Touch Screen Gadget

Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade from Motorola

Posted by sawaru | Category: Smartphone, Software

Motorola released a downloadable Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard upgrade for its AT&T-branded Moto Q9h and Q9h Global phones. The upgrade reportedly provides slightly faster speeds, along with new operating system features like a task manager, sliding panels on the home screen, plus cut and paste.
Motorola’s Q9h and Q9h Global originally shipped with Windows Mobile 6.0. Neither device has a touchscreen, making the upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1 potentially significant. That release brought non-touchscreen devices functionality that was previously available only on touchscreen smartphones, such as text select, cut, copy, and paste.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Casino touch-screen bar table for flirting

Posted by sawaru | Category: Restaurant, Bistro & Shop, Table and Floor, Trend Watch & News

Microsoft Corp. and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. introduced a high-tech interactive bar table Wednesday that lets patrons order drinks, watch YouTube videos, play touch-screen games and even flirt with each other.

The six rectangular tables with built-in 30-inch flat screens using Microsoft Surface technology were installed in a lounge at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, with custom applications built for Harrah’s.

A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the units sold for a base price of $10,000.

A program called Mixologists lets patrons play bartender by creating and ordering concoctions of whatever cocktails and mixers they click on. The system is able to remember users’ drink orders and, one day, may be able to offer customers the same drink at other Harrah’s locations, such as when they play a slot machine.

Another program lets users watch YouTube videos, either by searching or choosing from a list of popular videos. Harrah’s officials said they reached a licensing deal with YouTube on Wednesday. The table also includes a program called Flirt, which lets customers sitting at any such table in the lounge see and chat with each other, take and e-mail pictures and even trade cell phone numbers. Other programs let users play video games or get information about restaurants, shows, nightclubs and other Harrah’s attractions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

178M Touch Screen Phones to Ship by 2011

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Multi Touch, Smartphone, Trend Watch & News

Attendees of last week’s CTIA Wireless event saw major mobile phone makers like Sony Ericcson, Samsung and LG all tout new touch-screen-based devices. By 2011, handset makers will ship some 178 million phones with touch screens according to new predictions from Multimedia Intelligence, a market research firm. Compare that to the "rounding error" touch devices represented in the context of the entire handset market in 207, in which 1.12 billion devices were shipped, and you see a very significant jump.

One major catalyst for this change: Nine months ago, Apple took the entire mobile industry by storm when it released the iPhone. Apple’s first smartphone, based on its innovative and easy to use touch screen user interface (UI), already has made the company the number three smartphone maker in the world based on sales, according to research company Canalys. And it only sells one device, compared to the dozens of devices sold by its rivals, like Nokia and Research In Motion, numbers one and two in the market, currently offer.

Though handsets with touch screens had been available for years from companies like Palm and HTC–Apple even offered a PDA called the Newton throughout the 1990s–none had combined touch screen tech that doesn’t require the use of a stylus with such a simple and innovative UI.

With the iPhone’s success in the market–Canalys says Apple sold some 2.3 million units through Q4 2007–came a huge consumer appetite for touch screen tech, and Apple’s competitors have been quick to try to meet that demand.

Before CTIA, HTC debuted devices like the T-Mobile Wing and Sprint Touch, both of which have touch screens. LG released the touch-based Voyager. Palm’s Pilot and Treo devices, which have been around for years, have all featured touch screens. GPS maker Garmin plans to release a touch-based smartphone. And even BlackBerry-maker RIM is rumored to be working on a touch screen device.

At last week’s show, Sony Ericcson showed off its Windows Mobile-based XPERIA device, which has both a touch screen and a slider keyboard, not unlike the one found on T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick device. Then Samsung surprised the crowds with an iPhone lookalike called the Instinct, which will be available soon from Sprint. And LG showed off the Vu device with its touch screen and AT&T mobile TV support.

And the growing trend won’t likely stop at handset makers. AT&T recently said it would soon staring using Microsoft’s Surface desktop PC, which is users control by touching its large surface touch screen.

Panasonic recently unveiled a digital camera with a touch screen UI

And iSuppli recently predicted that global shipment revenue for cutting-edge touch-screen technologies will rise to $4.4 billion by 2012, up from $2.4 billion in 2006.

[cio]

Popularity: 3% [?]

Surface made headline table page

Posted by admin | Category: Multi Touch, Table and Floor

“Better late than never”, that could be the ad slogan for Microsoft’s Surface computer.

The table top, multi-touch, screen-based device that the company demonstrated last May has been wildly popular as “demo-ware” – garnering lots of attention in its public outings.

However, so far there have been none of the deployments initially planned by Microsoft’s commercial launch customers by the end of last year.

Microsoft announced this week that AT&T will begin using the Surface computer in its phone stores, starting with “select retail locations” in New York, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Francisco on April 17. The intent is for consumers to use the computer to help them compare mobile phones and service plans for sale in the stores.

“By harnessing the power of Surface in our retail stores, we’re giving shoppers the opportunity to learn about the growing universe of mobile applications and devices in a very personal and unique way,” AT&T said in a statement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Qualcomm MediaFLO powers AT&T Mobile TV

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Smartphone

AT&T announced today that the nation’s largest wireless carrier will offer subscribers ten channels of live, mobile TV on at least two new phones starting in May.

AT&T Mobile TV uses Qualcomm’s MediaFLO system, which we reviewed last year with two Verizon phones. The MediaFLO system allows for at least 14 channels. AT&T and Verizon will share eight: CBS, Comedy Central, ESPN , FOX, MTV, NBC, NBC News, and Nickelodeon. AT&T will get two exclusive channels of their own, which Verizon customers won’t have access to.

Verizon, for its part, added two exclusive channels this week: ESPN Radio and a Latino-focused MTV spinoff, "MTV Tr3s".

MediaFLO channels aren’t simulcasts of broadcast TV. Rather, they’re rearrangements of the TV schedule to play popular programs several times a day. Late night talk shows pop up during morning commuting hours, for instance, and the NBC channel mixes in both NBC network programs and popular shows from NBC’s Bravo cable channel.

Since AT&T uses the exact same mobile TV network as Verizon, we expect quality to be the same (excellent, just like ‘regular’ TV) and pricing plans to be the same (around $15/month.)

The Samsung Access will be AT&T’s more conventional, and presumably more affordable, TV phone. The Access is a small, slim candy-bar phone with a 2.3-inch screen and 1.3-megapixel camera. Like several other Samsung phones on AT&T, it features the Video Share service which lets you beam live video to people you’re calling. Using the 850/1900 Mhz 3G bands and quad-band EDGE, it can hit AT&T’s high-speed network here in the US and it roams to Europe at lower data speeds.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]