600
Latest
HTC Desire 600 announced: quad-core processor, dual-SIM and BlinkFeed
It didn't take long for HTC to go official with the Desire 600. Interestingly, it picks up on several of the new Sense 5 features revealed alongside the HTC One, including its fingertip-baiting BlinkFeed for social network and news updates. BoomSound and the ability to craft video highlights from your photos and clips also make the transition, although apparently not the burst-capture Zoe mode. Hardware-wise, there's a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 quad-core processor, with a 4.5-inch Super LCD2 display (at 960 x 540 resolution), an 8-megapixel primary camera capable of up to 720p video capture and a front-facing 1.6-megapixel shooter. The Desire 600 picks up the same dual front-facing speaker setup of the One, although rather than a global appearance, it's currently headed to Russia, Ukraine and the Middle-East for now, landing early this June in white and black options. However, we've already spotted a China-bound version for China Unicom's WCDMA network, the Desire 606w, and if we're honest, we'd probably be happier to see the rumored M4 make an official showing. Now, where's that Desire 200? %Gallery-189185%
Mid-range HTC 606w spotted with front stereo speakers and dual soft key design
While the HTC One is facing much anticipation ahead of its launch in more regions, its price tags may not be everyone's cup of tea; but judging by the above leak, it looks like Peter Chou's willing to spare a couple of notable features for a more affordable model. According to last week's filing on China's TENAA database, the back of this 606w takes design cues from the China-only One SU (especially around the camera), but flip it around and you'll notice what appears to be a pair of front-facing stereo speakers (aka BoomSound as it's marketed as for the One), as well as the same dual soft key implementation on the company's latest flagship. The rest of this Android 4.1.2 phone is a bit of a mix: there's a 4.5-inch 960 x 540 display, a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, an 8-megapixel main camera (so not UltraPixel), a 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera, WCDMA radio and microSD expansion. It's easy to see how these specs are carefully crafted to avoid directly clashing with the recently launched E1 (603e) as well: lesser front-facing camera but better processor and display here (presumably). And no, this is clearly not the rumored M4. As always, we'll keep an eye out for the 606w's official announcement.
Did ASUS' Windows 8-packing Tablet 600 hit the FCC?
Toying with the idea of picking up a keyboard-dockable Windows 8 slate? Take your pick -- since Computex (and Microsoft's own Surface unveiling), these devices have popping up like wildflowers -- and one of them may have just slipped through federal inspection. A recent FCC filing reveals an ASUS branded tablet bearing the mark of Windows 8. The feds out the device as the TF600T, an unannounced product that sounds suspiciously similar to the Tablet 600 ASUS trotted out at Computex. Further investigation only revealed a standard radios -- Bluetooth, WiFi and NFC -- but the Transformer-like model number and Windows logo have our attention. Is this the Tablet 600? We'll let you know when ASUS has something official to say. Dive into the federal report for yourself at the source link below.
ASUS outs Tablets 600 and 810, Transformer-like slates running Windows 8
How many times have we posted a review of an ASUS Transformer tablet only to read comments that say, "Put Win8 on it and I'll buy it." Well, folks, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. ASUS just announced the Tablet 600 and the Tablet 810, two Transformer-like slates running Windows 8. The difference? The 600 is an ARM-based tablet running Windows RT, while the 810 is a full-fledged Intel-powered model with full Windows 8 installed. Like any Android-powered Transformer, the 600 packs a quad-core Tegra 3 chip, except it has twice the RAM (2GB). At the center of it all is a 10.1-inch, 600-nit, 1366 x 768 Super IPS+ display with viewing angles similar to what you'll find on current Transformer tablets. Around back, it has an auto-focusing 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash, complemented by a 2-megapixel shooter up front. Other specs include WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and your usual array of sensors, including GPS, a gyroscope, e-compass and, last but not least, NFC.%Gallery-156821% Moving on, the 810 features an unspecified Intel Medfield CPU with 2GB of RAM. Like the 600, it has a Super IPS+ display with 1366 x 768 resolution, only the panel here is a bit larger, measuring 11.6 inches. What's more, this guy makes use of a Wacom dual digitizer, allowing for both pen and finger input. And that's not all: we've got video demos of both devices -- head past the break to see 'em in action.
Goodbye Nokia 600, we hardly knew ye
Symbian just scored another blow. The Belle-installed Nokia 600 was announced in late August, destined to be a great music-centric phone for anyone trying to stay on a budget. Sadly, it appears its fate has been sealed before its release, as the company's taken down any pages on its websites that are related to the product. Then, if that weren't enough confirmation, it also broke the news of the handset's demise to a disappointed Facebook fan. We haven't been given a reason for the sudden decision to cease and desist, but we're not discounting the coincidence of this happening so shortly after the Lumia series was revealed.
Nokia announces Symbian Belle alongside three new devices
True to Monday's teaser, Nokia unveiled its latest update to the Symbian OS as well as a few new devices. Belle is indeed coming, and it's heading to the Nokia 700, 701 and 600 in the third quarter of this year. The successor to Anna brings NFC sharing and pairing functionality to the table, along with three additional home screens (bumped up to six), a dynamic lock screen, live widgets in five different sizes, and a pull-down taskbar and notification menu. Fortunately, the new handsets announced today aren't the only beneficiaries of the upgrade: the N8, E6, E7, X7, C7, C6-01 and Oro will all get Belle at a yet-unknown later date. Join us after the break as we go more into detail on the three phones announced today, along with a video and press release. %Gallery-131567%
Nokia 701 'Helen' gets a lookover from the FCC, likely includes pentaband support
If you like to play FCC bingo, pull your cards out for the next round; another Nokia phone has made it through the good graces of the US government. This time it's the Helen -- or, going by the new number scheme, the Nokia 701 -- which bears the identification tag "RM-774." This successor to the C7 is rumored to have a 1GHz CPU and come with Symbian Belle preloaded. While the veil that hides the Helen's secrets remains tightly draped over it, the filing indicates that it includes quadband GSM / EDGE and a pentaband 3G radio, a feature Nokia's opted to include in many of its recent smartphones. Of the four new devices on Espoo's leaked roadmap, we've already checked the Nokia 500 "Fate" and 700 "Zeta" off our FCC watch lists, leaving the 600 "Cindy" to bring up the rear at a future date. It's evident that the phonemaker is continuing to push forward with its Symbian plans at an impressive pace; after all, there's still five more years before the company's ready to wave goodbye to the platform, so why not milk it?
WiFi-only Xoom headed to Staples for March 27th release?
If you're still holding out for a Motorola Xoom, here's some good news. The folks at Droid Life snagged a picture of a Staples ad depicting March 27th as the targeted release date for the slate. In addition, the tablet appears to be retailing for 600 bucks -- one the cheapest models money can buy. A Xoom, TI-Nspire and a new pack of pens, all from one place? Man, that really was easy. [Thanks, Hector N]
Logitech Harmony 650 remote review
Fewer products are more appropriately named than the Logitech Harmony series of smart remotes. They do wonderful things to take home entertainment systems, comprised of a disparate jumble of mismatched devices, and turn them into peaceful entities that work together for the betterment of your living room -- you half expect doves with olive branches in their mouths to fly out of the box when you get one. Alas, there are neither birds nor branches included with the company's latest entrants to the series, the 600 and 650 announced two weeks ago, but still they offer the best value amongst the current Harmony lineup. Can they broker successful negotiations amongst all your devices? Read on to find out. %Gallery-88275%
Logitech 600 and 650 remotes bring Harmony for under $100
Logitech's most recent offerings in the Harmony line, the 900 and the 700, were much more affordable than the $500 touchscreen Harmony 1100 we reviewed last year, but neither crossed beneath the magical $100 threshold. Finally Logitech has a few new models that'll set you back less than a Benjamin, the $79 Harmony 600 and $99 Harmony 650, said to be shipping by the end of the month. Both share the same shape as the 700 but have been gimped somewhat to control a maximum of five devices -- a curious step back from the 700's six. Likewise the 600 offers only monochrome screen while the 650 offers color, but given your dog's lack of chromatic acuity he'll be perfectly content chewing on either. %Gallery-86885%
HP TouchSmart 600 Quad series does the Core i7 thing
What? Did Intel release a new processor or something? HP is just the latest PC vendor to make the Core i7 jump as it plans to put its new TouchSmart 600 Quad series up for sale starting today. The beefed up 23-inch all-in-one starts at $1,699 with options for a 1.6GHz Core i7 720QM or 1.73GHz Core i7 820QM Intel quad-core processor. Otherwise, the rest of the specs remain unchanged for this Windows 7 AIO. Still, if you've been waiting to pull the trigger since hearing about this update from our December leaks, well, keep refreshing that source link boy, it'll be available shortly. Update: It's live.
Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: Desktops
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today's bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season. Let's face it, not everyone needs (or wants) to carry their computer around on the daily routine. Sacrificing portability can have its advantages -- and while nettops and all-in-one PCs have become a much more dominant force this year, the traditional, highly upgradeable desktop tower is still the reigning bang-for-the-buck champ. Just make sure your certain special someone has enough desk real estate for whatever potentially-enormous chassis you decide to take home and wrap. %Gallery-80501%
HP TouchSmart 300 and 600 bump the software to the next level, tx2 comes along for the ride
While the hardware on the outside looks to hardly be a departure from the norm for HP's TouchSmart line, there's some exciting stuff going on under the hood. Of course, multitouch is the big buzz this season with Windows 7 onboard and those fancy Surface apps are fine to play with, but more important is what HP is doing with its own TouchSmart application. It's added panes for Hulu, Netflix, Twitter and an HP Music Store powered by Rhapsody, which work in nicely with the rest of the touch-friendly apps onboard and a bit of underlying Microsoft technology keeping things humming -- like a nice big handwriting pane for quick Rhapsody searches. There's also a voice controlled recipe app that can capture recipes from popular recipe sites and read them out loud to you, and the photo app can hook up with a phone over Bluetooth and pull off photos. The other big new touch is the addition of HDMI and composite inputs, specifically for use with gaming consoles on the colorful 20-inch (300) and 23-inch (600) screens. What we would've really liked to see at this point would be a bit of that stylus-friendly capacitive Wacom tech, since a computer like this is dying to be turned into an easel, but this infrared camera-based stuff will have to do for now. HP had to hit these friendly $899 and $1,049 respective pricepoints somehow. Specs are nothing too special, but TV tuners, discrete graphics and Blu-ray are all in the offing. Meanwhile, HP's tossing all that fancy new software onto the TouchSmart tx2 convertible multitouch tablet, which starts at $800, and the dv3 is also getting a touchscreen as rumored -- thought details are slim there. The tx2 and 600 launch on October 22, while the 300 lands November 1. %Gallery-75369% %Gallery-75370%
Video: Sony PRS-600 Touch is fast but too dim to satisfy PRS-505 owner
Touch, it's the panacea of e-book readers, right? Sure, just so long as readability isn't sacrificed in the process. Flickr user Doodlydood uploaded some pics and video of Sony's new $300 PRS-600 (on the left above) reader and did a quick comparison with his legacy PRS-505. Unfortunately, the glare from the plastic resistive touchscreen is an issue and the weak contrast, like the touchscreen PRS-700 before it, pales by comparison to Sony's two year old PRS-505 with glass display. On the flip side, page turns on the new 600 were fast and "work extremely well" compared to the PRS-505. Unfortunately, that's a minor victory when the whole purpose of an e-reader it to well, you know... read. See for yourselves in the videos after the break. [Via Lesen.net, thanks Johannes]
Last Polaroid cameras and film to be sold at Urban Outfitters tomorrow
We've had a hole in our hearts ever since the original Polaroid company stopped manufacturing instant film, filed for Chapter 11, and sold off its brand name, but it looks like those crazy kids at The Impossible Project are making some small moves to turn things around after picking up the pieces last year: they'll be selling the remaining stock of cameras and film at Urban Outfitters starting tomorrow. Sadly, that's not much, as there are only 700 hand-numbered kits containing a deadstock Polaroid ONE600 Classic camera and a pack of Type 779 film available, but at least there's more film to go around if you already have a camera -- additional 779 packs will also be on sale until stock runs out. We're not sure if this plan will raise enough cash to start the factory up again -- or if anyone else even cares about Polaroid anymore -- but you know where we'll be standing in line tomorrow morning. [Via OhGizmo!]
Video: NVIDIA Tegra's GPU gets busy with HD video and full-screen Flash -- Intel 945GSE shrugs, kicks dirt
If you didn't believe the Tegra hype -- 25 days audio, 10 hours of 1080p video on single charge -- already then pull up a stool, son, NVIDIA wants to tell your a story. TechVideoBlog sat down with Gordon Grigor, NVIDIA's Director of Mobile Software to see Tegra's little Atom smasher in action. So sit back while Gordon smoothly streams a 720p MSN HD trailer off the web (over WiFi) then switches over to Firefox to take Flash for a spin at full-screen. Gordon also clarifies earlier confusion over Tegra's ability to handle HD video; see, the Tegra 600 can do H.264 video at 720p while the Tegra 650 can decode 1080p. Gordon also gives some more insight into memory configurations. It seems that the OS (either Android or Windows CE in single or dual-boot configurations) will be embedded with minimal on-board storage like those early Eee PCs. RAM will also be limited to about 512MB on base units going as low as 256MB and as high as 1GB in future (unannounced) devices. A 512MB model limits Firefox to about 3-4 opened tabs at a time. All of this is meant to keep prices down below $200 (or less when subsidized by carriers). Also of note is how the Tegra's GPU assists in rendering pixels anytime they appear on the display. In other words fonts, Firefox pages, scrolling, and of course video playback all benefit from an extra boost by the GPU. Check the video after the break to hear Gordon make some not so subtle jabs at Intel's relatively power-hungry Atom processor.Update: It's worth mentioning that the first Tegra smartbooks are expected to launch in October according to Gordon.
HP cancels the iPAQ 610 smartphone in the US
Ah, iPAQ 610. You were so close, and yet... so far away. According to a handful of tipsters, after a round of delays, HP has decided to cancel the release of its upcoming Windows Mobile smartphone, the 610 (also known as the iPAQ 614, 614c and 600). The company didn't give a lot of information, though they did state that, "due to recent legal issues between suppliers of mobile phone technologies, HP has decided not to offer the iPAQ 610 Business Navigator to U.S. customers as previously planned." It's unclear whether this means the phone will be missing from shelves worldwide, but it certainly won't be popping up on these shores anytime soon.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Blast from the past: come get your Treo 600 / 650 settlement!
For most, the Treo 600 and 650 are old enough so that we don't really remember if we had troubles with 'em or not -- but apparently we did, and some owners are now entitled to a little chunk of cash to show for it. A class action lawsuit filed against Palm "claimed that the Treo 600 and Treo 650 smartphones had certain defects, failed at unacceptable rates, and that Palm made misrepresentations concerning the Treo 600 and Treo 650 smartphones," and Palm just decided to settle the whole tiff rather than take it to trial. This means that if you owned a Treo 600 or 650 that required two or more repairs and ended up purchasing a new device within a certain period, you get a little spending money -- or you're entitled to some free repair work, even if your Treo didn't require two or more trips to the shop. Naturally, there are some rules and regs involved -- this is a legal matter, after all -- so head on over to the site to figure out whether you're affected and how you can cash in.[Thanks, Michael G.]
HP introduces iPAQ 600 and 900 series Windows Mobile 6 phones
In its fray of iPAQ introductions today come two new phones from HP -- the first since the rather bland 510 -- potentialy throwing the once-dominant Windows Mobile force back into the hunt. First up, the 600 series Business Navigator comes equipped with integrated GPS, a generous 2.8-inch touchscreen, 128MB of RAM, 256MB of ROM, 3 megapixel autofocus cam, WiFi, and Windows Mobile 6 Professional, all sitting atop a Marvell PXA270 putting along at 520MHz. The 600 rocks a numeric keypad; a dealbreaker for some, yes, but the nifty touch-sensitive scroll wheel integrated into the keys may be enough to sway a few back. The 900 series, meanwhile, swaps out the numeric pad for a standard QWERTY outfit and steps down to a 2.46-inch display, but the specs remain otherwise similar to its stablemate. Look for both to ship before the year's out.[Via Phone Scoop]
HP iPAQ 600 gets Korean confirmation
Though spec sheet details still haven't been confirmed, the existence of the rumored iPAQ 600 from HP now seems like a sure thing. A spokesman for HP Korea has said that a "third-generation PDA phone, dubbed the iPAQ 600" will launch on multiple Korean carriers later this year, featuring HSDPA, a numeric keypad, and likely a 2.8 inch display. Of course, a Korean launch doesn't really do us very much good in these parts, but we've gotta believe that HP is going to aim for one or more American launches as well as they've done in the past -- and even if it doesn't, the reported tri-band HSDPA radio should work swimmingly once we get any carrier lock issues taken care of.[Via the::unwired]
