Hands-on with the new PlayStation Vita (update: video!)

Posted on 19/09/2013 by Ben Gilbert

Just like the PlayStation Portable before it, the PlayStation Vita comes in iterations. There's the standard, original Vita, and then there's the new, even nicer version. Sony unveiled that new iteration recently at a Japanese event, and we got our first hands-on with it today at Tokyo Game Show 2013. So, what's different? Not too much. As it turns out, it's still a Vita.

The good news is that it's a far lighter, more comfy version of the Vita you already know and (maybe) love. Rounded edges make holding the Vita distinctly less abrasive -- the sharper angles on the original Vita were pretty from a design perspective, but not so much from an ergonomic standpoint. The buttons have been rejiggered as well, with a solid click for each (the start / select / PS Home buttons are also all now circles instead of ovals). And hey, the micro-USB port for charging is an unbelievably welcome addition. Gone are the days of your proprietary Vita charging cable (though there's still a port for it as well, should you refuse to change).

And that's not the only ergonomic improvement: the new Vita is dramatically lighter than its predecessor, making it all the easier to take on-the-go. We're told that its battery life is also much improved, but we've yet to see that play out in real life, so we'll reserve judgment for now.

Update: We've added video just below walking through the new Vita -- please excuse us, as we called the new Vita's LCD screen an LED in the video. Chock it up to jet lag!%Gallery-slideshow89586%

Check out all our Tokyo Game Show 2013 coverage right here at our hub!

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software, HD, Sony

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Palm and webOS product auction reminds us of the forgotten Foleo

Posted on 17/09/2013 by Jamie Rigg

It's funny how, as time passes, we grow fonder of gadgets that were once disregarded. Nerd nostalgia has a knack of trumping common sense and draining wallets, which is why we're almost hesitant to bring this auction of Palm and webOS gear to your attention. Featuring the collection of a former webOS employee, you'll find everything from t-shirts, posters and other branded paraphernalia, through to a mint-condition Palm VII PDA, 4G TouchPads and a range of mobiles, including many from the long-forgotten Pre series. The prize piece, however, has to be the boxed, unused Palm Foleo complete with an hour of phone time with one of the product's OG engineers, who also "has apps for you," apparently. All money raised from the auction is going to a charitable cause, which totally justifies whatever exaggerated sum Palm's nigh-mythical flop ends up going for.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Laptops, Tablets, HP

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Via: Dieter Bohn (Twitter)

Source: 32auctions, Josh Marinacci

iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor called Touch ID, recognizes your thumb on the Home button: here’s how it works and what it does

Posted on 10/09/2013 by Ben Gilbert

Apple's brand-new iPhone 5s isn't dramatically different from last year's model, but it has at least one major addition: a "Touch ID" sensor. Us human beings are calling it a fingerprint sensor, and it's built into the phone's main Home button below the screen. Apple's Phil Schiller says, "It reads your fingerprint at an entirely new level" -- it's 170 microns in thickness with 500 ppi resolution. According to Cupertino, it "scans sub-epidermal skin layers," and can read 360 degrees. As expected, the sensor is actually part of the Home button, making it less of a button and more of a...well, sensor. Using Touch ID, users can authorize purchases in iTunes, the App Store, or in iBooks by simply using their thumbprint (starting in iOS 7, of course). Pretty neat / scary!

As rumored, the sensor uses a laser cut sapphire crystal cover; it retains a tactile input for those wary of the sensor wearing down after lengthy use. The sapphire crystal, acting as a lens, takes a highly detailed image of your fingerprint, which Apple says is "never stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud." According to Apple's official PR on the new phone, Touch ID's fingerprint info is "encrypted and stored securely in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip" (the A7 chip is the new processor at the heart of the 5s). Apple hasn't made clear whether Touch ID allows for multiple users on a single iPhone or not, nor has the company said whether you could turn off fingerprint authentication (though we have to presume the answer is yes given previous authentication standards on the iPhone).

The fingerprint ID technology was long rumored as heading to 2013's iPhone following Apple's acquisition of Authentec last summer. A render of the iPhone 5s outed the new functionality's name just this week. We'll have more on Touch ID in our upcoming hands-on live from Cupertino, and you can find all our Apple event coverage from today right here.

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Check out all the coverage at our iPhone 'Special Event' 2013 event hub!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Software, Mobile, Apple

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IFA 2013 wrap-up: Galaxy Note 3, Xperia Z1, smartwatches, lens cameras, 4K displays and more

Posted on 07/09/2013 by Alexis Santos

We reckoned IFA would be an exceptionally busy show, and now that we've combed through all of our coverage and condensed it here, it's clear the event lived up to our expectations. Sure, the venerable CES may have topped IFA in show floor square feet, but the announcements in Berlin generated perhaps even more excitement than those that came out of Las Vegas in January. A pair of high-profile smartwatches, two titanic smartphones, a duo of lens cameras, 4K displays and a bevy of hands-ons await you in a neat, yet massive, roundup after the break.%Gallery-slideshow83286%

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Cameras, Displays, GPS, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Household, Laptops, Peripherals, Portable Audio/Video, Robots, Tablets, Transportation, Wearables, Samsung, Sony, HTC, ASUS, LG, HP, Acer, Lenovo

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16 ways to play: SmartGlass support for Xbox One doubles the controller cap

Posted on 06/09/2013 by Ben Gilbert

With the new Xbox this November, Microsoft's bringing a new iteration of SmartGlass to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices. And with said new iteration comes promised SmartGlass ubiquity. Microsoft GM and SmartGlass team lead Ron Pessner told Engadget as much in an interview this week on all things SmartGlass for Xbox One. You'll need to download a new (still free) SmartGlass app to your Smart device of choice come launch day (the new app won't function with Xbox 360, just the One).

Up to 15 of your best friends can bring their Smart devices over and...well, nothing just yet, but the Xbox One will support 16 Smart devices connected at one time (double the connected controller cap). Just imagine the possibilities for virtual canasta! Okay, not so thrilling, but the potential for games like Monopoly or Dungeons & Dragons is evident. Or maybe something more like Spaceteam?

Pessner also promised that the connectivity between Smart device and console is "three-and-a-half times faster" on Xbox One than with 360 (depending on your home wireless setup), and the first time "only takes about four seconds." And while on the go, the SmartGlass app can be used for mobile shopping, allowing a game or other piece of content to be purchased and made available when you get home. Pessner wouldn't go into specifics, but he told us, "We definitely want to make sure it's a seamless process for customers and they're able to find a piece of content regardless of where they are -- the web or the SmartGlass app -- and being able to have that content ready for them to play when they return to their Xbox One." The remotely queued content will show up as pinned to your Dashboard when you get back to the console, available to play immediately.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds, Peripherals, Tablets, Software, HD, Microsoft

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Refurbished 3DS XL handhelds available from Nintendo starting at $169

Posted on 12/08/2013 by Timothy J. Seppala

If you've been waiting for a price drop before upgrading to a 3DS XL, Nintendo has the next best thing for you: a refurbished trio of its up-sized 3D handhelds. They typically run $200 new, but you can get a redone unit for $170, or $180 with a 16GB SD memory card, in red, black or blue direct from the manufacturer. If you don't mind dropping the XL, a reworked aqua blue or midnight purple 3DS has lowered from April's price of $130 to $120, or $50 off compared to new. In all cases, Nintendo refurbs come with a one-year warranty and -- aside from the possibility of some "minor cosmetic blemishes" -- the Japanese manufacturer assures us that its quality standards are "VERY high". (Their caps, not ours.)

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Nintendo

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Via: Joystiq, Nintendo Life

Source: Nintendo Store

NVIDIA Shield now has open source software support

Posted on 07/08/2013 by Ben Gilbert

We loved NVIDIA Shield's bone stock Jelly Bean OS in our review, but if you're not a huge fan, NVIDIA's now offering a way to dig in and customize your Shield's OS even more. NVIDIA's made the Shield's software open source as of today, making the OS all the easier to customize. You'll of course have to root your device and, ya know, have an idea of what you're doing in the guts of a computer. NVIDIA warns new owners as much, saying, "To be sure, this is double-diamond stuff. If you're not a coder or already set up with an Android development environment you should skip downloading these tools."

The company's blog post also notes that rooting your Shield or adding a bootloader will potentially void your device's warranty, so hacker beware! Should the associated tasks and NVIDIA's warnings not scare you off, the software is available right here. Our review video of the Shield is just below, in case you missed it last week.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software, HD, Mobile, NVIDIA

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Source: NVIDIA

Battlefield 4’s Battlescreen map exclusive to next-gen and PC, Battlelog now fully web-based

Posted on 05/08/2013 by Ben Gilbert

In holiday 2011, while fans of both the Call of Duty and Battlefield series were gearing up for virtual war, the publishers behind each megafranchise were gearing up for a different type of virtual war. With the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Activision's in-game social network -- dubbed "Call of Duty Elite" -- went live. Just prior, alongside the launch of competing title Battlefield 3, EA introduced its "Battlelog" system. And thus began a parallel virtual war for fans' loyalty, battled via user numbers and engagement metrics. It's a pretty boring war, but its armaments are the games many of us know and love.

The first-person-shooter social network war continues to this day (in silence, of course), with EA recently stepping up its rhetoric surrounding this October's entry, Battlefield 4. Since E3, where some new Battlelog features were shown for the first time during EA's presser, the company's released its first big Battlelog marketing video (seen below). But we wanted more details about what the first next-gen version of Battlelog will look like, and what EA's DICE studio has been able to accomplish with new hardware.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds, Tablets, Internet, Software, HD

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NVIDIA Shield teardown dives deep inside the massive handheld

Posted on 01/08/2013 by Ben Gilbert

The folks at iFixit are braver souls than us, taking on NVIDIA's tank-like new gaming handheld, the Shield, in a teardown. Shield's cavernous shell houses a mess of multicolored parts, and hilariously reveals its Batman mask-esque properties when freed of said parts. Though it certainly doesn't look like an easy process, the repair site offers a six out of 10 rating; it specifically cites the battery and screen as being tricky to replace.

NVIDIA's Shield was a big surprise at this year's Consumer Electronics Show -- CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed up with the device on-stage during his company's press briefing, where he used it to demonstrate the just unveiled Tegra 4 processor. We finally got our hands on the final retail version earlier this month and you can find the full review right here. Consumers can also finally purchase the $300 handheld as of yesterday.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Mobile, NVIDIA

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Source: iFixit

NVIDIA Shield review (update: video!)

Posted on 31/07/2013 by Ben Gilbert

More Info

NVIDIA Shield is a truly strange device. It combines an eight-button console-size gamepad with dual analog sticks, and a 5-inch "multi-touch, retinal" screen. It runs stock Android 4.2.1. It touts wireless PC game streaming as its main selling point. It plays Android games, it plays PC games, it does the Twitter and the Gmail, et cetera. With Shield, NVIDIA is aiming to be the Swiss Army Knife of handheld game consoles. It slices! It dices! ShamWOW!

It also costs $300, weighs nearly 1.5 pounds and takes up quite a bit of bag space. Its main selling point -- PC game streaming -- is dependent on the user already owning a PC with a relatively fancy ($140) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 GPU or better. Let's be honest, though: you already know this stuff, right? If you're reading this review, you either already own all the necessary gear and wanna know if this is a worthwhile peripheral for your PC, or you're morbidly curious about NVIDIA's (admittedly bizarre) console experiment. Let's all head below and try to find satisfaction.

Update: We've added our full review video below -- please excuse the lateness! We ran into some technical glitches on our end, but the tribbles have all been eradicated.

Gallery: NVIDIA Shield (Review, product shots)