We know that DSi of yours is all the rage, but you did hang on to that DS / DS Lite, didn’t you? Phew. Starting this November in Europe and other PAL regions, you’ll have a remarkably good excuse to bust that unit back out, as this new peripheral looks to require that all-but-forgotten GBA slot. At any rate, the title (which goes by Easy Piano in case you glossed over the headline) will allow players to bang out masterpieces such as Bittersweet Symphony, Every Breath You Take and Pachelbel’s Canon on the 8-note, full-octave keyboard accessory. All told, 40 songs will be made available, and there’s even a “creation mode” that enables owners to record up to four 3-minute-long jams. Now, if only we had a North American price and release date to pencil in, we’d be all set.
Archive for July, 2009
Easy Piano title lets DS Lite users tickle the ivory
July 31st, 2009Motorola posts $26m Q2 profit, promises cheap Android thrills, does a little dance
July 31st, 2009See that image there on the right? Yeah, it’s a pretty drastic departure from the Sad Moto™ face that had become all too common when talking about the company’s financials. Just a quarter after posting a dreadful $291 million loss, the outfit responsible for creating the RAZR and then doing nothing for half a decade is finally showing a profit once more. The Q2 numbers show an “unexpected” $26 million profit on sales of $5.5 billion, $1.8 billion of which came from the handset division. Of course, that very division managed to lose $253 million and see its global market share slip to 5.5 percent, but with a big bang from Android reportedly just months away, CEO Sanjay Jha ain’t taking time to frown.
Just hours after the Verizon-branded Sholes smartphone surfaced, Mr. Jha was quoted as saying that two Android devices would be “in stores for the holiday season,” with launches occurring on “two major carriers in North America and multiple carriers outside the US.” He also noted that plans were in place to ship “several additional Android-based devices in the first quarter of 2010,” but details beyond that were vague. So, is this the beginning of a new, happier Moto?
AAXA ups the ante with SVGA P2 pico projector
July 31st, 2009While it’s probably safe to say that the rush of pico projectors has slowed to a trickle, that’s not stopping a few of the early entrants from dishing out new and improved models as the second wave builds. AAXA, the outfit responsible for serving up the pint-sized P1 back in February, is demonstrating exactly what a hasty refresh cycle looks like by dishing out the higher-res P2 just a few months later. The LCoS-based pico projector packs an SVGA (800 x 600) resolution, a 33 lumen LED light source, 1GB of onboard memory, a microSD card reader and even a built-in battery good for around 35 minutes of beaming (or in other terms, nearly two full episodes of Entourage). The device checks in at just 4.3- x 2.3- x 1-inches and sports a VGA input, 3.5mm headphone output and a mini USB socket to boot. Feel free to pre-order yours now for $349 — or, you know, wait for a 720p model.
Acer's Aspire Predator gaming rig gets even faster, stays just as orange
July 31st, 2009Just a few weeks too late for a Transformers 2 tie-in, Acer has announced a new revision of its Aspire G desktop, a.k.a. Predator. It shares the same case with the earlier edition that hit the US of A late last year, but naturally has some better specs this time ’round. The CPU is now one of Intel’s new Core i7 950’s running at 3.06GHz, up to 12GB of DDR3 RAM is on offer, while more permanent storage is offered by a 1TB HDD and a Blu-ray reader. A pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 graphics cards keep the pixels flowing over four DVI-D ports, and dual Gigabit Ethernet is on offer for those about to rock shotgun network connections. All that clad in a brilliant orange case that looks like it rolled off the Lamborghini production line, though at ¥259,800 ($2,700ish) it’s a lot cheaper than the Murciélago LP 670-4 Superveloce you’ve been drooling over. No word on American availability, but since the last one took about four months to make it this way perhaps we’ll see this one by year’s end.
China Mobile's 7-inch Android slate gets rendered
July 31st, 2009We’ve nothing much to go on outside of a few good renders and a smattering of machine translated paragraphs, but it sure sounds as if China Mobile is entertaining the idea of bringing a 7-inch Android-based tablet to its airwaves. As the story goes, said slate would boast China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G connectivity, support for video calling, a full-fledged web browser and an OPhone operating system — which is essentially a customized version of Android for the Chinese market. Sadly, no further information was given, leaving us to wonder what kind of innards are scheduled for implant and what kind of price tag / release date we’re looking at. Oh, and those “call” and “end call” buttons are pretty darn evident, leading us to believe that China Mobile might actually expect you to use this as your primary mobile. Can you say… Sidetalkin’?
