The iPhone 3G S is the fastest iPhone, yet. I hate stuffing multiple gadgets into my jeans. But it is uncool for a tech guy living in Silicon Valley to carry around a manbag. I’ve tried and it feels a bit awkward. So far my iPhone has been the best all-in-one pocketable device but with a few areas that needed improvement. The weakest feature of the iPhone 3G is the camera–it sucks. The new iPhone 3G S has a much improved camera and a whole lot more. If you want just one device in your pocket (or purse) that does it all and does it well the iPhone 3G S, in my opinion, is simply the best pocketable do-everything gadget available. Yes, better than the Palm Pre. Here are ten reasons why you should seriously consider getting the iPhone 3GS, in no particular order:

1. 3.2 Megapixel Camera: Autofocus. You can also manually focus. It has macro that get you real close. Bokeh? Yup.
2. Video: Flip? Good bye. The iPhone 3GS can take video with a 640 x 480 resolution at 30fps. That’s good enough for most applications. You can trim the video and then tap to upload to YouTube. Nice.
3. Voice Control: You like your RAZR because it has voice control? It took a long time (too long actually) but the iPhone 3GS has it too. Just press the button until you hear a tone. “Call Mom.” And you’ve got Mom on the line.
4. GPS: The full-blown kind. With a compass to make it more accurate. Tom Tom announced its Tom Tom for iPhone. No need to have a separate GPS device.
5. Voice Memos: A student and need to tape lectures? Or just want to record your own? This feature save a lot of hassle.
6. 7.2mbps HSDPA: Data transmission speeds are twice as fast. That’s always nice in a Web 2.0 world. Let’s hope AT&T delivers.
7. Longer Battery Life: 3 more hours of data on WiFi to 9. 6 more hours of audio to 30. 3 more hours of video to 10. talk time is the same at 5 hours.
8. Water & Oil Resistant: Wow, this is a surprise. You don’t have to worry about water or oil spills on the iPhone 3GS.
9. Nike+: Built-in support. Great for those that love to walk, jog and run.
10. Faster Processor: Everything is faster up to twice as fast. The fact that you have to close an app to get another running takes much less time. You almost don’t miss background processes with fast task switching.

AU Optronics (AUO), the largest Taiwan-based LCD manufacturer, will be showcasing its epaper display at the Display Taiwan 2009 conference that will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, June 10 to 12. The epaper display will be 6-inch in size and will use Sipix‘s Microcup technology with a pixel format of 800 x 600 in landscape mode. The 6-inch epaper display, similar to E Ink‘s technology, consumes power only when text and images are updated. Unlike most E Ink implementations that lack touch capability, AUO’s Sipix-based epaper display will be touch enabled. Touch, in my opinion, is a must-have feature for epaper displays to provide an experience that bridges the electronic from real paper. (more…)

Thanks to Nowhere Else you may be looking at the new iPhone that is expected to be announced next Monday at WWDC. At first glance it looks like the current iPhone 3G. But look carefully and there are three things I can see that are different.

Black Chrome is gone and the new iPhone is all black. This we are expecting and the picture seems to be bear the color/design change.

Voice Memos There is a new app called “Voice Memos” with an image of a microphone. Of course, this could easily be just another iPhone app, but I’m inclined to think that it’s legit.

Microphone for Ear On the current iPhone the microphone for the ear is located in the middle of the top bezel. In this picture it seems to be located flush with the border of the glass cover. I can’t make out what’s beneath it but there is certainly something there. Might it be an extra camera?

via Engadget

Acer unveiled its Aspire One netbook using Google’s Android operating system on June 2, 2009 at Computex.

… the majority of Acer netbooks will also offer Android in the future… Acer believes the Android operating system will contribute significantly to the worldwide netbook market growth.

Acer will give the customer the choice of having Android on its netbooks. I hope the brains over at Google makes the next iteration of Android capable of background processing similar to what the Pre does using WebOS. The press release states that the Android OS provides faster connection to the Internet on netbooks compared to other operating systems such as Windows XP. Acer plans to launch the first Aspire One netbooks with Android in the third quarter of this year.

With just-manufactured 3qi displays from a G3/G3.5 LCD fab, Pixel Qi purchased 10 red Acer netbooks and integrated the 3qi displays into them. The company burned a hole into the chassis and put in a toggle switch connected to the backlight driver to turn it on and off. The 3qi display is a transflective display that has some very good performance equaling the E Ink technology in reflective mode.

Production Plan John Ryan, COO and VP of Sales and Marketing at Pixel Qi, shared that the second batch will be manufactured in a week. A third much-larger batch in a month and in late Q3 production level will reach in the ten thousand range. Mass production at the hundred thousand range is expected to be reached in early 2010. (more…)

BusinessWire: The NEC 22-inch MultiSync E222W is greener than your average LCD monitor. It isn’t totally green since it still uses a CCFL backlight that contains mercury. But the LCD monitor uses half the amount of mercury. Power consumption is down by 50 percent too. My guess is that by improving the optical film stack, light throughput has been enhanced. That allows the number of CCFL tubes to be reduced. In the case of the E222W by half. A LED backlight would have made the E222W a lot more green but that would have meant you’d have to part with more of your greenbacks.

Less power consumption is a good thing in my book but let’s hope the picture quality wasn’t compromised. The E222W features a 1680 x 1050 pixel format, a 1000:1 contrast ratio and a 5ms response time. You have two ways to connect: DVI and VGA. Price? US$269 in July.

LG Electronics plans to move its flat panel display (FPD) TV manufacturing capabilities in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, closer to Seoul in Pyeongtaek. Why? To centralize production and improve management efficiency.

The company will need all the improvements it can get to achieve the goal of selling 18 million LCD TV sets in 2009 despite a weak economy. Centralized production will include costs savings in logistics, human resources and manufacturing.

LGE’s production center in Gumi will shift its focus on small/medium-sized LCD panels. LG Display is also focusing on expanding its LCD panel manufacturing from Gumi to Paju, which is just north of Seoul. LGE is also moving its research and development (R&D) personnel, roughly 300, out of Gumi and into Pyeongtaek.

Source: The Korea Times

Sony via Engadget: On June 2, 2009, Sony announced the PSP Go at E3. Unlike the previous PSP-3000 the PSP Go does not have a UMD drive. The PSP Go sports a 3.8-inch LCD with the same 480×272 pixel format found on the PSP-3000. It features WiFi B, Bluetooth, 16GB of internal storage and 64MB of memory, a 333MHz CPU, USB 2.0, Memory Stick Micro slot and analog video out.

I am somewhat relieved to see Sony recognizing that UMD had to go. A breath of fresh air coming out of a company that has been dead set on proprietary formats. But I’m still a little disappointed that Memory Stick Micro is still around. If you’re reading this Sony, just ditch the Memory Stick format and go with SD and save everyone a lot of trouble. I might sound a bit harsh but the design of the PSP Go is terrible: it looks like a cheap plastic gizmo you find in supermarkets designed by people who didn’t make the cut for the unsuccessful Mylo. The PSP Go will be available on October 1, 2009 and will cost you around US$250.

Smart Something is in the air and is about to come down hard on netbooks: smartbooks. True to its name I think smartbooks will be really smart when it comes to maximizing performance without needing a whole lot of power. There are three components that will make up the ultimate smartbook: Pixel Qi’s 3qi display, NVIDIA’s Tegra chipset and Google’s Android OS.

Android Smartbooks will eschew the weakest part of the equation: Windows (or Linux). Instead of these clunky operating systems*, smartbooks will use the lightweight smartphone-geared Android OS from Google. Advanced features such as touch, auto-tilt, etc. can be easily integrated and a good number of developers are coding cool apps as I type. There are some limitations. One glaring one is the lack of background processes. But if Palm can get that to work on the Pre, I’m sure the brains at Google can too. (more…)

720p HD Playback Mobinnova’s elan netbook looks quite nice, except for the bulging Sony-esque (but rather ugly) battery in the back. The elan sports a 8.9-inch display and offers “720p high-definition video playback” so I take it has a pixel format of at least 1280 x 720 and most likely 1366 x 768–very nice. The big news for the elan is that NVIDIA’s Tegra “computer-on-a-chip” is powering the device. At just 2lbs it is quite light and features instant on, a 3G connection and a very impressive battery life.

Impressive Battery Mobinnova claims the elan’s battery can last 5 to 10 hours of continuous HD video playback on single charge. That’s about 5 movies! If you’re not into video and just want to listen to music, you can do that for up to 24 days. Continuously! Just make sure the display is turned off. (more…)

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