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During the Apple Education event in NYC this morning many folk from the press sat and listened as Phil Schiller and crew announced and demoed iBooks 2, iBooks Author and iTunes U. No long after it had finished, the crew from Engadget got their hands on the latest creation by Apple. The video above shows a few of the features in the Life on Earth…
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By David Ponce
News of the MakerBot Replicator had already been out for some time before CES, but I’m happy to say that seeing it in person got me much more excited about the tech. If you haven’t heard, this is a 3D printer for home use. Any 3D object you can think of, anything you can either design in a CAD program or even download from the Thingiverse (a user-populated marketplace of pre-made CAD files) is yours to simply print right at home. In the back of the machine are spools of ABS plastic that are fed into the system, heated up and extruded (glue-gun style) from the printer head. It’ll then slowly make your object, layer by layer. It’s simply awesome.
A few caveats. The printed objects have a slightly rough surface. This is because each layer is visible as the extruded plastic is tube-like; two circles stacked atop each other will not form a smooth surface. You can clearly see this in my video, after the jump. It’s not a huge problem however because these “tubes” are so tiny (much, much less than 1mm). Still some people prefer to sand their objects once completed. Also, it’s a very slow process. A figurine like the one in my video can take 30 minutes or so. Still, you’re buying this for home use, so go make yourself a coffee and stop bitching about awesome tech.
It’s $1,750 for the one-spool replicator, and $2,000 for two spools, which gives you more color options. A 1kg spool of ABS plastic costs around $43.
Hit the jump for two videos: one shitty one, mine. And one good one, the company’s.
[ Product Page ]
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Here at CES 2012, phones are a bit in short supply. At least, new phones are. LG is one of the few companies to officially announce a new smartphone at the show, and I have to say it’s one of the best phones we’ve seen out of LG. Unfortunately, that still leaves the Spectrum quite a ways behind some of the other new phones we’ve seen recently like the Xperia S, Titan 2, or the Galaxy Nexus (of course).
The real stand-out feature here is the 4.5-inch 720p display with a True HD Graphic Engine and Corning Gorilla glass, boasting 326ppi. The phone also touts Verizon’s 4G LTE, which is mostly solid unless it’s December.
The Spectrum has a .4-inch waist line, and a glossy back panel which is a far cry from the more premium feel of the LG Nitro HD. What’s odd is that the Spectrum is actually meant to be an equally high-end phone, but takes prints so poorly and is so obviously plastic that it feels kind of cheap.
Under the hood you’ll find a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 4GB of on-board memory, and 1GB of RAM. The phone also comes with a 16GB microSD card, but the slot itself can handle a card up to 32GB.
The 8-megapixel rear camera shoots video in 1080p, and there’s a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat if that’s your style.
What’s perhaps the worst news of all is that the LG Spectrum will ship with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, and won’t get Ice Cream Sandwich until the second half of 2012. At the same time, most phones we’re seeing with these specs go for around $250 or $300 and the Spectrum can be had for $199 on a two-year contract.
Like most things with LG phones, you win some and you lose some.
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I’ve never been a huge fan of Sony Ericsson. The phones are fine, I guess, and I certainly commend the company’s drive to differentiate. The Xperia Play is a great concept but it failed to really take off.
Today, however, I was very impressed after taking a good hard look at the new Xperia S. It’s not the thinnest phone at .4 inches, nor does it have the biggest screen, but it is something fresh which is more than I can say for most Android Gingerbread phones.
The phone is very boxy, and even has an extra bit of hardware on the bottom that seemingly has no purpose. Still, I don’t mind it since it adds something new to the look of the phone with that thin strip of clear plastic. I also tend to frown upon white phones, but the Xperia S is a sexy little beast in white.
Spec-wise, this new phone continues to impress with a 4.3-inch HD Reality Display powered by Sony’s Bravia Engine. The screen boasts a 720p resolution, joining ranks with the Galaxy Nexus, the LG Spectrum, and the HTC Rezound.
Under the hood you’ll find 1GB of RAM, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and a memory card slot with room for up to a 32GB card.
Another impressive feature of the Xperia S is its 12-megapixel rear-facing camera that is capable of video capture in 1080p, along with a front-facing shooter for video chat.
All in all, the phone feels great in the hand and looks hot. The corners are a bit “sharp” but not at all uncomfortable, and the purposeless extra hardware along the bottom doesn’t make the phone cumbersome at all. Oh, and if gaming’s your thing than you’ll be happy to know that this phone is Playstation-certified.
Sony promises that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will head to the S eventually, but we have no word on pricing or availability yet so stay tuned.
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The Meizu MX is an odd duck. A Chinese-only smartphone that may (or may not) be reaching our shores, it’s hard not treating it like an oddity washed up on the beach rather than a shipping device. It is a 1.4GHz phone with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage and has an 8-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi support, and GSM/GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/HSPA+ built-in. It also has a micro SIM slot (which is putting a damper on my testing right now) and micro USB port. It will cost about $450 in Asia when it’s launched January 1st.
That it arrived at my home in a DHL box straight outta Hong Kong, however, suggests that there will be some US availability. This should be pleasing to folks who want a powerhouse Android phone that looks strikingly unlike any of these huge-screened, battery-hogging RAZRs, Galaxies, and LTE devices that are currently littering the phone landscape.
The obvious comparisons are, well, obvious, so I won’t go into them here. In short, this phone looks strikingly similar to another well-known cellphone until you turn it on. The screen is pixel-dense – 960 x 640 of them, to be exact – and beautiful and Meizu has a patented indicator system that changes the two “buttons” below the screen based on phone state. For example, when the left button is supposed to send you back, it turns into an arrow while at the home screen it is a sigle, simple dot.
The phone will get an Ice Cream Sandwich update in the next few weeks (at least according to Meizu) and the current os, a modified Android 2.3.5 called Flyme, is a strange departure from the standard experience. For example, there is no clear “apps” screen and instead apps appear on the “desktop,” much like another phone we all know and love.
In the Darwinian world of Android phones, the Meizu MX is a highly-evolved device that should make Android fans’ mouths water. I’ll take a closer look over the next few days and report back and here’s hoping it hits our shores this year.
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