GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Remember Que, Plastic Logic’s large screen e-reader that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year? It’s increasingly looking like vaporware.

Plastic Logic isn’t shipping the Que e-reader, though the company is officially calling it a “delay.” Plastic Logic has canceled all pre-oders and is no longer offering a date as to when we can see the Que in the real world. It has also stopped taking pre-orders for the device.

“We need to let you know that since your unit will not ship on June 24 as planned, our automated ordering system has automatically canceled your order,” Plastic Logic sent in an e-mail to its customers.

Billed as an e-reader for business users, the Que had an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers. The device could also synchronize with Microsoft Outlook to display e-mails and calendar.

A 4-GB version of the Que with Wi-Fi and storage for about 35,000 documents was priced at $650. The company also announced a $800 8-GB version that includes Wi-Fi and 3G capability from AT&T.

It was an ambitious move and one out-of-sync with the trend in the e-reader market. Amazon’s large screen Kindle DX is priced at$490. Meanwhile, Apple has launched its iPad tablet with iBooks, an iTunes-like book store. Starting at $500, the iPad offers readers access to e-mail and books with a large color touchscreen. So far, Apple has sold 3 million iPads. About 7 million e-readers are expected to sell this year, estimates Forrester Research.

Not surprisingly, Plastic Logic has failed to get off the ground. A month before it promised to to ship the Que reader in April, the company announced to customers that it is delaying the launch to “sometime this summer.” In an e-mail then, Plastic Logic said it needed the time to “fine-tune features and enhance the overall product.”

This time around, it is offering the same reason.

“Plastic Logic wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the right one for their target business customers in the rapidly changing marketplace,” a spokesperson for Plastic Logic wrote in an e-mail to us. “They are continuing to refine the product, technology and features, and are anxious to get in the marketplace as soon as possible.”

Unless Plastic Logic can bring the price of the Que down significantly and offer greater value than the iPad or the Kindle DX, it is likely to be a product that will be dead on arrival–if it ever makes it to market.

Photo: Que/Priya Ganapati

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Motorola’s Droid X is not out in retail stores yet but one phone enthusiast had taken a screwdriver to the device already.

Max Lee tore down the Droid X to expose its innards and show what’s inside the smartphone. It took Lee about 10 hours to figure out how to take the back cover off but he says it was well-worth the effort.

“You can easily disassemble and assemble the Droid X once you figure it out,” he says. “This should be good for consumers to replace parts if they happen to drop the phone.”

And you can see in the video, overall it’s a pretty easy process for those who may be inclined to do it. Just one tip from Lee: “It’s good to grow your fingernails before you do this. Makes it easy to take the things out.”

It’s also fascinating to watch the camera module pop off and all the components come apart like they are just pieces in an elaborate electronic jigsaw puzzle.

The $200 Droid X (after a $100 rebate and with a two-year Verizon contract) will be available starting July 15 on Verizon Wireless network. The phone has a 1 GHz processor, a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a 8-megapixel camera.

Lee says once he took the phone apart, he found the bottom of the Droid X “has a lot of room to play.”

“Motorola could have made the phone a bit shorter but there would be something sticking out,” he says. “They probably did that for the overall design of the phone.”

Check out Lee’s teardown of the Droid X through step-by-step photos on his blog.

Photo: Droidx.net

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

There’s an old joke about a man who visits a doctor, complaining that his arm hurts whenever he moves it a certain way. The doctor’s response? “Stop moving it that way.”

That pretty much sums up Apple’s response to the people who have complained that holding the iPhone 4 in their left hand can cause signal strength to fall, dropping calls and reducing bandwidth. For these people — over 40 of whom have contacted Wired.com — touching the lower left corner of the iPhone’s metal band is the source of the problem.

Here’s what Sascha Segan on Gearlog.com said Apple had to say about that:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your Phone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

Despite numerous reports from Wired.com readers, we have been trying to replicate the problem without success. According to Wired.com writer Brian X. Chen, if he grips the iPhone 4 firmly in his left hand while downloading a web page, one or two bars disappear from the signal strength indicator. I haven’t been able to reproduce the problem at all.

Segan was able to reproduce the problem using what he calls a “death grip,” holding it “in a slightly sweaty left hand, with my fingers covering the three black lines on the phone’s edge and the bottom left corner in my palm.” In that grip, he guesses, signal strength drops by about 3 to 5 dBm.

Solution: Don’t hold your phone in a death grip, especially if you’re left-handed and inclined to have sweaty palms.

And if you’re one of the people who sees this problem even when holding the phone gently, put your iPhone 4 in a protective case — or add a strip of black electrical tape to the lower left edge. Both break the electrical contact between the phone’s antenna and your skin, and prevent the signal-loss from happening.

Photo courtesy Thomas Barnes

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Is it me, or are bike racks and baskets getting hotter and hotter? The latest example is the made-to-order Bent Basket by San Francisco designer Faris Elmasu. The plywood, nylon and aluminum construction sits over the front wheel where you can gaze upon its lovely curves as you ride.

In practical terms, the Bent Basket looks to be top-notch. You may not be able to toss in small items and ride away, but the open design with those stretchy straps is more versatile than either a tall basket or a narrow rack. Strapping a MacBook Pro straight onto it when it is mounted on a bike with skinny hard tires and no suspension may not be the best idea, though, despite the picture showing this dubious practice on the product site.

The maximum load is listed as a “12-pack of beer” and it is designed for the wheel-size of a 700c road bike, which pretty much means carrying Pabst Blue Ribbon on a fixed-gear bike. If you have a more utilitarian bicycle, there are less fancy-looking cargo-platforms available, for undoubtedly less cash.

Talking of price, you’ll need to get in touch with Elmasu to work something out, as each “basket” is hand-built. So beautifully simple is the design, though, that a quick trip to your local kitchenware emporium (for the tray) followed by a stop at the hardware store (everything else) should equip you to make your own, something I’m now planning to do. If you do make one, post images to the Gadget Lab Flickr Group, or just mail them in.

Bent Basket product page [Bent Basket via Design Boom]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

In a blog post, Google has described how it remotely removed two safe but “practically useless” applications from Android phones. The two free applications billed themselves as being for “security research” but because they “misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads”, the Android team nuked them from afar using its remote kill-switch, removing them from connected users’ phones.

The post on the Android Developers blog is written by Android Security Lead Rich Cannings. Cannings cites violations of the Android Market Terms of Service as the reasons behind the deletions. Far from being controversial, these terms were clearly stated as far back as October 2008, and only apply to apps from the Android Market itself. Back then I predicted the fuss that would come about if ever the switch was used in public:

If Google gets serious about throwing the kill switch for apps which violate the agreement, there is likely to be a fuss, from the technology blog world at least.

This isn’t the first time Google has wiped apps from users’ phones, although its the first we remember that has an accompanying blog post. While it is reassuring to know that Google is patrolling its App Store, its a little disturbing to know that your favorite, non-malicious app could disappear without your permission. In this case Apple – ironically – wins, for users at least. Remember Netshare, the iPhone data tethering app that briefly made it into the App Store? It was soon pulled by Apple, presumably at AT&T’s request, but those people who downloaded it continue to use it to this day.

Exercising Our Remote Application Removal Feature [Google / Android Developers Blog]

Photo: laihiu/Flickr

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

When you think of Polaroid, you probably picture the SX-70 OneStep Land Camera above, once the best selling camera in the US. If you had been awake yesterday, you could have bought one. Not any old reproduction, but a factory original, put together from real Polaroid parts by the folks at the Impossible Project, who got bought up the ruins of the Polaroid empire and resurrected it. Or at least brought it coughing and spluttering into life for long enough to figure out its secrets.

The Impossible Project already makes film for your Polaroid, but this SX-70, originally produced from 1977-1982, was a chance to buy history. It sold out within hours of appearing on Photojojo proving that, even at $210 and despite the attempted destruction of the Polaroid brand by its current owners, many of us still have a soft spot for the iconic camera.

The limited edition consisted of 50 hand-numbered camera complete with two packs of PX 100 First Flush Film. Fortunately for those now desperate to do some instant shooting, this film can be had for $21 per pack of eight exposures: all you need to do is visit your local thrift store and grab an old camera.

Impossible Project [Impossible]

Vintage Polaroid SX-70 OneStep Land Camera [Photojojo via Uncrate]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The Hug-A-Plug Dual Outlet Wall Adapter not only doubles the amount of sockets into which you can plug your appliances, it flips the outlets through 90-degrees so you can use them easily, even when hidden awkwardly away behind furniture. It’s also called Hug-A-Plug, which along with its surprised-looking Mario-cloud face, is just plain cute.

The adapter is just $5, right about what it should be – I’ll admit to having a thing for plugs and adapters of all kinds, but anything over $5 takes them out of the useful category and into the “boutique power” category, a category which I just made up.

Bonus feature: the rounded ridges up top make a great thumb-grip for when you need some purchase to yank out a cable. Sexy? No? Useful? Hell yes!

Hug-A-Plug Dual Outlet Wall Adapter [Cyberguys via Coolest Gadgets]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The nPower PEG is exactly the kind of thing that would have airport security asking you some rather awkward questions, and perhaps also earn you some childish snickers. The rather utilitarian phallus is in fact a kinetic energy generator which charges gadgets as it moves.

The PEG (personal energy generator) makes electricity as you move, harvesting your expended energy like the Matrix harvests your battery-like human meat-bag. It is made from titanium, and outputs standard USB power, which can be piped through a variety of different cables into iOS devices, BlackBerries and other cellphones. And that is all we know. The FAQ, the spec page and even the compatibility pages are almost willfully free of real information.

For instance, do you wonder how it works? I did, so I followed the treasure-trail of links to the penultimate teaser:

The science behind our technology is based on the Faraday principle and Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Our technology is scientifically unique enough to receive a patent, yet very simple to use. Read.

Excited, I clicked the read link and found:

An average human walking up a set of stairs will expend around 200 Watts of power. When you recharge your cell phone (including iPhones) the most amount of power it will accept is 2.5 Watts. The nPower PEG can harvest your walking power and deliver it to your phone to recharge the battery without you knowing that it is working.

Where’s the science? There is no mention of Einstein to be found. Now, I did some science in school, so I can guess that the PEG probably just has a magnet inside, bouncing up and down in a copper coil and generating a current which is then smoothed out to safely enter a UBS-powered device. But if you’re going to drop $150, the price of the PEG, on a mysterious metal tube, it would be nice to know what it has inside. Especially if you are taking it through airport security.

How the nPower PEG “works” [nPower PEG. Thanks, Steve!]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Last night I went to see Bob Dylan in concert. The audience for the rock legend has probably changed more than Bob himself. I saw a lot of Cuban cigars, dads with binoculars and mumsie types waddling what I expect was meant to be a sexy dance. I also saw a lot of cellphone and camera screens a-glowing in the wind.

Thankfully Bob couldn’t see that the majority of his audience was happier watching him via a tiny LCD, but if he had cared, or wanted to join in, he could have used the Guitar Sidekick, a guitar headstock-mounted holder for smartphones.

The Sidekick clamps onto the strings behind the nut (the bit the strings pass over before running down the fretboard) and your device slides in and can be twisted to sit where you want it. The specs say “smartphone”, the pictures show that it is clearly meant for an iPhone, but you could probably even squeeze an old-school tuner in there.

Now, the Sidekick isn’t just for checking Twitter while you’re on stage trying to keep up with Bob’s creatively arrhythmic solos. It could also be used with any number of smartphone apps, whether for tuning, recording or even displaying musical notation or guitar tabs. You could even use it to remember lyrics, although if you are a 69 year-old with a voice that makes Tom Waits sound like a castrato, you probably don’t need to actually form real words anymore.

The Guitar Sidekick costs $30, and will work with any guitar that has strings. It needs just one more, tiny, feature: an Eric Clapton, or God attachment for holding burning cigarettes.

Guitar Sidekick [Castiv via Macworld]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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We’re back with episode #2 of the new, improved, videographic Gadget Lab podcast. In this episode, Brian X. Chen and Dylan F. Tweney discuss the top gadget news of the week: The launch of the iPhone 4, the rollout of Verizon’s and Motorola’s Droid X, and the public release of Android 2.2, aka “FroYo,” which sports a fully-functional version of Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1.

(It didn’t make it into this podcast, but don’t miss Brian’s video introduction to the iPhone 4.)

We also show off a handful of iPad and iPhone apps: the excellent photojournalism-centric Guardian Eyewitness, an impressive library of medical images called 3D4 Medical, and a photo shooting, editing and sharing app called Camera+.

Oh, and then there’s iKamasutra XL.

And we wrap things up with a plea to save the seahorses. (Seriously: Overfishing may be leading some of them to the brink of extinction.)

You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our mugs, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Wired.com reader Ryan Rhea says he found a way to double the download speed of his new iPhone 4 with nothing more than black electrician’s tape.

Rhea, clearly a graduate of the Home Depot School of Gadget Hacks, simply applied a thin strip of black tape on the lower left corner of the phone’s outer metal band, starting right below the volume buttons and extending down to the edge of the speaker on the bottom of the phone.

That was enough to stop the reception problem reported by many iPhone 4 customers. For those with this problem, touching the lower left corner of their new phone causes signal strength to drop, often cutting off calls and sharply decreasing data download speeds.

Wired.com has not been able to duplicate the problem, although more than 30 readers have reported experiencing it.

That metal band forms the phone’s antenna, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained when announcing the iPhone 4 earlier this month. And while touching a radio or TV antenna can often improve reception, by making the conductive surface of your skin into an extension of the antenna, it seems to have the opposite effect on the iPhone 4.

Several readers have reported that putting the iPhone 4 into a protective case, such as the $30 “bumper” case sold by Apple, solves the problem.

The electrical tape achieves the same result at a much lower cost, by putting an electrical insulator between you and the phone’s antenna. In Rhea’s case, his 3G download speed as reported by Testmyiphone.com went from 0.41 Mbps without the tape to 0.82 Mbps with the tape (in both cases, with the phone gripped firmly in his left hand).

The cost for a roll of electrical tape? About $4 for a 66-foot roll of 3/4″ tape, which should be enough to fix your iPhone — and about 790 others.

As a bonus, electrical tape also works great for fixing nerdy glasses.

Photo courtesy Ryan Rhea

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

For some iPhone users, months of waiting in anticipation for the iPhone 4 and hours of standing in line ended in a big disappointment. Glitches forced some users who had pre-ordered their phones to go home without a device in hand — even though they thought they were eligible for an upgrade.

Glen LaFratte, a Dallas, Texas-based iPhone user, is one of them. LaFratte bought two 3G S phones–for him and his wife– last June. To his surprise, when he reserved a pair of iPhone 4s a week ago, he found his wife’s phone was deemed not eligible for the upgrade pricing of $200 for a 16 GB version and $300 for the 32 GB model.

LaFratte says he bought both the 3G S phones on the same day and even showed AT&T store representatives a receipt to prove that. But so far, he hasn’t heard back from AT&T with a fix.

“How much blood do they want?,” he wrote in an e-mail to Gadget Lab. “Apple needs to dump AT&T. I cannot understand why a huge computer manufacturer like Apple lets a cellular company control their pricing and cripple them.”

Apple’s iPhone 4 debuted in retail stores Thursday morning to huge crowds. Meanwhile, a number of users are complaining about network reception problems with the device, especially when the left and the bottom of the phone is touched or squeezed.

Apple had said that any current iPhone customers whose contracts were due to expire this year would be eligible for the lower upgrade price of $200 for the 16GB iPhone 4 and $300 for the 32GB version.

The problems with the upgrade are not widespread, with just a handful of users reporting the issue to Gadget Lab so far.

Among them is Josh Strom, who handles system support for Wired, who faced a similar baffling upgrade problem.

After waiting in line for two hours, Strom found out his pre-ordered iPhone 4 won’t be available for the upgrade price of $200. His current iPhone 3G contract ends this month.

“I am frustrated and really upset with AT&T,” says Strom. “They just couldn’t tell me why I cannot upgrade my iPhone.”

Meanwhile, other AT&T users are discovering that the upgrade pricing may not be for everyone.

At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference this year, Steve Jobs made an offer that seemed too good to be true.

“I am thrilled to announce that AT&T is going to make an incredibly generous upgrade offer. If your contract expires any time during 2010, you are immediately eligible for a new iPhone 4 at the same $199, $299 prices if you top up your contract for 2 years. You can get up to six months early eligibility for the iPhone 4,” Jobs told the attendees while introducing the phone.

That declaration, though, left out the fine print. Some AT&T users found that unless your current phone is an iPhone, the upgrade offer does not apply, even if you have another smartphone from AT&T.

Another user, Chris Heery, faced a system glitch that froze him out of the reservation system in the store. He’d canceled his pre-order in the hopes of picking up a phone from the store on the day of the launch. Heery says he might now have to wait until the end of this week so AT&T can sort the issue out and give him an iPhone 4.

If you are eligible for an upgrade and have been denied one by AT&T, let us know what happened. Post your experience in the comments.

Photo: Kevin Aungle yells triumphantly as he exits the Apple store with a 32GB iPhone 4 in Emeryville on June 24. jungle slept in his car the night before the new iPhone was launched and says he waited a total of 15 hours. (Stefan Armijo/Wired.com)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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The iPhone 4 has finally arrived here in Gadget Lab. Some of you may have seen this before.

We’ve spent only a few hours with the iPhone 4, but our first impressions of the device are quite positive. The 960-by-640 screen is gorgeous, and the thinner profile feels nice in the pocket. FaceTime video conferencing was problematic probably because of our weak Wi-Fi network here but once it got working it was neat.

We’ll have a full review of the iPhone 4 by Friday, but for now enjoy the video above re-introducing the famous device at the center of perhaps the greatest drama in gadget history.

This episode of the Gadget Lab video podcast was produced by Annaliza Savage, with editing by Michael Lennon and audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso. If you want the audio version of this podcast, subscribe to the Gadget Lab audio podcast on iTunes.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Over in Britain, a nation of binge-drinking alcoholics, there’s now yet another way to get a booze-fix. Marks and Spencer, the kindly uncle of national department stores, is selling a single-serve glass of wine.

The glasses, actually recyclable plastic, come pre-filled with 187ml (6.3-ounces) of Shiraz, Chardonnay or rose and have a peel-off foil lid. They cost 2.25 each ($3.37), which makes them more expensive than buying the same wine by the bottle (four glasses add up to 9, whereas the bottle is 4.50).

The product was invented by an Englishman named James Nash, and ironically his idea, before being picked up by M&S, was laughed off UK reality business show Dragon’s Den by its foolish, short-sighted panel.

The idea of single-serve wine could really take off. In-flight beverage service is the obvious market, doing away with the wastefully separate bottle and cup, but picnics for one could also work well. Sitting in the park with a sandwich, a bottle of wine and a glass will draw in some stares, even if you aren’t dressed like a wino. But with a cold glass (plastic) glass of Chardonnay to accompany your smoked salmon bagel, you’ll be the most sophisticated bum in Union Square. Chin-chin!

Wine Innovations product page [Wine Innovations]

Wine-in-a-glass entrepreneur ridiculed in Dragons’ Den toasts M&S success [Daily Mail via Crave]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you thought that the hype was settling down, guess again: iPhone-hungry masses lined up outside Apple stores around the world Thursday, eager to get their hands on Apple’s latest smartphone.

“The line is longer than expected. I wish they had it more organized by time frame like they do at the genius bar,” said Robert Arnold-Kraft, a line waiter outside Apple’s downtown San Francisco store.

“My legs are already cramping up. It’s almost been two hours. This launch is bigger than a blackout sale,” said Joseph Canino, in San Francisco.

In fact, the launch of the iPhone 4 may have drawn the largest crowds ever. In New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris and London, thousands of would-be customers queued up, some camping out overnight, to get a chance at buying the phone.

They’ll need some luck. Apple reported receiving more than 600,000 preorders for the phone, in a pre-sales rush that swamped AT&T’s and Apple’s web servers and led to countless customer complaints. Some customers lucky enough to place their orders successfully, and smart enough to choose at-home delivery, started receiving their phones as early as Tuesday. Those who chose to pick up their pre-ordered phones at an Apple store had to wait in line today, although their are separate lines for preorders and for customers without preorders. And the unhappy few who chose to pick up their phones at an AT&T store may have to wait until next week.

According to some estimates, Apple may sell as many as one million iPhone 4s today, a clear record. By contrast, it took the original iPhone 74 days to hit a million, and the iPhone 3GS took a whole weekend to reach that number.

A large crowd stands in line outside the Apple Store in the Cherry Hill Mall in Cherry Hill, N.J., early in the morning Thursday, June 24, 2010, waiting to buy the new Apple iPhone 4. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Still, waiting in line is worth it for some.

“Pre-ordering your iPhone is like getting the t-shirt without going to the concert,” said iPad DJ Rana Sobhany in a tweet. “The waiting and anticipation is part of the fun.”

“I feel excited, cold and insane,” said Juliet Hoffman, who was near the front of the line in San Francisco.

Others were less excited about the onslaught of new iPhone customers, given that AT&T’s network is already stretched to the limits.

“So *excited* to know there are about to be 500k+ more iPhone users on ATT starting today. Never thought I would be a network NIMBY,” tweeted Alexander Rose, the executive director of the Long Now Foundation.

Evan Wiendczak, foreground center, from Boston, waits as the first person in line to enter the Apple flagship store, Thursday morning, June 24, 2010, to buy his Apple iPhone 4 in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Top photo: Customers line up to buy Apple’s newest iPhone outside an Apple Inc’s store
at the Ginza district in Tokyo, Japan Thursday, June 24, 2010. Hundreds more
lined up across the city at Apple stores and other Softbank outlets. (AP
Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Additional reporting by Brian X. Chen.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Those of you still holding out for a white iPhone 4 are going to have to be mighty patient. Citing manufacturing problems, Apple has officially stated that the white version of the sellout new iPhone won’t be in stores for another three weeks. Here’s the entire, short press release:

White models of Apples new iPhone 4 have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected, and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.

My assumption had been that Apple has just switched all production over to the black handset just to keep up with the extraordinary demand. Now it would seem that there is some problem with making the glass case white.

This may be similar to an issue with the old iBook of several years ago. These were made from clear polycarbonate and painted on the inside, presumably to avoid scratches. The trouble was that the paint wasn’t always applied so well. One of mine had a rather patchy finish.

Still, at least now we know how long it will be, and those who want the white iPhone can choose to wait or just change their mind and get a black one. But then, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you had to wait until mid-July for one of those, too.

Statement by Apple on White iPhone 4 [Apple]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Got an iPhone 4 yet? Hold it carefully by the glass, avoiding the new steel antenna band that runs around the edges. Note the number of signal-strength bars you have. Now, touch the steel band with your other hand, preferably the left and bottom sides together. You will almost certainly see your signal disappear, or drop by three or four bars.

The problem is being so widely reported that Gizmodo has managed to add 16 videos of the phenomenon, along with many, many user reports. The problem is also repeatable, making it look like a lot more than simple coincidence.

If you have ever touched a bare-metal loop antenna for a TV, you’ll know that the water-filled human body has an effect on the reception, although in that case it usually improves the picture.

This, it turns out, is not entirely unexpected. Just two weeks ago, Jens Nielsen of Danish blog ComON quoted Professor Gert Frlund Pedersen of the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University:

[H]uman tissues will in any case have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost. This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signals. [Translation by Google]

Simply holding the new iPhone in the hand is enough to kill the signal. Even Walt Mossberg, in his review of the iPhone 4, had an eerily similar-sounding experience:

[O]n at least six occasions during my tests, the new iPhone was either reporting no service or searching for a network while the old one, held in my other hand, was showing at least a couple of bars. Neither Apple nor AT&T could explain this. [emphasis added]

Is it possible that a problem like this would make it into the wild? You’d think that it would have been discovered in testing. On the other hand, maybe this is what caused Steve Jobs’ connection woes at the WWDC keynote where he demoed the new handset?

One possible answer is in the way the new antenna works. Instead of just picking the strongest signal, the iPhone 4 picks the highest quality signal, the frequency with the least amount of interference. In the current iPhone firmware, this is not yet reflected in the signal display, which still indicates actual strength. Apple has said that this is known bug which it plans to fix. If true, then you shouldn’t actually drop a call, even when your apparent signal-bars drop to zero.

Or perhaps it is all a sinister plot from Apple to sell more of those insulating rubber Bumper cases?

If you have an iPhone 4, please test this out for us, and send the results to us at gadgetnews@wired.com or post them in the comments. Specifically, check to see if a decrease in displayed bars corresponds with an actual drop in call quality.

iPhone 4 Reception Issue? [MacRumors]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

An English inventor has come up with an cheap, lightweight power-assist system for bicycles. It is built into a pair of modified pedals and requires no extra hardware. It also seems to be impossible.

I need your help, here, Gadget Lab readers. First, I’ll tell you what I know. The kit is called “Fast Forward” and, from the pictures, looks to be a pair of regular pedals with rechargeable batteries and motors inside. Fast Forward was designed by inventor Stephen Britt, and he is currently a finalist in the Barclays “Take One Small Step” contest. If it wins, Stephen will receive business funding.

To use them, you just swap them in for the pedals you already have. Here’s Stephen’s pitch:

These replace your standard pedals and provide you with assistance to get you up hills, or carry heavy loads. Each pedal incorporates a motor, gearbox, Li-po batteries and a control board. As you pedal the sensors detect your effort and provide assistance.

To pedal without assistance, simply flip the pedals over. They unclip and slot into a charger for charging, much like with a power tool. When fully developed they will provide a range of 10 miles and peak power of 200W. They will retail for around 200.

There’s no doubt that Stephen could build these pedals, but my question is, would they work? Surely the pedals, without toe-straps, would just spin under your feet. Even if you were to firmly cinch your feet in place, would a spinning pedal provide any assistance? It seems to me that the pedal would just try to twist your toes upwards and annoy you, and generally act like a tail wagging a dog.

But although I did just spend ten minutes with my foot in a spare pedal waving my leg around, I’m no no mechanic, let alone a physicist. So help me, readers. Could this possibly work? Answers, as always, in the comments.

Fast Forward Cycle Pedals [Barclays via Bicycle Design]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The iPhone 4 isn’t even officially on sale yet and already there are widespread reports of problems with the new retina display.

The iPhone 4 has already been delivered to some lucky customers, and some of them have discovered nasty yellow-brown “stains” on the ultra hi-res screen. These come in the form of a small blob of discoloration in one or more screen corners, as you can see in the photo above from the Apple Discussion forums, posted by user elitemrp.

The problem is echoed across various other sites, including the MacRumors forums, and Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo Tweets that his blog is also being deluged with reports.

Right now we have no direct experience of the problem, or any idea what may be causing it. Our guess would be that it is related to the new production technique Apple is using to bond the glass cover, the LCD panel and the digitizer together into one layered unit, but that’s just a guess.

This could turn into rather a big problem for Apple. If the internet is already this noisy after just a few iPhones were delivered early, imagine how loud things will get when the rest of the 600,000 pre-orders are in people’s hands.

Flawed screen [Apple Discussions]

Some iPhone 4s Experiencing Display Discoloration? [MacRumors]

Uh-Oh – Anyone got yellow spots on their 14 screen? [MacRumors Forums]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

You probably already know that you can hook up a MacBook to your giant 27-inch iMac and use it as an external display. But what if you have another device that you’d like to plug into the big screen? A Blu-ray player or a games console, perhaps?

Belkin’s new white plastic brick will take any HDMI signal and squirt it into the iMac’s Mini DisplayPort. The AV360 will let you play XBox games on the iMac, and even watch DRM-crippled movies – the adapter is HDCP-compliant, and also pipes through stereo audio.

There are a couple of gotchas. One is that any 1080p source will be downgraded to 720p, a shame on the biggest iMac’s 2560 x 1440 pixel display. The other problem is one of price: The AV360 is $150. That’s $150 for an adapter, although $150 is certainly cheaper than buying a second display, and the box takes up a lot less space. Available now.

AV360 Mini DisplayPort Converter for 27-inch iMac [Belkin via Oh Gizmo]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Eight months after Motorola debuted its first Droid phone, the company has refreshed the device to include a bigger screen, a focus on high-definition video and Flash compatibility.

Motorola’s new Droid X phone is the successor to its original Droid smartphone introduced last October. The $200 Droid X (after a $100 rebate and with a two-year contract) will run Google’s latest Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and will include Adobe Flash Player 10.1. DROID X customers will the 2.2 and Flash updates wirelessly over-the-air in the latter half of the summer.

“It is pretty spectacular,” John Stratton, chief marketing officer of Verizon told attendees at the device’s launch. “When you have a screen and form factor like this — very thin and lightweight — it screams video.”

The new Droid X will have a 4.3-inch touchscreen (854 x 480 pixels resolution) — about the same size as the HTC EVO 4G and much bigger physically than the 3.5-inch display on the iPhone 4, which is 960 x 640 pixels.

The phone includes a Texas Instruments OMAP processor with 1-GHz processing ability, 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB of internal memory that’s expandable to 40 GB using a storage card.

It also has a 8-megapixel camera, a step up from the 5-megapixel one in the earlier version. The camera can capture 720p video content and offers HD playback via HDMI. What’s missing is the dual camera that’s now a part of the iPhone and HTC Evo.

The Droid X announcement comes a day before the public debut of the iPhone 4, although Apple’s phone is already in the hands of some lucky customers as well as a few carefully chosen reviewers.

The Droid X will be the star in Motorola’s portfolio. So far Motorola has launched a number of Android phones, including the Cliq on T-Mobile, Backflip on AT&T and Devour on Verizon. But its first Droid phone remains a best-seller. Meanwhile, Apple is charging ahead with its latest iPhone, which is gathering generally positive reviews(though AT&T’s network has been criticized). Many Apple users have already started receiving their pre-ordered iPhone 4.

Droid X is Motorola’s 11th Android smartphone. The phone will start shipping July 15 and will be available exclusively on Verizon’s network.

See below for a larger image.

Top photo: Droid X
Stefan Armijo/Wired.com

Photo: Verizon

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The new Motorola Droid X phone, with its slim profile and striking display, doesn’t set a new standard in industrial design. But what it lacks in style, it makes up for with features, including an emphasis on high-definition video recording and playback.

The $200 Droid X (after a $100 rebate and with a two-year Verizon contract) will run Googles latest Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and will include Adobe Flash Player 10.1, following an update “late summer.”

There’s one key difference between the Droid X and the original Droid: The Droid X doesn’t have a physical keyboard. Instead its 4.3-inch display makes it one of the biggest touchscreens available among smartphones today.

The Droid X’s screen is gorgeous and incredibly responsive to touch. The display has a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels compared to 800 x 480 pixels on the HTC Evo. Placed side-by-side, the Evo’s display seemed brighter and more vivid.

But the Droid X’s touchscreen is a treat. It’s extremely responsive without crossing over into the annoyingly sensitive territory.

Unlike the Evo, which has its four Android buttons (Home, Menu, Back and Search) sleekly integrated into the frame, the Droid X has four physical buttons at the bottom of the phone and it is jarring. The matte black finish of the phone gives it a dull appearance compared to the glossy shine of the Evo.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The iPhone 4’s $200 price tag can be mesmerizing, but we’re all aware it’s going to cost a lot more over time thanks to monthly bills. Just how much will you ultimately spend on an iPhone 4 versus, say, a comparable Android handset? Fortunately for the non-mathletes, a website called BillShrink has done the tedious number crunching for us.

The chart at right (click to enlarge) does a nice job summing up the total costs of ownership for the iPhone 4 compared to three highlight Android phones: the Droid Incredible, HTC Evo 4G and Nexus One. Bottom line: If you opt for minimal data and voice plans, you can potentially spend the least on the iPhone 4 over two years.

That should be comforting for owners of the 600,000 iPhone 4s that were already preordered, though of course it doesn’t factor in the amount you’ll be spending on apps. Considering there are 215,000 apps in the App Store compared to Android’s 70,000 apps, we’re guessing iPhone 4 owners will be spending a lot more than Android users over time with all that additional software available.

Via BillShrink

Image courtesy of BillShrink

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

An exploded view of the iPhone 4 from iFixit

Hardware and software tests of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 have started to show up, and there are a few surprises. Those brand-new iPad owners looking jealously at the fancy new iPhone can relax, though: the iPad is still the fastest piece of Apple mobile hardware out there.

MacRumors has run the numbers using benchmark Geekbench and Checkup apps for iOS, and although the tests were complicated by the fact that not all the test software runs on all the platforms, the iPad came out tops, closely followed by the iPhone 4, with the iPhone 3G coming in last.

This is a little mysterious, as iFixit, the King of the Teardown, has already ripped open the iPhone4 to reveal that it does indeed use the same 1GHz A4 processor as the iPad, and also has double the RAM (512MB vs. 256MB). We strongly suspect that the chip is being under-clocked inside the iPhone to both keep things cooler in the tight confines of its case and to conserve battery life.

The iFixit teardown reveals some other surprises. The battery is not soldered in place, making it easy to replace. Very easy, in fact, as the two screws on the bottom edge release the back glass plates panel, giving instant access to the battery. Not so good is the new bonded display. It may be tougher, and make the pixels look closer to the surface, but the glass, LCD and digitizer are all one unit, meaning cracked screens will be a lot more expensive to replace.

But what of older hardware? Well, if you have the older 3G, you might not want to upgrade the OS. Flickr user Adrian Nier has posted a side-by-side video of two iPhones 3G, one running the new iOS4 and the other still on iOS 3.1.3. He tests the startup time, the camera, loads a web page (the now-traditional NYT, of course) and accesses the settings. Surprisingly, the phone running 3.1.3 is significantly, obviously faster. See for yourself:

This is not so surprising. The iPhone 3G is capable of running iOS4, but doesn’t get many of its goodies, including multitasking. It is also a three-year-old hardware design, and if you bought one back the, you should be eligible for an upgrade to the new iPhone anyway. For the record, my latest-gen iPod Touch (32GB) runs as fast as it did before. There seems to be no slowdown on an already very fast device.

To delve even deeper into the innards of Apple’s latest, head over to Chipworks, which carries on where iFixit leaves off. If you want to see pictures of the new 5MP camera’s sensor taken with an electron microscope, that’s the place to go.

iPhone 4 Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Kyle!]

Apple iPhone 4 Smart Phone – Teardown to the Silicon [Chipworks]

iPhone 4 is Faster than 3GS and Slower than iPad in Early Benchmarks [MacRumors]

iOS 4 Performance on iPhone 3G Camera and Settings [Adrian Nier / Flickr]

Image: iFixit

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

DC comics are now available from Comixology, the commercial comic book reader for iOS devices and the web. The second of the big two publishers joins Marvel, Vertigo, Dark Horse and a slew of smaller publishers and imprints to make Comixology the easiest place to find e-comics.

Most of you will know Comixology as the “Comics” app for the iPhone and iPad, but any Flash-capable browser can be pointed at the Comixology site and used to read anything in your collection in a rather excellent online reader. Try this on a big monitor and you’ll forget about paper forever.

Comixology doesn’t offer every comic you might want, nor even every new release, but the addition of DC at least means there is one place to go on, say, you iPad no matter what you are looking for. Now you can buy (and in some cases download free) series like Batman (including the superb Batman Year One), Frank Quitely’s All Star Superman, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Green Lantern and others.

Best of all, Comixology is free in the App Store and online. And if you don’t care to download DRM’ed content of any kind, check out out list of the best Comic Apps for the iPad which can be loaded with your own scans.

DC Comics Launches Digital Publishing: Partners With Comixology [Comixology]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews