Space-age design: The mPower Emergency Illuminator is set to hit stores in March, 2010.
(Credit: mPower)Flashlights are becoming more and more sophisticated, as well as rather expensive. Case in point: the upcoming mPower Emergency Illuminator, which made its press debut this week at an event in New York. Designed by the Porsche Design Studio to be "a stylish product with emergency utility, it will cost somewhere between $250 and $300 when it comes out in March of 2010.
Aside from the fetching design, the mPower Emergency Illuminator boasts some innovative battery technology. One battery "tube" stores two CR123 batteries, while the other has what's called an OnCommand Reserve Battery that the company says has a minimum 20-year shelf life and will deliver "power on command when and where you need it."
While the special reserve battery isn't rechargeable and will wear down if you use the flashlight a lot, it will never degrade just sitting around in its tube. In other words, you could never turn this torch on for years, and it would still work the moment you need it--according to mPower. Replacing the backup battery will cost you around $25, though that price may go up with inflation over the years.
It's also worth noting that the flashlight has a built-in USB port for charging cell phones and other gadgets. If there's juice available from the CR123 batteries, your device will draw power from them; if not, it will charge up via the backup battery.
Comments? Would you rather have this model or the battery-free LED quick charging flashlight from 5.11 Tactical?
In case you haven't noticed, the Google Android dam has broken. For almost a year HTC was the only manufacturer to offer handsets with the operating system, but in the past month, Motorola and Samsung almost fell over each other to offer Android smartphones of their own. Moto gave us the satisfying Cliq and Samsung countered with the Moment.
The Moment offers everything you'd expect from an Android phone while adding Sprint-specific media services. Other features are plentiful, and the sturdy design and comfortable physical keyboard offer a nice contrast to Sprint's other Android phone, the HTC Hero. The Android OS still has its quirks, camera-editing options are nonexistent, and we had a few performance complaints, but it's clear that Sammy is taking its Android endeavor seriously. Check out our Samsung Moment review for the full scoop.
(Credit:
T-shirt pictures from CafePress and main logo by Jarle Aasland)
The Leica M9 is possibly the most expensive 35mm full-frame camera on the market today with a hefty price tag of $8,183.39. But that hasn't stopped me from dreaming of owning one, though I'm pretty sure it'll remain just a dream for a long time to come.
Jarle Aasland really wants one of these.
(Credit: Leica)Photographer Jarle Aasland wants the M9, too, but he's not simply sitting down and thinking about it like me. This shutterbug's set up a Web site called Leicadream to explain his cause and sell T-shirts to fund his fantasy camera. Each casual top costs between $22.49 and $35.99, and is available in both men's and women's cuts.
Much as I would like to help Aasland get the M9, I think I'd rather save the money that would go toward buying a T-shirt and put it in my piggybank labeled "Future Leica."
(Source: Crave Asia via PDNPulse)
Article updated at 5:00 pm to correct mIQ media sharing details.
Best Buy Mobile's mIQ dashboard is easier on the eye.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)Microsoft introduced its My Phone service last week, an online dashboard for managing and sharing the contents of your mobile phone. We liked some aspects, and critiqued some others. Ultimately, we wished that Microsoft had teamed up with its Seattle neighbor, connected services startup Dashwire, whose legacy dashboard did much of the same thing as My Phone does now, but did it better. Dashwire has since turned its standalone product into a platform. Best Buy Mobile snapped up a license and is now offering its own sync-and-share service, called mIQ (short for mobile IQ).
I know what you're thinking: The T-Mobile Sidekick backup service just failed, and the blame is Microsoft's. Why trust its My Phone service at all? But backup isn't the point of these services. They're about management. Moreover, comfortably managing the contents of your smartphone from a screen and keypad that's larger than anything you can get on your smartphone. And if you delete a number or photo from the Web or phone, it's gone. Neither of these services intends to save it, but they do intend to make it available online.
So now that that's clear, it's time for a throwdown.
My Phone and mIQ both download small clients to the mobile phone. From there, they bidirectionally sync the phone's contents to an online dashboard. My Phone is limited to Windows phones, but mIQ is free for anyone with a BlackBerry, Symbian, or Windows phone.
Features
We'll say right off the bat that Microsoft's My Phone is richer in feature types overall compared with Best Buy Mobile's mIQ. ... Read more
Now that second-generation pico (i.e. really tiny) projectors are hitting the streets, you can pick up first-gen models for a song.
Witness the 3M MPro110, on sale at Newegg for $149.99 shipped. It's a refurb, but given that it sold new for $359 just 10 months ago, you gotta take a look-see.
The impossibly small MPro110 weighs 5.6 ounces and measures 0.9 inch high by 2 inches wide by 4.5 inches deep, meaning you can literally stuff it in a pocket.
The projector works with a wide variety of video sources: laptops, digital cameras, camcorders, and iPods (which require a special video-out cable--3M doesn't supply one).
CNET hasn't reviewed the MPro110, but be sure to read the reviews at Gizmodo and PC Magazine. The chief complaint lies with brightness: you need a pretty dark room to enjoy the view, and you can't get an image much larger than 20 inches without taking a brightness hit.
Of course, if you're running a photo slideshow or watching a movie, 20 inches is way better than the source device's little LCD. The MPro110 may not be a suitable replacement for a boardroom projector, but for fun and leisure, it's pretty sweet.
You can learn more, and see the gizmo in action, in the above video (which is a little cheesy but very informative). Still more info is available at 3M's product page.
Newegg doesn't specify the warranty, but assume 90 days (and call or e-mail them if you're concerned about it). I don't really have a need for one of these, but I'm salivating over that price.
3M's new 3D optical film relies on directional backlight technology to focus left and right images sequentially into the viewer's eyes.
(Credit: 3M)3M has come up with a new optical film that lets you ditch the glasses when viewing stereoscopic 3D images on mobile devices.
The 3D optical film goes into the gadget's backlight unit and uses two alternate rows of LED lights to project left and right images sequentially into the viewer's eyes. As the sequential images are focused on the individual eye, the technology eliminates the need for 3D glasses to block the picture for the other eye. And, according to Erik Jostes, LCD business director of 3M's Optical Systems Division, it does so without sacrificing screen brightness or resolution.
"This technology can switch from 3D mode to 2D mode and back and you don't make compromises on the original display," he said.
3M's technology works on displays up to 9 inches, and the company envisions it primarily for games and other single-user applications. It requires one LCD panel and operates at a 120Hz refresh rate (most monitors and TVs display video at 60Hz, but to watch video in 3D, the video must be displayed at 120Hz, since each side of the screen creates two perspectives for each frame).
Since installation of the 3D film is almost identical to that of film stacks on existing systems, 3M says it can be easily integrated into the display's backlight module at the assembly stage. The film--which will be on display at the Korea Electronics Show next week--is currently appearing in one mobile device in Asia, according to Jostes, though he wouldn't disclose which. He says it's currently in small-scale production and may show up in products stateside as early as the holidays.
After the disappointment of the Samsung Instinct S30, Samsung has redeemed itself with the Samsung Instinct HD for Sprint. Both an upgrade and an improvement over the original Instinct, the Instinct HD offers a sleeker design, a brighter display, and more features. Its much-hyped high definition camcorder is an obvious attraction and we're pleased that Samsung finally added Wi-Fi.
The Instinct HD's performance was generally good, particularly on the multimedia side. The camera offers a load of options and the streaming video was some of the best we've seen. Its call quality didn't rate quite as high, but we're more concerned about the sometimes sluggish performance.
The Instinct HD will go on sale Sunday, September 27 for $249 with a service contract. As much as the phone offers, we find the price rather hard to swallow. After all, you can get a full smartphone like the HTC Hero for $70 cheaper. Personally, we'd rather pay for productivity features, but if high-end multimedia is your main interest, the Instinct HD should deliver them.
Samsung Instinct HD
(Credit: Samsung)When Samsung introduced the Instinct S30 earlier this year, we hoped the company didn't seriously consider the stripped-down handset to be a worthy update to the satisfying Instinct M800. At the time, we heard rumors of another Instinct model, but Samsung kept us hanging until now.
Announced Thursday, Sprint's Instinct HD M850 improves on the original phone in a number of ways. Not only does does it offer the sleeker profile we saw on the S30, but it also packs in more features. The centerpiece is the high-definition 5-megapixel camera. You won't be able to play HD video on the handset, but the Instinct has a TV-out connection for playing clips on an HDTV.
Other features include messaging and e-mail, Sprint TV, stereo Bluetooth, a speakerphone, a personal organizer, a music player with access to the Sprint Music Store, speech recognition, a full Opera Mobile 9.7 browser, Wi-Fi (yay!), an accelerometer, a virtual QWERTY keyboard, a memory card slot, and support for Sprint's (3G) EV-D Rev. A network.
The Instinct HD will go on sale Sunday, September 27. The $249 is quite high considering that Sprint sells the Google Android-powered HTC Hero smartphone for $70 cheaper. To get that price, you'll need to agree to a two-year Simply Everything plan.
On Sale Now: $249.99
View the latest prices for Samsung Instinct HD SPH-M850 (Sprint)
With the Intel Developer Forum underway, one of the big stories has been Intel's official unveiling of its new high-end laptop CPU, the mobile version of the Core i7. Of course, everyone's been talking about Core i7 laptops for weeks now, so the only real surprise is which PC makers are jumping onboard right away to show off this pricey new technology. Here's a roundup of Wednesday's announcements:
>Toshiba revamps Qosmio line with Core i7 X505
>Dell welcomes Intel Core i7 with pair of laptops
>Alienware launches Core i7 M15x laptop
(Related: new Alienware desktops, too)
>Dell launches first laptop with Intel's Core i7
(Via CNET's Nanotech blog)
For more IDF news, keep an eye on this handy roundup page.
It's a largely new system on the inside, but Alienware isn't digging up a new name for its powerful 15-inch gaming laptop. Featuring Intel's new mobile Core i7 processor, the Alienware m15x debuted today, the first of several Core i7 laptops we expect in the near future.
According to Alienware, this new system is for "enthusiast and hardcore gamers that require a high level of mobility while still requiring an exceptional gaming experience." Which sounds like it's not exactly going to be inexpensive. It's also not going to be lightweight--this is a 15-inch laptop that starts at nine pounds.
While sure to be highly configurable, as are all Alienware systems, these representative specs seem like the highest-end options available. We suspect an m15x outfitted as below would run several thousand dollars.
- Processor: Intel Core i7 920XM 2.0GHz
- Graphics: 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M1
- Memory: Up to 8GB DDR31 1,333MHz
- Hard Drive: Up to 500GB3 7,200rpm or 256GB solid-state drive
- Optical Drive: Slot-loading dual-layer Blu-ray Disc combo
