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Daily Crunch: Car Tracking

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST

Verizon Cuts $50 Off The Droid Xyboards On-Contract Price But They’re Still Too Expensive

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 06:28 PM PST

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It seems that Verizon (or Motorola) got the message: The Droid Xyboards are too damn expensive when tied to a 2-year commitment. Until today, Verizon was selling the 10.1 Xoom 2 for $529 and required a 2-year contract. Ludicrous. Well, after today’s price cuts, the prices are less absurd, but just slightly.

Verizon lopped $50 off the on-contract price making the 16GB 10.1-inch $479 with the 8-inch retailing just $379. Of course buyers are still required to sign on the dotted line in order to get that price. But the unsubsidized models didn’t get the same love. Never mind that the new tabs are essentially downgraded versions of the 10 month old Xoom, these models still retail for $699 for buyers smart enough to avoid the contract (but dumb enough to want the tab in the first place).

Even with the lower price, the 2-year commitment is very troublesome. By essentially locking an early adopter (every single Android tab buyer still qualifies for this title) into already dated hardware, carriers are dramatically slowing the adoption rate. If Apple or AT&T had employed the same tactic with the original iPad, the iPad 2 would surely not been as big of a hit. But now, whatever delusional Android fanboy buys a Xoom 2 from Verizon on-contract, barring paying the high ETF, they’re locked into that particular model until at least 2013.

It looks like once again everyone’s to blame for another Motorola tablet failure.

The Gizmon iCA Might Be The Ultimate iPhone Camera Case

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:53 PM PST

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There are iPhone cases and then there are…more iPhone cases. There are probably close to a gazillion different iPhone cases available now. But none are as elaborate as the Gizmon iCA — at least none I have seen. The case — if you call it just a case — is made of 32 different polycarbonate parts, it features a conversion lens mount with additional optional lenses, and adds a working shutter button and optical viewfinder. There is even an optional faux pancake lens for additional street cred with the camera nerds. It gets better, too. No, seriously, this contraption is genius.

The case is available in white, black, and retrotastic orange. Both corners feature eyelets for a neck strap because, you know, if you have such a case, it deserves to live outside of a pocket. There’s a tripod mount even a mirror inside the fake lens for self portraits.

Four Corner Store currently sells the Gizmon case in the States along with a host of other unique photography-themed items. The iCA alone cost $65 with the strap running an additional $30 and the lenses costing $45 for either the macro or fisheye. It’s really a fair price to pay to dress your modern smartphone as a sexy rangefinder.

The Most Important Gadgets Of 2012

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 09:22 AM PST

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Rather than looking back (which I’m sure we will), I thought it would be nice to look forward to 2012 and beyond and note some of the gadgets that will change the world in the next few years. I’ve included mobile, gaming, and computing gadgets but I think 2012 will also be the year of Windows Phone, 3D printing, and fitness technology that actually makes a difference.

I’m not expecting much in the way of massive change this next year, just more of the same, but better. Here are our picks for the best of 2012.

Autom and Fitbit – Fewer things sell more products than weight-loss claims. Luckily, thanks to some new devices designed to help us get fitter, those claims are no longer snake oil. Take a look at Autom and FitBit (and the other devices competing in the cyberhealth space). These devices promise what geeks crave – stats – and also promise better health and decreased body mass. It’s a desk-jockey trifecta.

While many fitness devices won’t make it past 2013, I think weight-loss systems like Autom and pedometers like FitBit are the future of fitness. You can’t change what you can’t measure, and these devices let you measure just about everything.

Nokia Lumia 710 – A year ago I would have written Nokia off as a dead company. They were rudderless, without product, and perceived, at best, a commodity feature-phone player in a very competitive smartphone world.

With the arrival of cheap Windows Phones, however, Nokia is looking to take back the low end and win the business of folks who are either too busy, too annoyed, or too cash-strapped to invest in iOS or, increasingly, the more powerful Android flagships. To the anti-Microsoft contingent, Windows Phone is too little too late. In reality, we’re talking about Microsoft: when have they ever been on time.

There are plenty of folks out there without smartphones and no one ever got fired for picking something from Redmond for their IT fleet. Sure, the $50 Lumia 710 requires a two year contract with rebat and all that rigamarole, but the key number isn’t “2-year contract:” it’s $50.

Makerbot – This small, Brooklyn-based company isn’t very big but it’s very powerful. The company just raised $10 million and is working on better ways to get 3D printing to the masses. While not many of us – myself included – can see the value in a 3D printer in the home, I see 3D printing as a technology that just hasn’t caught up with our imagination. A decade ago a laser printer was a distant dream machine that cost thousands of dollars and seemed out of reach for many consumers. Now you can get a color model for a few hundred and every tech-savvy household has at least one color inkjet that can produce better photos than almost any photo lab.

3D printing is in the same boat: the machines are prohibitively expensive and complex, but with a few UI and marketing twists, I foresee a day when the kids print out model car parts the way they print out book reports.

Ultrabooks – Thinking back on the great netbook debacle of a few years ago: the rise in popularity, the fall in pricing, and their eventual death, it’s not difficult to imagine the ultrabook is phase two of the hardware-maker’s lemming rush. However, ultrabooks are a necessary addition to the laptop ecosystem and should be taken seriously. I could definitely see a large buyer picking up a few thousand ultrabooks for employees rather than a few thousand fat-and-heavies from Dell and Lenovo. It makes sense in terms of power, price, and portability.


Kindle Fire – Love it or hate it, the Kindle Fire is Amazon’s first salvo against the iTunes juggernaut. Amazon wants to sell you stuff. They don’t want to impress you with a tablet that runs Ice Cream Sandwich and can compute SETI@Home strings. The device is Amazon incarnate, an all singing, all dancing tablet for readers that will become, for many, the primary way to consume streaming video.

I’m not suggesting the Kindle Fire is great, but future Fires will be on the 2012 Christmas lists for many casual tablet users.


PSP Vita – I put the Vita here not because it will be particularly successful (handheld gaming is a hard business and phone gaming is making it even harder), but because it is the first of the next gen consoles to roll, inexorably, towards our living room. The Vita will ship in 2012, followed by E3 announcements by all the majors about updated hardware (I’m betting on a new Xbox announcement this year, but I doubt it will be released until 2014). The Wii U is next on the upgrade list while Microsoft and Sony are still trying to figure out what a next gen console is supposed to do and what it’s supposed to look like.

Samsung Ships 1 Million Galaxy Note Phablets

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 07:49 AM PST

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When we first heard about Samsung’s 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, we didn’t really know what to do with it. Is it a phone? Is it a tablet? Oh, look! A stylus!

It was weird.

But apparently people like weird, as Samsung is now reporting that it’s shipped over 1 million Galaxy Note phablets globally. The device launched back in September, and devices shipped is normally a higher number than the devices actually out in the real world, but it’s still a solid number nonetheless.

Samsung expects the numbers to grow once the Note makes its way to U.S. shores. Since we’ve been made to wait, it’s worth wondering if the U.S. version will be all that different. Rumors suggest AT&T LTE at the moment.

Time shall tell, dear friends, so if you’ve a nice pair of man hands and believe in the stylus, I’d suggest listening up during Samsung’s CES announcements. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more about the U.S.-bound Note come January.



Rumor: Apple Will Debut Two iPads Next Month, Retina Displays In Tow (Update)

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 06:09 AM PST

Screen shot 2011-12-29 at 9.04.42 AM

The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays.

In the past months we’ve heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a smaller sized Apple tab at 8.75 inches and a release date of early 2012. As Devin explained so well, the notion of a smaller iPad out of Cupertino is a bit hard to believe. It would mean that Apple is going back on its word that the iPad is the right size.

Today Digitimes backtracks from its previous rumor with a new one: Instead of the 7.85-inch iPad, Apple will supposedly be bringing two new Retina-style iPads to the market to fill in the mid- and high-end market segments, while the current iPad 2 hangs around to take on the Kindle Fire.

Apple’s stuff tends to be a bit pricier than the competition, but Cupertino still likes to round out its categories. Just look at the iPod. Each model, ranging from Classic, to Touch, to Nano, to Shuffle is a very different product, but combined they still cover very different price points.

Digitimes sources claim that the new models will hold true to Apple’s 9.7-inch screen, but with a QXGA resolution (1536×2048) and dual-LED light bars. And if said sources are to be believed, Sharp is now taking the lead on panel supply, with a little help from LG Display and Samsung Electronics.

The report goes on to say that Samsung will continue to supply Apple with its chips, specifically the quad-core A6 this time around, and that Samsung has come on as a supplier of CMOS sensors. Apparently Samsung will be supplying 5-megapixel sensors for the mid-range model, while Sony provides 8-megapixel sensors for the high-end iPad.

Digitimes has also gathered information regarding the new iPad batteries, stating that Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology have both taken orders for batteries with a capacity of as high as 14,000 mAh. And if that weren’t enough, Digitimes even claims to know when the new models will be unveiled: January 26, 2012 at the iWorld conference.

Granted, this is quite a hefty amount of information and I’d wager that not all of it is 100 percent spot on (Digitimes has been wrong before… but also right). Still, I think higher-res iPads with better cameras make much more sense out of Cupertino than a smaller tablet just for the sake of following competition. The Kindle Fire is selling great, and Apple doesn’t want even one competing tablet to start draining market share. But Apple has never fought back by copying.

The true assault will be a price drop, and from what we’ve seen happen with the iPhone 4 in recent months it wouldn’t be that surprising to see the current iPad 2 shed a couple hundred bucks from its price tag.

In order to compete with the $200 Fire, it’d have to.

Update: LoopInsight’s Jim Dalrymple, who is certainly one of the more reliable sources for Apple news, has checked with his sources and believes that Apple will not debut a new iPad (or two) at MacWorld or CES this year. As for the supply chain sources and the information they gave… Well, that’s still up for debate.



Video: Electric Car From Japan Reaches Over 300KM Travel Range

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 06:06 AM PST

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We spent two posts on SIM-LEI, an electric car developed by a a spin-off startup at Keio University in Tokyo in collaboration with a total of 34 domestic and foreign companies, in the past months. And it seems that the startup, SIM Drive Corporation, is on track to start mass-producing the vehicle in about 2 years. The company was set up in August 2009.

The main selling point of the newest version is that it can drive over 300km at a constant speed of 100km/h. In spring, SIM Drive said the SIM-LEI ("Leading Efficiency In-Wheel motor") can reach 333km under "general urban traffic conditions in Japan".

The new model is equipped with a 65kW/700 newton meter engine, an in-dash 19-inch display, and a set of side-view cameras.

This video, shot by Diginfo TV in Tokyo, provides more insight: