March 12, 2010
Written by Gadget Gurus
Novothink Solar Surge – first Apple-certified solar-powered charging case for iPhone
Novothink Solar Surge, the first Apple-certified solar-powered charging case, has been announced for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Solar Surge is a comfortable, soft touch, non-slip finish case, is able to harness sunlight and store in its internal lithium ion battery to serve as a handy power backup for the iPhone or iPod Touch as well as protecting them.
The Solar Surge case is able to provide you 30 minutes of talk time on 3G network and 60 minutes on 2G after it’s been exposed to 30 minutes 2 hours of sunlight. The Surge’s lithium-ion polymer battery features smart charging technology that automatically senses when the battery needs a charge and ensures sufficient power reserved for it.
Other goodies include LED indicators to tell if you have sufficiently powerful light source and the remaining charge in the battery, a wrist strap and smaller carabiners that make it suitable for travelers and adventurers.
And it also offers a free Solar Panel application (available on iTunes) for your iPhone or iPod Touch, which allows you to be aware of how much sun exposure required to maintain the Surge’s backup power, based on your daily usage and weather forecast. It also allows alternative charging via USB, which is useful for rainy days
Once fully charged the Surge case is able to provide up to additional 4 hours of talk time on 3G network, up to 8 hours on 2G and up to 240 hours on standby etc. Available in black and white, the iPhone 3G/3GS version costs $80, whereas the iPod Touch version costs $70.
March 3, 2010
Written by Gadget Gurus
Netgear Powerline adapter kits create 500Mbps connection from any power outlet
Although WiFi is pretty common these days, but if you always deal with bandwidth-hungry applications, you should then make use of powerline Ethernet for much higher data transfer speeds to eliminate your frustrations.
Netgear has announced two HomePlug® AV-certified Powerline adapter kits, which allow you to make use of your home electrical outlets to transmit data at super high speeds of up to 500Mbps theoretically. The two Netgear Powerline kits are the compact Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit (XAVB5001) and the Powerline AV+ 500 Adapter Kit (XAVB5501) with a filtered “pass-through” power socket.
These Netgear Powerline kits were designed to be compatible with the draft international IEEE P1901 Powerline standard. They’re best used for applications that require high data bandwidth such as VOIP, lag-free Internet gaming, huge file transfer between networked devices, and even multiple streaming of Blu-ray videos at full HD 1080p quality from your computers or players to multiple TVs throughout the entire home.
The Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit (XAVB5001) comes in a compact form factor, which is 50% relatively smaller than its market rivals. The compact design doesn’t block an open power outlet when plugged in, leaving you with some rooms for other power plugs.
The Netgear Powerline AV+ 500 Adapter Kit (XAVB5501) shares same performance and design benefits as the XAVB5001. The only difference is it’s integrated with the filtered power socket with pass-through capability, which ensures a power outlet with the adapter plugged in is not cannibalized. No information on the pricing but they’ll be out sometime in Q3.
Similar to other car-shaped cellphones, the Bugatti-shaped cellphone is also from China
The Audi, BMW and Ferrari have got cellphones shaped like them and now it’s the turn of the million dollar-priced Bugatti Veyron. Similar to other car-shaped cellphones, the Bugatti-shaped cellphone is also from China.
It’s just a basic GSM cellphone that has a 2.4-inch touchscreen, a 1.3 megapixel camera, FM radio, Bluetooth, MP3 player. And like many other China-made cellphones, it offers dual-sim capability. The best is it costs only $185. Buying a China-made mobile phone is simply at your own risk. There is no guarantee that this is going to work on your cellular provider network. Please read the warning on the product page before hitting the “Add To Cart” button.
Nokia C5 smartphone, lastest smartphone from Nokia
Nokia has announced their latest smartphone, C5, which is a smart phone that runs on the S60 3rd edition platform and specially designed for social networking and sharing. The social networking feature on the Nokia C5 of course lets you have easy accesses to Facebook and MySpace. And it also allows you to keep in touch via instant messaging and email via Ovi Mail.
The C5 smartphone also includes free navigation via Ovi maps, a 2.2-inch screen, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 2GB memory card (supports up to 16GB), built-in FM radio, and accesses to other Ovi services such as Ovi store and music. The Nokia C5 will start shipping to selected markets in Q2 of 2010 and has an estimated price of $182 or 135 Euros. The specs at a glance are as follows:
- S60 platform 3rd Edition
- 2.2–inch QVGA (320 x 24) display
- 50MB internal memory
- WCDMA 900/2100 with HSDPA/HSUPA support
- A-GPS
- Bluetooth 2.0
- 3.5mm Nokia AV connector
- microUSB
- VGA video capture up to 15fps