associated with all this. It’s not what I do. Rather what I could do.

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giger robot 1 263x350 customOver at Let’s Make Robots! Tyberius is showing off Giger, his two-foot tall DIY humanoid ‘bot.  A roughly 100 hour project so far, Giger runs embedded Linux and has both an integrated camera and WiFi, and apparently cost around $10,000 to build.

Now that might sound like an awful lot – probably because it is an awful lot – but you can blame the pro-quality servos.  Tyberius used Dynamixels RX-64 and RX-28 units, which come in at $300 and $200 each, respectively; however unlike cheap servos they put out a whopping 1,000 ounces per inch of torque.

We’re not sure what we like most about Giger: his classic Cylon-style eye, mean looking pincers, or how easily he segues from a butch fighting stance to a reasonably camp wave.  Tyberius’ next job is tightening up the dynamic balancing and getting the walking gait more natural; right now Giger looks a little drunk.

Video demo after the cut

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HP’s Envy range promises MacBook style at mainstream prices, but is there a gap in-between the 13.1-inch Envy 13 and the 15-inch Envy 15?  HP seem to think so; according to a support page on the company’s site there’s an Envy 14 on the horizon, which we’d presume would offer a 14-inch display.

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We suppose we can't really fault Verizon too much for wanting customers to honor their contracts rather than paying an early termination fee (ETF) of around half the phone's value and then selling the handset for a profit on eBay, but our natural dislike of ETFs is perking up this morning.  According to a leaked slide that found its way to the BGR, Verizon are now planning to charge up to $350 in termination fees on "Advanced Devices" - we're guessing they mean smartphones or high-end featurephones - whose owners don't complete the full term of the agreement.

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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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The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 may have been making the Android headlines this week, but it’s not the first smartphone running Google’s open-source OS to pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.  That honor goes to the Acer Liquid A1 – though the company have apparently underclocked the CPU to 768MHz – set to be the first Snapdragon Android phone to reach consumers’ hands.  Arne from the::unwired has been playing with the Liquid and has put together a “preview” review.

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Verizon's apparent intention to show up AT&T and the iPhone at every turn continues, with the latest snook to be cocked being confirmed tethering for the Verizon DROID by Motorola.  According to the CDMA carrier, early 2010 will see the Verizon Broadband Access Connect plan arrive on the Android slider, likely priced at the usual $15 per month on top of your regular data contract.

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With the XPERIA X10 splayed open for all to see, attention turns to other leaky Sony Ericsson devices and in particular the Kurara.  Tipped to be the more basic sibling to the current flagship SE Satio, the Kurara is believed to have a 3.5-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 8.1-megapixel autofocus camera and run Symbian S60.

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