Samsung has the MBP200 Pico Projector for mobile phones on display at CES. The pocket-sized device measures 107.3×48.8×19 mm and weighs only 160g! This is made possible using Instruments’ DLP pico chip, which we hope will be picked up by other manufacturers as well.
Specs wise, the Samsung MBP200 can project an image of up to 50-inches, and also features a 2.2-inch QVGA (240×320 pixels) screen for private viewing, and a microSD card slot so you can playback video files directly from a memory card, without connecting the MBP200 to a mobile phone or any other source (i.e. camera or camcorder). In addition, there’s a standard 3.5mm audio port for connecting headphones or external speakers.
Boy do I want it! Samsung, however, hasn’t released pricing information nor exact release date. All we know is that it’s coming “later this year,” whatever that means…
At the CES, a small company called Logic Wireless is presenting its first baby – Logic Bolt. It’s not really a compact device, but it rocks a built-in projector and we love it for that.
Aside from the uber-cool projector, the Bolt comes with a quad-band GSM radio, 3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a battery that can support about 2 to 3 hours of talk time, which is also about the time it can be used for video playback on a 36 to 64 inches wall. In addition, the device also boasts a VGA input allowing users to connect other devices and use the Bolt as a simple mobile projector.
Best of all, Logic Wireless won’t stop here. They say there are plans to make a dual-mode GSM/CDMA handset with live video conferencing, four times brighter projector — which would run Windows Mobile, rather than the current Java-based OS. Apparently, the upcoming device is planned to be offered through carriers (no names were given) for $100 on a contract, or for $600 sans any commitments. Sounds enticing, don’t you think?
Better late than never, eh? Yesterday was a full, full day at CES 2009, occupied mainly by the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre announcement, but we touched base with a lot of exhibitors and went to plenty of events that are worth talking about. On the other hand, the vast majority of you will be most interested in the Palm press conference fully videoed above. (Big ups to Serko for the feed.) We had more happening today, that’s for sure – chatting with Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) and Sandisk, but that will come in our day 4 wrap-up.
Remember, if you want to stay up-to-date with what’s going on at the Consumer Electronics Show (and other future events like Mobile World Conference next month) be sure to follow us on Twitter, or scope out the CES 2009 category on Viigo for a variety of great front-line sources.
The morning started off with a visit to HP, since we got an invite to hit the show floor before things opened. Yeah, they’re mostly printers and computers (I certainly wasn’t holding my breath for breaking iPAQ news), but I did get to take a look at iPrint, their free remote printing application for iPhone. No fancy cropping or color correction, which is fine, but it would be nice to see something a little more full-bodied. They were pretty keen on keeping it simple, which isn’t a bad call by any means.
I had to scramble a bit to get to a meeting with Synaptics, who do a lot of back-end work on touchscreen mobiles. Their booth was tucked away amidst the rows of identical meeting rooms, but I managed to get there eventually. Luckily, they weren’t seeing much in the way of foot traffic, so the lateness didn’t bother anyone. We had a good long talk about multi-touch and the growth of touchscreens, so be sure to listen in on The Signal at the end of the show for our talk.
Of course, the biggie was the Palm Pre announcement. Will covered the most of it in his liveblog and full tour, but I gotta chime in – the thing is frikkin’ sweet. The worst thing I can say about it is a lack of microSD memory card slot. Aside from that, I could imagine that some folks might accidentally launch applications from the favourites dashboard when they were really trying to pull up the home screen, but that’s pretty hard to nail down at this point. Whatever, small potatoes.
Fact of the matter is, this thing rubs shoulders with the hardcore e-mailing BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), the open dev platform of Android, the processing power of Windows Mobile, and the smoothness of the iPhone. As far as I’m concerned, every major player has users to lose to the Pre and WebOS. Anything short of this announcement wouldn’t have been enough to pull Palm out of the rut they’ve been in, but it looks like they’ve successful risen from the dead, and shall henceforth be dubbed ZomPalm. (N.B. Do not confuse ZomPalm with those lame shambly-type zombies. ZomPalm is for sure one of the crazy rabid sprinters you see in 28 Weeks Later). It is easy to worry that expectations are fairly high at this point, and we’ll likely be disappointed at least a bit once more details come into focus. In the meanwhile, take a look at Palm’s Pre minisite for official info and availability notification.
After somehow surviving the exit stampede from the Palm press conference, I headed out to meet with the Wi-Fi Alliance. 387 million devices with Wi-Fi built in were moved this year, up 26% from last year, counting 250 certified mobile models, with about 50/50 split between feature and smartphones. One of the more interesting things that I got out of talking with these guys was actually after the interview; over the last couple of years, they’ve gone from having the thankless task of convincing manufacturers that phones needed Wi-Fi, to being brushed off as taken for granted in most projects. I couldn’t help but sympathize with these folks who have created something that is becoming as ubiquitous in mobiles as cameras – it’s such a huge step and a huge enabler that they really don’t get the credit they deserve, especially in a show with so many shiny eye-catching toys.
Just around the corner from the Wi-Fi Alliance meeting room was Wilson Electronics, who were announcing an iPhone product at CES. They’ve hooked us up with a 3G signal booster that we haven’t been able to get working just yet, but we’ll give it an honest-to-goodness chance before passing jugement. With so many people bitching about shoddy reception and dropped calls at the conference, a signal booster sounded pretty sweet. They’re mostly built for setting up in cars or homes, but work with both GSM and CDMA, and provide a boost to data and voice quality. For those folks living in (or frequently traveling through) the wireless boonies, these might be a worthwhile investment. Keep an eye out for a review soon!
That was the last official meeting of the day, so I wandered around and found the Gracenote booth, the guys who do MusicID on Sony Ericsson phones. While weaving through, I spotted a Bold, and giggled with glee (just a bit, mind you) upon seeing their app on there. Holding up your phone to music and getting lyrics, album art, and digital download links in return is just plain cool. Talked to them a bit about the trickier issues of licensing music abroad, since us in Canada are always boned with online content distribution channels like that. What I wouldn’t do for Hulu.ca…
At that point I was looking for a little something other than phones, so hopped downstairs to see if anything was going on gaming-wise. As soon as I walked in, Dolby was there, blasting away at the front entrance. I had nearly forgotten about Dolby Mobile, the initiative they were working on to include a massive boost in sound quality to select handsets. There were only a few phones supporting it, but I got the impression that more were on the way and that we would hear about them in Barcelona next month.
That’s about it for yesterday. The blame for late posting lays squarely on the shoulders of Kevin for feeding me gigantic burgers at ungodly hours of the night. Today’s wrap-up is on the way!
(Sorry about the lack of pics, my laptop exploded along with my snaps from the day. Check back later after the mechano-monkeys have had their hand at fixing the thing,)
The just-launched Palm Pre promises to bring ailing Palm (NSDQ: PALM) back from the depths of financial ruin. With its innovative design, high-end feature-set, and intuitive UI (courtesy of Palm’s other new product, the Web OS), the Palm Pre has the potential to rock the smartphone world, redefining what it means to be connected to the web and how you manage all the information sources in your daily life.
No longer will your business and personal lives need to be separated, the Palm Pre integrates all aspects of your life in an easy-to-use platform that’s still powerful and flexible enough to take your virtual office with you. Palm Synergy is possibly the coolest feature of the Web OS. Enter your Facebook credentials and Synergy will search out all your contacts and automatically add them to your contacts list – complete with profile information (like phone numbers and email addresses) as well as pictures. Synergy can also draw contact information from multiple sources, like other social networks.
Another interesting feature is the universal search tool. Simply bring up the search box and start typing for whatever you need – food, a contact, and email, a song, or a movie theater – and Universal Search will automatically scour your device for appropriate content. If the Web OS can’t find anything on your Palm Pre that matches your search, it’ll search Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Wikipedia, or even offer to map the location for you.
Oh, and then there’s the 3.1-inch capacitance touchscreen that’s just a joy to use. Combined with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the gesture-control area directly below the display, the Palm Pre offers intuitive navigation and sleek design. But, it doesn’t stop there. Oh no, not in the least. The Palm Pre sports a 3 megapixel camera, GPS, WiFi, EVDO Rev. A data connection (3G), 8GB of on-board storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a super-fast CPU based on the OMAP3 architecture (the Palm Pre is the first mobile phone to use the processor, in fact).
We’re looking for the Palm Pre to hit market in the first half of 2009 (1H 2009). And there are rumblings about the Sprint (NYSE: S) subsidized pricing coming in around $400 on contract, but we’re not going to hold our breath. Palm would do well to get this little baby out as quickly as possible.
Needless to say, we’re enamored with the Palm Pre. We’ve already offered a sacrificial intern to the Palm reps in exchange for a early review unit – it would be totally worth it.
Peep the video for a hands-on look at the Palm Pre.
The LG booth tour we took you on previously was missing one of the more significant product launches at CES Las Vegas 2009. The LG Touch Watch Phone was announced here in beautiful Las Vegas, but was unfortunately unavailable for viewing yesterday. Today, however, is a completely different story. We managed to get some one-on-one time with the LG Touch Watch Phone, and we came away with some great footage of the LG LG-GD910 Touch Watch Phone!
LG wasn’t letting anyone lay so much as a finger on the LG Touch Phone, but we’re not going to hold that against them. Launching a new platform is a tricky business and we’re going to assume that LG didn’t want anyone crashing the highly sought-after, and still in development, LG Touch Watch Phone with press from all corners of the world scrutinizing the new watchnew phone new Touch Watch Phone.
Unlike time-pieces turned mobile phones that have previously been launched, the LG Touch Watch Phone is actually a slick-looking piece of time-telling kit. The sleek metallic casing and refined leather strap lends an an air of elegance to the LG Touch Watch Phone, while the 3G (7.2Mbps HSDPA) data connection, quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM radio, and 1.43-inch touchscreen makes for a powerful and fully-functional mobile phone watch.
Time is displayed in either analog or digital form on the small-but-usable touchscreen. The LG Touch Watch Phone is powered by LG’s own proprietary Flash UI, which is customized for finger inputs (large icons, and an uncluttered menu make it easy to navigate). And, thanks to the melding of powerful phone features with a watch, the cellphone watch from LG not only tells time, makes calls, sends text messages, and plays music through its integrated media player, it can do video-calls over the 3G data connection (using the built-in camera, of course).
Pricing and availability are not yet known, but LG expects to push the LG Touch Watch Phone to commercial channels in Europe “sometime in 2009.” We’re hoping to see a CDMA variant of the LG Touch Watch Phone coming to the US shortly after the European launch. Can you guess what’s on our list of gotta-have stocking-stuffers for the coming holiday gift-receiving gift-giving season?
Griffin’s latest contribution to the mobile world comes in the form of a couple portable charger/external
battery solutions for the iPhone and iPhone 3G (iPods, too). The PowerBlock lineup from Griffin includes the PowerBlock Reserve and PowerBlock Jolt. The PowerBlock reserve is tailored for use in the home or office, while the PowerBlock Jolt is designed to give you portable power in your car.
Both the PowerBlock Jolt and Reserve sport a removable Li-ion battery pack that’s good for an additional 6 hours of iPhone-uptime on a full charge. The PowerBlock unit charges the battery pack through a wall outlet (for the PowerBlock Reserve) or through a car’s cigarette lighter port (for the PowerBlock Jolt). And, because outlets and power ports are sometimes scarce, Griffin has designed their PowerBlocks with USB ports that you can use to charge your iPhone or iPhone 3G through the PowerBlock.
Once charged, the removable battery pack plugs directly into your iPhone for a quick top-off or a much-needed recharge. Think of the PowerBlock as a replacement for the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone charging block, but it sports an external battery pack to make your life easier.
The PowerBlock Reserve (the wall-charger variant) and PowerBlock Jolt will be available from Griffin in April for $39.99.
Let’s take a little walk through LG’s CES Las Vegas 2009 booth on the Las Vegas Convention Center showfloor. LG was on hand to showcase their latest and greatest in the camaraphone segment – the LG KC910 Renoir. The new LG Renoir leads the cameraphone-pack with an 8 megapixel Schneider-Kreuznach shooter.
While most cameraphones on market make photo-taking compromises for the sake of phone functionality and size, the LG Renoir focuses on its camera functionality. The LG Renoir’s 8 megapixel camera feature-set reads like a spec-sheet from a good stand-alone point-and-shoot camera – 8 megapixel image sensor, Schneider-Kreuznach optics (those Germans know their optics), xenon flash, 120fps video recording, image stabilization, auto-focus, and a host of shooting modes that can detect smiles, eye-blinks, and even rid your pics of blemishes (say you’re still hung-over from last night and it shows – the LG Renoir has you covered).
The LG booth was dominated by the new high-megapixel cameraphone. We gotta hand it to LG, they really know what they’re doing when it comes to marketing their wares.
From our short hands-on time with the LG Renoir, we can confidently say that LG has created one of the best cameraphones currently on market. Heck, the LG Renoir is probably better than some cameraphones coming down the pipeline in the near-term.
Slide open the lens cover and the LG Renoir’s large 3-inch touchscreen comes to life with all manner of camera controls. Everything from exposure levels to timing and even various shooting modes can be controlled through on-screen buttons. Photos snap-off as quickly as we could hope for in a cameraphone. The majority of cameraphone makers concentrate on megapixel counts rather than details like shot-to-shot time and shutter lag, but the LG Renoir proves itself as a competent camera. Oh, and it makes phones calls and all that jazz.
In the hand, the LG Renoir felt solid. The handset is perfectly sized for making calls and for taking photos. There’s a good balance between functionality and sleek design, although, we’d have liked to have seen a recessed (or at least flush with the case) camera module and sliding lens cover, a la the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) Cybershot cameraphones. Aside from that, the LG Renoir took beautiful pictures. And, the slo-mo shooting mode that takes 5 pictures a second makes for some fun action shots.
By now you’ve probably heard about BlueAnt and their Bluetooth-enabled products — after all, we covered them for quite a few times at IntoMobile.
The company is using the CES to unveil its latest baby – Q1 Bluetooth headset, which features automatic volume control; patented acoustic form factor, designed to effectively eliminate wind; and dual-microphone technology to further eliminate background noise.
And while we’ve no details about the pricing nor exact release date, we do know BlueAnt’s headset sports removable over-ear loop, as well as an in-ear earpiece. In addition, we’ve heard a details about Q1’s battery — it should reportedly provide users with up to 4 hours of talk time…
I’m far from being an expert on the “battery matters,” but what Energizer is talking about sounds super interesting. At the CES, they’re all about Zinc Air Prismatic batteries arguing that when compared with lithium ion rechargeable batteries, they offer much lower cost for the OEMs, a similar thin form factor, and eliminate the need for charge circuitry and a charging device. This is in addition to the up to three times (3X) advantage in runtime in similar sized batteries!!!
Apparently, these kind of batteries use the same zinc air technology that is used in hearing aid batteries, in which zinc reacts with oxygen in the air to generate power. The battery offers high energy density as well as a thin form factor.
Energizer says that they’ve developed simple and cost effective air management solutions to enable the use of this battery technology in a wide range of portable electronic devices, and is looking forward to introduce their technology through a series of OEM design seminars this year.
They certainly got our attention and we can’t wait to see better batteries powering up our devices. You can get more information from Energizer’s website or by visiting their booth at the CES.
Panasonic (NYSE: PC) is out with a new pair of premium in-ear headphones. It’s the RP-HJE700 that will make every audiophile want to grab them instantly, thanks to the Acoustic Precision Control which makes them [headphones] designed to provide optimum sound and comfort.
Acoustic Precision Control employs a triple virtual speaker system which uses three tuning gates to deliver fine tuning and rich bass response. The speakers are engineered with special ribbing on the driver cones to provide rigidity for purer sound and less resonance. The limb-mounted diaphragm enhances the cavity capacity to deliver a wider dynamic range.
As for the rest of the specs, the RP-HJE700 High-Fidelity In-Ear Headphones sport solid aluminum housing, cord slider to prevent tangling and neodymium magnet for rich and powerful sound. In addition, they boast an impressive frequency response of 6Hz-26kHz, sensitivity of 106dB, impedance of 16 Omega, and 12.5mm drivers.
Finally the price and the availability info. The RP-HJE700 will come in black or silver in May of this year, when you will be able to grab them for $129.99 (MSRP).
The 
I’m far from being an expert on the “battery matters,” but what Energizer is talking about sounds super interesting. At the CES, they’re all about Zinc Air Prismatic batteries arguing that when compared with lithium ion rechargeable batteries, they offer much lower cost for the OEMs, a similar thin form factor, and eliminate the need for charge circuitry and a charging device. This is in addition to the up to three times (3X) advantage in runtime in similar sized batteries!!!
