First Sprint got a 4G-capable, 4.3-inch Android phone from HTC, then this January AT&T (Inspire 4G) and Verizon (Thunderbolt) received promises of the same. Is T-Mobile feeling left out? It might not be for long, as the rumor mill has just churned out a rather mighty 1.2GHz dual-core beast of a handset and is ascribing it to the Magenta network for a launch some time around May or June. We're hearing it'll come with qHD resolution (960 x 540, just like the Atrix 4G) and the SOC within will be that famedSnapdragon MSM8260 that Qualcomm teased briefly at CES a couple of weeks ago. Lending credence to this scuttlebutt is the fact that both TmoNews and Android and Me found sources affirming the Pyramid's existence, leaving us only to wait and wonder about what we can do with a device of its kind.
Toyota is billing the Prius c Concept as a “small city-centric hybrid vehicle,” which is to say it will be a bit smaller than the current Prius hatchback, likely aimed at a slightly younger demographic. As a result, expect the price and feature list to me lower and shorter than its big brother. Hit read more for details.
Most of our readers would surely know a thing or two about Kinect by now but if you have been sleeping under a rock for the last few years, heres a little gist. Kinect is Microsoft's Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move killer. It is basically a controller free interface for gaming in which it looks at your moves and actions and instructs the game to perform accordingly. Now that Kinect competitors have begun to spring up, Microsoft's tipped its hand -- CEO Steve Ballmer told the BBC that his company will officially support the depth camera in Windows PCs at some undisclosed point in the future, confirming earlier suspicions. Whether that will just be part of a riskynew operating system or just another notch in Games for Windows' belt is hard to say, but it's nice to know that there will be uses for those eight million cameras when we're done hacking and dancing our hearts out.
Ask any real gamer about gaming on a touchscreen, and the first thing you'll hear is he or she lamenting over the lack of physical buttons. Ten One Design aims to remedy this legitimate complaint with its Fling joystick add-ons for the iPad. The product is simple enough, a twisted piece of plastic with capacitive contact points in the center and suction cups to stick it to the screen. They feel quite like the joysticks on a PSP, and make gaming on the device seriously more enjoyable -- not to mention natural feeling -- and other than that there's not much else to say. Oh wait, did we mention they cost $25! Hit read more for a video.
We aren't quite sure we're on the same page as Splashtop's CEO, who is seemingly on a mission to "build the Bridge to Anywhere," but we're all for a remote access client for Google's mobile OS. Shortly after bringing your Windows PC to the iPhone, iPod and iPad, the aforementioned company has now issued an Android client. As you'd probably guess, it allows anyone with an Android-based smartphone or tablet to tap into their networked Windows PC, with content and applications both accessible. According to the company, it'll allow Android users to "listen to music, access all of their files and applications, and play PC and Flash games remotely." We're a little hesitent to believe all that will be doable on some of the lower-end handsets, but at least it's out there to try (if you're willing to part ways with $4.99).
A revised diesel engine and a myriad of detail changes mark the new year for the world-market Honda Accord, which is sold in North America as the Acura TSX. Hit read more for details and pictures.
Volkswagen’s 313-mpg XL1 concept car, which debuted last week at the Qatar Motor Show in the Middle East, might look futuristic, but a VW executive has hinted that the vehicle could reach limited production. Hit read more for details.
Imagine driving your BMW using an App on your Nokia phone! Life doesn't get any better than that does it? At CES and the NAIAS in Detroit this year we saw ever more powerful smartphone integration, but nothing like this. Nokia Asia teamed up with two Chinese coders, An Jiaxuan and an unnamed friend, to whip up a C7 app that controls a BMW 1 Series. They said it took them only 20 days to get things ready but we're thinking adding the remote controls to the car itself must have added some further time to that. The result is in the video below, a short test drive that Nokia promises "isn't special effects." See for yourself and let us know if you spot a meatbag driver hiding in there somewhere. Hit read more for the video.
We can't imagine how this might have slipped your attention, but LG and Motorola used this year's CES to roll out the smartphone world's first dual-core devices in the shape of the Atrix 4G and Optimus 2X. Both are built around NVIDIA's 1GHz Tegra 2 chip, which has been the most popular thing out here in Vegas after the free food and shuttle rides (Moto even has the Droid Bionic, a 4.3-incher bound for Verizon, using it). But what does that extra core matter to you? Hit read more to find out!
You can't have all this 3D stuff happening on the home entertainment front without it trickling down to smartphones, right? Sharp's already planning to bring its autostereoscopic wares to US shores at some point during 2011 and today LG's busy showing off a prototype of its own, right here at CES. It's a 4.3-inch panel, pumping out glasses-free 3D (using the parallax barrier method) and is presently embedded in an enormous demo box, but the ultimate goal is to have it in media-centric handsets. To be honest, yes, there's some glasses-free 3D effect going on, but for the most part we just noticed the two frames splitting and didn't find the video before us enhanced in any major way. The best parts might even have been the ones that didn't have any 3D-ification applied to them -- the display on show is certainly a lucid and bright one. Skip past the break to see what we're talking about in a video.
