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Blinged out Michael Jackson phone is fashionably late

by Laura June posted Nov 6th 2009 at 12:25PM

Michael Jackson may never take the stage again, but that doesn't mean you can't commemorate him in your pocket, right? This special, "limited edition" mobile phone appears to have been dipped in gold and diamonds, and, if we're not mistaken... it's basically a Vertu KIRF that's dressed like a headless MJ? We're pretty light on specs and pricing information here, but rest assured that unless you live in China, you'll probably never be able to get your be-gloved hand on one of these. Nothing like cashing in on the dead.

[Via Shanzhai]

China bans corporal punishment in internet rehab, UK and USA open up their own clinics

by Vladislav Savov posted Nov 5th 2009 at 5:28AM

China's, how to say this, unorthodox rehabilitation methods, which involve "beating and confinement" of internet addicts, have finally been fully outlawed. Following the death of one teenager due to the treatment he received at an addiction camp, the Chinese Health Ministry has come out with a statement to say corporal punishment and methods restricting personal freedom "are strictly forbidden." In the meantime, the UK and USA are playing catch-up by opening up their own computer addiction camps, which have been described as residential internet detox clinics. Their genius ploy to get you off the web juice has been to go cold turkey and teach people to do chores as a distraction (really, chores and boredom are the cure and not the disease?). The British version even has a 12-step program, but we advise doing what we all did -- if you find yourself spending most of your time on the internet, just become a full-time blogger.

Read - China bans tough treatment of young Web addicts
Read - Britain's first computer rehab clinic opens
Read - Clinic for internet addicts opens in US

Eston's 7-inch Android MID believes it's an N97, can play full HD

by Vladislav Savov posted Nov 3rd 2009 at 5:46AM

We'll go out on a limb here and suggest that Nokia probably doesn't care about Shenzhen Eston's N97-branded device, but what really matters is whether you should care about it. Positioned slap bang in the middle between smartphones and netbooks, this Android-driven MID offers 7 inches of viewing real estate and 4 hours of battery, as well as integrated WiFi, 3G, Flash player, web browser, and ebook reader, plus the purported ability to play back full HD content. Don't ask us how anyone can squeeze that kind of processing power out of a Marvell PXA303 chip, but if you want to know more, the read link is your ever-loyal best friend.

[Via Cloned in China]

Nokia's first TD-SCDMA-based 6788 ready for China Mobile's 500 million subscribers

by Thomas Ricker posted Oct 27th 2009 at 6:26AM

Nokia might be hemorrhaging smartphone marketshare to North America's meddling upstarts but it still dominates in total handsets sold worldwide. Today's news can only help that cause as Nokia taps into China's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G marketplace for the first time. The Nokia 6788 does the honor via collaboration with China Mobile, China's (and the world's) largest mobile phone operator. The handset itself brings a 2.8-inch QVGA display, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash, 4GB of memory plus microSD expansion, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack, and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, all riding atop S60 3rd Edition -- not 5th as we're accustomed to seeing by now. Unfortunately, it won't start contributing to Nokia's sagging bottom-line until the end of December.

Motorola's Zeppelin spotted, found to contain Android rather than hydrogen

by Tim Stevens posted Oct 23rd 2009 at 8:13AM

Motorola's Zepplin spotted, found to contain Android rather than Hydrogen

Last week's blurry little roadmap from Motorola gave us our first glimpse of the codename Zeppelin, and now just a few days later the back half of the thing has floated its way into the hands of someone at DIGI.QQ.com. The Android-powered handset is said to sport a five megapixel camera with flash, WiFi, a 3.1-inch 480 x 320 screen, HDMI output, and, in a first for Android, dual SIM slots marked GSM and CDMA -- technically an R-UIM slot for CDMA, actually, which pretty much limits this thing to China. And indeed, rumor has it release will come behind the Great Wall sometime in the first quarter of next year, with worldwide shipments (of some other variant, we'd imagine) sometime later. Sure, that's a long time to wait if your contract expiration is nigh, but we hear that Droid thing is pretty neat.

[Via AndroidOS.in]

SmartQ V5 MID strives to be relevant, may succeed on some level

by Darren Murph posted Oct 22nd 2009 at 10:48AM

Not to be confused with the SmartQ 5 (how could you ever, right?), the SmartQ V5 MID is essentially a V7 with a less spacious screen. Within, you'll find a 600MHz ARM11 processor, 256MB of DDR2 memory, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, 2GB of internal storage and an SD expansion slot. There's also USB 2.0 connectivity, an HDMI output good for shooting out material at up to 1080p, a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and a 4.3-inch touchscreen (800 x 480). You'll also find a format support list longer than your latest cellphone bill, though both a price and release date have remained elusive thus far. Here's hoping it's cheap enough to matter.

[Via PMP Today]

HiPhone F320: 'a rotary phone and an iPod nano walk into a bar...'

by Darren Murph posted Oct 20th 2009 at 4:03PM

With a name like HiPhone, it has to be good, right? Totally. The outfit famous for knocking off RIM's BlackBerry Storm in impressive fashion is back, this time with a psychedelic mishmash that could make even the most hardened soul chuckle once or twice. The F320 is -- as you can so clearly see above -- a terribly funny combination of iPod nano and rotary phone, and while we wouldn't trust the specifications for a minute, we're told that it's a dual-band GSM handset with a built-in multimedia player, FM tuner, camera, 2.6-inch touchscreen and Bluetooth. There's no mention of a price (unless you're willing to commit to buying a few hundred), but trust us, it's better that way.

[Via PMP Today]

Newsmy A11HD portable media player tries hard to be special

by Darren Murph posted Oct 20th 2009 at 3:11AM

Newsmy (or Newman, as it were) may not be a household name here in the States, but it's good for pumping out new portable media players at a decent clip over in the Far East. Thankfully, there's this amazing invention called the "internet," which essentially enables folks all over the world to trade currency for product. For those interested in the ho hum player shown above -- which features a 4.3-inch display (480 x 272), 720p TV output, an absurd list of supported file formats and 16GB of internal storage -- it can be shipped your way for the intriguing price of $129.86. Oh, and did we mention that this thing can play "64 games?" Look out, iPod touch!

[Via PMP Today]

First electromagnetic 'black hole' built on earth, nobody raps about it

by Laura June posted Oct 17th 2009 at 10:24AM

An electromagnetic black hole -- which sucks in the light surrounding it -- has been built at Southeast University in Nanjing, China for the first time. The device works like cosmological black holes in that it has gravity which is intense enough to bend the surrounding space-time, causing any matter in the neighborhood to spiral inward and create the hole itself. The earth-built 'black hole' for microwave frequencies is constructed of 60 annular strips of meta-materials (yes, that's the stuff of invisibility cloaks). Each strip is an intricately etched circuit board which seamlessly and smoothly connects to the strips next to it, creating both a shell and absorber section to the device. When an electromagnetic wave hits the device, it is trapped and guided through the shell region toward the core, where it is absorbed. The device, which was created by Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng, converts that absorbed light into heat, meaning that future possible applications could include new ways of harvesting solar energy. Hit the read link for a fuller description of this truly bad dude.

Intel's Pine Trail Atom D510 already spotted in Chinese nettop

by Darren Murph posted Oct 15th 2009 at 9:19AM

Remember when we first heard that a mythical Atom D510 was on Intel's roadmap way back in June? Yeah, turns out that memo was spot-on, and while the chip maker has since gone official with the next-gen architecture, we've yet to see it within any machine outside of a trade show floor... until now. Halfway around the world, the KND K1850 all-in-one nettop is said to be packing a dual-core 1.66GHz D510 (Pineview) chip, an 18.6-inch display, 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM and a DVD drive. There's also inbuilt WiFi, a 3-in-1 card reader and a few USB ports, though there's no indication that it'll ever ship to anywhere outside of Asia. 'Course, about four billion other machines from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo will, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they'll all have the exact same specifications. Oh, joy.

[Via Slashgear]

Motorola to introduce eight OPhones on China Mobile next year, celebrate intensely

by Darren Murph posted Oct 15th 2009 at 3:36AM

M otorol a may be pinning its comeback hopes on the CLIQ here in America, but it obviously has some rather large plans for the world's largest carrier, too. An admittedly perplexing report has surfaced purporting that the creator of the iconic i776, er, RAZR, is fixing to distribute not one, not two, but eight OPhones to China Mobile next year. For those unaware, OPhone is an Android-based OS tailor made to operate on the aforesaid carrier and cater to its customers, and to date, quite a few other manufacturers have jumped on board over there. Sadly, no actual details about the eight Moto handsets were given, so it looks like it's just you, a cup of joe and your hyperactive imagination for the time being.

Keepin' it real fake, part CCXXXVIII: Palm Pre knockoff doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up

by Laura June posted Oct 9th 2009 at 12:16PM

Yes, this was only a matter of time, and we're a little surprised we didn't see one earlier. Regardless, this is the Palm Pre knockoff we've been waiting for. Seemingly called just iPhone +QWERTY -- this KIRF is being marketed as just that -- a real business phone with a hybrid identity blending the BlackBerry and the iPhone. And really, that's not too bad of a description for this little dude, we guess. Boasting analog TV, Bluetooth, and an FM radio, it runs the much-loved OPhone operating system, and can be had for 600 RMP (about $88). There are two more shots after the break. Hit the read link for a full peek.

[Via PMP Today]

Continue reading Keepin' it real fake, part CCXXXVIII: Palm Pre knockoff doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up

China's KIRF marketplace captured on hidden camera

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Oct 7th 2009 at 2:29AM

Love 'em, loathe 'em, or love to loathe 'em as you will, but the humble KIRF has a big place in our geek DNA -- that's why we were tickled when the gang over at Shanzhai.com paid the markets of Shenzhen, China, a 60 Minutes-esque visit complete with hidden camera. Although we've been hearing tales for years now about the legendary stalls deep in the heart of KIRFdom, Western visitors have rarely made the trip -- until now! And this clip has it all, including one of our all-time favorite head scratchers: the Buddha handset. But don't take our word for it -- grab yourself some popcorn and move on past the break to see it for yourself.

Continue reading China's KIRF marketplace captured on hidden camera

Keepin' it real fake, part CCXXXVI: Nokia N900 rip shows no trademark fear

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 29th 2009 at 5:23AM

It's pretty typical for serial KIRFers to make minor changes to the names of the brands they're ripping -- take Sany Ericssan, for example -- but we've never really known why. "Go big or go home" is the KIRF mantra we prefer to live by, and if you're going to gank a phone's design, by golly, do it with gusto. Give it 110 percent. In your heart, after all, that NOKLA's really a Nokia -- it's what you feel deep inside that really matters, and no well-staffed, well-funded Finnish legal team can tell you otherwise. That's why we've got to hand it to this particular model, simply called "Copy Nokia N900" in a painfully honest, accurate admission of its true raison d'être. Strangely, though, they've missed a few basic points: the Copy Nokia N900 trades the genuine article's landscape QWERTY slider for a dual slide configuration in the same vein as the N85 and N95, for example, and Maemo 5 has gone missing -- instead, you're treated to a frighteningly accurate S60 5th Edition knockoff. If you can tolerate the dismal VGA cam, GPRS data, and QVGA screen, you'll be pleased to discover that the phone features an analog (yes, analog) TV tuner and an accelerometer with "support" for flick control, which you can watch in action on video after the break -- looks super fun and usable, doesn't it?

Continue reading Keepin' it real fake, part CCXXXVI: Nokia N900 rip shows no trademark fear

Video: Hanvon / Hanwang's aluminum-clad tablet does Windows 7 multitouch

by Vladislav Savov posted Sep 29th 2009 at 5:02AM

You know that tablet we keep waiting for? Well, here's something that looks very much like it, but for the Windows 7 operating system and purported Atom processor inside. This 8.9-inch, two USB port-sporting device can pull off multi-touch pinching and zooming -- albeit with a lag akin to wading through water -- and is outfitted in a rather becoming all-aluminum case. It could make for a pretty desirable movie-playing machine on the go, provided it has the battery prowess for such tasks. Chinese folks will know for sure pretty soon, with the release coming before year's end -- presumably just as soon as the company figures out which westernized version of its name to use. Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading Video: Hanvon / Hanwang's aluminum-clad tablet does Windows 7 multitouch