Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Gaming

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime sat down with VentureBeat on the heels of last week’s DSi announcement, and while he didn’t drop any major bombshells, he did put the kibosh on those Wii HD rumors, saying that they were “pure rumor and speculation″ and that Nintendo wouldn′t show off upcoming models to devs as the rumors claimed. Reggie also downplayed the talk that Nintendo is going head to head against Apple, saying that Ninty’s always “viewed ourselves as competing in a larger entertainment space.” That’s the end of that for now, we suppose — but Reggie didn′t close the door on either rumor entirely, and his closing comment that Nintendo’s good fortunes “makes us the most paranoid people in the world”certainly keeps possibilities open. Hit the read link for the full interview.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Man, the DSLR rumor mill never stops, does it? This time we’re being treated to some leaked Japanese Nikon ads, which feature a shadowy DSLR body that’s somewhat different than the D700 and D3 and the word “big” in Japanese. Of course, it could be totally fake, but we’re not going to say we’re not hoping for a compact full-frame camera — but we’re clearly dreamers. Anyone else have any guesses?

Read - First ad
Read - Second ad
Read - Sensor size comparison

Permalink&nbsp|&nbspEmail this | Comments

Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

You know how it goes — first comes the far-out rumor, then comes something a touch more believable, and then the company itself issues an all-too-familiar non-denial denial. According to MCV sources, the next step in the process will happen tomorrow, as a revamped DS storms into action at 5:00AM GMT on the 2nd of October. As for specifics, we’ll have to wait for Iwata’s supposed announcement to find out more, but we’d be utterly shocked to see this ship after Christmas. That is, if this isn’t just some elaborate scheme from the Big N to distract us all from realizing that Wiis will still be impossible to find this holiday season two full years after launch.

[Image courtesy of Parade, thanks Michael]

Read | Permalink&nbsp|&nbspEmail this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Gaming

Nintendo seems to be tripping all over itself denying the rumors that broke over the weekend of a new camera-packing DS, but it’s not exactly doing the greatest job — “While Nintendo is always working on new hardware, we have not made any announcement about a DS and we cannot comment on the Nikkei story” is exactly the sort of not-quite-a-no that has our new-hardware piggy bank cowering in fear. We’ll see soon, hopefully — Ninty prez Satoru Iwata is scheduled to give his fall presentation on Wednesday.

[Via Joystiq; image courtesy of Techeblog]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones

You’ve seen HTC’s Touch Diamond, Touch Pro and Touch HD handled in separate instances, but CNET Asia took the opportunity to get all three of the handsets together for a little get-together. Atypical for most sibling relationships, these three seemed to get along fairly well, though we did overhear the Touch Diamond calling the Touch Pro “a fatso.” Hit the read link for a few more looks.

[Via SlashPhone]

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink&nbsp|&nbspEmail this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

It’s no shock to see a US 3G-enabled Touch Diamond showing up at Best Buy (unlike the hamstrung sibling over at CompUSA) — though we can’t say we were expecting the big box retailer to start shipping this soon. If its website is to be believed (read: don’t book it just yet), the unlocked Touch Diamond 3G you’re about to order for $699.99 will leave Best Buy’s warehouse within one business day. If that’s not cool with you, you can also pick it up “at most stores.” Shame there’s no white option listed…

[Via MobileTechReview]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Okay, so this “review” of HTC’s beastly new Touch HD isn’t much of a review, but it offers up a few important snippets of insight — and perhaps more importantly for the visual stimulation-starved among us, a plethora of photography. The reviewer notes that the 800 x 480 display is positively gorgeous, the cam is decent (though autofocus is a tad on the slow side), the latest iteration of TouchFLO 3D running here chugs along with virtually no slowdown, and despite the display and the heavy-duty spec sheet, the darned thing is essentially the same size as an iPhone 3G. Oh, and there’s also a true 3.5mm headphone jack lurking on here, too, which we dare you to find on that HTC in your pocket right now. Makes it all that much harder to hear that it’s launching in the fourth quarter without global HSDPA, doesn’t it?

[Thanks, Steph]

Read | Permalink | Email this&nbsp|&nbspComments

Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones

We’ve known for what feels like ages that Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 would be based on Windows Mobile, but we wouldn’t count on the X2, X3 or X99 to just follow suit. At the launch of its digital marketing campaign for said handset, the firm made clear that future SE Xperia phones may not be based on Microsoft’s OS, with Magnus Andersson, product manager for the X1, noting that “the brand is not tied into any specific technical platform.” Unfortunately, he didn’t elaborate nor give any indication what other systems we could eventually see, but at least we know that there will be life after the X1 in one form or another, right?

Read | Permalink&nbsp|&nbspEmail this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Billed as an “affordable touch phone with the benefits of HTC′s TouchFLO,” the Touch Viva picks up where the original Touch left off and move things just a little bit downmarket for the benefit of smartphone lovers in emerging markets. To that end, the screen stays low-end with QVGA resolution, the radio tops out at EDGE speeds, and the camera’s a mere 2-megapixel piece — but by the same token, the Viva hangs onto WiFi, 256MB of ROM, and GPS. It also gets blessed with a tweaked version of TouchFLO that doesn’t rely on 3D acceleration found in HTC’s higher-end units. It’ll be available starting next month for what we can only imagine will be a pretty reasonable price; backup smartphone, anyone?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Oh, come on, you know there’s a part of you that wants it. A big part, even. The Touch Diamond is the first new HTC piece to get teed up for Sprint, but the Touch Pro is hot on its heels a few weeks later — and with a QWERTY keyboard, it’s hard to ignore. Question is, is it worth the extra wait? Well, ease your troubled mind for just a second and take a gander at our gallery on Engadget Mobile — we’re not saying it’s going to make your decision any easier, we’re just saying everyone likes pretty pictures.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Don’t say the writing wasn’t already littering the walls, because it was. Just months after AMD hacked its workforce by 10% and let its CTO walk away without being replaced, the company′s second CEO after Jerry Sanders has spent his last day in AMD′s biggest corner office. Hector Ruiz has decided to walk away from his role in the flagging outfit, leaving his right hand man (that would be Dirk Meyer) to take over whatever there is to take over. Of note, Mr. Ruiz will still have ties with the company as he remains on its board of directors as “executive chairman,” though it’s hard to say how much influence he’ll have from there. Really though, what’s next?

[Thanks, nehemoth]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Whispers in the hallways of George Washington CPU High School indicate that Intel is primed to release a batch of quad-core laptop processors next month. There apparently isn’t a ton of info on the happening right now, though Pioneer Computers (an Australian PC maker) is currently taking orders on a system equipped with a 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme chip, the QX9300. Of course, one of Intel’s regional marketing managers in Singapore, Sujan Kamran, says that, “We’re bringing quad-core to mobile in August,” so, uh… not a lot of mystery left, is there?

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink | Email this&nbsp|&nbspComments

Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Cellphones

We’re pretty certain we’ll be hearing this same story each year, every year for the rest of eternity, but hey, not like we’re kvetching over that or anything. Once again, we’re hearing that mad scientists have developed a breakthrough that makes Mr. Moore look remarkably bright, as a new approach to chip making could carve features in silicon chips “that are many times smaller than the wavelength of the light used to make them.” Reportedly, the new method “produces grids of parallel lines just 25-nanometers wide using light with a wavelength of 351-nanometers,” although the grids aren’t functional circuits just yet. If you’re interested in more technobabble on the matter, head on down to the read link, but we’d recommend against if you’re easily frightened by terms like “photolithographic” and “nanotechnology.”

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Who says you need a desktop chip packed within a 3-inch thick, 15-pound beast of a “laptop” to get decent FPS while at a LAN party? Intel’s speedy Core 2 Extreme Mobile 󙂨 checks in at 2.8GHz (prior to overclocking, of course), and promises to punish today’s latest games while sipping less power and generating less heat than the aforementioned alternatives. The gurus over at HotHardware were able to sit down with said chip and put it to the test overall, the Mobile X9000 “proved itself to be as fast as its desktop counterparts in many scenarios, all the while consuming less power as a complete system in the Dell XPS M730 notebook testbed.” If you’re the type that gets all hot and bothered by benchmarks and graphs, there’s plenty of those in the read link below.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

It’s been far too long since we’ve seen a gizmo from any walk of life get torture tested, but the wait for another is over at long last. As part of the Naked Pico Challenge, the crazy cats over at TechnoVoyance set out to see just how long the VIA PX5000EG Pico-ITX board could operate without any cooling whatsoever. After it hummed along for a fortnight without even a hiccup, the line had been drawn, and it was finally time to see precisely what could shut this thing down. We hate to spoil things, but suffice it to say, even this athlete-of-a-motherboard couldn’t withstand the pressure of an 1,800-watt hair dryer for more than a minute or two. Head on past the break to see the softcore abuse on video.

Continue reading VIA’s PX5000EG Pico-ITX motherboard is no match for a hair dryer

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink | Email this&nbsp|&nbspComments

Original post by Darren Murph