Tom Tom: The Tom Tom GPS Kit for the iPod touch has a built-in GPS receiver, enabling the iPod touch to become a GPS navigation device. The US$100 charging and spinning windshield mount features an audio line-out, built-in speaker and works with all iPod touch models including the very first generation. To make it work you’ll need to invest another $100 on the app bringing the total to $200. Expensive but maybe worth it for those of you who would rather not deal with another gadget.
Direct2Dell: Chrome OS has been hacked thanks to Doug A. and now runs on Dell’s Mini 10v including WiFi. Not perfect, but working: The ChromiumOS network connection may take up to 5-10 minutes to see your WiFi connections. A USB image as well as instructions are available for download at Direct2Dell. I expect Chrome OS to be ported over to pretty much everything, and soon.
Hexxeh: Hexxeh has built a Chrome OS Diet version that fits into a 1GB USB key with improved WiFi support.
CNET: “Android and Chrome will likely converge over time.” – Sergey Brin, Co-Founder of Google. Android and Chrome OS should be merged now. Chrome OS is light enough to be loaded on smartphones but the weak link is its 100% dependence on the cloud. Incorporating Android apps into the Chrome OS could enable a happy middle with cloud-centric local apps.
Palm: An unbelievable price of US$30 for the Palm Pixi that originally goes for $199.99 with a 2-year contract with Sprint. It seems Sprint’s “Sprint Simply Everything” plan is included with this deal that goes for $99.99 per month. There is also a $36 activation fee. But the $30 price for the Palm Pixi is low, real low.
Gartner: Nokia is the number one smartphone brand in the third quarter of 2009 with a 39.3% share of a 41 million unit market. Nokia’s 16.16 million units dwarf the others but its market share is shrinking. At #2 is Research In Motion (RIM) with 8.52 million units and capturing 20.8%. Apple is #3 with a 17.1% market share and 7.04 million units. HTC and Samsung rounded out the #4 and #5 spots respectively.
Nokia’s smartphone market share reached an all-time low in the third quarter. On the other hand, RIM reached its highest. Popular models for RIM include the Curve 8900 in Europe and the Tour in the US. Apple added 4.2% to its market share while moving 2.3 million additional iPhones compared to the second quarter. Fourth quarter should be a boon to Apple as customers in China will be given the opportunity to purchase an iPhone.
RIM: The RIM BlackBerry Storm2 fixes a couple of big problems plagued the first Storm. One of the biggest problems was the virtual keyboard technology called SurePress.
With a single mechanical switch underneath the center of the LCD, typing on the original Storm was less than pleasant. Want to press shift and a letter at the same time? Good luck. Storm2 has an improved SurePress with not one but four piezo-electric switches, one on each corner of the LCD. Thanks to having four switches you are now free to press more than one virtual button at a time. Engadget’s Chris Ziegler took the Storm2 for a spin and came out less than impressed with the updated SurePress:
We can’t think of a single good reason why you’d want your touchscreen to be able to click like this… What’s worse, the Storm2′s implementation requires a surprising amount of effort to actuate… it gets old hearing the screen’s loud ‘thunk’ each and every time you type a letter.
I guess RIM didn’t call Stantum like I recommended a couple of months ago. Stantum has a resistive multitouch technology where the screen physically indents a bit to give you that “I clicked it”-feeling. And because it is resistive you can use your finger or anything else for that matter. And yes, multitouch is a definite go and the resistive technology is very responsive a whole bunch of touch points.
3D@Home just released its “Active Shutter Glasses Database” for you to enjoy 3D. I didn’t know there were so many brands: 3DTV Corporation, i-Art Corporation, I-O Display Systems, VRex, eDimensional, Micro Star International, RealD, Samsung, NVIDIA. Not one looks cool.
Samsung: The Samsung SyncMaster P2770HD is a 27-inch LCD monitor with built-in TV tuner. The 27-inch LCD sports a 1920×1080 resolution. If you sit in front of the computer all day but still want to watch TV, the P2770HD might be a very suitable solution for you. The 27-inch LCD is certainly large enough to sit back in your office chair and the 1080p resolution will show off over-the-air terrestrial HD signals just right.
Samsung points to some design touches on the P2270HD: a crystal bezel, transparent neck on the stand, and touch-sensitive power button. There are two 3W speakers.
I really like the large size and the plethora of connectivity options. But, there are a few things that make me pause in my excitement. The viewing angles are not so great at just 170/160; that tells me Samsung has used a cheap TN panel instead of its excellent PVA panel. Next up is Samsung’s showcasing the 50,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio: that number doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t bright enough. The 300 cd/m2 is certainly not dim for a monitor but when you’re marketing it to be used as a TV that will quite possibly be used during the day for a quick 10-minute TV break, the brightness isn’t enough especially when you’re trying to “sit back, relax, and enjoy the show”. The price sounds good enough but with 42-inch 1080p LCD TVs that are going for under $500, I’m not too sure it’s competitive enough.
SquareTrade, Engadget: SquareTrade, a company that sells extended warranties, combed through three years of service history for more than 30,000 notebook PCs. Here are some conclusions:
As you can see from the chart above netbooks have a first-year malfunction rate of 5.8%. Premium notebook PCs have a lower 4.2% malfunction rate at 12 months. The percentages don’t seem to be that different but let’s put a real number on these figures: a nice round figure of 10 million. Let’s say 10 million netbooks and 10 million premium notebook PCs were sold. In the first year 580,000 netbooks would have malfunctioned. On the other hand 420,000 premium notebook PCs would have malfunctioned. That’s a 160,000 unit difference. One simple conclusion might be that it would be wise to spend a bit more to reduce the chance that your notebook PC will malfunction. A notebook PC malfunction is not only inconvenient it takes away a lot of time: time to retrieve data, to send the malfunctioning unit off to a service center, to acquire another PC to do work while it is being fixed, etc. It is also a lot of stress. Another conclusion is to always have real-time backup of important documents and media.
This is somewhat surprising and a bit contradictory from the previous chart. I would have guessed a brand that concentrates on building premium notebook PCs to have been at the top. Doesn’t Sony or Apple have more premium notebook PC sales than ASUS? Maybe not. Maybe the Timeline series from ASUS is helping to pull the company’s notebook PC toward more premium products. It is also surprising to see HP in last place as the company has recently introduced some very nice notebook PCs like its ENVY line.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.