E-Z Life

Not satisfied by the new retail-friendly Popbox that just debuted at CES? Popcorn Hour has announced it is introducing the A-200 Networked Media tank, internally as powerful as the bigger C-200 but with the A-110′s profile and lacking a Blu-ray drive port. Priced at $179, or with optional WiFi dongle for $20 more, preorders are to begin January 18 at 10 a.m. PST, it still has a slot for an internally mounted SATA HDD, and reported support for “simple” Blu-ray menu browsing. As far as other features, they’ve listened by including NTFS write support and also confirmed a new Flash Lite menu announced for the C-200 will arrive on this box, but unfortunately Netflix support on the Popbox doesn’t appear to have worked its way into the A-200. Check for even more specs and pics after the break, for those PCH fans once again choosing between flexibility and all-in-one ease.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Popcorn Hour casually announces the A-200 NMT for its most dedicated media streamer fans

Popcorn Hour casually announces the A-200 NMT for its most dedicated media streamer fans originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s our third year visiting with Fulton Innovation and the eCoupled wireless power booth at CES, and once again there’s significant progress to be seen — this time in the form of actual shipping products like the Case-mate Hug and the Dell Latitude Z. Fulton’s really pushing the industry standard angle with eCoupled — it’s a founding member of the Wireless Power Consortium, which is just a few months away from finalizing a standard based on eCoupled called Qi. Qi’s going to be backed by some pretty big names: Motorola, Nokia, RIM, Energizer, Duracell, Samsung, and Philips are all members of the WPC, along with several others, and the goal is for all this stuff to seamlessly play together. Fulton had some pretty hot demos to show off of the standard in action, including a Toyota Avalon interior with functional spots for two phones, a GPS, a Bluetooth headset, and a netbook, a slick first-class airline seat with a charging table, and a hotel room with several power points — including a slick motorized dock built into the desk for the Dell. Our favorite demo, however, was a wall sconce: an eCoupled point in the wall was used to power a light fixture, which was then swapped for a digital photo frame. Nifty stuff, indeed.

Still, the big challenge for Fulton and the WPC is going to be actually shipping a bunch of these products this year — standards are nice, but without gear in hand they’re meaningless, and the rival PowerMat crew has been making a pretty big push of its own. We’ll see what happens in the next few months — and how much has changed at CES 2011. Check a couple videos after the break!

Continue reading Wireless power takes another baby step at CES 2010 with Qi standard

Wireless power takes another baby step at CES 2010 with Qi standard originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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T-Mobile’s already starting to acknowledge that the Nexus One might have a love-hate relationship with its 3G spectrum, but we’ve been able to track down some internal documentation on exactly how the carrier’s going about resolving this. Naturally, they’re recommending affected customers reset the phone — an old standby that actually works a troublingly high percentage of the time — and hitting them up with some knowledge about the behavior of the device in different situations (you don’t see the 3G icon when you’re on WiFi, for instance, nor if you’re not in a 3G area). As far as T-Mob knows, exchanging the handset doesn’t help so they’re not currently recommending it, but they are asking folks with other 3G devices to see if they can pick up a signal in the same area — something we’d already seen from the carrier’s support forum post. We’re hopeful this all gets tied off nicely with a firmware update on the double, because let’s be honest: a device with a huge touchscreen becomes a lot less interesting when high-speed data goes away.

T-Mobile gives reps troubleshooting tips for Nexus One’s 3G issues originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re not quite sure what to make of this, but it appears that the AccuWeather app for S60 5th Edition devices has gone ahead and leaked an unknown Nokia device — the “Saga” — which appears to be a sort of N97 Mini Mini (two “Minis” on purpose there) that trades the tilting screen for a more traditional flat sliding one. As Symbian-Guru points out, Nokia itself doesn’t typically assign names to its handsets — it leaves that job to its carrier partners — so this might simply be a branded version of one of the existing N97 variants, but naturally, the leaked device theory is juicier. At any rate, if this were to come Stateside, they might have a bit of trouble slipping it by Samsung since they’ve already got a Saga in the mix here, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for some blander N, E, or X series label if this gets real.

Update: David Fields of the Nokia Messaging team is saying over on Symbian-Guru that it’s simply an N97 Mini — but that still doesn’t explain where the Saga name comes into play. The mystery continues!

Nokia ‘Saga’ accidentally outed in AccuWeather ad? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A lot’s happened since T-Mobile first announced the myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition, but if you’re looking for last-gen Android hardware in the sweetest case around, your wait is almost up: test units are going our to T-Mobile reps, and that formal launch will occur on January 20th. No word on pricing, but we can’t imagine it’ll be cheaper than the current myTouch 3G, especially since it adds a much-needed 3.5mm headphone jack and has that fancy woodgrain finish, bundled 16GB microSD card, and preloaded music. Yeah, we’ll still take the Nexus One, although we’d bet the myTouch 3G actually has… 3G.

T-Mobile Fender MyTouch 3G in the wild, due for launch January 20 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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