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Pantech Pocket review
Hundreds of smartphones of all shapes, sizes and colors pass through the doors of Engadget HQ every year, so it's natural for a few oddball devices with crazy form factors to end up in our hands from time to time. The Motorola Flipout, LG DoublePlay, Kyocera Echo and Samsung DoubleTime are all instances of carriers trying something new, seeing what sticks. Of course, pushing out a phone with an unproven form factor is a huge gamble for a mobile provider, and as a result they only ship to stores in low volume and rarely receive any kind of marketing campaign at its launch. Indeed, the vast majority of these types of phones are low-end devices aimed at young adults and first-time smartphone buyers, but we still find it adventurous to take a break from the monotony of black slabs and try out something completely different. The Pantech Pocket is definitely unique -- not because it flips or slides a weird way or because it has two and a half screens, but because its 4-inch display, whose 4:3 aspect ratio promises 20 percent more horizontal real estate. Did AT&T's gamble on the display pay off? Is it worth the $50 that AT&T demands with a two-year commitment attached? Time to find out below. %Gallery-142128%
Arduino geek develops Cold War Angst, starts spying on satellites (video)
Start with some Arduino and Gameduino hardware, add a splash of PLAN-13 satellite tracking software from 1983, and finish with a healthy dose of libertarianism. The result? A neat little hack called Angst, designed and built by Mark VandeWettering (aka Brainwagon). It can store details of up to 750 satellites on 128KB of EEPROM memory and display their predicted orbits in all the glory of SVGA. Don't get lazy though -- the most reliable way to track those pesky snoops in the sky is still to don your anorak, step outdoors and snoop right back.
Samsung Captivate Glide, Doubletime and Pantech Pocket join AT&T's Android brigade on November 20th
Two flavors of TouchWiz and an oddly-dimensioned handset are making their way to AT&T's lineup come next week. Sammy's QWERTY duo, the Tegra 2-powered Captivate Glide and Froyo-based Doubletime, along with Pantech's uniquely formed Pocket will make their US carrier debut on November 20th, offering a little bit of everything for Joe Consumer. There's no official word on the contracted pricing for this Android trio, but you shouldn't have to wait much longer for that essential bit of info. Update: And just like that, official pricing for AT&T's latest trio has arrived. If you're curious, both the Pocket and Doubletime will retail for $50, while Sammy's Captivate Glide will set you back a solid $150. Naturally, each of these figures assume you'll sign a new contract. If you're of the skeptical type, just hop the break for confirmation.
NTT DoCoMo's Fujitsu F-07C now available, marries Windows 7 and Symbian at last
Calling the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C an eccentric device is not a stretch -- in fact, it's one of the more unique smartphones we've seen in a fair length of time. Now available on NTT DoCoMo, the dual-booting hybrid is touted as "the world's smallest PC," since it can switch between Windows 7 and Symbian and offers a few netbook-worthy specs. It runs off a 1.2GHz Intel Atom Z600 CPU (downclocked by 50 percent, unfortunately), a 32GB eMMC SSD, and 1GB LPDDR400 RAM, packed underneath a 4-inch SVGA (1024 x 600) LCD display. You can also take advantage of the 5-megapixel camera on the back, paired up with a VGA front-facing shooter. Things get a little strange when it comes to battery life, however; while you get up to 600 hours of standby time and 370 minutes of talk time in mobile phone mode, it gets sucked dry after just two hours when using Windows 7. If your smartphone just doesn't have enough brainpower to handle your daily grind, here's an alternative. Full press release with specs are after the break.
Polymer Vision's latest display rolls up, still doesn't ship out (video)
Despite a litany of missed launch dates, bankruptcy filings, and corporate buyouts, Polymer Vision continues to trudge forward, and we're more than happy to ogle its latest flexible screen. This time, the new hotness is a six-inch SVGA display repeatedly rolled-up 25,000 times at a radius of only six millimeters. The resulting scroll is apparently slightly smaller than a dime. With that kind of repetitive endurance, this tech seems well suited for building that Readius-like eReader Wistron promised a while back; not that we're holding our breath, or anything.
Infocus shows off new projectors, none "true HD"
In almost a bit of underwheleming news -- considering the "true HD" pitches that other companies are making -- Infocus has announced three new projectors, none of them displaying higher than XGA. The Work Big IN24+ and the Work Big IN2+ (both of which are available now) share mostly similar specs including a brightness of 2,200 lumens, contrast of 2,000:1, and VGA, S-Video, and Composite RCA ports; they only differ in resolutions -- the IN24+ ($649) features 800 x 600 SVGA while the IN26+ ($799) sports an XGA-tastic 1024 x 768 pixels. Its other big model for CES is the Play Big IN1, which is scarce on deets -- including pricing and availability -- but has an integrated DVD player and allows you to display movies onto your ceiling so you can enjoy them without the stress of having to sit up. As convenient as that may be, we'll continue to go out of our way to be upright if it means watching at least 720p.
