zeal

Skiing showdown: GPS-informed goggles miss the mark

As a skier, I've often wondered how fast I'm skiing when I'm skiing really fast.

Turns out it's 44.7 miles per hour.

I got my answer from Zeal Optics's Z3 goggles during a December trip to Whistler Blackcomb mountain in British Columbia. The Z3s are a new, and very expensive, breed of goggles that capture data using GPS technology and flash it on a tiny heads-up display unit at the bottom of the field of vision on the right side of lens. Zipping down Springboard, a wide-open, groomed intermediate run, the tiny display ticked off my speed as the slope steepened and the wind whistled past me.

Zeal is one of a handful of ski goggle makers selling devices that include the heads-up display technology from Recon Instruments, a Vancouver, B.C., company that's trying to bring hands-free, real-time performance statistics to skiers. The devices include tiny GPS receivers and a set of sensors to provide speed, distance, vertical descent data, and more. I also brought along goggles from Oakley and Smith Optics that use Recon's heads-up displays to test during my ski trip as well.… Read more

'Zune-like' smartphone in Nokia's future?

Nokia is reportedly working on a midrange smartphone with design cues reminiscent of partner Microsoft's Zune.

The Finnish handset maker plans to release next year a 4.3-inch Zune-like smartphone that will run Windows Phone 8, sources tell The Verge. The "Zeal" will appear in the middle of Nokia's new Lumia lineup and reportedly feature a 1.0GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a microSD slot. … Read more

Samsung Zeal: Impressive e-ink keyboard (review)

It's hard not to look at the Samsung Zeal for Verizon without feeling some reaction to its unique e-ink keyboard. Instead of characters printed on the topside, the gel-like buttons are lit from below, and morph from numbers to letters to symbols at the flick of a hinge or press of a button. However, we've seen this exact keyboard before in the Samsung Alias 2, along with the Zeal's dual-hinge, two-way flip phone.

Now, whether the phone's convertible design and interesting display grab you or feel gimmicky is the judgment at hand. I happen to be … Read more

Samsung Zeal brings e-ink back to Verizon

We see plenty of phones with unique designs, but this week Samsung is bringing Verizon customers a shape we haven't seen in awhile. The Samsung Zeal is a dual-hinge messaging phone. Flip it in portrait mode like you would a clamshell phone to see a numeric keypad. Flip it in landscape mode to see an QWERTY keypad.

What's more, the Samsung Zeal's keypads use e-ink, a technology we've seen before in another dual-hinge e-ink phone, the Samsung Alias 2, also for Verizon. As with the Alias 2, the characters on the Zeal's QWERTY keyboard morph … Read more