Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Your 2 hourly digest for Engadget

Engadget
Engadget
Samsung's crystal-studded Series 9 laptop to make its QVC debut tomorrow
Feb 14th 2012, 01:58

Been waiting patiently to get your hands on Samsung's limited edition Series 9 laptop since its first showing at IFA in the fall? Then you really should have been looking into some other more sensible options in the interim. But if those non-crystal-studded alternatives didn't strike your fancy, you'll be glad to know that the laptop will finally be available in the US, exclusively on QVC, beginning tomorrow at 10PM. Unfortunately, the sure-to-be-premium price will only buy you a last-gen Series 9, with a Core i5-2467M processor and Windows 7 Home Premium for an OS.

Samsung's crystal-studded Series 9 laptop to make its QVC debut tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MediaTek sees no reason cheap phones can't have Ice Cream Sandwich too
Feb 14th 2012, 01:12

Ice Cream Sandwich
If you don't want to drop $300 on a phone we don't blame you -- honestly, the idea makes us feel a bit dirty too. MediaTek doesn't seen any reason for it either. The company has been working its way in to the mobile chipset business for a little while now, and its latest is aimed squarely at the lower end of the handset spectrum but still promises to deliver the latest in dessert-themed operating systems. The MT6575 is a single core Cortex-A9 solution with an unidentified 5-series PowerVR GPU on board and an HSPA modem. The 1GHz core probably won't win and benchmark competitions, but it's enough to push Android 4.0 to a qHD screen, power through 720p video and capture shots with an 8 megapixel sensor. It even is capable of supporting 3D displays and DTV broadcasts -- not too bad for something destined to wind up in $50 smartphones. Checkout the complete PR after the break.

Continue reading MediaTek sees no reason cheap phones can't have Ice Cream Sandwich too

MediaTek sees no reason cheap phones can't have Ice Cream Sandwich too originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Live from Camp Pendleton with ViaSat SurfBeam 2 Pro Portable (video)
Feb 14th 2012, 00:34

There's no power outlet, land-based internet connection or even a decent cell signal in sight, yet we're posting this live, at fast broadband speeds. We're miles deep into Camp Pendleton, connected to ViaSat's SurfBeam 2 Pro Portable mobile satellite transceiver and sending data to and from ViaSat-1 located more than 20,000 miles above our heads. SurfBeam 2 wasn't designed for us to kick back and surf the web in the middle of nowhere at speeds that we could barely achieve while tethered to a cable connection just a few years ago, but we're doing just that, with ViaSat's roughly $20,000 go-anywhere satellite broadband rig. We first heard about Pro Portable last month at CES, which the company is marketing towards military, emergency management personnel and even broadcasters -- that's right, the sat truck of the future fits inside a hand-carry suitcase, and sends HD video from the world's most remote locations right back to broadcast centers at record speed, nearly eliminating that lag that makes certain CNN reports painful to watch.

Pro Portable really can go anywhere -- disassembled, it fits inside a fairly modest suitcase, but screw it together and you have a full-size dish. There's also a four-port Ethernet router and an optional battery pack, which provides up to four hours of juice. Think of it as Exede broadband for far-off-the-grid types. Sadly, Pro Portable isn't priced low enough to make its way into your on-the-go blogger kit, but it costs a small fraction of the million dollars you can spend on a sat truck, which rents for thousands of dollars a day. It's also far more transportable and discrete, offering consistent 12 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds nearly anywhere in North America. How can SurfBeam 2 hold up during a bandwidth-intensive HD upload? See for yourself just past the break -- our 230MB hands-on video made its way from the ground to space and back to Viddler in just shy of 13 minutes, and our Skype video call looked fantastic, without any noticeable lag.

Continue reading Live from Camp Pendleton with ViaSat SurfBeam 2 Pro Portable (video)

Live from Camp Pendleton with ViaSat SurfBeam 2 Pro Portable (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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