Sanyo has entered the pocket camcorder business, and their VPC-PD2BK looks like a nice quality for the price and good competition against the Flip Ultra HD. This pocket camcorder has stereo mics, a 2-inch LCD, 3x optical zoom, 10MP still images, a flash, SD card support, and HDMI out, which will be good for showing your 1080p, 30fps movies on your HDTV. It’s available now for $170.
Checking e-mail on the iPad & iPhone is great — there’s nothing better than tapping a bunch of spam and deleting it in seconds. But there is still room for improvement. Why is why it’s good to hear that Google’s updated the Gmail for iPad interface (for a second time) to include some nice touch-specific features. Now, conversations have a “stacked card” appearance, which lets you flick through them quickly to view past replies below your current one and leave an uncluttered interface. You can check it (for free, obviously) right now.
Well this is a little odd. New reports from Bloomberg say that BlackBerry’s upcoming tablet, which is still pretty shrouded in mystery (despite its $200 million development cost) might be called the ‘Blackpad’, and might not be using the company’s new BlackBerry OS 6 after all. Instead, it would use a custom OS designed by developer QNX. Why not use their latest and greatest? Well, apparently the legacy code does not work well with the tablet, so a complete overhaul is a better fit. We’ll hopefully find out more soon enough.
Colorware is on a mission to paint every popular gadget in whatever color its users desire, and they’ve now added the Flip Ultra HD & BlackBerry Pearl 3G to their roster. For $165, you’ll get a paint job for the Pearl 3G or $640 to get a new phone with the service. Then there’s the Flip Ultra HD, which you can alter for only $50 (or buy new for $260). Check out their site to try on different color schemes before you take the plunge.
Sony’s still pimping the original PSP in commercials, despite it being half a decade old, so it seems like a successor should be coming soon. We thought it might’ve been announced at E3, but that didn’t happen. So we were surprised to hear that at this year’s Gamescom Conference in Germany, lots of rumors have been popping up that the PSP2 will have touchscreen controls on its back. It makes sense if you think about it — they would make for a more comfortable holding experience, and offer different touch gameplay than smartphones. I’m betting we’ll see something by the end of the year, to be released in 2011. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering — that image is an old artists’s concept, don’t get too excited.
Shuttle’s just released XS35 netttop is slim, affordable, and powerful — pretty much all you could want in a HTPC these days. It comes in three configurations — the base specs for each include a dual-core 1.66GHz Atom D510 CPU, WiFi, 5 USB 2.0 inputs, and a 4-in-1 media card reader. The premium version also throws in a DVD drive, 500GB HDD, 1080p playback via NVIDIA’S Ion 2 chip (I think it’s a must these days), and HDMI out. The XS35 starts at $290 and goes up to $380 and is available now.
Summer’s almost over, so you better get out to the beach while you still can, and you better do it in the sharkboat. This submersible is up high on my list of “awesome.” Okay, so it’s actually not called the sharkboat, but it’s real name, the Seabreacher X, is still pretty cool. It’s capable of jumping 12 feet in the air, and going 50mph on the water’s surface and 25mph below it. It’ll only set you back $100,000.
At $60 bucks a pop, many gamers wish there was an easy way of backing up their expensive PS3 games to prevent wear and tear, since it’s legal to do so (as long as you actually own the thing). Now, a group has come out with something called the PSJailbreak that allows for playing hard drive backups, no dangerous console modding required. Simply insert the USB dongle, use the included backup tool, and you’re set to play games off either the PS3’s internal drive or external storage. If you’re interested (and I’m sure quite a few PS3 users are), be warned that Sony usually stamps out these exploits with quickly-released firmware updates. The video showing the process is below.
We haven’t had a phone leak in a little while, so it’s nice to see Nokia’s upcoming N9 smartphone in the wild. A source in China has taken photos of a prototype of the QWERTY-slider phone, which was manufactured in Finland. Other details are scarce, but it’s intended for release this September. What people are really interested in, though, is the device’s uncanny resemblance to Apple’s MacBook Pro line, from the metallic/aluminum construction to the black keyboard and display bezel. I wonder if Apple is going to find it a little too similar once it’s released.
Portable hard drives are incredibly useful, but they’ve always had to take a slight speed hit for the sake having no power cord — until now. Samsung’s new S2 Portable 3.0 has both USB 3.0 and a 7200rpm drive speed, making it the fastest portable drive you can get, giving you 5 MB/s transfer speeds. The S2 comes in a variety of colors, 320GB & 640GB sizes, and is shipping now in Europe.
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