Archive for the ‘Motorola’ Category

Super Bowl Ads 2010: Lots of Chips and Beer, Light On Gadgets [Super Bowl]

Did you blink during the Super Bowl commercial breaks? Too bad if you did, because it means you may have missed the anemic number of gadget or tech-related commercials worth talking about tomorrow at the water cooler. But! Megan Fox!

Megan Fox is an obvious choice, for obvious reasons (if she’s your thing): She had a Motoblur, and we’re a gadget blog! See? Obvious. Anyway, tweeting from a tub on her new phone, she pondered what would happen if she sent a picture of her bathing out to the world. Hijinks ensued, people were hurt, and even a gay couple somehow got distracted by the fox that is Megan Fox:

And such is the power of Fox that there were scenes that didn’t make the final cut.

Then there was Beyonce, fresh off her Grammy performance, performing again for Vizio. Surrounded by Internet memes and celebrities, Twitter and what appeared to be an army of automobile assembly line robots (hopefully not ones from Toyota), she sang and sold that company’s Via/Internet Apps technology. Think Internet on your HDTV, not because I say so or because that’s exactly what it is, but because that’s the message Vizio assaulted viewers with during the 60-second clip:

Tough love was the story for Intel’s Jeffrey the Robot. The commercial was supposedly for Intel’s Core processor line, but I know the truth: Robot uprising. It 20 years’ time we can all look back at this commercial, when poor Jeffrey was snubbed For The Last Time by his human overlords:

Lastly, there’s one we actually covered yesterday. Google. Its poignant ad about a search-happy boy in love with a French girl aired yesterday, on the Internet, which is probably fitting. We’ll revisit it again here if you missed it tonight:

Sigh.

Personally, for me the ads were a bit stale this year. Even the Bud Light beer ads, which have made me laugh out loud on occasion in years past, felt a little tired. Betty White was a standout though, and there were back-to-back ads depicting grown men in their underwear. Possibly a first there. Also a first: Seeing a two-timing baby talk about eTrade while his “milk-a-holic” girl on the side blew up his shit over a webcam.

The one Bud Light ad I will give props to, however, was their Autotune bit. It’s a stretch including here on Gizmodo, but we have a history with that app (iPhone, anyone?), and we’ll take an opportunity here to thank Budweiser for hopefully killing the tech off for good with this Super Bowl ad:

OK, I admit it, I smiled a bit watching that a second time. Guilty.

The entire crop is over at YouTube in one convenient package (Fox’s is notably absent at the moment, although they appear to be updating throughout the night).

Android 2.1-equiped Motorola Sholes tablet spied in China as XT701?

No sooner do we get brief corner glimpses of the supposed Motorola Sholes tablet do we get tipped off to this writeup from Androidin.net which has a number of pictures of an eerily similar keyboard-less handset with a 3.7-inch screen, Android 2.1, FM radio, and interestingly enough, only a 5 megapixel camera — last we heard it was going to be 8. Also debatable is a HDMI port, since the image that would show it is a tad too blurry. Otherwise, it seems to be about in line with what we expected, and it also seems destined for China Unicom as the XT701 (analogous to China Mobile’s Motorola Android device). Now how about a few dashes of hope we’ll see this stateside, eh Moto? Two more shots after the break.

[Thanks, yee]

Continue reading Android 2.1-equiped Motorola Sholes tablet spied in China as XT701?

Android 2.1-equiped Motorola Sholes tablet spied in China as XT701? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Review: The Motorola Droid

A few days ago we got Motorola’s Droid in the mail. The device is quite awesome. Beyond being offered on Verizon’s network (which consistently squelches AT&T in coverage and speed) the phone is forged from super-solid (and stylish) hardware. Plus it runs freaking Android 2.0 as its OS. From reviewer Priya Ganapati:

The Droid runs Android 2.0 (aka Éclair) as its OS. It feels more refined than the first version of Android on T-Mobile’s G1 and it’s certainly better than the muddled interface on Motorola’s Cliq.

The Droid’s 5-megapixel camera has up to 4x digital zoom. It produces photos that aren’t too noisy and it does well even in low light, thanks to the built-in LED flash.

The most exciting feature of the phone, though, is the Google maps app — with built-in turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation. Replete with text-to-speech features, the maps are layered with traffic data and a satellite view. But here’s the best part. It’s free! Hear that? You don’t have to pay $10 a month as subscription or buy a pricey $100 TomTom app. You can just zip around with the Droid and Google Maps.

$200, motorola.com

8/10

You can, of course read the full review of the Motorola Droid on our reviews website.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

How-to: hack your own DROID dock with magnets and cardboard

You know what’s magical? Magnets. They’re so magical, in fact, that Motorola decided to use them in its new DROID car and “multimedia station” docks. Based on the positioning of a couple of magnets, the phone auto-loads the pertinent application — the multimedia station at least offers a charging plug, but the car dock is all stand. Lucky for us it’s not hard to figure out where to place a couple of magnets (we used some nerd-approved “Buckyballs“) and spoof the phone into acting like it’s docked. We’re sure with some additional craftmanship we could have a dock that actually holds the DROID upright, but we won’t get ahead of ourselves. For now check out our very own multipurpose homebrew DROID dock after the break.

Continue reading How-to: hack your own DROID dock with magnets and cardboard

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

How-to: hack your own DROID dock with magnets and cardboard originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola’s Droid is Memorable, But Won’t Make You Forget the iPhone

Like it or not, Motorola’s new Google-powered Droid smartphone will be compared to the iPhone.

The good news is that this feature-rich handset, running version 2.0 of Google’s Android OS, compares very favorably to the Goliath of the smartphone world as a utility mobile computing device — and, oh yeah, a phone.

The bad news is that there may be too many good things going on to make using this device the quick, intuitive, out-of-the-box experience it should be. That’s a problem, given that the iPhone has set the usability bar so high.

An embarrassment of riches shouldn’t be a negative, and it really isn’t overall on the Droid, which goes on sale Nov. 6 to Verizon customers only. The tight integration of all things Google — maps overlayed on GPS, voice input all over the place, search that does not ask you to decide whether you are looking for something locally or on the net — are now more fully realized in this major upgrade to the mobile operating system the search giant first released on a single handset, the T-1.

This is very good thing for that segment of the population who have become Google citizens and are already used to entrusting their contacts, documents and discovery needs to that cloud.

On the down side, you will need a Gmail, Facebook or Microsoft exchange account to use the e-mail app. And, there is no provision for syncing to an address book (or calendar) on your desktop. Everything is in the Google cloud which, given the recent Sidekick data-loss debacle, may not be the greatest selling point just now.

Like the iPhone and many other handsets this is a primarily a touchscreen device whose face is almost 100% screen — and a bright, crisp screen it is. Rather than take sides in the virtual vs. hardware keyboard debate, the Droid provides both. The hardware keyboard slides out in a familiar landscape mechanism, and it includes a 5-way directional-pad, the better to allow you to keep your hands on the keyboard once you have them there.

The virtual keyboard appears when appropriate, landscape or portrait. And while the software keys appear to be narrower than those on the iPhone they seem at least as easy to use. Another familiar feature is the “reality check” of a small pop-up displaying the key being pressed. And there is a type-ahead function which displays possible words, potentially saving you keystrokes.

On-board music purchase is from Amazon (at least), but when the Droid is connected to a computer it’s read as an SD card, and dragging any tracks onto it makes them playable within the music app. The Droid also sports a 5 MP camera with autofocus, on-demand flash and video.

The Droid goes beyond the iPhone in two key areas: Like the Palm Pre, applications can run in the background, and switching among them is a smooth process. And as a robust GPS device it accepts and gives turn-by-turn verbal instructions, making it the closest approximation yet to a total GPS solution that obviates the need for a dedicated vehicle device. One caveat: it’s necessary to be connected to the 3G data service for course-correction and other dynamic route features to work (and to even plot a course), so this is not a replacement for a GPS device in locales where Verizon 3G coverage is nonexistent or spotty.

Available apps? Android only offers about 1/10th of the nearly 100,000 Apple has available, but that should change as Android handsets become more common. The first app I downloaded was Google Voice which, strangely, is not pre-installed — but then again, it isn’t available at all on the iPhone. On the Droid, you can set your Google Voice number to be the one that everyone sees when you call or text them, so you can switch to Verizon without worrying about giving everyone a new number or waiting for your old number to port over. That’s assuming you’re already using the phone-number-for-life that Google provides.

Navigation is not a touch-screen experience: Unlike the left-right/swipe metaphor there is hard “undo” button which takes you back step by step. In fact there are four hardware buttons to the iPhone’s one: back, menu (which does not activate from any given screen), home and search (which does).

There are three customizable screens that can contain dozens of shortcuts — to contacts, bookmarks, anything — but there are only three of these screens: the “home” screen plus one to the left and one to the right, accessible by swiping. Think of these as a speed dial, with your entire collection of app icons in a sliding drawer. But these icons can be moved anywhere using touch/hold, and there is the gentlest of vibrating feedback to confirm your gesture. (This “haptic feedback” is the default and activates in too many contexts, including for every number you hit when manually entering a phone number. Fortunately, it can be turned off in the settings).

There’s one “feature” that is is sure to draw fire: on certain events, the entire array of which I have yet to determine (although connecting to a power source is one), a computerized voice announces: “Droid.”

On version 2.1 please remove that, Google.

Continue reading for more photos of the Droid.

The edge of the Droid features a headphone jack.

5 megapixels! Take that, Cupertino!

It's black. It's rectangular. It's the bad-ass-looking Droid.

Choose your weapon: use the touchscreen, or use the keyboard and D-pad.

Photos: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

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