Tech Gadgets Reviews

Posted Mar 20th 2008 8:09PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: cellphones, Transportation

It’s been two years since we first heard that Qantas was bringing in-flight email and SMS to its fleet, and after a lengthy testing period, it looks like it’s finally happening. The last set of test flights wrapped up in January, and allowing people to check in on the status of their Nigerian money transfers and send R U HERE texts apparently didn’t cause any major problems, so the airline is moving to bring the tech to all Boeing 767 and Airbus A330 flights in Australia. Voice service still isn’t in the cards, but considering how long it’s taking to get any of this tech off the ground in the States, we’ll take what we can get.

[Thanks, Chris]

The Samsung Muse handset is now available form Alltel, featuring the following specifications for your perusal :-

• MP3 playback
• 64MB internal memory
• 2 megapixel camera with video recording capability
• GPS navigation
• Stereo Bluetooth connectivity
• Access to XM Mobile Radio Service

You can pick up the Samsung Muse from Alltel for a mere $90, which ain’t too shabby an offer.

SanDisk is releasing DRM-free music of 50 new and emerging artists on microSD cards. This program is part of SanDisk’s campaign to promote its recently announced 8GB Sansa Fuze.

The microSD card will contain a collection of rock, pop, and hip hop songs, music videos and photos from more than 30 record labels. Among those featured artists in the microSD cards are All Time Low Ladytron, Magnet, Nada Surf, Of Montreal and The Coup. All 50 tracks included in Sansa microSD card were selected and licensed by LA-based entertainment and music marketing agency NonStop Riot.

U.S.-based music fans who will purchase the 8GB Sansa Fuse player will receive a promotional coupon that they can use to redeem the Sansa microSD card containing the 50 DRM-free music tracks.

Read [SanDisk]

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We had seen the first leaked image of the Motorola Z9 way back in July 2007 only to have it finally turn up on the FCC earlier this month, now we have all the details and its safe to say they are official, they were leaked courtesy of a Motorola product sheet.

The Motorola Z9 will be a media-centric slider style phone with dedicated music keys that will appear when the music player is launched or the phone is set to music mode. The Z9 has support for GSM 850/19001800/1900, WCDMA 1900/850 and 3.6 Mbps HSDPA. It will feature a 2.4-inch QVGA display, have A-GPS support, a 2-megapixel camera with flash and 8x zoom, Opera 8 browser and 45MB of internal memory with up to 8GB of additional storage with the microSD card slot.

Now it just comes down to when Motorola will release the Z9 and how much it will retail for. In addition to the scan of the ‘official’ product sheet (which you can see below) you can also check out some other goodies from Motorola by visiting their site: http://uaprof.motorola.com/

Via [Just Another mobile phone Blog] Image Via [gizmos.es]

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The RAmos RM955 portable media player looks elegant and sleek enough to be a cell phone, and it comes with the following features :-

• 2.8″ touch screen QVGA display at 320 x 240 resolution
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Support for AVI, MP3, WMA, JPEG and BMP files
• microSD memory card slot

The RM955 will be available in 2GB and 4GB varieties, although there is no mention of price as at press time despite having an April shipping date.

The StereoStone Fountain Speaker is a marriage of convenience, bringing together a piece of garden decor and audio playback courtesy of its 250-watt, 8″ dual voice coil speaker, concealed within a water fountain. It boasts a wrought iron-look and features a built-in fountain as well, providing you with a relaxing environment that is completed with the inclusion of a speaker, enabling you to enjoy your favorite relaxing tunes while listening to the gentle bubbling of the fountain. The Fountain Speaker will be available this April, retailing for $599.95.

This Transformer concept phone by Shkinder Maxim is a wondrous thing, as it wears many hats. Capable of functioning as a cell phone primarily, the Transformer concept phone also doubles up as a photo/video camera, a multimedia player, a projector, and even supports holographic imaging and 3D scanning! Clearly, such technology is not available for a commercial rollout as yet, but this is a concept so it is all right to go nuts over it. Features include a coupe of independent swiveling and flipping displays, letting you switch from one function to another with minimal effort. I wonder which company would be the first to come out with such a technologically advanced handset.

Posted Mar 20th 2008 11:57AM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Displays, Peripherals

It may not boast fancy OLED displays, let alone three of ‘em, but if you just want to get some basic status updates in convenient slide show form, it looks like this so-called “Gadget Display” should do the trick, and presumably on the relative cheap. While complete details are pretty light, the device apparently boasts a 2-inch LCD, which you can configure to display a range of information from a clock to CPU and RAM usage, although there doesn’t appear to be support for Vista Sidebar gadgets (at least officially). No word on pricing or availability, unfortunately, though we’re guessing it should be cheap enough to let you buy ‘em buy the bundle if you have some ideas of your own for them.

[Via Crave]

HTC’s Shift, an attractive, late-to-market UMPC hampered by poor battery life, will finally go on sale on the 24th of March. Though America’s getting a neat additional feature, an Evdo Rev. A modem that’ll hook it up to Sprint, the hefty price tag might well warn you off: at $1,500, it’s unusually expensive.

After all, there are already good current-gen UMPCs with Wireless WAN, such as the OQO, Vaio UX and Fujitsu’s U810, and only the Sony’ll hit you up for that kind of moolah. Moreover, the next-gen of pocket PCs is coming, powered by a similarly fresh lineup of power-pinching chips like Intel’s Atom.

ZDNet has its first impressions blogged online, with a giant, relentless gallery of unboxing shots.

The long awaited HTC Shift is now coming to you from Sprint, 140+ hands-on photos [ZDNET]

Who doesn’t cherish their treasured moments? The Beautiful Times clock helps etch those memories in your mind with its extremely unconventional design, featuring LCD numbers that seemingly “float” above a wooden block. What makes this clock unique is the fact that it tells the time only when the figures are deemed “beautiful”, for example mirroring (22:55), repeating (7:07), up- or countdown (12:34 or 5:43) and turning around (6:09) categories. Definitely not the most practical timepiece to have around in your home, but at least it is different.