The Microsoft Research team responsible for IllumiRoom is currently using a standard projector with a wide field of view, and a Kinect for Windows sensor bar, though any commercial implementation would probably be designed to sit on a coffee table. Automatic room calibration is included, projecting various patterns and sequences which map the outline of the TV, furniture, and the room’s geography in 3D; future iterations could even identify and track moving objects, such as people, as they move through the projection.

Once the layout of the gaming arena is understood, IllumiRoom’s real magic can begin. Various implementations are proposed, from fully extending what’s on the TV to greater fill the room – making for a more immersive environment – to picking out specific elements to highlight them, such as weapons fire that escapes from the primary display. By changing how physical objects in the room have their own textures projected, furniture could be made to ripple and wobble, change color or desaturate, or have their lighting adjusted.

Alternatively, the IllumiRoom system might just expand on the theme of the current game: having virtual falling snow spread across the living room, perhaps, building up on the actual furniture. The three possibilities, Microsoft Research suggests, are “negating”, “including”, or “augmenting” real-world objects: either digitally masking them, allowing them to remain visible, or adding to them with projected graphics.

“Ideally, IllumiRoom would be directly integrated into a next generation console and new games would be designed for IllumiRoom from the ground up. We envision an API that enables triggering illusions, changing surface appearance, controlling room lighting, inserting objects into the physical environment, etc.” Microsoft Research

While the best result would be if games natively supported, and integrated, IllumiRoom functionality, the system could also fashion a suitable AR scheme by analyzing gameplay in realtime, similar to how Philips’ Ambilight system tracks on-screen colors and matches them with its periphery of multicolor LEDs. The developers also suggest that audio cues could be used, such as triggering a ripple of the surrounding projection whenever the system hears a gunshot sound.

There’s also potential for how IllumiRoom could work with non-game content, such as movies and television; the team fashioned a prototype extended field-of-view camcorder – in effect pairing a standard camcorder with one that has a wide FOV – with the main screen showing the core video and the IllumiRoom projector showing the peripheral footage.

“Can a grenade from the latest Bond film explode in your living room? How would such content be authored? It would be im- portant to investigate how the movie director should deal with the fixed nature of a film and the randomness imbued by the system adapting to the user’s living room” Microsoft Research

Unsurprisingly, there’s still no (public) talk about how IllumiRoom tech and Microsoft’s Xbox ambitions might work together. As it stands, the current projection system relies on a PC for its brain, though it’s worth remembering that Kinect itself started out as a proof-of-concept peripheral, and only later evolved into an Xbox 360 add-on.

[via The Verge; via CHI 2013; Thanks Zak!]

This prototype smartwatch utilizes a flexible e-paper color display that wraps around the wrist and uses e-ink in combination with a color filter to produce the colors. The concept watch is incredibly thin at only 900μm, although that thickness could go up if a touch panel was imbedded in the watch, which would be likely if it ends up in mass production.

As with other smartwatches, the Plastic Logic watch demonstrates a variety of different features the watch could end up offering, such as a heart-rate monitoring ability, information displays from a connected smartphone, such as message notifications and call alerts, and more. One big potential feature that makes it stand out from some other smartwatches is its durable nature.

Jim Watts, an engineer with Plastic Logic, called the display in the smartwatch “effectively unbreakable,” with the device said to be durable enough to handle the pounding daily use would give it. Of course, while the prototype is appealing, the practical application of the display in a smartwatch would result in a larger device once a battery and backlight, among other hardware elements, were implemented.

[via Pocket Lint]

Ars Technica ended up getting an exclusive look at the old prototype, and it essentially looks like a miniature table. Of course, the late Steve Jobs actually thought of the iPad first before the iPhone, so this actually could be an iPad prototype that was used to eventually make the iPhone that released two years later.

The photos come from a former Apple employee who says that “at that early date no one knew what [the final device] would be.” The prototype is roughly two-inches thick, so you definitely wouldn’t be able to slide it in your pocket or bag with ease, but the former Apple employee says that it was “really impressive seeing basically a version of OS X running on it,” during that time.

It should be noted that the chip that the prototype is running is the Samsung S3C2410, which is “a distant relative of the chip the first iPhone ended up using, just older and slower.” The prototype chip was clocked at around 200-233MHz, while the first iPhone used a 620MHz chip underclocked to 412Mhz. We’ve certainly come a long way since then.

[via Ars Technica]

The cases you see above come from MobileGeeks where they’ve gotten information from the case manufacturers themselves on the origin of the design. As the folks at MyLiving have let it be known that they’ve gotten information on the build of the Galaxy S4 straight from Foxconn, there is a real possibility that they are, indeed, legitimate. Foxconn is a manufacturing chain that over the past few years has become famous for putting together some of the most high-profile gadgets in the mobile industry.

What we can glean from these cases (the two black cases, that is), is that this Galaxy S machine may be working with a slightly less organic look than the Galaxy S III had. The salmon-colored case above is made for a Galaxy S III and the blue device to the left of the whole pack is, indeed, a Galaxy S III in the flesh. The Galaxy S4 appears to be essentially the same height as the Galaxy S III with a bit more bulk around the edges and, though you can’t tell from this photo, both cases appear to be made for devices with essentially the same thickness.

Several elements wash over from the Galaxy S III like the necessity for three holes right up top of the back on the case – one for a camera lens, one for a camera flash, the third for a speaker. The appearance of a power button hole on the case in the same place and the volume button also appearing in essentially the same space on the opposite side of the phone are also really rather indicative of Samsung sticking to its guns with how they intend you to tap on this smartphone.

You’ll also notice that these case designs bear exceeding resemblance to the cases leaked last month courtesy of MobileFun. Either this is what the Galaxy S4 will be shaped like, or there’s a real trickster out there poking fun at the case manufacturers one by one – we shall see!

Have a peek at the timeline below of Samsung Galaxy S4 articles from the past week or so to make sure you’re all up to speed on everything that’s known – and what’s about to be known, too. The big event for the reveal of the Samsung Galaxy S4 takes place on the 14th of March – we’ll be there with bells on, so follow along all day!

A member on the GameTrailers forum posted up a high-resolution image of the controller, where he claims he was the one that snapped the photo, although that has yet to be proven, so we remain skeptical as far as the goes. However, the controller looks to be the same one (or at least the same model) as the one we saw yesterday.

Thanks to the photo, we can see that there’s apparently a 3.5mm audio jack situated on the side of the controller, right below the “PS” logo/button. We’re guessing this for headsets, similar to how the Xbox 360 controller has its proprietary connector in the same location as well. The grips also appear to be longer as well.

The controller looks like it has concave analog sticks, and the same kind of buttons on previous PlayStation controllers. There’s also the small touchpad towards the top that may even be a small LCD touchscreen, but that is yet to be discovered. We’re keeping the salt nearby, and since this is simply just a prototype, it may not be the final version, so don’t get your hopes up if you like the look of this controller.

The glasses emit a near-infrared set of LEDs that block facial recognition cameras from identifying wearers. According to Echizen, the glasses are the answer to what he refers to as the “invasion of privacy caused by photographs taken in secret.” Facial recognition software collects a lot of data about patrons. Not only can it identify you, but it can also figure out your body type and age.

These prototype glasses aren’t the most appealing, and they likely won’t be adopted by the masses, but if the idea takes off, we may see versions that are much smaller and more stylish than the ones we’re seeing today. Plus, in order to keep the LED lights on and working for this prototype privacy visor, you have to carry around a small power supply in your pocket.

Echizen says that he’s already received offers from companies that want to work toward mass-producing the visors in the future. Echizen says that he and his development team are working on “an improved version of the privacy visor without power supply consisting of transparent materials that reflect or absorb specific wavelength.”

Launching in Q1 2013, the panel apparently brings not only a bump in resolution over Samsung’s previous AMOLEDs – the Galaxy S III, for instance, has a 4.8-inch 720p screen – but a cut in power consumption. The company claims the newer panels use 25-percent less juice than before, thanks to a switch-up in materials, while a low-power mode cuts the battery drain by almost half.

It’s YOUM technology we’d really like to see show up in the wild, however. Samsung’s mock-ups weren’t flexible in the sense of being bendable by the user, but instead wrapped the panel around the edges of the device; since AMOLEDs can selectively turn on sections of the display while leaving other parts shut off, that could mean the side of your phone might perpetually show a status ticker – with new message alerts, battery and signal indicators, IM previews, music playlist details, or other information – while consuming minimal power.

That’s an idea Nokia has flirted with in its Gem concept phone, though there the touchscreen was altogether more comprehensive, envisaged as wrapping around the whole device. Meanwhile, Samsung itself has dabbled in dual-displays, with the Continuum of late 2010 having a pair of screens. Since Samsung didn’t have flexible panels available at the time, however, it put both displays on the front of the handset.

Exactly when we can expect to see YOUM displays in shipping devices is unclear, however. Samsung’s original plan was to begin volume-production of the technology in 2012, but according to sources within the company opted to delay that roadmap and focus instead on regular AMOLED panels, which were still in high demand thanks to strong sellers like the Galaxy S III.

The teams call those stacks “PaperTabs” and the eponymous slate can show several of them, on-screen, at the same time. That streamlines workflow, so for instance you can easily attach a photo to an email by previewing them at the same time and simply tapping them.

However, there’s also support for less traditional methods of control. For instance, flex-sensors allow for an email to be sent if the top corner of the screen is bent; you could also trigger a send by dropping the PaperTab into your outbox tray on your desk.

Multiple PaperTab units can be placed side-by-side, with the on-screen interface automatically extending to take advantage of the extra real-state, while the UI can be stretched out with simple gestures. There’s also interpretation of physical distance: for instance, when the PaperTab is out of reach, the interface switches to an icon mode to show what’s happening across all apps.

As you might have guessed, PaperTab is just a prototype right now, though Intel, Plastic Logic, and the Queen’s University team say the technology is all functional. Exactly what sort of battery life you could expect from a commercial product based on the hardware, and what kind of price you’d be looking at, is unclear; we’ll find out more at CES 2013 this week.

Furlan’s hardware falls roughly in line with what we’ve seen other projects piece together in earlier AR attempts. He opted for a MyVu eyepiece – a 0.44-inch microdisplay culled from a cheap Crystal headset, such as used in this UMPC-based wearable back in 2009, and this Beagleboard version in 2010 - hooked up to the composite video output of a 4th-gen iPod touch; that way, he can see a mirror of the iPod’s UI floating in his line of sight.

Meanwhile, a Looxie Bluetooth Video Camera - stripped of its casing and attached to the goggles – streams video to the iPod touch wirelessly. Furlan says he’s cooking up a second-gen version running off a Raspberry Pi, again another approach we’ve seen other wearables experimenters take. That, Furlan says, will allow for more flexibility with the Looxie’s input, as well as greater support for other sensors such as accelerometers.

The interesting part is how Furlan’s experience of the wearable evolved, from initial discomfort and a sense of information overload – the feeling of needing to keep up with every notification, server status, stock price, and message that pops up – to a less conscious consumption of the data flow:

“When I wear my prototype, I am connected to the world in a way that is quintessentially different from how I’m connected with my smartphone and computer. Our brains are eager to incorporate new streams of information into our mental model of the world. Once the initial period of adaptation is over, those augmented streams of information slowly fade into the background of our minds as conscious effort is replaced with subconscious monitoring” Rod Furlan

That fits in line with what we’ve heard from Google itself; Glass project chief Babak Parviz said recently that part of the company’s work on software has been to deliver a pared-back version of the usual gush of information that hits our smartphone and tablet displays. Developers, for instance, will be able to use a set of special cloud APIs to prioritize specific content that gets delivered to the Android-based wearable.

Furlan concludes that the biggest advantage of wearables won’t be overlaying data on top of the real world – what we know as augmented or mediated reality – but being able to persistently record (and recall) all of our experiences. That does differ from Google’s perception, where capturing photos and videos is only seen as a subset of Glass, and the headset is gradually being positioned as a way to access a curated feed of the digital world, whether that be from Google Now prompts or something else.

[via] 9to5Mac]

Google’s Sergey Brin sported a set of Glass with sunglasses lenses back at Google IO, with the tinted sections apparently clipping into the brow frame. Meanwhile, Google had also confirmed that it was looking at prescription lens support.

Google is also exploring the potential to integrate the Glass display cube into a set of prescription lenses themselves, rather than using a separate display altogether. That would require more precise optical work, of course, and could prove significantly more expensive when it comes to changing your prescription.

Exactly how well the Explorer version will handle lenses remains to be seen; Google has described it as a test kit for developers to begin coding augmented reality-compatible apps, rather than the final form-factor of the hardware. It’s also believed to feature a bone-conduction earpiece for sound inaudible to anyone but the wearer. Judging by what look to be discrete metal lens rims, however, it’s an altogether slicker system than the large black glasses Google showed photos of at I/O 2012.

At Mind The Product 2012, Google’s Tom Chi demonstrated that anyone can build these incredible products and ideas by using everyday materials and a bit of ingenuity. For example, Chi’s team built a fully-working prototype of Google Glassses from a coat hanger, a piece of plexi-glass, a Pico protector, a wire harness, and a netbook.

Chi’s team also built a prototype of the gestural interface as seen in the movie Minority Report. Unlike the Google Glasses rapid prototype, this only took 45 minutes to throw together, and it uses materials that you would normally find in any office or home, including a coat hanger, a whiteboard, fishing wire, a couple of hairgrips, a chopstick, and a presentation clicker.

Obviously, these rapid prototypes aren’t that practical, but the important thing that Chi notes is they get you to think and do the first things that pop in your mind. Chi also notes that the first thing that does pop in your head is “the right thing” only about 5% of the time, but he mentions that 5% is usually the rate of success for most startups. Chi notes that once you begin rapid prototyping, you go through ideas a lot quicker, meaning a higher success rate:

“By the time you try 20 things, even if each individual thing only has a 5% chance of success, by the time you try 20 things, your chance of success goes up to 64%. By the time you try 50 things, it goes up to 92%. It’s almost like you can’t fail!”

[via Mind the Product]

The photographs above and below appear very much to be showing an LG device based on their recently revealed LG Optimus G, a device with a quad-core processor from Qualcomm and a massive camera. The USA versions of the Optimus G have two different cameras, one model with a 13 megapixel camera, the other with an 8 megapixel camera. This LG Nexus device quite likely has an 8 megapixel camera, this assessment based on the apparent size of the module compared to the G and our understanding of how Google advances their Nexus line one step at a time – aka they wouldn’t skip 8 and go right to 13.

The Galaxy Nexus, a Samsung device, surprised the masses last year with a release that included a 5 megapixel camera. We expect that this LG device – if indeed it does pan out – will include an 8 megapixel camera at least. This prototype carries with it the code LG E960 as well as the name “Mako”. It’s also been suggested that this device is code-named LG Nexus 4.

The LG Nexus 4 name comes from the idea that it is the 4th major Nexus smartphone on the market – or will be in the near future. The prototype review we’re seeing today shows the device to be extremely similar to the Galaxy Nexus in size and shape with a slightly more flat front and back, a glittery sort of back panel not unlike the Optimus G, and a front panel with glass that curves downward near its edges.

The display is shown here to be an IPS LCD and has the same amount of pixels that the Galaxy Nexus had at 720 x 1280 across a 4.7-inch panel. The image you’re seeing below shows the device next to the iPhone 5, that device having a 4-inch panel, both devices apparently showing the same wallpaper to make it clear which is the brighter and the sharper of the two. We do not know if the reviewer here made both devices hit their maximum brightness.

Keep your eyes peeled for a real look at this device as it leaves its prototype stages and brings on the next generation of Google’s Vanilla-flavored Android system. We’re expecting a very clean version of whatever Google has to offer next for Android with no carrier additions. What we’re suspecting, in addition to this, is a worldwide release – or something close to it – with Google’s own Google Play store online offering up the device for sale for everyone all at once.

We shall see soon, and very soon, if the rumors are correct!

[Thanks Gene for the tip!]

Of course, eye tracking tech probably isn’t going to sell millions upon millions of tablets in the blink of an eye, but it does have its uses. The ibeam uses the Tobii IS20, which is described as “the most advanced and compact eye tracker in the world,” in a statement released today. During CEATEC in Tokyo, NTT DOCOMO will be showing off examples of natural user interfaces for PCs and tablets that are centered around eye tracking integration.

One of the benefits of eye tracking integration is that users would potentially be able to control the ibeam tablet using only their eyes. This means that you could have true hands-free functionality, and we imagine that using eye tracking tech would prove to be a lot easier than using voice commands. At the very least, when using eye tracking tech, you won’t be caught in public shouting commands at your device.

The ibeam certainly sounds like an interesting tablet, but unfortunately we’re going to have to wait for the lion’s share of the details. Since it sounds like the ibeam is in the early stages of development – keep in mind that NTT DOCOMO will only be showing off a prototype at CEATEC – the tablet is probably still a ways off from hitting the market (if it ever does at all). Still, it will be exciting to see what the ibeam can do, so keep it tuned here to SlashGear for more information.

The Swivel model, shown above, follows the convertible notebook approach we’ve seen in Windows tablets before, with a touchscreen that can be rotated and then folded flat down onto the keyboard so as to make a ruggedized slate. That would deliver the same functionality as the Dual-Display concept, but with less weight thanks to only having a single screen.

The Binder concept is more unusual, with a touchscreen slate sliding into the docking slot of a removable keyboard. It’s hard to tell how it differs from the docking systems of the Samsung ATIV line-up - all four of the concepts were behind glass – but it presumably has low-profile connections in the docking “gutter” so as to allow the slate to glide into place.

Samsung’s Slider concept took a slightly different angle to the Sliding PC Series 7 the company showed off back at CES in January, with a form-factor more akin to Sony’s VAIO Duo 11. The fixed viewing angle is a compromise, but the mechanism may well be more sturdy than a single swiveling hinge as on the first prototype.

Finally, there was the Samsung Memo PC, a smaller form-factor slate (somewhere between 7- and 8.9-inches, we’d say) with S Pen support, intended for those that don’t need a physical keyboard. The asymmetric profile would be more suited to right-handed users, but it could be an interesting alternative to Samsung’s Android-based Note series.

Of course, that’s assuming any of the designs actually make it to production. Samsung is pushing ahead with more conventional docking-tablet designs right now, but was polling IFA attendees to see if they were swayed by any of the concepts it had on show. Let us know which you prefer in the comments.

This device clearly has a reinforced metallic back, lovely HTC design language in its curves on all sides, and what must be a high-end camera with a single LED flash. What’s confusing here is that the device still has the Beats Audio logo at the bottom back, this not quite adding up with their recent announcements that they’d be parting ways sooner than later with the audio company. Perhaps this device still falls under the fold though – we certainly wont be expecting any Beats-branded earbuds.

This device also has three capacitive buttons, similar to the rest of the HTC One series, letting us know that it’s got at least Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich if not the newer software Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Other specifications for this device have had it carrying a 5 megapixel camera on the back, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, and a processor twice as powerful as the HTC One V.

Above: the HTC Sensation, an obvious design reference for this new device.

We’re expecting that this device would have at least a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, but nothing’s confirmed as of yet. The HTC Proto will also quite likely have global connectivity for carriers around the world. HTC has also recently been reported as preparing an HTC One X for T-Mobile – they’d better get a move on!

[via The Verge]

The UI also marks the unnamed phone out as potentially something special. The smaller iconography – which now fits up to four Live Tiles to each line – is a feature of Windows Phone 7.8 and Windows Phone 8; it’s unclear which version of the platform this device is running or, indeed, if it’s merely showing a screenshot of the updated interface.

Muddying the waters is Nokia’s close work with Microsoft and the existing confirmation that the company has been providing reference hardware for Windows Phone testing. One such device, not intended for commercial production, was demonstrated back in June, complete with a dualcore processor, 720p HD display and integrated NFC.

According to the latest rumors, we won’t have long to wait to know the truth. Nokia is expected to announce a press event in early September, shortly after IFA 2012 and ahead of the predicted iPhone 5 unveil, at which it’s tipped to reveal its new Windows Phone 8 line-up. Commercially availability is said to be due before the holiday shopping season.

[via Softpedia]

It isn’t much to look at, but the seller says that it still works and still even saves – not bad for a cartridge that is apparently dated February 23, 1987. If the cartridge was indeed made around that date, that means this copy of The Legend of Zelda was making its way around Nintendo of America’s offices six months before the retail version released. For those doubting the cartridge’s authenticity (or the claim that it’s still in working order), the seller made a YouTube video demonstrating that the cartridge boots up just fine when popped into an NES. Check it out below.

Sadly, there don’t seem to be any differences between this prototype and the retail version that hit shelves in August of 1987. The seller does point out that he hasn’t played through it all the way yet, so there could very well be some differences which remain undiscovered, but if you’re planning on buying, you should probably keep that little caveat in mind. If it isn’t different from its retail cousin, you’re buying the prototype because it’s a prototype, and not because it provides an ultra-rare glimpse at gameplay elements that were left on the cutting room floor.

So far there have been 37 offers made on the prototype, and while a few are currently pending, most have been declined. That means there’s still time to secure this bad boy, but the seller obviously won’t abide low-ball offers. $150,000 is a lot to pay for a cartridge, and with this supposedly being the only one in the world, it’s difficult to put a value on the prototype. We’ve got some pretty serious game collectors walking this planet, however, so the seller may just make his sale by the time everything is said and done.

Of course, it’s important to remember that isn’t necessarily the finished product. Its design could change greatly by the time everything is said and done, and Luckey is expected to share some new renders of the headset when the Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift gets underway. That Kickstarter campaign should be launching soon, but at the moment we don’t have a solid kick-off date.

Luckey also announced that there will be an Oculus Rift SDK available to interested developers. Developing for Oculus Rift isn’t going to be a cake walk, however, as developers will have to overcome challenges that are unique to the world of virtual reality. There can be all sorts of issues with head tracking, for instance, and there’s also the fact that the output needs to warped in order to provide users with a wider field of view. The Rift SDK will hopefully make the obstacles a bit easier for developers to deal with, as Luckey says that the goal is making the development process hard on the device itself, not the developers.

In other news, the Oculus Rift will have a booth at QuakeCon later this week, where the unit will be displayed and presumably demoed. The write-up on Road to VR suggests that the Kickstarter campaign may be launching before QuakeCon kicks off on Thusday, August 2, so keep an eye out for that one. We’re definitely excited to see where this goes, so keep it tuned to SlashGear for more information on the Oculus Rift!

What you’ll see is the iPad 2 sitting next to what’s being called the original iPad prototype. This device was shown in a story earlier this week which had none other than Apple’s Jonathan Ive confirming the existence of said prototype and that the images matched up to what he remembered from the early 2000s as the prototype in question. This original iPad – made well before such a name existed – had a 12 in display and was nearly an inch thick.

This device has not yet been shown running any software at all, but due to the distinctive lack of any kind of buttons or switches at all, we must assume that it was meant to be a touch-screen unit. The back of the device has an Apple logo in portrait configuration, and the whole back of the device is white plastic. This design places the device right in line with the original white MacBook lineup, rounded corners and everything.

One rather large difference is the area around the front glass panel – it appears to have a space for airflow, this unit perhaps even containing a cooling fan inside!

Have a glance at how different the original is from the most modern of iPad units, and thank your lucky iStars that Apple found a way to make things much, much smaller in the decade between the two. Head to our iPad timeline below as well for additional recent bits on the future of the iPad.

[via Buzzfeed]

Speaking on the images of the 035 – aka the images you’re seeing above and below – Ive let the court know that he’d been working with the device between 2002 and 2004. He also let it be known that though he wasn’t sure which model shop created this exact model, that it was part of Apple’s exploration of the tablet in general.

“My recollection of first seeing it is very hazy, but it was, I’m guessing, sometime between 2002 and 2004, some but it was I remember seeing this and perhaps models similar to this when we were first exploring tablet designs that ultimately became the iPad.” – Ive

Remember also that Steve Jobs himself spoke with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher during an appearance at the 2010 All Things D, saying that it was actually the iPad that was being worked on before the iPhone came to fruition.

“I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got [rubber band] scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.” – Jobs

Have a peek above and below at the beast that was the first version of the iPad, or the earliest known version at this point, at least. It’s just as thick as a plastic MacBook, has no physical home button, and probably weighed in at several pounds. Enjoy your 2012 iPad and remember what it once was!

[via NetworkWorld]

The concept behind the idea is straightforward: smartphones are incredibly capable, powerful devices, but in being portable they also demand a huge compromise on screen size. Even the Galaxy Note, with its 5.3-inch display, is considerably smaller than the average tablet, and that can make reading news, ebooks, presentations and other content frustratingly uncomfortable.

Plastic Logic’s idea is an ultra-thin companion device using one of its plastic-transistor based displays, paired with a wireless technology such as WiFi or Bluetooth, a battery, touchscreen, and a smartphone app – currently a hastily-cobbled-together Android app – that exchanges data between the two devices. With that app, users could squirt over emailed documents or webpages to the epaper, paging through using the onscreen controls. Alternatively, you can do the same thing with photos taken with the phone, which could be useful for those with partial-sight wanting to enlarge pages.

Although Plastic Logic bills its displays as flexible, in this context the company says its potential carrier partners are more focused on a rugged device: something that can be dropped into a bag or briefcase without concerns that the screen might crack. Rather than the Heath Robinson prototype, the final design is envisaged as a slim frame with a carry-handle on the top that would contain the electronics, battery and other components.

Battery life could be a real advantage over existing tablets. Since the Plastic Logic display only uses power when it changes the on-screen image, it’s far more frugal than a traditional LCD or OLED. That could mean 2-4 weeks use on a single charge, potentially, though final runtimes haven’t been confirmed.

In practice, use is a simple affair. The rudimentary app allows you to pick a file and share it to the display – in this prototype’s case, using a WiFi connection – and, after a couple of seconds, it blinks into life. Photos are shown full-screen and, while it’s currently monochrome and obviously lower resolution than a new iPad, it’s still easier to look at than a compact phone screen. As for multi-page documents, like PDFs, they can be paged through with a few stabs at the on-screen buttons, though there’s the usual blink-refresh we’re familiar with from other e-paper products. That should change if Plastic Logic uses one of its video-capable panels, which has a higher refresh rate.

The deciding factor is likely to be price: Plastic Logic and its partners would need to bring this in significantly lower than regular tablets, which could be a challenge given the $199 Nexus 7 announced yesterday. The company wouldn’t give us an estimate – it depends on who supplies the rest of the components and builds the slate, as well as how carriers decide to market it – but the idea of it being supplied as a freebie with a new phone was vaunted.

There’s also NFC support, again a new native feature of Windows Phone 8, which Microsoft will use with its new Wallet Hub. Hardware acceleration for HMTL5 Canvas is also included, and Belfiore’s demo showed just how slickly Internet Explorer 10 could run on the new dual-core device.

Exact hardware details of the Nokia prototype are in short supply. It’s not clear which company supplied the processor – though Qualcomm, as the key chipset partner so far, seems a likely assumption – nor what speed it’s running at.

Unfortunately, as Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore was keen to make clear, the Nokia prototype isn’t expected to turn up as a production device. However, while that exact model isn’t going to reach store shelves, we would be very surprised if Nokia didn’t use similar components for commercial models when they arrive this fall.

The hardware itself is reasonably solid, though there’s some flex in the slate section. It docks with a reassuring click – the cradle itself has two latches and a cup-design that hugs the lower edges – while the speaker on the bottom of the tablet is replaced by integrated stereo speakers built into the hinges of the dock.

The keyboard section isn’t just a peripheral, but adds new functionality to the package as a whole: AMD says it has a large capacity hard-drive inside, along with automatic sync between it and the slate’s storage. Together, closed, they’re 20mm thick, which brings the whole package into ultrabook territory.

A couple of cameras, several USB ports spread out between the tablet and the dock, a wired ethernet port on the back of the keyboard and HDMI connectivity round out the main specs. It’s certainly not the first hybrid we’ve seen, but if AMD can deliver its Trinity APU performance claims in the real-world, it’s one we might consider opting for.

Recent photos of the prototypes revealed a hidden button on the inner edge, for controlling power, and a microUSB port on the underside, presumably for recharging the augmented reality wearable and flashing new firmware to it. There’s also what looks to be a button on the top edge, which it seems is now accompanied by a touch-sensitive trackpad integrated into the side arm.

“Don’t touch the pad on the side” Brin warned Newsom when balancing Project Glass on his face. Although the exec didn’t talk through exactly what he was doing in terms of navigation, he was seen to slide his finger back and forward to locate a previously-taken photo – potentially using some sort of carousel UI like CoverFlow – and then later swiped downward, perhaps to dismiss the gallery.

As for when the rest of us could try Project Glass, Brin suggested that a commercial launch might be closer than previously believed. “I have some hopes to maybe get it out sometime next year” he said, “but that’s still a little bit of a hope.” Still, the project is “a heck of a lot further along than people have imagined.”

Project Glass has been a Google X Labs endeavor for the past 2-3 years, Brin confirmed, with his own involvement ramping up in the past 12 months. So far, Google’s demonstrations have focused on the camera functionality of the headset, though it is also expected to include navigation and telecommunication features.

This device has 16GB of storage and is in near-working condition. In effect, this was supposed to be a tester device for Apple, it seems, but never made it past the viewing floor. The internal parts are said by the seller to be prototypes, each of them except for the battery which was removed for one reason or another before being whisked away into the wild where it rests now. There’s also no securing clip to hold down the device’s display flex cable and the touchscreen is “sporadic” as it’s noted – not the best tablet in the world if you’re looking for a working device, shall we say.

The iPad is one of the most iconic devices in mobile history, certainly setting the stage in many ways for our modern mobile world of many device screen sizes. Because of this, you can expect two things – first, that the auction will go up past its current sale price of of $4,800. Second, that Apple will demand that this device be returned to them where it will be swiftly destroyed. Buyer beware, this may not be the most legal of situations – no guarantees!

[via AppleInsider]

Ranjay Krishna, Seonwoo Lee, and Si Ping Wang, along with help from Jonathan Lang, developed a Sign Language Translator glove for their final project this past semester. The prototype glove is powered by 9-volt batteries and can transmit signals wirelessly. It uses various accelerometers, contact sensors, and flex sensors to gather three-dimensional data from complex finger gestures.

It then converts the gestures into digital signals that can be spoken aloud as letters by the system itself or sent to a computer as text. The prototype unit does both and the letters sent to the computer can be used to construct sentences or to play games, such as an American Sign Language testing game demoed in the video below.

[via Engadget]

The technology was first shown off back in 2009, an AMOLED panel with integrated camera pixels embedded between the display pixels. That way, not only could the user’s eye see the display, but the display could also track the eye; the resolution was too low for clear photography, but certainly enough to rely on eye-tracking for navigating a wearable computing interface.

A prototype was spawned, with its 2011 iteration sporting a monochrome 320 x 240 display with a 32-degree viewing angle and 1500 cd/m2 luminance. The latest version, however, increases resolution to VGA 640 x 480; it’s unclear if the camera part of the display has also seen a boost – the old prototype managed 160 x 120 pixels, again in monochrome – but it seems likely.

Fraunhofer intends to show off its new evaluation kit at the screen-centric SID 2012 at the start of June 2012, and though that will be undoubtedly targeted at developers looking at wearables research, the prospect of commercial products is at hand. Vuzix namechecked Fraunhofer back in October 2011 when discussing its plans for a head-mounted computing range, also integrating Nokia’s see-through EPE (Exit Pupil Expanding) optics technology.

“Integrate this Nokia technology with Vuzix’s advanced display engine developments with partners like Fraunhofer IPMS,” Vuzix president and CEO Paul Travers said at the time, ”and we expect to be able to offer the video glasses that Hollywood and Sci-Fi writers have only been able to imagine.”

[via OLED-Info]

Power isn’t the Sooner’s forte, running a miserly OMAP850 with 64MB of RAM, but that’s enough for this decidedly early build of Android: htc-2065.0.8.0.0 dated May 15 2007. Other hardware specs include a 320 x 240 display and a 1.3-megapixel camera, though no 3G connectivity or even WiFi.

The UI itself comes in before even what Google showed off in its early Android demos, with a homescreen devoid of anything beyond a clock and a search box. The refreshed version, with the row of shortcut icons across the bottom of the screen, is actually loaded as a separate app.

“It’s quite clear that Android was being designed to a completely different target before the iPhone was released. What we see here would have fitted in perfectly with the world of Symbian and BlackBerry. This early build of Android is in fact even less capable and mature than the 2004 release of Symbian Series 90 (Hildon), the OS that runs on the Nokia 7700 and 7710 – Nokia’s first, and only, pre-iPhone touchscreen smartphones. It’s not hard to see that iPhone really changed the thinking across the entire industry, and caused everybody to start from scratch” Steve Troughton-Smith

It’s no small distance from Ice Cream Sandwich as we know it today, and as Troughton-Smith points out it feels more like a BlackBerry competitor than the iPhone rival we primarily know Android as today.

Parts have emerged from various prototypes before, but there has never been a complete unit until now. The owner says that this wasn’t built from spare parts, and is an original prototype dated 1982-83. It doesn’t fully work, though: if you try to boot the machine with a Lisa-formatted Twiggy disk, the machine will attempt to read it, then eject the disk. At least the keyboard and mouse still work.

What you’re getting then is a cleaned and restored prototype that is simply a piece of history. It does show some signs of yellowing thanks to age, but hey, it’s the only one of its kind. The price you’ll have to pay to get your hands on it? A cool $99,995 if you Buy It Now. You could choose to bid on the item, but the starting price there is still a steep $89,995. We hope you’ve been saving up for this very moment.

[via Twitter/Steve Troughton-Smith]

The Transition is a two-seater vehicle with folding wings that can be driven on highways and flown in the air, all on unleaded gasoline. The vehicle was fueled at a regular gas station, driven to an airport, and flown to an altitude of 1,400 feet during its test flight, staying in the air for around eight minutes.

Six more phases of flight testing are scheduled for the Transition before it goes into production. Terrafugia is already accepting $10,000 deposits for the vehicle, which the company plans to sell for $279,000. The Transition will be on display at this week’s New York International Auto Show.

[via The Register]

The announcement comes amid news of slumping BlackBerry sales and waning developer interest in the much delayed platform transition that won’t see the launch of new BlackBerry 10 devices until late 2012. The arrival of the prototypes in May is a positive sign that the company is still on track, but Saunders emphasized that those test models will be very different from the actual handsets that will hit the market.

The new BB10 platform will basically be the same as what’s currently running on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which has about 10,000 apps that should easily port over to the new BB10 smartphones. The prototypes will be given out to attendees of the BlackBerry Jam event from May 1 to 3, which will run alongside the BlackBerry World Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The Toshiba AT330 prototype tablet is nearly double the size of the 7.7-inch AT200 prototype the company revealed at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, which also featured an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor and a similar aesthetic. But the AT330′s roomier body accommodates 32GB of storage with a full-sized SD card slot and HDMI output.

Not too much more is known about the specs of the AT330 other than having a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. It’s not certain what resolution display it has, but it looks to be a 1920 x 1200 LCD panel. The size would suggest a hefty device, but the marketing indicates it’s a lightweight tablet, although we don’t know yet exactly how much it weighs.

[via Android Community]

“For a monolingual speaker traveling in a foreign country, we’ll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output [in] a different language, but still in his own voice,” explained Soong regarding one of the potential applications for the software. Beyond eliminating language barriers for travelers, the software could also assist students in learning foreign languages.

However, in its current prototype stage, it takes about one hour of training in order for the software to learn a user’s nuances of speech to create a model that can read text in the user’s voice. But once the model is tuned, the translation can happen almost in real time. Among the 26 languages currently supported by the software are English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Italian.

[via PopSci]

The University of Utah has created a new prototype video game controller, which is similar to the traditional game pad that PS3 or Xbox gamers are used to playing with. The difference is that the university researchers have placed a small red knob in the center of the traditional thumb sticks that are able to pull against the user offering force feedback sensations on the game pad. Traditionally game pads only offer vibrating feedback.

The researchers tested multiple layouts for the controller and found gamers could easily interpret the direction of the small tugs provided by the little red eraser-sized tactors in the center of the normal thumb sticks. According to the designers, a gamer using this controller for shooter game would be able to feel the thumb sticks push on one side and pull on the other as their game character crawls on the ground. That would be very interesting. It would certainly add a new dimension to gaming with a game pad. The controller designers hope to bring the technology to commercial game pads in the future.

[via Physorg]

With Fujitsu saying the device is still months away from production and slated for a late 2012 launch we were happy to at least get some time with it. While the hardware felt a little loosely designed this early on it’s to hard to judge. The quad-core Tegra 3 under the hood is impressive with this prototype device but that is only one small part of what makes it so unique. Fujitsu’s also outfitted the phone with many top end specs to make an overall premiere device.

Along with everything else from Fujitsu this phone is both dustproof and waterproof. To make things better we have a 4.6″ high resolution display but the exact specifications weren’t available. It was extremely crisp and clear as you can see from our video experience below — although unresponsive at times.

To top things off we have a 13.1 megapixel camera on the rear and an optional fingerprint scanner too — similar to the Motorola Atrix. This sensor doubles as a proximity sensor and will automatically turn off the display when you set the device on the table. As usual the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor was blazing fast and Fujitsu had a few on demo displaying some HD Tegra games using HDMI mirror to the big screen. The performance of the device was extremely stable and quick running on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, even for a early prototype device.

Although Fujitsu is only calling this a prototype for now under the settings tab it was labeled the F12arc so we’ll be sure to look for more information soon. Overall this quad-core prototype phone definetaly had its strong points and its weak ones. With the hardware needing some minor touch-ups this will be a quality top-end phone to round off the Fujitsu lineup. We look forward to seeing more later this year.

The Gunze prototype had a capacitive touchscreen embedded in a tabletop with four electrodes located around the touch panel. In order for the touchscreen to differentiate between the players around the table, each player would have to have one hand hold the electrode while the other hand touched the screen.

Touching the electrode and then the touchscreen panel forms a closed circuit via the human body. The prototype so far also allows users to to operate the table by sitting on conductive chairs instead of having to touch an electrode with the other hand.

The Gunze touchscreen panel was introduced at the 11th International Nanotechnology Exhibition & Conference 2012 in Tokyo this month, but a timeframe for commercialization isn’t set yet. The company hopes to market the technology for multiplayer game machines.

[via Tech On]

Google is listed as the manufacturer of the devices, described as “in the prototyping phase”, and says that they will be connected to home internet connections via WiFi. Staff in Mountain View, Los Angeles, Cambridge and New York will all be involved, using the gadgets at work and at home. It’s also possible that the device is Google’s HUD Smart Glasses project, being tested in the wild.

Although the Home Entertainment System was immediately connected with the Android@Home, there are other possibilities for these latest filings. Google has also requested permission to test a “fiber residential gateway” including WiFi and Bluetooth wireless options as part of its 1Gbps Google Fiber project that recently broke ground in Kansas City.

This next-gen personal communication device, therefore, could be related to Google Fiber – perhaps linking wirelessly to the residential gateway, as some sort of portable Google Voice or Google Talk comms gadget – or it could be an element of the home entertainment system. Although talk so far has positioned that system as a Sonos rival, Android@Home supports a broad range of functionality thanks to the underlying app support, and personal communications could easily be an aspect of that.

Google demonstrated Android@Home at Google I/O 2011 last year; it’s entirely possible the new hardware could be prepared for the same show this year, which is expected to take place in late June 2012.

[Thanks Si!]

Running along the bottom edge is “a set of what appear to be LEDs” the report continues. Insiders at Microsoft have supposedly confirmed that the modified netbooks are indeed official demo units, though the expectation is that – unlike the original Kinect for the Xbox 360 – Microsoft will not itself be building computers with Kinect baked in.

Instead, the company is expected to license the Kinect system as an add-on to Windows 8. Gaming is one possibility – especially as we already know Xbox LIVE will be integrated into the new desktop platform – but there are other options including hands-free multimedia navigation, easier control of an HTPC or new usability for the disabled.

Microsoft’s approach isn’t the only one we’ve seen looking to add different control methods to Windows 8. Tobii unveiled its Gaze system earlier this month, using eye-tracking cameras to add an extra dimension to traditional mouse and keyboard navigation. However, Tobii’s previous eye-tracking hardware has been considerably more expensive than a Kinect sensor, while Microsoft is also believed to be readying a second-gen version accurate enough to allow for lip-reading.

[via Electronista]

The book reveals that the room is located in a walled-off section inside Apple’s main marketing building and requires a special badge in order to enter or exit the room. The packaging designers inside are said to open hundreds of prototype packaging in trying to achieve the perfect unboxing experience.

“How a customer opens a box must be one of the last things a typical product designer would consider,” wrote Lashinsky. “Yet for Apple, the inexpensive box merits as much attention as the high-margin electronic device inside.”

One after another, the designer created and tested an endless series of arrows, colors, and tapes for a tiny tab designed to show the consumer where to pull back the invisible, full-bleed sticker adhered to the top of the clear iPod box. Getting it just right was this particular designer’s obsession.

What’s more, it wasn’t just about one box. The tabs were placed so that when Apple’s factory packed multiple boxes for shipping to retail stores, there was a natural negative space between the boxes that protected and preserved the tab.

It truly illustrates the obsessive attention to detail at Apple, something Steve Jobs was well known for. Jobs was said to have gone through more than 2,000 shades of beige to find the perfect one for the Apple II and even insisted that engineers make the circuit board inside the Mac look great although consumers wouldn’t be able to see it.

[via MacRumors]

For those that don’t know, Rockchip is the increasingly popular manufacturer over in China, but are also responsible for the slew of cheap Gingerbread tablets that flooded the market in early 2011. They claimed the first Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet back in December but not being approved by Google or having the Android Market we can hardly call it official.

At the ShowStoppers booth Rockchip had a thin and lightweight 7″ device but it wasn’t fully operational and was quickly removed from our cameras eye. Instead they were showing off their 10″ slate that had a striking resemblance to those Galaxy Tabs. Does the back look familiar to anyone else?

The Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich prototype was running on a very early alpha build that was built from source — and according to that “about me” page it was only compiled a few days ago on January 8th. That is beta software if I don’t say so myself. The 10″ display was average at best and it was rocking a 5 megapixel camera around back. It was quick and stable and seemed to be a fully functional version of ICS although we didn’t have enough time to put it through the proper paces.

With Rockchip attending CES here in Vegas, and working hard to bring Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich tablets to more markets than China, we can expect to see another 3rd party unofficial tablet assault from Rockchip soon.