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Acer CloudMobile phone wins design award, lets cat out of the bag
Sometimes, you're just so darn full of pride you can get lost in the moment. We assume that's what Acer's done, having revealed possibly its trump handset weeks before the global mobile event, MWC, even starts. Its CloudMobile has won the iF design award for 2012, and the company just wanted everyone to know. So what can we expect to see later this month? Well, the phone will pack a 4.3-inch high-definition touchscreen, with a Dolby-branded speaker plate on the back, all wrapped in a sub-10mm "Sleeve DNA" contoured shell. Expect the device to be tightly integrated with Acer's cloud technology -- we grabbed a hands-on with this just last month -- using peer-to-peer connectivity to sync pictures, music and other files, while also offering up printer functionality. Pocket-Lint believes we'll see the device running Android 4.0 on arrival -- it's currently posited for a Q3 release. We'll be scouring the show floor for it when Mobile World Congress kicks off in earnest.
Wistron's WiGO 1 and 2 streamers win iF design awards, presumably for strangeness
Though it could easily be mistaken for a dinosaur egg trapped in some prehistoric block of ice, what you're looking at here is actually a set-top box. A media streamer, to be specific. Details are light, but Wistron's so-called WiGO 1 and 2 have showed up at the presentation of iF's annual Product Design Awards at CeBIT, described as "multimedia centers" with HDMI connections that can browse local, networked, and internet content. In the case of the WiGO 1 (pictured above), it looks like the inner "egg" -- where the electronics lie -- has literally no accessible connections, but the reality is that the iF folks simply set it in its display case with the rear facing down. The WiGO 2 is a little more traditional in appearance; the meat of the device is a normal black box at the bottom, topped with a large cube of clear acrylic that gives the package a less geeky, more fashion-forward appearance. See shots of both units below.
HMK 561 electric bike concept seats you on the battery, makes you significantly more attractive
Most electric bikes are fairly sordid affairs, little more than an ordinary bicycle with a motorized hub, a strap-on battery pack and regenerative braking capabilities (if you're lucky). Not this HMK 561 electric bicycle concept, which took home an iF Design Award for some seriously forward thinking. It's not just the stylish forward rake of this juiced cruiser that's innovative, it's the frame -- composed completely of a conductive carbon fiber weave that allows the bike's body to not just pass electricity to the motors, but actually store it like a giant capacitor. Factor in integrated lights and a pinch of that aforesaid regenerative braking at each axle, and you've just about got the bicycle of our dreams. Oh, and did we mention a prototype has already been built? Yeah. %Gallery-88012%
Qisda's ultra high-res QCM-330 smartphone and more surface ahead of iF awards
The iF Design Awards won't officially be handed out until the big ceremony at CeBIT next month, but some of the winners have now already been announced, and they include a few surprises. One of those is this new Qisda QCM-330 smartphone, which is said to be Android-based, and packs a 4-inch, 1,280 x 1,024 screen (supposedly, although the actual resolution will likely differ given the aspect ratio), WiFi and HSDPA connectivity, a 3 megapixel camera, and an accelerometer, among other, as yet unnamed specs. It's joined by the LG GD880 we previously spotted in the wild, along with a slew of phones headed for Vodafone, including the Compass slider, and the Krystal (pictured after the break), which apparently packs displays on both sides and some augmented reality-type features (like on the fly translation of newspapers). Rounding out the lot are the decidedly more ordinary Vodafone Sting, Shilpa, Quincy and, our personal favorite, the Larry. Hit up the link below for a closer look at those.
Samsung F700, others to sport "Croix" interface concept
Okay, so we've gathered a little more intelligence since our last run-through on the topic, and it turns out that Samsung's Ultra Smart F700 has not been dubbed "Croix." Croix is still alive and well, but it's actually the F700's underlying user interface paradigm, a paradigm based on crosses used for navigation ("croix" is French for cross, after all). It's the first time we've really seen the F700 in action, come to think of it, since we've only managed to get our hands on nonfunctional units at events so far. If the platform turns out to work as nicely as it looks, this is all great news, because Samsung's freshly-issued iF Communication Design Award indicates that "Croix is the backbone of a series of finger touch-based mobile phones with full touch screens." Let's worry about getting some F700s out in the field first though, eh, Samsung?[Thanks, Gary C.]
