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BenQ's DC X725 cam: too skinny for the megapixels
Step aside X720, you're out. BenQ just replaced you with the 12.5-mm DC X725 stainless steel shooter in choice of black, red, pearl and silver. Funny enough, while they tell us that it features a 1/2.5-inch CCD, BenQ fails to mention anything about the pixel resolution. Could it be that compact camera manufacturers have learned that pixel count has pretty much gone the way of the "digital zoom" spec on modern shooters? Doubtful. Probably just too busy with their legal woes to notice the omission. Let's assume 7.2 megapixels like its predecessor. BenQ does manage to tell us a bit about the Pentax (Super Multi-Coating) 3x optical zoom lens, Super Shake Free stabilization, ISO 1600 sensitivity (4000 in recording mode), and SD/SDHC card support. Oh, and BenQ says it's available worldwide too, only they fail to mention a price. Pfff. Pic of the backside looking out, after the break.[Via LetsGoDigital]
BenQ-Siemens' SF71 set to launch?
Although rumors of the BenQ-Siemens SF71 have floated around the web for quite a while now, will the handset be released any time soon? The SF71's shiny metal "armor plating" and flat keypad stay hip to the brushed-metal housings we're seeing in fashionphones these days -- and with UMTS, a microSD slot and Bluetooth 2.0 along with a QVGA display and 2 megapixel cam, specs are right in the mix, too. Alas, with BenQ-Siemens falling on really hard times these days, even this armor-plated phone may not be able to save the company from shooting itself in the foot.[Via Unwired View]
The 2006 Engadget Awards: Vote for Display of the Year
Now's your chance to cast your ballot for the 2006 Display of the Year! Our Engadget Awards nominees are listed below, and you've got until 11.59PM EST on Monday, April 16th to file your vote. You can only vote once, so make it count, and may the best tech win! The nominees: BenQ FP241W, Dell 3007WFP-HC, Gateway FPD2485W, HP LP3065, Optimus mini three, and Samsung 305T. %Poll-317%
BenQ's chairman and president charged in Taiwan, out on bail
It doesn't look like the BenQ saga is showing any signs of letting up anytime soon, with two of the company's top executives now running into trouble with the law over alleged insider trading. According to The Taipei Times, both Chairman K.Y. Lee (who recently offered to leave the company) and President Sheaffer Lee have been named as defendants in the insider trading case against BenQ, which stems mainly from the company's mangled acquisition of Siemen AG's mobile phone business. Both men reportedly faced a grilling from prosecutors for some eight hours on Wednesday before being released on bail, at a cost of a couple of hundred thousand dollars apiece. Of course, these aren't the first charges to be laid against the company in the insider trading probe, with BenQ's CFO and senior VP Eric Yu still locked up after the last sweep by prosecutors. As if BenQ needed any more bad news, the company's shares unsurprisingly took a bit of a tumble after this latest development, adding further to the 20% loss the company has seen over the past three months.[Via The Inquirer]
BenQ rolls out DC-E605 6 megapixel camera
The trickle of digital cameras out of BenQ looks to be holding steady, with the company following up its P860 and T700 cams released last month with its new DC-E605 model, itself and update to the DC-E600. Like that earlier model, the big selling point here is the cam's "3D-rotating lens," which promises to speed up your zooming while still keeping things in focus. That questionable benefit aside, the cam's other features all look to be decent enough, with a 6 megapixel CCD, 3x optical zoom, and a 2.4-inch LCD on the rear, along with 32MB of built-in memory and an SD slot for expansion. While those specs aren't a heckuva lot different than the earlier E600, this latest cam does look to add a bit more in the way of features, including shake-reduction in sports mode, and an apparently new user interface. BenQ's also managed to keep the cam fairly pocketable, measuring just under an inch thick, 3.6 inches wide, and 2.36 inches tall. While there's no word on price, we wouldn't expect it to be too far off the E600's $300 asking price.[Via LetsGoDigital]
BenQ's SP830 / SP831 DLP projectors hit up split-screens
BenQ's internal quibbles haven't exactly remained behind closed doors, but rather than harp on who's leaving or what division is shutting down next, we'll just focus on the (literally) brighter side of things. The outfit is announcing today a duo of svelte projectors that not only sport TI's DLP technology, but also boast the ability to "receive two source / inputs in order to project two independent visuals with a single attachable lens." Put simply, the SP830 and SP831 can both output split-screen action through a single lens, and apparently, it's all handled with "a simple push of one button." Furthermore, both 720p units feature HQV (Hollywood Quality Video) Detail Enhancement Technology, TI's BrilliantColor, six-color adjustments, 4x digital zoom, uber-quiet operation, 2000:1 contrast ratio, and a 1,366 x 768 native resolution. While the SP830 doesn't appear to differ much from its higher-priced sibling, it does tout "just" 3,500 ANSI lumens while the SP831 pumps out 4,000, and both of these two-faced PJs should soon be hitting the Malaysian market for 9,999.00 MYR ($2,889) and 12,999.00 MYR ($3,755), respectively.[Via Electronista]
BenQ intros T700 compact digicam
BenQ may have its troubles these days, but that hasn't stopped 'em from churning out its usual variety of products, one of the latest of which is its new 7 megapixel T700 compact digital camera. Measuring just a sliver under 15 mm thick, the cam boasts a sizeable 3-inch touchscreen display that takes up the majority of space on its backside, along with a 3x optical zoom, BenQ's "Super Shake Free" mode, and 18MB of internal storage with an SD slot providing some much-needed expansion options. You'll also be able to snag this one in your choice of four colors (black, white, sliver, and red), with each now available (in Taiwan) for the local equivalent of $333.[Via Engadget Chinese]
Ronaldo to BenQ Mobile: I wanna get paid
Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo has a beef to pick with BenQ Mobile, a sponsor of the Real Madrid soccer team. The problem? BenQ Mobile has filed bankruptcy and Ronaldo wants his, umm, cash. While we're quite sure celebrity endorsements are fine and dandy, perhaps Ronaldo's contract should have stipulated payment up front. Regardless, the European soccer sensation is looking for at least 20 percent of what he agreed to in the BenQ Mobile endorsement contract. With former employees of BenQ Mobile sitting on the bench with owed monies as well, Ronaldo may be waiting a while for his cut.[Via I4U News, thanks to Ali and Number_42 for the corrections]
Siemens board member arrested in payola scandal
With all of the bribery, corruption, and kickback scandals plaguing German giant Siemens at the moment, we're half expecting to wake up tomorrow and learn that one of their executives drunkenly wrapped his exotic car around a tree after a night of boozing it up with notorious Deutchland bad boy Dietrich. The latest player to get caught up in this mess -- and the highest ranking -- is board member Johannes Feldmayer, who was detained yesterday while prosecutors tore his life apart executed search warrants on three of his offices. Interestingly enough, Feldmayer's alleged payoff of already-arrested union official Wilhelm Schelsky has nothing to do with the larger $500 million embezzlement scandal involving the company's communications division, which sparked that countrywide raid late last year. Siemens has reportedly brought on an anti-corruption expert to advise the firm on how to, um, not be so corrupt, and we hear that the bidding war for his services got pretty heated when BenQ also learned that there are people out there who can help you run your business in a less shady manner.
Honeywell sues myriad of LCD TV makers for anti-flicker technology
If you think LG has a mess on its hands, it's suddenly not alone, as six other manufacturers touching one point or another in the LCD TV supply chain are now facing a patent lawsuit from Honeywell. In what smells awfully like another patent instance of patent trolling, Honeywell is suing Acer, AU Optronics, BenQ, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Renesas Technology, and Denmos Technology as it claims that a patented "method of stopping liquid-crystal displays from flickering" has been unrightfully used. The firm has reportedly "sustained damages and will continue to sustain damages in the future," which they feel should translate into receiving incredible amounts of cash in order to resolve the situation. Reportedly, five of the six outfits under the lawsuit said that they "had not been informed" about the issue just yet, but we doubt it'll be too much longer before it floats to their respective legal departments.[Via Inquirer]
BenQ CEO offers to quit, told to stay
BenQ has certainly seen more than a few problems as of late, recently catching some heat for a tasteless ad campaign, not to mention running into a whole mess of trouble with its short-lived mobile phone subsidiary. Now, Infoworld is reporting that the financial losses caused by those latter problems have prompted BenQ CEO K.Y. Lee to offer his resignation. The company's board of directors appears to be having none of that, however, with them instead demanding that Lee stay in his job and try to turn BenQ's problematic situation around. The board also looks to be trying to get to the bottom of just how much the failed acquisition of Siemens's mobile division actually cost the company, with them set to form a task force to review and report on all losses related to the acquisition.
BenQ lets the P51 piggie fly
Can it really be true? One year after announcing the P51 (we had a hands-on at CeBIT 2006 for crissake), BenQ has finally released the damn thing beyond the confines of China... and Singapore and Turkey too, apparently. Don't even get us started on the P50 this handset was meant to follow. It doesn't look like there's anything new on this FCC approved handset, but hey, we'll run down the specs again anyway: quad-band GSM / GPRS (that's right, not even EDGE), 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS, A2DP Bluetooth, SDIO slot, and 1.3 megapixel cam with a 2.83-inch QVGA touchscreen LCD for Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC to dance upon. We agree, a bit rusty for a 2007 release.
BenQ announces P860 8 megapixel, 6x zoom camera
BenQ recently announced a new 8 megapixel, 6x optical zoom lens point and shoot digital camera to replace the P500. Besides the impressive CCD and zoom lens, the P860 also comes with a roomy 2.5-inch LCD, and a manual mode for adjusting aperture and shutter settings, although things'll take a turn for the worse when you notice its paltry 18 MB of integrated memory; the maximum ISO setting is only 1000 too, which is a fair bit under the 1600 ISO modes that are starting to creep into middle of the pack shooters. This little number runs off AAs -- no rechargeables out of the box, boo -- and can also shoot 30fps video at 640 x 480. So far BenQ has said that the P860 will only available in Italy, Spain, Russian, and China at the end of March, although we wouldn't be surprised if that release gets an extension somewhere along the line.[Via dcviews]
BenQ Joybook R42: first laptop without RAM and a hard drive?
So we're all for brevity when it comes to press releases, but you'd think that if BenQ actually wanted people to buy its new Joybook R42, it would at least advertise such nontrivial features as the machine's RAM, hard drive capacity, or -- and this is a biggie -- the darn thing's screen size and resolution. We can only assume that all of the company's writers have been locked up in this insider trading nastiness, because how else to explain a three paragraph release that wastes two-thirds of the space extolling the virtues of the "sophisticated" cooling system and "vibrant" display whose measurements shall not be spoken? Despite BenQ's stinginess with the deets, we can extrapolate from past models that the R42 features a 14.1-inch LCD, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, dual-layer DVD burner, probably 1GB of RAM, maybe 160GB of storage max, and -- the only thing we learned from the crummy PR -- some variety of Core 2 Duo processor with Via integrated graphics. As for price and release date? Ha, that's rich; right now BenQ execs are probably more worried about posting bail than getting this into your hands.Update: No, we're not complete idiots: that specifications table really did show up after this post was published. The big news, however, is that our initial guesses were almost right on the money; the only extra info we've gleaned is that the screen resolution is 1,280 x 800 and your hard drive options max out at 120GB, not 160GB.[Via PC Launches]
BenQ faces insider trading probe as CFO gets locked up
If you thought the BenQ Mobile saga ended when Taiwan severed ties with the former Siemens unit and prepared to slice it up and serve it cold, you ain't seen nothin' yet. It's no secret that the struggling handset maker had been losing money ever since the handover, but apparently some company insiders may have used their knowledge of the impending bankruptcy filing to get out while the getting was still good -- selling shares of BenQ prior to the announcement and the inevitable consequences. So far 13 executives have been caught up in the sting -- including CFO and senior VP Eric Yu, who is still being "detained" along with six others in lieu of what is probably well over $100,000 bail -- and although Chairman K.Y. Lee hasn't yet been named as a person of interest, Taiwanese investors were still shaken enough to push BenQ shares down almost 7% to their lowest level in ten years. In a typical response during times of scrutiny, the company itself publicly pledged its cooperation, but with all the top dogs behind bars, we're not sure if anyone will still be around to provide the relevant documents. Either way, you should hold on tight to all that BenQ gear you've been collecting over the years, just in case, you know, they happen to become collectibles.[Thanks, Reg]
BenQ Mobile to divide, be sold in pieces
'Tis a sad day for those at BenQ Mobile, as the Munich-based company will reportedly be split up and sold after failing to turn around the struggling unit it acquired from Siemens AG. Honestly though, this shouldn't come as any major surprise, as the endeavor has already had its plug pulled and suffered through an investigation into its bankruptcy filing, so it's simply following the unfortunately necessary series of events as its dwindles into oblivion. The outfit's insolvency administrator announced that there would be "no realistic chance" of it being sold off as a whole, but didn't elaborate on exactly which portions would be segmented for bidding. Furthermore, it's suggested that "nearly all of the 3,000 jobs" at the division would vanish, but at least 550 have purportedly already found employment in other areas. I guess we should now cue the sappy background music as we sneak a peek at BenQ mobiles that could have been, but sadly never were never will be.
BenQ-Siemens' E72 part of Windows Mobile 6 fray
Despite being down on its luck as of late, BenQ-Siemens somehow still found the time and money to come to Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 party with the new E72 candybar last week. With data topping out at measly EDGE speeds and an emphasis on VoIP via its WiFi connectivity, the E72 smacks of the also-announced iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger from HP -- and like the 510, it'll also be running the Standard version of the platform atop 64MB of RAM and 128MB of ROM. Where the E72 wins, though, is with its QVGA display (versus 220 x 176 on the 510) and a slightly snappier 260MHz TI OMAP core. Don't hold your breath for an American release though (we weren't anyway) on account of a tri-band radio.[Via CoolSmartphone]
BenQ's Joybook A52 widescreen lappy
Damn skippy BenQ has a new Joybook out that will almost certainly never make it to the US: the A52, to you. As usual, BenQ has foregone any serious product photography (seriously, what the hell kind of backwards company wants to show off their consumer electronics on the internet, we ask?), but despite a wide 16ms 15.4-inch DBEF (Display Brilliance Enhancement Film) WXGA (1280 x 800) display, ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphics, Core Duo CPU, 802.11a/b/g, drives up to 120GB, dual-layer DVD burner, and PCMCIA slot, this kinda low-ender only lands with Vista Basic. Don't worry though, Taiwanese consumers, we hear Asia's a pretty sweet place to pirate the occasional copy of Windows if you need a quick bump to Ultimate.[Via MobileWhack]
Xbox 360 sporting new 'super-quiet' internal DVD drives
The Xbox-Scene forums are abuzz with news that some newly built Xbox 360 consoles (manufactured November 2006 and up) are trading in their previously noisy (and we mean loud) DVD drives for the "super-quiet" BenQ VAD6038. But just cause it's quiet, doesn't mean it can't keep up with its two noisier predecessors; the new drive is reported to load "stuff a bit faster and smoother." Stuff, eh? Imagine it: this drive coupled with those smaller, cooler (and delayed) 65nm chips, maybe an HDMI port for good measure, and all of a sudden our old-model 360 (which is gonna need a clever nickname) will be looking less like the firstborn and more like a redheaded stepchild.[Via Engadget]
Xbox 360 finally quiets down with brand new internal DVD drive
It's no secret that the Xbox 360's disc drive is hella noisy, by far outstripping any incidental fan noises that might be going on inside that white box. Luckily, help is on the way -- sort of. Microsoft has started building its 360s with a new DVD drive manufactured by BenQ-LiteOn-Philips, the BenQ VAD6038, which purportedly runs "super-quiet" in comparison to the previous two drives used by MS, and even speeds up and smooths out load times. Of course, this does nothing for the 10 million plus current owners of Xbox 360s suffering from the noisy insanity of the older drives, but it does mean that as Microsoft ramps up production with this new drive, your next 360 hopefully won't fall victim to the whir.[Via Xbox-Scene; thanks smash_linux]
