Harman Kardon Unveils Pair of Speaker Systems

Harman Kardon announced two new speaker system meant to be used with Mac and iPods. The First speaker system GLA-55 is powered by a 100-watt digital amplifier and sports a DSP equalizer. The speakers can be attached to a Mac via 3.5mm headphone jack, and it has a woofer and tweeter configuration for each speaker. The speaker uses a clear plastic casing that shows off its magnets and wiring. The GLA-55 will ship by end of this year for $915. Read More

Sony to Ship First 240Hz LCD HDTV on November 10th

Samsung was the first company to talk about 240Hz LCD HDTV, but Sony will be world’s first to actually ship a 240Hz LCD HDTV. Sony will ship their new W1 series of HDTVs with 240Hz imaging on November 10th in Japan. There will be two models 46-inch KDL-46W1 and 40-inch KDL-40W1. Read More

Samsung Launches Two New 22-inch LCD Monitors

At IFA, Samsung has launched two new 22-inch LCD displays 2233Hz and 2243Hz, both the displays have 5ms gray-to-gray response time. Samsung claims that the new LCDs improve the poorer black-to-white response time that LCD makers often omit from their specifications. The company brought the full pixel response time down by using a new imaging engine, the response time reduced from 27ms to 9ms, resulting is artifact free image quality in extreme color changes during movement. Read More

Apple Files More Touchscreen Patent for Mac Tablet

Apple has been filing touchscreen patents for quite some time now. But the latest patent that Apple has filed with US patent office in April 2008 is the most detailed touchscreen patent by Apple. The patent deals with almost all the aspects of a touchscreen UI for a tablet kind of handheld device. The 52 page patent talks about controls with finger inputs, avoiding accidental input, scrolling horizontally or vertically and touch QWERTY keyboard. Read More

Google Announces Android Market, How Open the Market will Really Be?

Google has posted on the Android Blog that Android Market, an App store like solution will be offered for Google’s Android based phones. The post goes as follows:
Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. We chose the term “market” rather than “store” because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available.
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Samsung Joins the Ultra Thin and Light Laptop Race with X360

Samsung has also joined the 13.3-inch ultra thin and ultra light race by announcing their new X360 a 2.8 pounds notebook. The laptop is 0.66-inch thin at its thinnest side and 1.2-inch thick at its thickest side. Though not as sleek as the MacBook Air, but still impressive. Samsung will use the new Centrino 2 Ultra Low Voltage processors for the notebook (1.2GHz or 1.4Ghz). Storage options available are 64GB SSD, 128 GB SSD or 120GB 5400 RPM hard drive. Read More

Philips Shows 8mm Thin Prototype 32-inch LCD HDTV

Earlier today, Sony revealed the KDL-40ZX1 the 9.9mm thin LCD HDTV that it will ship on November 10th and now Philips is showing a prototype 32-inch LCD HDTV that is just 8mm thin. Though Philips doesn’t have a shipping date, but it is interesting as a prototype can be made into a shipping product very soon, say about 6 to 12 months. Read More

Inside iPhone 3G Dropped Calls and How iPhone 2.0.2 Update Works

Few days back AT&T had send all iPhone 3G owners text message guiding them to update to the latest 2.0.2 software via iTunes. Many have speculated that Apple’s latest iPhone update is aimed at resolving the call drop problems. And even after the update has been released few users are still reporting the problem. RoughlyDrafted is now reporting more details via an AT&T source that explains the original issue and why some users didn’t notice any immediate impact after updating their devices. Read More

Panasonic Exhibits The Largest Plasma TV and The Thinnest Plasma TV

If the 103-inch Panasonic plasma HDTV did not impress you, the company is showing a 150-inch plasma at the IFA show in Berlin. The 150-inch HDTV has 4K resolution for ultra clear picture quality. Panasonic is not giving any information about whether the massive plasma HDTV will ship or will it remain a concept. Read More

Sony Introduces New Cyber-shot T500 With HD Video Capability

Sony announced their new 10.1-megapixel Cyber-shot T500 digital camera with HD movie mode for capturing high-quality HD video clips. The camera has 5X optical zoom, 3.5-inch LCD screen, anti-blur technology and easy file management that allow users to easily upload images on web or email them. The new camera will be available in black, silver and red colors. Read More

Sony Announces S, E and B Series of Walkman PMPs

Sony today announced three new series of Walkman portable media players. All the three series support MP3, WMA and drag-and-drop file management. The S-series has two models 4GB NWZ-S736F and 8GB NWZ-S738F. Both the players will support variety of audio/video codec including AAC, Linear PCM and MPEG4. The S-series will also come with in-built noise cancellation technology and will have a SensMe feature that creates song shuffles based on users listening habits. The battery life on the player will be 40 hours. Read More

Sony Showcases World’s Thinnest LCD HDTV KDL-40ZX1 at Just 9.9mm

IFA Berlin is starting on 29th August and we have got a list of new HDTVs that will be announced at the trade show. The most interesting new HDTV that will be shown at IFA is Sony KDL-40ZX1. We have heard a lot about how thin OLED display are, at about 3mm, but they are available in only 11-inch size and no one wants to watch a movie on an 11-inch TV. The KDL-40ZX1 is the worlds thinnest LCD TV at just 9.9mm (0.38-inch) and it has 40-inch screen size. There are few concepts HDTVs that are slightly thinner, but there is no production LCD TV that even comes close to KDL-40ZX1. Read More

Creative to Launch X-Fi Go! USB Sound Card, N400 USB Speakers and EP-430 In-ear Headphones

By the end of this month Creative plans to release three new products Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! portable USB sound card, N400 USB speakers and EP-430 in-ear headphones.
The X-Fi Go! will have microphone-in and headphone-out ports along with X-Fi audio processing software and 1GB of storage capacity. The features on the X-Fi Go! include EAX Advanced HD 4.0, OpenAL for games, X-Fi 240bit Crystallizer and CMSS-3D processing. On the software side the card will come pre-loaded with Alchemy and WaveStudio. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! will be price around $50-$60 mark. Read More

Microsoft’s New “BlueTrack” Mouse Tracking Technology Revealed

Today Morning, when Microsoft sent a teaser “Say Goodbye to Laser” on 9.9.08, we said that if Microsoft follows its regular pattern, we will know about the event or technology that Microsoft will reveal at the event before September 9th. Well our statement came true with in hours. Amazon.de has posted MS Explorer Mini Mouse with “BlueTrack” technology for notebooks. BlueTrack is the revolutionary new technology that Microsoft will reveal at the event on September 9th. Read More

ChangeWave Survey: Apple iPhone Continues to Show Considerable Momentum

In a recent survey done by ChangeWave to gauge IT spending for smartphones, the company found that Research In Motion continued to overshadow its two main competitors in terms of planned 4th quarter purchases with 79% of respondents planning to buy RIM’s smartphones. But that was down 3-points from high it registered in May. Additionally Apple continued to show considerable momentum in terms of corporate planned purchases – up 4-points from May. Read More

Nikon’s New Digital SLR D90 Now Official

After numerous rumors and leaked inventory screenshot, Nikon today officially announced the new D90 Digital SLR. The D90 is an upgrade to Nikon’s super successful D80 DSLR and will feature a 12.3-megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor with integrated dust reduction system. Nikon claims that D90 is world’s first DLSR to offer users the ability to shoot D-movie video footage in resolutions up to 720p. Read More

iPhone 3G has Outsold First Generation iPhone in Just 7 Weeks

Michael Arrington has posted on TechCrunch that “some time in the next week more than 6 million iPhone 3Gs will be in people’s hands around the world.” He believes Apple might already have crossed the mark after the launch of the iPhone 3G in 20 more countries on August 22nd. Michael bases his assumption on the report that Foxconn is building iPhones for Apple at the rate of 800,000 units per week. Read More

Nokia Gets Official with N79 and N85 Details

Today, Nokia officially provided details about upcoming N79 and N85 Handsets. The N85 is a two-way slider phone like N95 and has a 2.6-inch AMOLED screen with 320 x 240 resolution. Internal memory on the phone is just 78MB, but you can use microSD card to add up to 8GB memory. For communication and navigation the phone features quad-band GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz), WCDMA (900, 1900, 2100MHz), WiFi b/g, Bluetooth and A-GPS. The N85 has a 5-megapixel camera with 20x digital zoom, autofocus, dual LED flash and seven scene modes. For music the phone has FM radio, 3.5mm stereo headphone plug and support for audio format like MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC and eAAC+. Read More

Canon Adds Four New Cameras To PowerShot Lineup

Along with the new mid-level 50D digital SLR, Canon also announced four new PowerShot cameras. The company launched two new A-series cameras, one new ultra-zoom SX-series camera and a new E1 camera focused on teenage markets. The A-series get A1000 IS and A2000 IS digital cameras. The first one features a 10-megapixel sensor, 4X optical zoom and a 2.5-inch LCD screen. The A1000 IS will be available in four two-toned colors blue/silver, brown/silver, gray/silver and purple/silver. The second A-series camera A2000 IS is also a 10-megapixel camera with 6x optical zoom and 3-inch LCD screen. It will ship in two-toned gray/sliver color only. Read More

Orange Denies Paying Actors To Queue-Up For iPhone Launch in Poland

Reuter had reported – citing an unnamed Orange employee that the firm was paying people to stand outside of its stores. Orange today said that the report weren’t true. The story about Orange hiring people to stand in like to create excitement about the iPhone was widely reported by various new agencies and blogs after the iPhone was launched last Friday. It was also reported that iPhones sales were slow in Poland. Read More

Canon Officially Announces EOS 50D Digital SLR

Rumors about Canon’s new 50D have just turned real as Canon announced their new DSLR today. The 50D is an upgrade for Canon’s 40D model and has identical body as the 40D, but it elevates the pixel count to 15-megapixel from 10-megapixel. The 50D uses the new Digic 4 image processor and the company claims that even though the resolution has increased it won’t impose a significant performance penalty, and the 50D will be able to maintain burst speeds close to 40D’s. The new camera will have continues shooting of 6.3fps compared to 6.5fps of 40D. Read More

HTC Introduces S740 Smartphone in Europe

HTC today introduced their new smartphone with slide-out QWERTY keyboard and Windows Mobile 6.1 standard. The front of the phone is shared by the LCD screen and numeric keypad. The phone doesn’t have touchscreen, but uses the menu keys on the numeric keypad for managing the user interface. The S740 comes with 2.4-inch screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 256MB on board memory, microSD card slot and aGPS. Read More

Verizon Issues Anti-iPhone Material for Its Authorized Personnel and Agents

BGR got their hands on an internal Verizon wireless document that the company is giving to its sales agents to help them convince current and potential customers to not go for the iPhone. The document is labeled “3G iPhone Myths” and it attempts to challenge iPhone selling points. The three myths it covers are - 3G iPhone is now twice as fast, the new 3G iPhone is now half the price and iPhone data plan includes all data. Read More

3G Antenna Test Reveals iPhone 3G Reception Completely Norma

The Gothenburg Post took the new iPhone 3G and tested its 3G antennas. The post used a Bluetest’s test chamber for wireless devices with small antennas to test the iPhone reception. The equipment measures how the mobile sends and receives signals under different conditions. These chambers are used by many companies to test their mobile devices.
Magnus Franzen, an antenna engineer with the company did the tests on the iPhone. First he tested the TRP value—in which mobile is ordered to radiate at full power at three different frequencies. Then the TIS value was tested. Here the test measures the mobile’s performance in receiving signals. Read More

Olympus Unveils Four New Digital Cameras

Olympus has introduced four new digital cameras and the most impressive of the lot is Stylus 1050 SW a $299.99 camera. This semi-rugged camera can withstand fall from 5 feet height, temperatures as low as 14 degrees F and submersion to 10 feet. But the most interesting thing about this new camera is “Tap Control”—tapping the camera twice on back, top or sides will switch the camera into different modes. The camera has a 2.7-inch screen, 10-megapixel sensor, 3X optical zoom, ISO up to 1600, digital image stabilization and 27 shooting modes. Read More

Cowon Announces Three New Portable Media Players L3, O2 and S9

Today, at IFA, Cowon launched three new portable media players. The top of the line L3 Personal Navigator is a successor of the L2 and it features a 7-inch screen with 800 x 480 resolution. Aside from navigation the L3 is a full-featured portable media player with T-DMB TV tuner and a SD card slot for memory expansion. Cowon has introduced touch buttons on the player and the company calls them “Shadow Touch Button”. Read More

Sony Unveils S-AIRPLAY Wireless Multi-room Audio System For iPod

Sony announced a new wireless, multi-room audio system with iPod support. The new S-AIRPLAY system uses Sony’s S-Air technology, which provides a wireless multi-room solution without complicated set-up requirements. Wireless audio is transmitted through the system’s main dock in one room to the S-Air speakers plugged in power outlet in various rooms with in range of 164 feet. Read More