Frankly I’m finding it difficult to get worked up over the Motorola U9, or the ‘MOTO U9′ as the press release prefers to call it. Motorola announced their latest addition on Thursday and I’m still trying to find something good to say about it. Unfortunately the only word that springs to mind at the moment is ‘mediocre’. The features include a 2 mp camera, USB connectivity for transferring your tunes, expandable microSD memory up to 4GB and Bluetooth connectivity - what can I say apart from average.

There is an upside but I’m not sure its worth the as of yet unspecified dollar amount ‘MOTO’ will be asking for this baby. So what is the upside, well it does look nice with its super-sleek curves and flush external OLED display neatly displaying tune and call info but without the all important price tag I’m still gonna hold back judgement on this sucker as I’m sure ‘MOTO’ will need some dollars to pay the designers and I’m not convinced the word ‘cheap’ will be used to describe this phone any time soon.

So, yeah, I’m not impressed by the U9, it’s a bit like my old school reports which read ‘Could do better’, come on MOTO show us what you’re really made of.

Source: MOTO

Featured tags: motorola u9

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No full details on this sucker yet, but it appears as if the Samsung U900 will be making an appearance in the Verizon lineup as the Flipshot. The phone has a built in 3.2 mp camera with flash which ‘flips’ out by twisting the display portion of the clamshell unit. Apparently this action turns your phone into a digital camera a la Transformers, but I must admit I’ve never seen a digital camera that looks like the twisted Flipshot!

The unit does come with its own photo editing software so you can ‘photo-chop’ your pics before sending them onto to your mates and does double up as video camcorder.

There’s room for some tunes too, with microSD expandable storage and the VCAST Music player. It supports CDMA 800/1900 networks, SMS messaging and Email, Bluetooth connectivity and boasts a speakerphone. Sounds good? I’ll reserve judgement until that oh so important price tag is announced!

Featured tags: flipshot samsung u900 verizon

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Another day, another Blu-Ray drive and today it’s the Optiarc BC-5500A a slimline Blu-Ray drive for your laptop. Unlike yesterday’s Blu-Ray drive, the Sony BWU-200S, this sucker will only read your discs but obviously being able to watch your fav Blu-Ray movies whilst you are out on the road with your laptop could be handy. Optiarc is a joint-venture between Sony and NEC and this is its first Blu-Ray drive for laptops and with a price tag of around US$335 they are hoping it will enable laptop manufacturers to make Blu-Ray drives available in ‘mid-range’ units.

Just in case you were wondering it can burn to single-layer DVD±R/RW at 8x (dual at 4x) and to CD-R/RW at up to 16x.

Source: Reg Hardware

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray player laptop optiarc

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Looking for a 4x Blu-Ray writer that still writes to DVD at 16x? Then the Sony BWU-200S writer should be the latest upgrade to your PC build. It sports the ability to write to Blu-Ray discs (both BD-R and BD-RE) at a speed of 4x enabling you to pack 50 GB of hi def entertainment onto a BR disc in around 45 minutes. Still using standard def too? Well it’ll also make your old DVD 16x writer redundant as it can slap the 4.7 GB DVD standard onto a disc at the same speed as your standalone unit and can also handle dual layer discs at the same speed.

A space-saver with increased speed? What’s the catch? A US$600 price tag. Actually that doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me, but expect that price tag to be a lot smaller in oh say around six months time, but can you wait that long? ;)

Source: Sony

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray writers BWU 200S Sony

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Seems like these sound projectors are all the rage at the moment, especially with people limited for space for their surround sound thrills or those of use fed up with speaker cables adorning their lounge floor. Well Yamaha have released an entry level unit, the YSP-500, for 75,000 yen about US$640, no news on a US launch but with Santa revving up the reindeer watch this space.

As befits an entry level model, the YSP-500 sports unremarkable specs at a mere 62W total output but does spread this over eighteen speakers of which sixteen are supposed to bounce the audio around your lounge to give a surround sound effect. The ‘IntelliBeam Automated System Calibration’ feature sets up these speakers to produce the ’surround sound’ effect and not unsurprisingly an uncluttered room assists in this success of this process.

Although I’m all for getting rid of speaker cables and saving space around the home, I would want to test one of these systems out before purchasing as my lounge tends to be a little on the ‘cluttered’ side! Anyone out there have one of these systems? If so let us know what you think.

Source: electronista

Featured tags: speaker system yamaha ysp 500

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The boffins over at Hitachi have knocked together a quad layer Blu-Ray disc capable of holding up to 100 GB of glorious movie action. Whilst 100 GB Blu-Ray discs are nothing new, the good news about the Hitachi version is that it is the first 100 GB BR disc to only require a firmware update to existing Blu-Ray players to handle the extra capacity sported by these discs.

There’s still one glitch in the system to sort out regarding stabilising signal quality, but once the boffins have figured that out look for a commercial rollout not long after and of course the deal-clinching price tag on these suckers.

Hitachi are also currently researching an eight layer (octo layer?) disc which boosts the capacity up to a massive 200 GB. So it looks like the boffins won’t be unemployed any time soon.

Anyway the game continues with no end in sight, as disc capacity increases, at a rate possibly surpassing demand judging by the sales or lack of sales of hi def movies, however the increase in media capacity drives the storage manufacturers to squeeze more zeros and ones into their boxes. Also the processor guys have to ramp up the grunt at their end to handle larger files and of course memory sticks have to increase their size appropriately too.

Do we really need all this extra media capacity, processor power etc? Are we becoming more savvy in our entertainment and data needs and these advances are only keeping up with an existing consumer demand or are the manufacturers trying to strip every single hard-earned penny from wallets? Let me know what you think.

Source: Electronista

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray disc hitachi

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After I had upgraded my system to a dual monitor setup I thought I wouldn’t consider a third monitor necessary for a long time. However within weeks, nay days I was craving the extra pixels that a third screen would offer me! But the thought of squeezing in another video card inside my box was just too much, OK it was actually the thought of shelling out for another card that put me off but you get the idea. Anyway it seems that Samsung have circumvented this issue and will happily support my pixel craving.

They have just released a USB connected 19 inch monitor, the 940UX. The monitor simply plugs into a spare USB port on your machine and away you go and at US$379 it’s not too much of a drain on the finances for the more frugally-minded techie peeps either.

The monitor uses a combination of on-board hardware and your machine’s CPU to drive its pixels and apparently the only limitation to the number of these you can hook up is the number of spare USB ports you have and the power of your CPU. Oh and of course your desk space!

So now we can all satisfy our pixel lust for significantly less dosh that we could yesterday. For a cool review of the unit check out Everything USB.

Source: Electronista

Featured tags: monitor samsung usb

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