We hate to turn your entire world — nay, your very belief system — on its end, but it’s at least conceivable here that the so-called Nokia Mystic with the portrait QWERTY keyboard may not be the upcoming C6 after all. Instead, Tom’s Guide is submitting this bright white exhibit as the device lucky enough to wear the C6 name, a phone that looks a whole hell of a lot like a 5230 with a QWERTY slider tacked on for good measure. That would make sense considering Nokia’s goal of turning the freshly-introduced Cseries into a midrange, consumer-friendly brand; this phone could easily slot in below the N97 Mini, for example, particularly in light of rumors that the phone will lack the N97′s beefy internal storage. Word is the C6 is pegged for a European release by Summer, so start cleaning off those 5800s and 5230s for eBay right now, why don’t you?
Nokia C6 is actually a 5230-ish landscape slider? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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GDC is winding down here in San Francisco, but Playcast Media is hoping to snag its 15 minutes by announcing new partnerships with Atari, Capcom, Codemasters and THQ (to name a few) for use in its “console-free games-on-demand” service. ‘Course, streaming games in through a set-top-box is nothing new, but few operators in the States offer such a thing with any real substance behind it. Playcast’s solution enables titles to be pushed through existing cable and telco STBs, and we’re told that the US market is next in line to get gifted. We’re not given any significant details beyond that, but we’re pretty jazzed about big name publishers signing on to finally give this distribution method a bit of credence. Now, if only this Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD shipped with a SIXAXIS controller, we’d be golden.
Continue reading Playcast Media nabs support from big name publishers, aims to bring STB gaming to US
Playcast Media nabs support from big name publishers, aims to bring STB gaming to US originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Using a camera as an input device is hardly a new idea — even on a
mobile device — but most examples so far have been to enable functionality not possible on a touchscreen. As Master’s student Daniel Bierwirth has shown in the video after the break, however, a phone on a camera can also be used as an alternative input method for features like scrolling or zooming, potentially allowing for easier interaction on devices with smaller screens. Bierwirth also takes the idea one step further, and sees the system eventually including a second camera that’s worn by a person, which would be able to detect when your hands are near the phone and allow for a range of other gestures. Check out his full report at the link below.
Continue reading German student shows off camera-based input on an iPhone
German student shows off camera-based input on an iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Solid state drives may be the fast-moving wave of the future in PC storage, but the technology for bigger and better magnetic media keeps on trucking. Only recently, that truck hit something of a pothole: the 4096-byte sector size that will allow advanced format drives to have more usable space (and surpass the current 2TB capacity limit) doesn’t play nice with the world’s most popular OS — Windows XP. While manufacturers like Western Digital have already introduced software that successfully combats the problem, the new drives perform poorly in Win XP without it, and rival manufacturer Seagate told the BBC that even with software tricks, XP users should expect the occasional 5ms delay, or 10% speed reduction, during write times. Is this the end of Windows XP? Hardly. Should you make sure to install the software that comes with your next hard drive? Absolutely.
Win XP needs some TLC to use next-gen hard drives originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but Android Central seems to have obtained a screen shot from a deep, dark, top-secret Verizon system that indicated that the upcoming CDMA version of the Nexus One will be “available only through www.Google.com/Phones.” That, of course, matches T-Mobile’s strategy of quietly letting Google do its thing — and Verizon’s strategy of keeping its network “open” — so you’ll just have to remember to not line up at your local store at 8PM the night before the launch, otherwise you’re going to come away very, very disappointed. What’s a whole lot stranger, though, is a mention that it runs HTC’s Sense UI, which means one of a few things: Google’s allowing carriers and manufacturers to have their way with the Android builds sold directly through its own store, the Verizon-branded Nexus One is the Incredible, or the document is just sorely confused. The way we see it, there’d simply not be enough differentiation between the Nexus One and the Incredible for them to come to market as separate products if they were both running Sense — and besides, isn’t variety the spice of life?
Update: That was quick — it seems Verizon has already updated its specs to remove the reference to Sense and change the URL from google.com/phones to google.com/phone — no plural. Thanks, ninjalex76!
Verizon’s Nexus One to be sold only through Google, have Sense UI (or not) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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