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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Panasonic P51 breaks into the Indian phone market with a 5-inch screen and stylus (updated)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/panasonic-p51/

Although Panasonic's cellphones have traveled far from Japan, the company has left the hot Indian market relatively untapped -- until today, that is. The company is staking its first proper claim in the country with the launch of the P51. The Android 4.2-toting smartphone reflects the local market's taste for big-screened yet modest phones between its 5-inch, 720p LCD and quad-core 1.2GHz MediaTek processor, but comes across as a sort of Galaxy Note lite: Panasonic bundles both a capacitive stylus and a magnetic flip cover in the box. The remaining hardware is a slightly unusual mix of budget and premium components, with the so-so 1GB of RAM and 4GB of expandable storage buffered by an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1.3-megapixel front camera and support for both HSPA+ and dual SIM cards. The P51 will be comparatively expensive for India at 26,900 rupees ($517) contract-free when it's available next week, but it should be a bargain next to its pen-packing Samsung counterpart.

Update: Panasonic is being a bit clever with its Indian foray -- we now know that the P51 shares a TCL-built design template with the Alcatel Scribe Easy, keeping the French phone's basic formula while upgrading the processor, camera and screen resolution. However, the P51 is definitely identical to the TCL Y900 in China.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: FoneArena

Source: Panasonic

David Beckham Scored A Goal From Behind The Halfway Line When He Was A Little-Known 21-Year-Old

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-beckham-goal-half-way-line-2013-5

Before he was one of the most recognizable people on the planet, David Beckham scored a ridiculous goal from behind the halfway line for Manchester United.

It was the first day of the 1996-97 season. United was playing Wimbledon. Beckham — a promising 21-year-old, but hardly an international star — had just broken into the lineup the year before.

He saw Wimbledon's goalie Neil Sullivan off his line, so he fired in a dipping ball toward goal from a hair behind midfield.

It fell over Sullivan's head for a goal:

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Watch Liquid Water Instantly Turn into Ice

Source: http://gizmodo.com/watch-liquid-water-instantly-turn-into-ice-507061373

Turning water into ice usually takes a lot of time. Not for this guy though, he magically turns liquid water into frozen ice. It's instantaneous! Seriously, just watch water get poured from the bottle and then freeze immediately. What kind of sorcery is this?

The trick is getting the water to just about freezing in the freezer. Grant Thompson, the mastermind behind the video, put an unopened bottle of water in the freezer for about an hour and a half to two hours to get the perfect temperature. Then after the water is supercooled, he pours the almost freezing water over ice and watches it immediately transform into ice as it touches the ice cube. It's a fun little trick that'll blow your friends minds. [Grant Thompson via The Awesomer]

Visualized: Google I/O's colorful circle of ChromeBook Pixels

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/visualized-google-io-chromebook-circle/

Google loves to use I/O as a platform for sharing its creativity with the world. This year, one of the masterpieces is a circular edifice consisting of two lines of Chromebook Pixels, with each keyboard on the outside. Ultimately, the artistic monument appears to highlight the Pixel's touchscreen and high-def display, as it flashes a wide variety of colorful imagery and music as you interact with each monitor. We have a gallery of images and a brief video below, showing off some of what this clever spheroid of Chrome OS can do.

Gallery: Google IO Chromebook Pixel circle

Filed under: Displays, Laptops, Google

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Recon Instruments Jet heads-up display debuts at Google I/O, we go hands-on (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/recon-instruments-jet-hands-on/

Google Glass is a lot of things, but it's hardly a superstar when it comes to the world of sports. Though we've seen proof it is at least water resistant, it doesn't feel particularly durable and isn't entirely well-suited to wearing while, say, sweating profusely during a lengthy climb on a road bike. Recon Instruments has what it thinks is a solution: the Jet. It's a pair of sporting sunglasses with an integrated, Android-powered display that could make things like running and cycling far more exciting -- or at least far more information-packed. Join us after the break for our impressions.

Gallery: Recon Instruments Jet hands-on

Filed under: Wearables

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PrimeSense demonstrates Capri 3D sensor on Nexus 10 (hands-on)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/primesense-demonstrates-capri-3d-sensor/

Take the 3D sensor inside the Microsoft Kinect, shrink it down to a tenth of its original size and add a bunch of mobile capabilities, and you have yourself PrimeSense's latest conquest, better known as Capri. The company, which is the brains behind the Kinect, has been openly working on bringing a tiny-yet-advanced 3D experience to tablets, televisions and smartphones for quite some time now. And it's proud enough of its progress so far that it's willing to give some real-life demonstrations to developers attending Google I/O. You may not see Capri embedded on the PCB of your portable gadget anytime soon -- at least, not until PrimeSense winds up wooing the pants off a lucky OEM or two -- so in the meantime, the company has connected the sensor board to the Nexus 10 via micro-USB.

Unlike the Kinect, however, PrimeSense doesn't think gestures will play a significant role in how we use Capri to interact with our gadgets. Rather, it seems to be more focused on 3D-based use case scenarios, many of which haven't even been thought up yet. As you'll see in the video below, we were shown an AR game that takes the environment around you -- walls, furniture and other elements -- and uses them as restrictions, just as much as they would be in real life. In another app, Capri snapped a three-dimension shot of an object on the table in front of us, captured its measurements and let us export that image to another device or even a 3D printer. In many respects, PrimeSense appears to be taking the same strategy Google does with Glass: get developers excited about the tech in the hopes they'll come up with clever uses for it. And while the company isn't ready to put Capri in their hands yet, the SDK is up for grabs, and I/O is no doubt an ideal place to build excitement for it. If you're looking for more info, we have a gallery, video and press release below, and you'll find the SDK at the More Coverage link.

Gallery: PrimeSense Capri demo at Google IO

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Tablets, Mobile

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OLPC working on XO laptop telescope and microscope peripherals (hands-on)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/olpc-telescope-microscope/

So much of what children are taught in the sciences amounts to abstractions. It's a shame, really -- concepts of the universe are so much easier to extrapolate when we can see them for ourselves. OLPC's looking to give the classrooms it serves more access to the very big and very small with two new attachments that we had the opportunity to check out on a recent visit to the company's Miami office. First off is a telescope that secures to the side of its XO-4 laptop with a vice grip, utilizing the device's built-in camera. There's also a microscope that sits atop a swiveling base and plugs directly into one of the laptop's USB ports. Both peripherals run on Fedora-based software designed by the company.

OLPC will be bringing these out as soon as it can get the price down through manufacturing. For the France-designed telescope, the company is aiming for $10, with a potentially lower price on the microscope. The idea is to get one of each in a classroom, rather than the one-to-one approach of its XO line.

Gallery: OLPC working on XO laptop telescope and microscope peripherals

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TCL announces MoVo UD 4K television with Google TV coming later this year

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/tcl-movo-ud-4k-tv-google-tv/

TCL announces MoVo UD 4K television with Google TV coming later this year

Google just announced it will be upgrading Google TV units to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and China's TCL has announced it will have the first 4K TV built on the platform. We got a look at TCL's custom-skinned MoVo Google TV platform and 4K TVs separately at CES (pictured above, and in the gallery) so it only makes sense they'll be combining the two. Part of TCL's MoVo customizations include a motion sensor to recognize each user and personalize offerings based on their habits. Called Personal Box Office (PBO) or "Lazy TV" searches the available content and makes a recommendation without the need for a remote or even voice command. The press release indicates it will be available "later this year" although whether that includes a US release like Seiki's 50-inch Ultra HD set remains to be seen. According to the company it's being demonstrated at Google I/O this week, we'll see if we can get some hands-on time tomorrow.

Gallery: TCL CES 2013 booth

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, Google

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Field Trip for Android gets updated with over 80 countries, auto-translation

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/field-trip-android-update/

Niantic Labs' Field Trip is a location-discovery app that runs in the background during your aimless wanderings, piping up when you stumble across something notable. Unfortunately, for software designed to help you travel, it'd only made the one journey itself -- to the UK, and no further. Fortunately, the Google-owned company has sent the Android version of the app truly global, helping you find attractions in over 80 countries. Niantic Labs has also jammed in 30 languages and auto-translation, so if you find a restaurant review in an unfamiliar tongue, you won't have to resort to negotiating with the locals.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google Play

Google opens its Cloud Platform Compute Engine to all comers, updates App Engine

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/google-cloud-platform-compute-engine/

During Google's I/O developer's conference keynote, it actually slipped in quite a bit of, yes, developer news amongst all the noisy consumer launches. One biggie was the announcement that any and all companies looking for computing horsepower can jump on board its formerly-limited Google Compute Engine, part of the Google Cloud Platform. In order to compete with the kingpin of that space, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its Elastic Compute Cloud, Google has bolstered its platform with new features, including shared-core instances for low-intensity chores, advanced routing, large persistent disks up to 10TB in volume size and sub-hour billing to keep costs down. It also updated its App Engine hosting service with PHP runtime, calling it "the most requested feature," and launched Google Cloud Datastore to go up against AWS' cloud storage services. All that will surely help Mountain View gain a bigger slice of the multi-billion dollar cloud infrastructure market, and should open up more space for all those apps.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Google

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Via: Techcrunch

Source: Google Cloud Platform Blog

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

ZTE Grand X2 In official with Clover Trail+ Atom, photos at 24 frames per second

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/zte-grand-x2-in/

While Intel's Clover Trail+ Atom platform has been slow-moving so far, with only a handful of noteworthy unveilings, it just got a big shot in the arm through the official launch of ZTE's Grand X2 In. The 4.5-inch, 720p Jelly Bean phone is smaller than the Geek we saw not long ago, but it still carries that 2GHz Atom Z2580 inside -- and it's quite the screamer for shutterbugs between its 24 frames per second burst shooting, zero shutter lag and image stabilization. It otherwise sits in the middle of the road like its ancestor, carrying an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1-megapixel front camera, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. We're digging that soft-touch purple finish, though. Europeans should receive the Grand X2 In sometime in the third quarter of the year; there's no word on launches elsewhere, but you can be sure that we're interested in giving this x86 headliner a proper shakedown.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Intel

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Via: MojAndroid.sk (translated)

Source: ZTE

Recon Instruments reveals Recon Jet, a sports HUD so bright it needs shades (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/recon-instruments-reveals-recon-jet/

We know Glass comes with some snap-on shades, which is no doubt great when casually vlogging in the sun. If you're heading down a mountain, though, you're going to need something a little more like Recon Jet. You may know Recon Instruments from its line of technolicious HUD ski goggles, but Jet sees the firm leap into more casual (yet no less useful) eyewear. Inside you'll find a dual-core processor, WiFi, GPS, Ant+, Bluetooth and an HD camera, plus all the sensors you could want (altimeter, thermometer, accelerometer etc). Recon Jet comes with its own open platform (which typically has been based on Android), and will have some existing native apps (video streaming, Facebook integration, etc.) on display at Google I/O this week. Comparison with Mountain View's own product will be inevitable, but we're guessing that Recon hopes you'll leave Glass on your desk, while popping Jet on for the weekend.

Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables

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Google Play game services aims to integrate gaming across Android, iOS and the web, available today

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/google-play-game-services/

Google Play game services aims to integrate gaming across iOS, Android and the web, available today

Google Play game developers and players alike are getting a quartet of game-changing additions today: real-time multiplayer, leaderboards, cloud saves and achievements. And that's not all -- the latter three services will function cross-platform between Android, iOS and the web. The whole initiative is called -- unsurprisingly -- "Google Play Game Services," and it's available today in a smattering of games. Unlike Apple's Game Center application, what Google's offering is backend support for developers rather than a standalone application. Think of it more like OpenFeint than Game Center -- you can sign in using your Google+ login in-game, and that login will track your identity (including leaderboard scores, achievements and saves) across various games and devices.

Any developer launching a game on the Google Play store has access to game services, though Google isn't making it an obligation. "We won't make it a mandatory exercise, or have any certification process around it," Google lead product manager Greg Hartrell told us. "We create fantastic services that allow developers to create these great game experiences, and help promote their discovery, help retain their users and keep them engaged."

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds, Tablets, Software, Mobile, Google

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Google's conversational voice search reaches the desktop through Chrome

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/15/google-conversational-search-reaches-the-desktop-through-chrome/

Google conversational search

We're used to Google's mobile search apps letting us ask questions as we would with real people, but the desktop has usually been quite stiff. That's changing today: Google is bringing conversation-like voice search to our computers through Chrome, with no typing required. Web denizens just have to say "okay, Google," ask their question, and get back a spoken response similar to what they'd hear on their phones. The company hasn't said just how soon Chrome will incorporate the new voice features, however.

Gallery: Google I/O 2013: Google conversational voice search