Friday, February 24, 2012

Your 2 hourly digest for Engadget

Engadget
Engadget
Lumus' OE-31 optical engine turns motorcycle helmets, other eyewear into wearable displays
Feb 23rd 2012, 16:57

After showing off a duo of wearable, see-through displays at CES, Lumus is back with a second optical engine -- one that could be used in any style of frames, from prescription glasses to ski goggles. Available in binocular and monocular configurations, the tiny OE-31 sensor weighs just 10 grams (.35 ounces), allowing it to accommodate a variety of form factors besides your run-of-the mill (and quite dorky-looking) 3D glasses. As always, Lumus' hook is its ability to combine head up displays, augmented reality and see-through displays, though this time around the sensor allows for a 19-degree field of view and a full-color, 640 x 360 picture. Though that's not as impressive as the 720p, 3D-capable frames on offer at CES, the company argues it should be adequate for reading text, particularly since the viewing experience will be comparable to starting at a 40-inch screen from 10 feet away. No word, of course, on what products might incorporate these discreet head up displays, though maybe, just maybe, we'll catch a demo in Barcelona. For now, we've got photos below along with a handful of demo videos after the break.

Continue reading Lumus' OE-31 optical engine turns motorcycle helmets, other eyewear into wearable displays

Lumus' OE-31 optical engine turns motorcycle helmets, other eyewear into wearable displays originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

OMAP 5's dual A15 cores wipe the floor with four A9s in browsing benchmark
Feb 23rd 2012, 16:35

OMAP 5
We've seen Texas Instrument's OMAP 5 in action, but we haven't been able to pit it directly against a competitor. The Dallas company must be growing more and more confident in its product however, as its posted a video demoing its pair of A15 cores alongside an unspecified quad-core A9 part -- presumably the Tegra 3. The video shows the next-gen TI part powering through the EEMBC BrowsingBench in 95 seconds, while its opposition takes a whopping 201. What's more, this thrashing was performed by an 800MHz part -- the four A9s were clocked at 1.3GHz. Of course, Tegra 3s are already in shipping products, while the OMAP 5 might not find a home in consumer devices before 2013. It's also unclear just how much of a hit these new high-powered ARM cores will have on battery life or how much the pair of M4 companion cores helped in the benchmark. Head on after the break to watch a pair of tablets load up 20 websites in quick succession.

Continue reading OMAP 5's dual A15 cores wipe the floor with four A9s in browsing benchmark

OMAP 5's dual A15 cores wipe the floor with four A9s in browsing benchmark originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink AnandTech, CNXSoft  |  sourceTexas Instruments (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

The winners of the 2011 Engadget Awards -- Readers' Choice
Feb 23rd 2012, 16:00

The results for the 2011 Engadget Awards are in! With more than 250,000 total votes, the response this year has been tremendous -- and no, that's not just another name for the Galaxy Note, which garnered just 3.5 percent of tallies in the Smartphone category. Instead, the iPhone 4S took top prize for Smartphones, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S II as the runner up. The ASUS Zenbook was the first pick among this year's Laptops, with the Apple iMac besting the rest of 2011's Desktops. Canon and Nikon battled it out till the end, but the former eventually came out ahead, earning 17.9 percent of the Digital Camera vote for its T3i, while the Nikon D5100 represented a very respectable 17.6 percent. That's just a small sample of this year's top gadgets -- there are 15 categories in all, and we're crowning both Readers' and Editors' Choice winners for each. Jump past the break for an unabridged look at your selections for the 2011 Engadget Awards, and check back tomorrow for the Editors' Choice. And if you're wondering who came in almost-first place, you can find the runners up for each category in this week's issue of Engadget Distro.

Continue reading The winners of the 2011 Engadget Awards -- Readers' Choice

The winners of the 2011 Engadget Awards -- Readers' Choice originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

NPD: Apple grabs over a quarter of the mobile PC business in Q4 2011 (including iPads), HP tops with laptops
Feb 23rd 2012, 15:45

Just what is a "mobile PC" these days? According to market research firm NPD, that category now includes both tablets and laptops -- and by that definition, Apple is unsurprisingly way ahead of its competitors. Based on its preliminary numbers, Apple shipped 23.4 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2011 (nearly 80 percent of which were iPads), which was enough to snag a market share of 26.6 percent (and keep it in the top spot for the year). In contrast, the four companies rounding out the top five relied almost entirely on laptops to fill their numbers, with HP coming in at just under a 10 percent market share, followed by Dell, Acer and Lenovo. Looking just at laptops, however, HP comes in first with a 15.5 percent market share, while Apple falls to fifth with just over eight percent. As for tablets, Apple is estimated to have a 59 percent market share for Q4, followed by Amazon at 16.7 percent (based on shipments of 5.3 million), and Samsung, ASUS and Barnes & Noble each in single digits. Additional numbers can be found in the press release after the break and at the source link below.

Continue reading NPD: Apple grabs over a quarter of the mobile PC business in Q4 2011 (including iPads), HP tops with laptops

NPD: Apple grabs over a quarter of the mobile PC business in Q4 2011 (including iPads), HP tops with laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNPD DisplaySearch  | Email this | Comments

Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 1PM EST!
Feb 23rd 2012, 15:40

It's a special Thursday afternoon edition of the Engadget Mobile Podcast! We'll all be en route to Barcelona tomorrow, so we've bumped it up a day early to help you get even more excited about Mobile World Congress. So join Myriam, Brad and Joseph as we all talk ourselves silly about things present and very near future on today's podcast, live at 1PM EST!

February 23, 2012 1:00 PM EST

Continue reading Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 1PM EST!

Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 1PM EST! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions