Devices Site

For a company called Super Talent, there must be super claims. With that being said, they just launched what is suppose to be the “world’s thinnest” SSD Drive, but is it really the one?

Codenamed FSD56GC25H, the SSD Drive has 256GB of memory. Taking a look at the Guinness Book of World Records, this is truly the world’s thinnest drive, but only for the specific capacity of 256GB.

The transfer speeds are 50MB/sec when writing, and 65MB/sec while reading. As for the access times, only 0.1-milliseconds.

Strangely enough, the price of the Super Talent 256GB SSD Drive can only be known by request.

via

Motorola announced its new DVB-H Mobile TV DH02 that follows the DH1 introduced at CES and the DH1n introduced at MWC. The new features on this model include a GPS with Tele Atlas maps, a touch screen user interface supposed to be intuitive, and the HSDPA/ GPRS back channel support. There is no information about the display size, it could be the same as the previous model (4.3-inch). The resolution (480 x 270) and the video frame rate (25 fps) are not very exciting.

Features include:

• Live DVB-H TV with PVR capabilities – timeshift, live pause, frame grabbing
• GPS and Tele Atlas map views, POI, voice-activated directions
• real-time traffic information and speed alerts
• automatic channel scan and listing
• WQVGA display (480 x 270)
• Portrait and landscape auto-flip
• video play rate: 25 fps
• microSD cards to use for video, music and pictures
• Five-minute memory buffer for live pause and time shift of TV channels
• E-call (Emergency Calls) and SMS support
• Bluetooth and earphones

Mini Winnies Acre Wood Edition

You can have this for ?7.99

Posted Mar 26th 2008 11:41PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: GPS
We’ve been drooling over the GPRS-enabled, OpenMoko-powered Dash Express for what seems like forever now, but it’s finally shipping — and what’s even better, the price has dropped $200 to $399. Pre-order customers can expect a note from Dash alerting them to a refund of the difference sometime soon, while the rest of us can take ol’ Benjamin and his three best friends over to Amazon, which is the exclusive retailer for the next 30 days. Unfortunately, the monthly services fees are still kind of high: although you can still use the device as a regular GPS unit after the initial three-month grace period, if you buy the premium service you’ll be out $13 a month, or $10 if you sign a two-year deal — but hey, that’s the price you pay to be on the front lines of the revolution, right?

Posted Mar 27th 2008 3:03AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Misc. gadgetsThe whole claim of a product sell-out is a bit dubious without any numbers to back up the boast. Was it 100 or 100,000 units sold? Nevertheless, Bug Labs has depleted its initial stock of Bugs. Those of you looking to get your hands on the open-source, modular hardware platform will have to wait until the next shipment in May. While most of the purchases went the way of tinkerers, about a third of the devices were surprisingly scooped up by corporations looking at Bug to possibly replace expensive, custom devices. At least that’s how Bug Labs’ founder, Peter Semmelhack spins it. Could be, or perhaps it’s just the same compelling curiosity we all feel about Bug with a desire (read: R&D budget) to keep abreast of industry change? Regardless, good on ya Pete.

MP4 Watch

You can have this for ?59.95

LG have launched their new LG-KF510, a designer phone that packs in some pretty top rate features. The features themselves aren’t novel - all phones come with MP3 players, digital cameras, and the life these days - but what the LG-KF510 does is to provide high performing versions of such features in an attractive handset.

For example, the digital camera isn’t just a 3 megapixel camera; it’s a 3 megapixel camera with power flash and 1 second response time, meaning you can actually take decent photos in the gloom, as well as taking photos the second you see something interesting happening.

The impressive thing about this is that these features are being presented in a designer phone, which traditionally focuses more on looks and less on the quality of the features it offers. Indeed, most designer phones simply include the features in order to fill out the spec sheet, with no thought on the quality of those features given to the design at all.

The reason for this is the odd way we consumers behave. We want a phone to look good, so we buy a designer phone. But if one of our friend says “oh, but it’s only got a 1 megapixel camera”, we suddenly don’t like it, even if we know we’ll never actually use the phone’s camera feature. So we look for a phone that looks good and has all the features we a phone needs, irrespective of the quality of those features, as we secretly know we’ll never use them!

We’re odd beings, we humans!

So traditionally the designer phone rested on the laurels of its good looks, and didn’t really bother too much with its features. As such, it’s refreshing to see LG break the mould somewhat with the LG-KF510.

The design of the LG-KF510

The first thing to focus on with the LG-KF510 is obviously the design of the thing. It’s a slider, with a metal exterior that’s painted either Stardust Dark Gray or Sunset Red, with each paintjob featuring a color gradation. The front keys are simple LEDs that are touch sensitive and animated, which works well with the paintjob, giving an overall look of modern simplicity.

The actual keys of the keypad are revealed when the phone is slid back, and here the designer phone doesn’t look so designer - in fact, it just looks so so! Rather than the checkerboard or diamond pattern of previous designer phones (such as LG’s Chocolate or Shine range), the keypad seem to have come from an old 2001 brick! No matter, they work well, and it’s the main front of the phone that most people see anyway.

The features of the LG-KF510

As for the features, well, they seem to work remarkably well. The camera, for example, acts like a camera, taking photos when you want it to, not asking for you to wait while it catches its breath, builds up a head of steam, and then takes the picture. How many times have you taken photos of your friends with a poor camera phone, and had to get them all to sit still for a minute or so while your camera phone gets itself ready to actually take the pic?

If your mates are anything like mine, you’ll end up with a a photo album full of blurred gurning goons, all because they were too impatient (or drunk!) to sit still long enough for the camera to take a decent shot. It’s nice to see a designer phone that doesn’t have this problem.

There’s also an mp3 player with playlist feature, but this really isn’t that innovative, despite LG’s claims.

All, in all then, the LG-KF510 seems like a fine new addition to LG’s range of designer phones, and sees the company extending its lead in this area at the expense of Motorola.

As Dr. Skott Ahn, CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, puts it, “2008 is the year for a new paradigm in mobile phone design and LG is setting the benchmark…We have established ourselves as a leader in this field and the LG-KF510 is a unique addition in our mobile portfolio. With its sleek aesthetic and superior technology, it will appeal to many discerning consumers that value both style and substance.”

Which just about says it all, really!

The LG-KF510 release date is April 2008, or about two weeks by my reckoning!

Posted Mar 26th 2008 4:01PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Handhelds Harris Corp. may have nothing but good things to say about the HTC-made PDAs it’s planning to supply for use in the 2010 census, but it looks like the handhelds are already starting to cause plenty of headaches for census officials, who are reportedly even considering a return to pencil and paper if things can’t be resolved. As the AP reports, the problems start with the contract for the devices, which originally clocked in at $596 million, has since grown to $647 million, and could eventually balloon to as much as $2 billion. As if that wasn’t enough, the handheld has also apparently proven to be “too complex” for some of the temporary census workers that took part in a test last year, and the device was reportedly “not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary.” As a result, census officials are now said to be considering a number of different options to scale back the use of the devices, only one of which apparently actually has the headcounters entering data into ‘em as they go door-to-door.

While Samsung remains happy enough with its 5.9mm Samsung U100 cellphone, a little known device called the Modu stole the world record for the lightest cellphone in the world. It stands at 2.8 inches x 1.4 inches x 0.3 inch and weighs just 1.5 ounces. Obviously, there’s isn’t much technology you can pack in a cellphone as small as that, but the Modu isn’t a cellphone in itself anyway, and instead is only a modular cell phone. To use it, you place it inside some kind of “jacket” (a separate housing) which then increases the overall size and makes the Modu work like a typical handset.

The Modu features a small display, a mini USB port, a charger jack and a few navigational controls. It’s as small as, no, actually smaller than a credit card and yet it works just as well as most ordinary cellphones. I have to admit it’s a pretty tight phone. But I wonder, who would want one? I know I don’t.

Via [Crave]

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After Netflix went down on Monday for 11 hours and delayed the mailing of scheduled DVD’s, many customers spent the day tearing into the business, leading the Bay Area company to issue a 5% credit today. It will be automatically added to the user’s account, which is better than receiving a little coupon in the mail. It’s still only 5% though, which is less than what many users wanted: An extra rental or two.

If a customer had a DVD rental scheduled for Monday, Netflix sent them an email detailing the credit. If there was no scheduled shipment, you didn’t get anything, not even an email.  I had all three of my rentals at my place on Monday, so I won’t get to enjoy the few cents that would have been mine had I decided to send in that worn out copy of Superbad.

The email is above, but allow me to summarize:

“You probably heard what happened, it wasn’t great, we are sorry, we apologize (again), and here’s some money. On your way little ones.”

Do you think Netflix had to do anything to compensate for the day off? Is the 5% too minuscule to matter at all? Will this small gesture drown out the talk of more (or any) transparency with their broken DVDs and long wait times?