handheld

Even for the most effective night-vision goggles, there's always been one problem: It's difficult to be discreet while looking like "Buffalo Bill" from Silence of the Lambs.

But there may a more discreet way to carry out surreptitious missions with the "Infrar-Red Personal Night Viewer," which provides nocturnal vision on a 3.5-inch screen built into a handheld device. Better still, as OhGizmo notes, the 500-line-resolution display comes through in black and white, rather than that creepy green glow.

The Oqo was novel when the company first debuted: a small, ultra portable PC weighing 1 pound with slide-out QWERTY keyboard. But that was eight years ago.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a little feature Monday on the latest model ("latest" being relative since it actually launched in March of last year), in which it describes how the Oqo is being forced to "defend its niche" against the rise of the mini-notebook from the likes of Asus and Hewlett-Packard. The company cut the price, added Microsoft Vista, and bumped up the storage in September. The Oqo … Read more

For all you PSP and Nintendo DS addicts, we're taking you back, way back in time. It's the year 1977, where disco rules and the interwebs is just a twinkle in Al Gore's eye--it may seem like a long time ago to some, and for others it may even supersede your existence. That year though, I can remember emptying my piggy bank and running down to Woolworths to make my first handheld game purchase: Mattel Football. A very simple game, and quite prehistoric when compared to the handheld games of today. It didn't have Wi-Fi, and … Read more

First seen at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the mystery handheld Lenovo was showing off now has a name.

The IdeaPad U8 was unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai Tuesday along with a few more tidbits about what it's packing inside.

We already learned at CES that it runs Linux, is Web-enabled, has GPS, plays music, and takes photos.

By the name, IdeaPad, we can assume it's a consumer device, since IdeaPad is the name of Lenovo's newest line of consumer-oriented notebooks. We also know now that Intel considers it an MID (mobile Internet … Read more

As expected, Nokia officially unveiled the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMax Edition here at CTIA 2008. It's a slightly revamped Nokia N810 that adds, obviously, WiMax support and several other enhancements. For those unfamiliar with WiMax, it is a wireless broadband technology that promises to deliver download speeds of up to 2Mbps to 4Mbps with the potential to even hit up to 10Mbps, so we're talking cable and DSL-like speeds here.

While WiMax is the big story, there are a couple of other noteworthy changes to the Nokia N810. The slide-out full QWERTY keyboard has been improved to … Read more

Well, well, what do we have here? Engadget Mobile (via Internet Tablet Talk) caught wind of a WiMax-enabled Nokia N810 Internet Tablet after it was posted on Nokia Europe's Web site. Unfortunately, the link to the product page isn't working at the moment, but you can pretty much figure out that it's like the Nokia N810 we reviewed earlier this year but with WiMax support. Rumor has it that we'll see the debut of this device at CTIA 2008, so check back next week when our show coverage begins to see if this puppy shows its … Read more

Much has been made of Dell's retail makeover, but it's actually part of a larger trend toward experimentalism.

The company that has largely avoided unproven product categories is jumping all over them suddenly. Case in point: several years ago, when Microsoft was pushing tablet computing, Dell was fairly adamant that, no thanks, tablet PCs weren't something the company was interested in making.

"I think it is really unknown at this point how big the market is," CEO Michael Dell said in a 2002 interview about tablet PCs. "Dell, of course, likes to participate in … Read more

Rumors continue to persist about Dell getting back into the handheld business.

The latest is from Digitimes (which should be taken with a grain of salt) which is reporting that Dell has placed orders with several Asian manufacturers for smartphones, PDAs, and GPS devices. Digitimes says those devices would run Windows Mobile. That differs from the rumor floating around in late January that Dell was about to announce an Android-based handset.

As of this writing, Dell had not yet responded to requests for comment.

It's been almost a year since the company ended production of its popular Axim handheld, … Read more

Brazilian schoolchildren aren't the only ones not waiting around for the much-delayed One Laptop Per Child computer--many kids are turning to alternatives right in the USA.

Non-profit Innovations for Learning today launched the "Teachermate" in Chicago public schools, a $50 handheld device that it calls "the world's most affordable solution for providing one computer to every student in a classroom." It's obviously not the most powerful handheld, but it should be plenty for the kids in kindergarten through second grade for whom it is intended, with a 2.5-inch color LCD, built-in microphone … Read more