Cell Phone Hub

Why confine your nerdy sloth to your living room, where large robots mime fake guitar and serve you sloppy mixed drinks? Take that zest for the sedentary life with you on the road by having one of your robot ninjas steal this iPhone Rock Band robot from its ingenious creator, Joe Bowers. The Arduino-based device uses ambient light sensors to detect the falling notes and then taps out the music with some conductive foam attached to some squeaky fake fingers. Joe did a fairly detailed write-up, and even uploaded his code, so there’s presumably nothing stopping you from actually doing something with your life and building one of these with all that free time you’ve saved up by hacking your way through all the console-based guitar games. Video is after the break.

[Via Daily Mobile]

Continue reading Laziness on the move: robot plays Rock Band on the iPhone

Filed under: Cellphones, Robots

Laziness on the move: robot plays Rock Band on the iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The iPhone is one of the most wildly popular phones the world has ever seen, while Windows 7 is well on its way to becoming the globe’s most ubiquitous OS. So compatibility between the two would be kinda sorta important, right? Tell that to Intel’s quality control team who seem to have somehow missed an issue between Apple’s app carrier deluxe and the P55 Express chipset’s USB controller. Consistent (and persistent) syncing issues have been reported on Apple’s support forums, wherein iTunes on Windows 7 machines recognizes the iPhone, but spits out an “error 0xE8000065″ message whenever the user attempts to sync. While some have found limited success with using PCI-based USB cards (and bypassing the chipset), this is clearly a major issue and something Apple would expect to be fixed before shipping its Core i5 / i7 iMacs, which are likely to sport the chipset. Hit the read link for the original thread of sorrow and regret, and do chime in with your own experience in the comments.

[Via The Register]

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops

iPhone and Windows 7 don’t play nice, Intel P55 chipset to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Like it or not, we’ve got it on pretty reasonable authority that HTC’s first “DROID” phone is nothing more than a rebadged, shape-shifted Hero (something we’ve been hearing for a while now), and that it’ll be launching on Verizon on November 6th, the same day as Motorola’s DROID. That means Android 1.5 “Cupcake,” Sense UI, 3.2-inch screen, 528MHz processor and so forth. The Eris will retail for $199 but with a $100 mail-in rebate. It’ll pack in an 8GB microSD card and the hopes and dreams of a generation of cheapskates that will be hopin’ and prayin’ that HTC manages to push Android 2.0 onto this thing so they don’t look too bad in front of their DROID-toting buddies on Verizon.

[Thanks, anonymous]

Gallery: HTC’s DROID Eris leaked docs

Filed under: Cellphones

Leaked docs show HTC’s DROID Eris launching on November 6th for $99, running Android 1.5 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Don’t panic, we haven’t gone back in time. What we’re looking at here is the world’s first but still-yet-to-be-released phone that runs on Windows XP, and its Chinese maker has just released some juicy specs and interface images to tease us all. The ITG xpPhone will be blessed with the chutzpah-filled AMD “Super Mobile” CPU, coupled with either 512MB or 1GB RAM. Storage options range from 8GB SSD to 120GB HDD (probably 1.8-inch) and everything in between. While the sheet confirms both GSM and CDMA support, ITG’s pre-order page — which looks more like a newsletter sign-up page at the moment — is still vague on the phone’s availability and price. For now we’ll just continue to gaze at the interface pictures until something happens.

[Via Gizmodo]

Gallery: xpPhone teased with specs and pictures, makes Windows XP young again

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

xpPhone teased with specs and pictures, makes Windows XP young again originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming

Nokia announces the end of its N-Gage gaming platform originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Is there any other field of technology that promises as many revolutionary innovations as battery makers do yet delivers so few? We’ve heard of battery life being made four times, eight times, even twelve times better… and seen pretty much none of it pan out in any sort of meaningful way. Zinc-air batteries are also nothing new, but now some whizkids up in Norway have figured out how to make them rechargeable and set up an entire company, ReVolt, for their commercialization. With more than double the energy density of regular Lithium-Ion batteries, safer operation, lower cost of production, and environmentally friendlier ingredients, ReVolt’s tech sounds as sweet as anything, but we’d advise waiting for the pudding-based proof before getting excited. Plans are for small hearing aid and cellphone batteries to show up in 2010, and if all goes well there, larger cells for electric vehicles could also follow. Sure.

[Via PhysOrg]

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds, Laptops

Rechargeable zinc-air batteries promise a lot, we’ll see if they deliver in 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For Motorola, any profit at all is a Good Thing right now, so we’re sure there are a lot of smiling faces out in Schaumburg today on news that the company managed just a smidge of black ink in the third quarter. The Mobile Devices division specifically turned in $1.7 billion in revenue (about $100 million less than the quarter prior) and accounted for a $183 million loss, which was offset by wins in the company’s other divisions ultimately resulting in $12 million in bankable profit. The company says that it expects to push fewer handsets in the fourth quarter as it scales back “unprofitable” devices in favor of its new Android-based gear — which is just fine by us — and yes, indeed, it still intends to split the company into two entities when the time is right. In the meantime, the company has announced a permanent CFO — Edward Fitzpatrick, who was conveniently already appointed to the position on an interim basis — putting to bed some of the drama to bed that’s surrounded Paul Liska, who vacated the post months ago on bad terms. All told, the DROID and CLIQ launches have cast a rosy glow on Moto’s current situation, so now it’s time to put the nose to the grindstone and see if these guys can deliver financially through the end of the year.

Read - Earnings
Read - CFO announcement

Filed under: Cellphones

Motorola posts small 3Q profit, picks new CFO originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The crux of AT&T’s recent complaint to the FCC regarding Google Voice was that Google — not being subject to the common carrier rules that help facilitate fair, open telephone networks — was blocking customers from accessing numbers managed by rural carriers that charged higher connection fees, thereby giving it a leg up on its Old Guard competition by saving cash in ways AT&T and others are legally barred from doing. Google’s hitting back today, not by agreeing to submit to common carrier rules (come on now, don’t be ridiculous) but by saying in a statement to the FCC that it’s now blocking calls to “fewer than 100″ numbers in total now that it has finished implementing new back-end capabilities that allow it to single out specific numbers rather than entire exchanges. Google complains that calls to the top ten exchanges accounted for 26 percent of its entire connection fee outlay — but yeah, that’s pretty much what telcos have been dealing with since time immemorial, so the bellyaching’s likely to fall on a lot of deaf ears. For what it’s worth, the company is still asking the FCC to make sweeping changes to connection fee policy, but whether this ends up getting them out of AT&T’s more immediate concerns remains to be seen.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Filed under: Cellphones

Google says it’s now blocking ‘fewer than 100′ numbers in Google Voice originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We just got a stack of Droid review units at Engadget HQ, and we’re told that this is in fact the final packaging. The charger is just Micro USB, and that’s really all you get in the box — the docks will cost you extra. We’re digging for pricing info on those, we’ll let you know.

Gallery: Motorola Droid unboxing!

Filed under: Cellphones

Motorola Droid unboxing! originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We’ll come right out and say it, we like Julius Genachowski. Whether you agree with the dude’s policies or not, you can’t deny he’s pursuing them with gusto. Having already noted the insufficient carrying capacity of current mobile broadband airways to deal with incoming 4G connections, the FCC chairman is now reported to be moving ahead with plans to provide greater spectrum allocation for those purposes. Currently in the draft stage, the latest Commission proposals include a plan to reclaim airwaves from digital broadcasters (and pay them appropriately for it), which are to then be sold off to the highest bidder from among the wireless service providers. Executing the most extreme version of this plan could generate around $62 billion in auction revenues, though it would require transitioning digital TV viewers over to cable or subscription services and is therefore unlikely. Jules and his crew are still “looking at everything” and ruling out nothing, but we can probably expect to see a moderate shift of TV spectrum rights over to wireless carriers in the final plans when they’re revealed in February.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Wearables

FCC keen on commandeering TV spectrum for wireless broadband originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.