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Filed under: Cellphones

Well we see where this is headed. It was nice to catch a few of those quasi-unboxing pics of the T-Mobile ˇ the other day, but now the cats and kittens at TmoNews have gone and gotten pretty much the full monty. If you want to get a taste of what’s to come, here’s the perfect chance. You can check out photos of the Android device being wrenched from its packaging, as well as some glamour shots of the bundled accessories — including a bizarrely retro remote on the earbuds and “handsome” carrying pouch. October 22nd, you can’t come soon enough.

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

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]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

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?

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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.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It’s always good news when some sort of Touch Pro garners approval from that lovable bureaucracy we call the FCC, but this one has an extra-special place in our hearts: we’re pretty sure it’s the Fuze. Digging a little deeper into the documentation for the HTC model with code “NM8RPLT” reveals that it’s a Raphael, and it sports HSUPA 850 / 1900 — and if that doesn’t dovetail nicely with what we’re expecting out of AT&T any day, week, month, or year now, we don’t know what does. So tell us, FCC, how are AT&T’s customizations to TouchFLO 3D? Tasteful? Annoying?

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets

As the military industrial complex surges forward, so do advances in technology for the public sector. At least that’s how the cold-war wisdom goes. Case in point: QinetiQ is developing a lens-less, mirror-less, battlefield imaging system with some help from your DARPA’s deep pockets. The LACOSTE project (Large Area Coverage Optical Search while Track and Engage) aims to set aloft high-altitude (about 20km) drones and air-ships fitted with a special, thousand-strong microscopic sensor array (a “first of their kind,” according to QinetiQ), a “mask,” and image processor to decode the scene and extract an image of the quickly changing conditions on the battlefield or, you guessed it, city streets. The resulting lightweight and highly-durable system should feature a “super resolution” mode with the ability to “detect and simultaneously track large numbers of moving vehicles in dense urban areas with a high degree of accuracy, 24-hours a day.” And here you thought CCTV was intrusive.

[Via BBC]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Laptops

Not particularly thrilled with the performance of your HP Mini-Note 2133? If you’re vigorously shaking your head up and down as that render chugs along in the background, take a listen at this. The folks over at HP 2133 Guide took the time to benchmark their Vista / XP systems and then apply VIA′s recently released drivers for the CN896 chipset and Chrome9 integrated graphics. Not surprisingly, they found the update totally worthwhile. Based on pure numerical changes, there’s not a lot to phone home about, but critics did note that “video playback was improved quite a bit on each OS,” and that YouTube / Hulu vids were actually watchable post-update. Not a lot of downside to upgrading, so head on over and see what the new drivers have in store for you.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

It only makes sense that VIA’s contribution to the quickly growing netbook world — the OpenBook — get ripped wide open, wouldn’t you agree? Better still, this isn’t your typical dissection, as the invasive Tim Brown tears apart his own product on video. Three minutes of teardown is just one click away.

Continue reading VIA’s OpenBook gets fittingly ripped open

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Peripherals

Remember middle school? These guys do. NVIDIA, AMD, VIA and now SiS (only two capital letters? Not trying hard enough) have all teamed up in a fight against Intel of truly pubescent proportions. Intel has denied accusations of hiding the USB 3.0 spec, since it’s not their spec to hide, and claims it has no obligation to disclose its actual host controller specification before it’s ready. This apparently has the other chip makers scrambling to make their own host controller, so they aren’t beholden to Intel’s schedule. That could cause problems for the end product — if they don’t build theirs exactly like Intel’s, and with Intel’s already being on the market by the time they’re done, they’ll have to return to the drawing board and possibly delay their release by nine months. They claim this could give Intel two years of zero competition in the USB 3.0 space, but Intel figures since it plans to release the spec for free, is investing heavily in its development, and isn’t done yet anyways, it doesn’t owe those companies a thing. This just gets better and better.

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Original post by Paul Miller

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 P󘄈EG Pico-ITX motherboard is no match for a hair dryer

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Sweet, and likely salty. That’s VIA’s “special assistant to president,” Timothy Chen, giving NVIDIA’s Drew Henry, general manager of its MCP business, a little sugar. The moment was captured after the unveiling of the Mini-ITX 2.0 spec at Computex last week. Why? We’re not exactly sure, but we imagine things can get a bit emotional when old enemies join forces against a foe as formidable as Intel. Now give eachother a firm slap on the back, punch to the shoulder, and possibly, if it feels right… a noogie. There’s much to do if NVIDIA’s Tegra and VIA’s Nano are to supplant Intel’s Silverthorne and Diamondville in future MIDs and netbooks, respectively.

[Thanks, Richard L.]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Handhelds

We’ve seen companies toss out kit that claims to showcase the third-dimension without requiring a set of those face-consuming spectacles, but we’re having an even harder time believing it would go over well (or at all) on a ‘roided-up do-it-all handheld. Details are scarce on this one, but the Telson prototype / reference model device looks to be hung somewhere between the land of gaming handhelds and unadulterated UMPCs. Within, you’ll find a VIA C7-M processor, 512MB of RAM, a 30/60GB hard drive and a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 resolution panel that’s reportedly capable of displaying 3D imagery without special glasses. Can′t say we’re huge fans of the design / idea / etc., but we’ll be keeping an eye out just in case this somehow makes it into production.

[Via SlashGear]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Today VIA announced their Mini-ITX 2.0 platform for mini PCs. The standard calls for a high-performance, power efficient ⼶ processor like the VIA Nano, DirectX 10 graphics for Blu-ray Disc playback, 6-channel surround support, and a PCI Express ⻰ slot for video expansion. An optimized 2.0 system combined with a 1.8GHz Nano processor, CN896 chipset, nVidia GeForce 8600 card and 64-bit Windows will even kick its way through Crysis just as VIA has been saying all along. Don’t believe us? Check the video after the break.

Read — Mini-ITX 2.0 annoucement
Read — Crysis

Continue reading Video: Mini-ITX 2.0 with VIA Nano really does play Crysis

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Laptops

Talk about being behind the eight ball. With the Eee PC 901 and 1000 getting official, not to mention the onslaught of potent competitors, GeCube’s 10.2-inch alternative isn’t likely to steal much of the spotlight in Taipei. Nevertheless, the seemingly unnamed machine is ready to fight the losing battle with a 1.6GHz VIA C7-D processor, 512MB of DD̶ RAM (with an additional slot open), 1,024 x 600 resolution panel, 80GB SATA hard drive, stereo speakers, Ethernet, WiFi and three USB 2.0 jacks. Reportedly, the unit will come loaded with gOS (but it will support Windows XP if that’s more your style), and while no price is mentioned, we’d suggest keeping it remarkably low until a Nano / Atom shows up inside.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Stop the presses, UMPC Portal (AVING really) spotted the first netbook pumping VIA’s Atom-hating Nano processor at its core. The 10.2-inch Imini S1 Mini-Note from TongFang is just a customized VIA OpenBook reference design. Still, it does our Intel-weary, competitive hearts good to see a 1.2GHz VIA Nano CPU listed in the specs.

[Via UMPC Portal]

Continue reading First VIA Nano-based netbook spotted

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Original post by Thomas Ricker