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Thursday, July 01, 2010

iPhone 4 gets a $1 alternative to pricey Bumpers

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/iphone-4-gets-a-1-alternative-to-pricey-bumpers/

If you ask us, Apple should be giving away free bumpers, lollipops, and anything else it can think of to keep its otherwise loyal followers from revolting. But the Great Bitten One isn't doing any one of those things, and most of us are stuck either having to pony up $30 for the official salvation from self-inflicted signal harm or looking out to the grey markets. Entering this morose situation with a bit of ingenuity is Oliver Nelson, who alerts us to the fact that rubber wristbands of the sort your favorite cyclist wears are apparently an almost perfect fit when stretched around the 4's antennae. He advises that a 1.125-inch long by 0.125-inch wide incision (into the unstretched band) is necessary to keep the 30-pin port and speakers open, but otherwise it seems like a pretty effortless and dirt cheap way to avoid all this drama.

iPhone 4 gets a $1 alternative to pricey Bumpers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Aspire One 521 and 721 review

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/acer-aspire-one-521-and-721-review/

On the surface Acer's 10.1-inch Aspire One 521 and 11.6-inch Aspire One 721 appear to be fairly run-of-the-mill netbooks -- or ultraportables for those that are morally opposed to calling a laptop with a 11.6-inch display a netbook. They're rather small machines, measure just about an inch thick, and ring up at under $430. But there's a lot more than meets the eye with this Aspire One duo - instead of Intel Atom or ULV processors, both are powered by a new AMD 1.7GHz Athlon II Neo K125 processor and promise 1080p playback thanks to ATI Radeon HD 4225 graphics. We've certainly been pumped about these two systems since their French debut, but fear of AMD's usually poor battery life and scorching temperatures have been holding us back from all-out excitement. Do we have nothing to fear but fear itself? We've spent the last few days with these two systems, and will reveal all in our full review after the break.

Gallery: Acer Aspire One 521 and 721 review

Continue reading Acer Aspire One 521 and 721 review

Acer Aspire One 521 and 721 review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Symbian-Guru shuts down, says Nokia is 'losing hard'

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/symbian-guru-shuts-down-says-nokia-is-losing-hard/

Well, we can't sugar-coat this one -- when a major Nokia / Symbian site like Symbian-Guru decides to close up shop "thanks to Nokia's consistently piss-poor hardware choices and Symbian's lack of ability to even remotely compete in terms of features," there's not much else to say. It sounds like shutting things down was at once both incredibly easy and incredibly hard for site heads Ricky Cadden and Rita El Khoury, who've both penned long letters about their decision -- you can tell both of them remain incredibly passionate about Nokia and Symbian, but that they've been disappointed by mediocre handsets like the N97 one time too many. Better hope Nokia can take that MeeGo for handsets pre-alpha we saw yesterday and whip it into something good, we suppose. You should really hit the source link and read the entire post on Symbian-Guru, but we've collected some choice quotes after the break.

Continue reading Symbian-Guru shuts down, says Nokia is 'losing hard'

Symbian-Guru shuts down, says Nokia is 'losing hard' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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