The Megapixel war is over as consumer understands that better optics are the real key to capturing better images. While the lenses do not grow larger, the computing and storage capacity of cameras do. Casio has found a way to use it: ultra fast photo and video capture. By ultra-fast, they mean 60fps for photos and 1200fps for videos – wow.

There is a photographic mode in which the camera starts to capture in 60fps burst mode, as soon as you touch the shutter button. When reviewing the photo, you can go back one second in time, to find a better shot.

In video recording more, you should be able to get stunning slow-motion movies, which were difficult to make without this feature. We can’t vouch for the image quality as we have not tested it in the field, but this is extremely interesting. Product home page

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[CES 2008] Some people love him, others hate him but regardless of what one thinks of Bill Gates, he is (and has been) a part of the computing history. He is going to step down and “retire” (he will still attend board meetings) to work on reducing underdevelopment via his foundation. Personally, I like his “normal guy” personality, and although he can be a brutal businessperson, he is not a brutal businessperson with a primadona attitude. I have not donated to his foundation yet, but I feel like it would be more efficient in getting the job done than other established charitable entities. What’s your take on his legacy and his work with his foundation?

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[CES 2008] SmartLabs Inc. has rolled out the INSTEON Thermostat Adapter that hooks up to Totaline / Venstar T1700, T1800, or T1900 programmable thermostats for easy remote control of the temperature from any INSTEON-compatible controller. It takes just a couple of minutes to configure the entire setup, where you will then be able to take advantage of one-button access to heating or cooling to specific temperatures. Smarthome is already starting to take pre-orders for the INSTEON Thermostat Adapter for $99.99 each.

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Filed under: Cellphones

The Dark Age of Nokia’s CDMA relations may be finally drawing to a close. After a series of forgettable rebranded Pantechs (seriously Nokia, what the crap was up with that?), we were encouraged last year by the introduction of the rather low-end 2135 candybar, an honest-to-goodness Nokia that seemed to indicate Nokia / Qualcomm relations might — might be warming. This device features EV-DO data and Bluetooth, but that’s about all we can gather from the few FCC docs that aren’t protected by the confidentiality clause at the moment; we don’t know who it might be headed for, whether it runs S40 or S60, or any other juicy little bits of information that would make the Nokia faithful on Verizon and Sprint drool. We’ll pass along details as we get ‘em, of course.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Come, reader. Take a step into our very special Engadget Blog Archive 2000[TM] device, watch as we wave our fingers through the air and say, “Doo-do-dodo, doo-do-dodo,” and think back to this time last year when industry conferences CES and MacWorld overlapped, overworked (and heavily caffeinated) tech writers tripped over themselves to cover both, and Apple introduced a little product called the iPhone. Wired’s got a look at the development of the groundbreaking handset and, though most of this may be a rehash for our gadget-savvy readers, there are some interesting moments documented in the piece: The chronology of the failed Motorola ROKR; the porting of OS X to the iPhone (which didn’t start until early 2006); and the year Apple engineers spent working on a tablet PC, whose tech was obviously rolled into the iPhone’s multitouch display. It’s worth a stroll down the tattered corridors of your memory before El-Jobso’s Macworld keynote next week.
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Filed under: Cellphones, CES

We were taken by this innovative iP*** holster in attractive gunmetal finish, spotted at the Pioneer booth/spacepod. Because nothing says commitment like welding your iGadget right to the wall.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Looks like the folks at Samsung woke up on the right side of the bed this morning, and decided to gift us all with the SGH-F490. This handsome prada-esque set features full screen browsing on its 3.2 inch screen in both landscape and portrait mode, 5 mega pixel camera, 3.5 mm audio jack, 130 MB of internal storage, and memory expansion via microSD. The disappointing bit is that we’re only getting tri-band GSM / EDGE and HSDPA in the European 2100 MHz band. Price is set for about €530 (roughly $780) and is expected to ship in February.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Google told us that we wouldn’t see any Android devices until the end of the year, but a funny thing happens when you put up the entire SDK and an emulator for a platform — all them crazy hackers start hacking. Apparently Android was natively booted on a Freescale-based dev board called the Armadillo 500 back in November, but the floodgates were really opened when a Hungarian group called Eu.Edge discovered that basically any device with an ARMv5TE chip could run Google’s baby. Armed (heh!) with that information, tinkerers around the world have gotten a variety of Sharp devices running Android: the SL-C760, C3000M, SL-C3000 series, and the SL-6000 have all been confirmed running the OS. Hopefully that means we’ll be seeing a lot more unofficial Android devices soon — check a couple videos after the break.

Read - Overview of Android hacks
Read - Instructions on booting the Sharp Zaurus SL-C760
Read - Instructions on booting the Sharp SL-C3000 series

Continue reading Android hacked to run on real hardware

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Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Features, Handhelds

We sat down with one of Qualcomm’s fancy new reference designs today, the Anchorage QWERTY slider phone. Let’s be perfectly clear — the Inventec-crafted device won’t ever see the light of day in this exact form, Qualcomm just needed some eye candy with which to demonstrate its new Snapdragon platform. The chipset features a highly specialized and customized ARM-based core and graphics from ATI — both actually licensed this time around, we’re told — and tries to take advantage of as many technologies that Snapdragon offers as possible: MediaFLO support, blazing clock speeds (1GHz to be exact), high resolutions (SVGA here), and the list goes on. Snapdragon-powered devices should hit retail from HTC and Samsung by the end of the year. Click on for pics, just don’t get too attached since this is as close as you’ll ever get to it, alright?

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Filed under: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Theatrical Reviews

I suppose that reviewing an Uwe Boll film is a lot like having a fancy restaurant critic do a write-up on McDonald’s new McGristle sandwich — but I’m not “fancy” by any definition of the word, and I’ve grown madly in love with Uwe Boll’s enthusiastically slipshod filmmaking techniques. So to those who thought miracles were actually possible, I have some disappointing news: Boll’s latest, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, is every bit as consistently awful as the director’s earlier offerings — only it’s 126 minutes long. And that’s just not fair.

Also unfair is the stunningly blatant way in which Mr. Boll tries to rip off the Lord of the Rings trilogy in this chintzy little epic. Every other sequence has a musical cue, a costume, a bit of dialog, or a background character that just fell off the Hobbit truck. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Uwe Boll just spent 126 minutes telling Peter Jackson how thin, talented and gorgeous he is. To be completely fair, I did notice a few components (mainly the action scene editing and a few moments of strangely effective cinematography) that manage to improve upon films like Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead and BloodRayne — but really, you could probably improve upon those three movies using only a cell phone camera and a powerful flashlight.

For a flick that runs two hours, the plot is distressingly skimpy: Villains are ransacking the countryside, so a farmer called Farmer takes up arms, grabs a few sidekicks, and heads out to destroy the evil and perpetually cackling Boss Villain. That’s it, really. But we’re not going to see an Uwe Boll video game adaptation for the plot, are we? No. We’re usually watching his flicks for the sheer unintentional hilarity of it all, but King is even better because it’s an ensemble piece! We’ve got…

Continue reading Review: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

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