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Panasonic's behemoth camera phone hits the US for $1,000
Did you take one look at Panasonic's Lumix DMC-CM1 and vow to pay whatever it took to get this smartphone/mirrorless camera hybrid in the US? You now have a chance to put your money where your mouth is. Panasonic has started selling an unlocked version of the CM1 in the US, and it'll set you back an eye-watering $1,000 -- suddenly, that 128GB Galaxy S6 seems like a bargain. There's a good reason for the giant price tag, mind you. While the phone half is no great shakes between its 4.7-inch 1080p screen, Android 4.4 KitKat and a Snapdragon 801 chip, you're also getting a big 1-inch, 20-megapixel imaging sensor with a bright, high-quality f/2.8 lens. If you already treat your smartphone as a camera that just happens to make calls, this might be your handset of choice.
Panasonic's 'connected camera' pairs an Android smartphone with a one-inch sensor and f/2.8 lens
Compact, point-and-shoot cameras are dying, simply because people would rather use smartphones and tablets to snap their dinner and instantly share them to Instagram. Unfortunately, that's a segment of the market that Panasonic abandoned (at least in Europe) back in 2013. That left the company without a convincing rival to the Lumia 1020 and Samsung's various phone / camera hybrids. That's why the company has now launched the DMC-CM1, a "connected camera" (i.e. a smartphone with a proper lens) that's capable of taking 20-megapixel stills and record 4K video thanks to a one-inch MOS sensor.
Intel Classmate PC becomes Toshiba CM1 in Japan
Toshiba and Intel have announced that they're partnering up to deliver Chipzilla's convertible Classmate PC to Japanese youths -- just in time for the new school year. Sporting a 1.66GHz Atom N450 and an overhauled design, this latest iteration of the educational use netbook will start filtering through Nipponese school corridors this August. It packs 160GB of storage room and 2GB of RAM under a nice 1,366 x 768 10.1-inch touchscreen. The latter flips around to facilitate pen input with an included stylus, while the whole package is protected by a well rubberized and ruggedized case. Now if only it could get some multitouch and one of those crazy 15-hour batteries, we might consider going back to school and using it to finish our floristry studies. Full PR after the break. Update: The Japanese school year starts in April, so technically the CM1 is just in time for the second semester. So long as it's on time, we don't think anyone will mind much.
Third time's a charm: OLPC notebook now called XO
Now we love hugs and kisses as much as the next guy -- wait, that didn't come out right -- but when it comes to naming computing devices that will be used by millions of children worldwide, we think that the esteemed Nicholas Negroponte could have come up with a better one for his beloved machine than "XO." Like CM1, for instance. Or 2B1. Oh wait, those names for the string-powered OLPC notebook have already been tried and discarded -- NickNeg may be a whiz at marketing "The Children's Machine" to developing countries, but it seems that he could still use a lesson or two in branding. For the third time in only two months, the product-formerly-known-as-the-hundred-dollar-laptop has undergone yet another name change, with Fortune's senior editor now referring to it as the XO -- a title so new, it hasn't even made it to the OLPC wiki page yet. No explanation is given as to why this device has undergone such an unusual number of rebrandings -- especially for a non-commercial product -- and we imagine that more than a few people are getting confused by the habitual changes in its specs and titles. Still, the major issue here is not what it's called but what it could be able to achieve -- well that, and avoiding anymore price hikes, because if these little wonders get much more expensive, Qadaffi and friends might be better off buying a Dell, dude.[Via OLPC News]
OLPC dual-mode display gets for reals
The last update we got on the "CM1" OLPC's state of development was that everything was pretty far along except for that proprietary dual-mode display they'd been touting since day one. Well, it's finally gotten real in the form of a boxy prototype running Squeak. With specs like "higher resolution than 95% of the laptop displays on the market today," "sunlight readability" and "room-light readability with the backlight off," the display has some pretty high expectations to live up to. From what we can tell of the prototype, it's at least readable, and the 22.2 frames per second isn't too bad neither. Now the challenge is seeing how well they manage to stuff this bad boy into one of those minuscule laptops of theirs, and how long it will take for this tech to become available to us lowly consumers.
OLPC now called the 2B1, still The Children's Machine
There's great news afoot in the world of Nicholas Negroponte, and his favorite little toy-green (or yellow, or orange, etc.) laptop: it's now apparently called the 2B1. This comes after the named CM1, which was preceded by the One Laptop Per Child (now the name of the organization), which was preceded by the $100(ish) Laptop. Of course, given that news of this comes from the ultra-reliable technology known as a wiki, it's totally possible that this is just a prank, or yet another baby step on the road to production. Either way, Engadget is going to be drawing up some fake Ministry of Education stationary any day now so that we can get our hands on a million of these things.[Via OLPC News]
OLPC gets a name: the CM1, or Children's Machine
So, it's official: the hundred-plus-dollar laptop spearheaded by Nicholas Negroponte -- and called the OLPC up to this point for lack of better terminology -- can now be definitively referred to as the CM1, or The Children's Machine. The 7.5-inch, 1,200 x 900 pixel configurable and mesh-networkable notebook, which runs a Fedora Linux distro powered by a 400MHz AMD Geode processor, is meant to supply kids in developing countries with a super-cheap way to access the Internet and thus bridge the so-called technological divide. Although India has publicly scorned the string-powered lappy as "pedagogically suspect," several other nations have expressed interest in submitting the minimum required order of one million units; so unless players like Microsoft suddenly swoop in with their own alternatives, it looks like the CM1 is well on its way to seeing widespread distribution. Three cheers for The Children's Machine, and three more for the fact that we can stop awkwardly referring to this product by the name of the project.[Via OLPC News]
