Ceatec2010
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Fujitsu's social robot bear is the supertoy of Kubrick's dreams, almost (video)
Ah, the Fujitsu bear cub social robot. What child or elderly person should go without a "people-friendly terminal" with snuggly-soft fur and a camera in lieu of the ever-popular button nose? The little guy made the rounds briefly earlier this year, but this is our first time making acquaintances. The duo waved at us, waved with us, laughed with (at?) us, and then at some point, decided to arbitrarily fall asleep and ignore us -- just like our actual friends! The representative told us this prototype -- with a reported 300 actions from 12 actuators (three face, three neck, and six in the body), 13 skin touch sensors, hand grip sensors, a tilt sensor, and a microphone -- is a ways off from hitting the childcare / nursing home market. For now, enjoy the pictures below and footage after the break... and if all this seems eerily familiar, hey, we're with you. A wink and a nod in that direction can be found via the second video. %Gallery-104247%
TDK's see-through and curved OLED display eyes-on (video)
Remember the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness? At a list price of $1,000, it'd be hard to forget -- but with a monochrome see-through display, the whole transparency thing was little more than a novelty on a phone that served little practical purpose. TDK might have the solution with its new transparent QVGA OLEDs, available now to manufacturers in monochrome and in a lovely color variant by the end of the year. At two inches, they offer 200ppi pixel density and are more secure than you might think: the light only shines in one direction, so you actually can't see any data from the back even though you can still see through the display. At a glance, the display's didn't seem as vibrant as the best AMOLEDs on the market, but then again, these are passive matrix -- and you can really tell in our videos after the break where the refresh scans stand out. Guess that's the price you pay for transparency, right? We've also got some video of the 3.5-inch flexible OLED screens TDK's got on hand; they're not transparent, but considering the long, narrow resolution, we can't help but think they'd make for amazing wristwatches (or high-tech glowstick replacements at raves). %Gallery-104249%
Panasonic Lumix Phone eyes-on (video)
Right on schedule, Panasonic's 13.2 megapixel Lumix Phone made its physical debut buried within NTT DoCoMo's CEATEC booth. And by buried, we mean locked behind plexiglass and out of reach of our own hands. That didn't stop the light-capturing mechanics of our cameras, however. We're not sure where the "folding mechanism" mentioned in the press release comes from, but it looks to be a slider phone that keeps a numpad / text entry box out of view. Color options include black, pink, blue, and gold (though frankly, it looked more silver to us). Alas, that also means no chance to provide sample shots from the devices itself, but we do have a smattering of product photos from which you might derive glee -- and that aforementioned video after the break. %Gallery-104245%
Fujitsu dual-touchscreen concept phone hands-on
Back at Mobile World Congress in February, the mobile UI gurus at TAT showed off their interpretation of a dual-screen phone interface using TI's powerhouse OMAP4 testbed. Seemed a little pie-in-the-sky at the time, but frankly, the concept device being shown off by Fujtisu at CEATEC this week -- created with TAT's involvement, it turns out -- seems virtually ready for production. Or the hardware did, anyway; the software was spartan by comparison, obviously designed to call out a few key use cases where having two giant, glorious 960 x 480 displays right next to each other might come in handy. We were shown browser and email list scrolling across both displays -- boring, if not obvious -- but what really piqued our interest was a cool photo sharing feature whereby you fling photos you want to share from a gallery on the bottom display to a list of contacts on the top one -- very TAT, if we do say so ourselves. Both displays can be rotated between portrait and landscape, creating either a nicely-sized clamshell or a gigantic flip, not an uncommon shape among Japanese phones. Indeed, given the form factor, the entirely-Japanese interface, and Fujitsu's history, we're sure this was designed entirely with the Japanese domestic market in mind -- and we wouldn't be at all surprised to see it show up in a retail capacity there within a year or so. Follow the break for video. %Gallery-104244%
Sharp Galapagos e-reading tablets hands-on (video)
Sharp's 5.5-inch and 10.8-inch Galapagos are something to covet. Sharp's got the Android-powered e-reading tablets heavily on display here at CEATEC, meaning of course we jumped at the chance to try it ourselves. The interface is a bit sluggish, as is pinch-to-zoom on the browser. That said, pages (like our darling Engadget) displayed in full and were crisp, as were the supplied magazine examples (Newsweek, GQ -- all in Japanese, naturally). Flash 10 is supported, although we didn't get a chance to try it. The missing trackball on the 10.8-inch model wasn't much of a concern, as it was all but redundant on the 5.5-incher. Looks promising now, but with its US launch not expected until sometime in 2011, no telling what the competition might look like by then. More pictures in the gallery below! %Gallery-104242%
AMIMON crams 1080p streaming into its WHDI Stick, your laptop might have a new BFF
We can't say there's been a shortage of WHDI-enabled laptop-to-TV streaming solutions in the last few months -- ASUS has its WiCast, HP its Wireless TV and BriteView its HDelight -- but we've got one major complaint about them all: the large size of the transmitter. As you've probably heard us whine about before, each of those products requires a fairly chunky box be attached to the laptop itself via both HDMI and USB. But it's looking like it won't be that way for too long -- AMIMON, the company behind that WHDI technology, has engineered the WHDI Stick. The picture above is a clear sign of its prototype status, but the company's created the 3.2 x 1.2 x .61-inch device to really let the world, or at least manufacturers, know that it's shrunk down the package, but hasn't messed with the features -- it can still stream uncompressed 1080p/60Hz HD from a laptop to an HDTV with minimal (less than one millisecond) latency. We're planning to check it out in action at CEATEC this week, but AMIMON doesn't expect products based on the prototype to hit the market until the end of Q1 2011. Hit the break for the press release and the gallery below for some more pictures of the Stick. %Gallery-104235%
Sharp IS03 Android phone hands-on
Both KDDI and Sharp had a billion IS03s on display at CEATEC in Japan today (okay, not literally a billion, but quite a few), so naturally, we swung by to see what all the commotion was about. We'll be honest -- the phone didn't feel particularly high-end, coated top to bottom in cheap-feeling plastic and weighing a little less than you'd expect a phone of these specs to weigh. Furthermore, it was pretty sluggish and Sharp's UI skin atop Android 2.1 felt very "version 1.0," so we think we might want to wait for these guys to hone their game a bit before jumping in. That said, the vaunted 960 x 640 ASV display definitely seems up to the task, delivering bright, crisp images in the face of the notoriously harsh trade show lighting -- and the always-on LCD strip below the main display is a neat trick for glancing at the date and time without going to the hassle of powering on your phone. You might be worried that stacking it below the already-large primary display would make the handset too long, but we really didn't feel like that was the case. Follow the break for video! %Gallery-104240%
TDK flexes its transparent OLED muscles with CEATEC demonstrations
Finally a bit of competition to pep up the transparent OLED market. Samsung and LG seem to have had this party all to themselves until now, but TDK is stepping in with a 2-inch passive matrix screen and a humble QVGA (320 x 240) resolution. Sure, those aren't groundbreaking specs, but a claimed 50 percent transmittance -- meaning that half of what's behind the screen can be seen through it -- beats its Korean competitors rather handily. Another prototype being shown off by the company is a 3.5-inch flexible OLED panel that redefines thinness with a slinky 0.3mm profile. It's made using a resin substrate and covers an unimpressive 256 x 54 pixels at the moment, but again, that's just how good things get started: with small steps of awesome. We'll keep an eye out for both of these as we prowl the halls of CEATEC 2010.
Toshiba Regza GL1 wants you to put down the glasses, enjoy the 3D
Toshiba might have abandoned OLED, but that doesn't mean the company is lacking ambition in the display-making field. Today it's using CEATEC 2010, Japan's biggest electronics expo, to make official that 21-inch glasses-free 3D prototype we've been hearing about. It's lost an inch in becoming a retail product, with the 20GL1 offering a 20-inch diagonal, but the important multi-parallax picture transmission (employing a lenticular lens setup as used in Philips' Dimenco) remains the same. The new set, accompanied by a smaller 12GL1 model, will be shipping in Japan this December, and if it really does what it promises, the rest of the world should not be far behind. Update: Japan's Impress Watch has more details for us, listing a 720p resolution for the 20-incher and a funky 466 x 350 on the 12-inch GL1. Prices are estimated at ¥240,000 ($2,885) and ¥120,000 ($1,443), respectively.%Gallery-104161%%Gallery-104163%
Samsung showing off 330Mbps WiMAX 2 mobile broadband over at CEATEC 2010
WiMAX 2, the sequel to the movie most people haven't watched, is back to tease and tantalize us courtesy of Samsung's new CEATEC demo. Filling four separate HDTVs with streaming Full HD and 3D content, the Korean manufacturer of everything electronic is touting its latest advance in mobile broadband connectivity that takes the top speed up to 330Mbps. That may only be a third of the theoretical max capability of WiMAX 2, but you know, we'll take it for now. The good news is that Samsung's innovation brew extends only to the conduits between WiMAX devices, meaning that your current-gen transceiver will be able to join the accelerated party as and when Samsung's ready to dish out the goods. With the 802.16m standard expected to be ratified by next month, Samsung projects its first commercial solutions will be landing in late 2011. Consider our calendars marked.
Panasonic teases a 13.2MP 'Lumix phone' for October 5 unveiling
Looks like we'll soon have another heavyweight to throw into the renewed cameraphone wars, as Panasonic has put up a teaser site for its first Lumix-branded phone. Lumix is of course Panasonic's camera label, which counts among its luminary membership the likes of the GF1 and the newly refreshed LX5. The new phone shooter promises to beat both in terms of pure resolution with its 13.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, which is accompanied by a 3.3-inch LCD atop a 146-gram body. Much like Nokia's N8 and its protruding sensor compartment, this Lumix handset will have to make room for its expanded imaging equipment, which is why it'll offer a comparatively chubby 17.7mm thickness, to go along with a 116mm height and 52mm width. We'll know more next week when CEATEC 2010 gets rolling over in Tokyo. [Thanks, Anton] P.S. -- It's also noteworthy that Panasonic's press release indicates a folding mechanism for this handset, which, given current trends in Japan, makes it most likely to be a clamshell device. It's also got some DLNA voodoo inside and is coming out by the end of this fiscal year (April 2011).
Mitsubishi's huge, modular OLED display set to go on sale worldwide on September 21
Before you start dreaming of 155-inch OLED displays for your home theater, let us remind you that this Mitsubishi panel happens to pack an ignobly low 69 8.5dpi pixel density. So while it is indeed a wall-sized OLED image maker, it's not exactly designed to match up to the HD rigors of modern video. Composed of smaller, bezel-free modules, Mitsu's Diamond Vision OLED display has gone from CEATEC prototype last year to a triumphant retail product this year, starting to be exchanged for cash, trinkets and favors this September 21. As you might have guessed, it's primarily intended for use in digital signage scenarios -- which should be great so long as nobody tries to perch one up in the sun.
Japan still looking into holographic broadcasts for World Cup 2022
Sure, we'd prefer if Japan spent its time working on giant mecha suits to combat any potential alien threats, but right now the National Institute of Information and Communications Studies seems focused on trying to create holographic broadcast technology in an effort to secure Japan as the location for the World Cup in 2022. According to Variety, the team has already developed real time color holography in 3D for small toys and other objects, and plans to show off the technology using 8K Super Hi-Vision Cameras at CEATEC in October. Research leader Taiichiro Kurita compares the work done so far to the decades it took to perfect high definition TV and supposes live holographic broadcasts could be as little as 15-20 years away. Of course, to get there, they'll need more funding to continue research and so far the commercial giants are unsure if there's real product coming anytime soon -- we've got $5 on it, anyone else?
