Motorola’s Ischia has just been sent to the FCC office for their highly sought after stamp of approval. Is it just me, or do Motorola engineers love coming up with highly unpronounceable names for their products? First they dropped a vowel in the RAZR line, and now with the Motorola Ischia, my tongue’s all tied up in a knot. What I do know about the handset is the inclusion of Bluetooth and EDGE connectivity, and that’s that. GSM 850 support is missing though, so forget about making this a world clamshell phone.

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Having a Chinese portable media player make a beeline for the FCC is not a common sight, but the Teclast M31 surely goes against the grain by doing so. A seamless metal body encases the innards carefully, offering various openings to accommodate the USB port, a 3.5mm audio jack and a handful of buttons. Features include a 178-degree viewing angle display, touch sensitive buttons, TV Out and compatibility with RMVB, RM, FLV, AVI, WMV and DAT file formats. No idea on pricing details though, but that shouldn’t be a hindrance.

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News has it that AT&T’s Navigator location-based service will be expanding overseas, giving bouquets to AT&T for being the first US carrier that offers international navigation capabilities. Known as the AT&T Navigator Global Edition, this service functions across 20 countries including North America, the U.S. Caribbean, and the majority of countries in Western Europe. It will also run perfectly fine within the boundaries of half a dozen Chinese cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Shenyang, Tianjin, and Qinhuangdao. This comes as no surprise since AT&T is an official sponsor of the US Olympic Team. The AT&T Navigator Global Edition will come with a $19.98 monthly fee and is compatible with the AT&T Tilt, RIM BlackBerry 8800, RIM BlackBerry Curve 8310, RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8110, Samsung BlackJack II, and the Motorola Q9h.

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Filed under: Gaming

Interesting that this didn’t get announced at E3, but Games for Windows Live is now free for all. Yep, totally free, cross-platform multiplayer with the 360 included — which obviously raises the question of whether Live will ever be free on Xbox. We think that’s a pretty safe no — unlike Games For Windows, Xbox Live actually makes money, which is pretty hard to turn down, and without a ton of competitive pressure from, say, Playstation Home, it’s hard to see why Microsoft would turn that funtime cash fountain off. Still, there’s always hoping, right?

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Filed under: Audio/Video, Editor’s Picks, iPod, iPhone, Home Audio, Portable Audio, Reviews, Back to School Guide 2008

With the possible exceptions of ramen and the occasional sixer of Natty Ice, there’s nothing quite as essential for the scholarly life as music. And with all your music on your iPod, a quality dock can be just the thing to give your dorm room the moodiness it so desperately needs. Check out this handful of winners.

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Filed under: Gaming

Okay, okay — we get it. So maybe there’s just not enough room in a genuine Zapper to fit all the necessary innards of a Nintendo Entertainment System into, but it’s just a bit weird to see the Big N’s antiquated console crammed into some other light gun. Similar to the NES-in-an-NES-controller mod we peeked earlier this week, this unit includes a plethora of games and all the controls you need; just plug it up to a TV, pop a few batteries in there and you’re golden. Is it any surprise this guy was tracked down on Ben Heck’s own forums?

[Via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]

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Teddy bears can be comfort toys and highly expensive collectibles as well, depending on which end of the spectrum you’re at. The Dilus electronic teddy bear concept is definitely groundbreaking as it will try to make your parenting life a wee bit easier by offering socialization, entertainment, communication and education lessons via interacting with your child. Holographic technology is employed to help kids interact with it, and also doubles up as an imaginary friend ala Calvin & Hobbes. Too bad this is but a concept, and it will be interesting to see how the power issues are solved for something so small and yet capable of doing so much.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Sure, Apple alleges to have flipped over a million iPhone 3Gs at this point, but what does that mean? The devil’s in the details, as always; yes, true, the first one took 74 days to reach that same milestone, but it was available in less than one-twentieth the number of countries and an even smaller fraction of carriers. Hell, the very definition of “sale” is under scrutiny here, with some suggesting that Apple’s making reference to the number of phones it’s sold to its carrier partners, not end users — a metric that would make sense from Cupertino’s perspective since Apple’s payday technically ends there. We have some metrics on hand here that paint an interesting picture of the iPhone 3G launch that might be a little different than what you expect; head on over to Engadget Mobile for the scoop.

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Filed under: TV

What we’re watching tonight:

• ABC (720p) has ‘I Survived a Japanese Game Show‘ at 9:01 p.m.
• TLC (1080i) lines up ‘Say Yes to the Dress‘ at 8 p.m. followed by ‘Rock the Reception‘ and ‘Must Love Kids‘
• ABC Family (720p) has ‘Secret Life of American Teenager‘ at 8 p.m.
• A&E (720p) brings ‘The Cleaner‘ at 10 p.m.
• Discovery (1080i) presents the season finale of ‘Deadliest Catch‘ at 9 p.m.
• Sci Fi (1080i) has ‘ECW‘ at 10 p.m.
• History (1080i) tosses in the season finale of ‘Mega Disasters’ at 10 p.m.
• ESPN HD (720p) kicks off the 2008 World Series of Poker at 8 p.m.

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Filed under: Gaming

There may not have been any word of a new PSP out of E3 as some had suspected, but it looks Sony may have a bit of a late surprise for us, at least if these tantalizing pics from PSPChina are to be believed. Apparently, this new PSP-3000 model remains mostly unchanged from the current PSP-2000, with the notable addition of a built-in microphone and a somewhat less notable PlayStation button in place of the usual Home button. As you can see in the picture after the break, the signature steel ring on the back of the PSP also appears to have been trimmed a bit (there’s a pic of the inside of the case as well, for the curious). Not exactly the DS Lite sort of upgrade that’d make everyone ditch their old PSPs to be sure but, as we’ve seen with the PSP-2000, it would be about par for the course for Sony.

[Via Joystiq, Khattab]

Continue reading Sony said to be prepping PSP-3000 with built-in mic

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