Filed under: Announcements

It’s hard to think back to a time when Peter and I longed to do our very own cellphone-centric Engadget spinoff — those were the days that a 1GB microSD card was pretty impressive, HTC phones were frequently EDGE-only (the more things change…), and Ballmer was predicting $100 smartphones were still a year or two out. But exactly two years ago today we also finally launched Engadget Mobile, and it’s been a crazy amount of fun watching it grow into its own as the go-to place for handset news ever since. Much love to Chris, Sean, and the rest of our regular EngMob contributors — and, of course, the cellphone fanatics that keep coming back to feed their sick, wireless addiction.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Looks good, performs well and kicks ass. But enough about us; this laptop pleasures us too. Tosh have come up trumps with their HD offering, but with the super slim Portege on the prowl how does this beast fare?

The screen is a whisker off full HD, but you’d be hard pushed to tell, as movies whisked from the HD-DVD drive look awesome. Colour and contrasts is on par with a number of big telly’s and for such a small screen we didn’t lose any of the drama of Transformers. It’s deep OK?

If films aren’t your thing, this lappie has got gaming licked too, packing enough poke to give silky smooth frame rate in Crysis, and as a bonus, the Harman Kardon speakers pump out some of the best laptop audio around.

The sole bum notes are provided by its weight, clocking in at an offensive 3.8kg. With a power supply that’s only slightly smaller than Battersea power station, this is not the laptop you want to be lugging around in your man bag.

Mimicking the PSP’s UMD format, the Movie Phone from Indian firm Spice Corp Ltd. plays movies from tiny optical discs that you slide in the back.

Not much bigger than an SD card, the 1GB Vmedia discs are far smaller than UMDs, and can hold a three-and-a-half hour Bollywood epic. And you won’t see them anywhere else – they’ve been made specifically for use with this mobile, just like Sony’s UMDs were exclusively for the PSP.

Makers Vmedia say quality is 20% higher than a DVD, and they’ll sell for the same price and come out on the same day. We saw one blown up on a 50-inch plasma, and it looked pretty darned impressive.

Talks are being held with top Hollywood studios to bring Western flicks to the format. Which of course will decide its success when it launches in Europe at the end of the year. Those lucky Indians will get it in the summer.

Also from the same company is a phone for the blind, with braile on the keys and which speaks the numbers as you dial them. Looks like Japan and Europe are getting some serious competition when it comes to mobile innovation.

GTA IV’s online multiplayer section looks like it could be heading to the 360 only if gossiping Microsoft execs are to be believed.

Our thumb twitching mates at CVG have sniffed out news that the two suits from the Big M described the game’s multiplayer as ‘unique to 360’ and that punters would get the ‘premium experience on our platform.’

The idle chatter was part of a gaming podcast, which you can check out by hitting the link down below.

If it turns out to be true, it’ll be a major coup for the Xbox. The online portion of the game has had us us salivating since we first heard word of it way back last year.

GTA Iv hits the shelves on April 29th, having initially been slated for an October 2007 release. Word on the street is that once again Rockstar are not going to disappoint.

An Apple spokesperson has told T3 that the MacBook Air’s multitouch track pad is software, not hardware, based.

This means that rather than having to lash out on a new lappie to have access to all that touch-based goodness, owners of standard MacBooks and MacBook Pros could potentially download an update to give their kit a multitouch makeover.

When put to our man on the inside, he said that this was the whole point of it being software based.

Whether we’ll see an official release later this year, or have to wait for hackers to get to work on some homebrewed alternative, remains to be seen.

The potential for this is huge. Getting multitouch working on a full specced machine, like the Pro, would completely change the way people interact with their computer in a work environment, as well as making the likes of iTunes and iPhoto more user friendly.

If it was seeded to developers, then the opportunities to use it in line with likes of Photoshop and Final Cut are also massive.

But, let’s face it, the real killer here is the fact that you won’t have to fork out on a new high ender just because your laptop doesn’t come with multitouch.