Otaku Gadgets

As the holidays inch nearer and nearer, rest assured that the manufacturers are losing their sleep and their minds in order to bring out the latest and greatest gadgets right before people start hitting the buy button.

With multiple companies announcing release dates this October, there are just way too many gadgets to cover around this time of the year. So I am basically going to spare you the torture and give you these digest posts so that you keep up with them without having to go through dozens of PRs each and every single day. Jump over to the other side to see today’s highlights.

HP Envy 13 & 15

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then HP has just paid Apple a huge compliment. So far, only those rogue Chinese companies have blatantly ripped off Apple’s designs and the more mainstream companies have been content with just copying certain parts.

Now HP has decided to completely copy the aesthetics of the MacBook Pro line in the two latest Envy notebooks – Envy 13 and Envy 15. The flat style keyboard, the aluminum surface and even the button-less glass touchpad with gestures – they have all been integrated into the two new HP portables.

The Envy 13 though is more of a MacBook Air copy in its dimensions and weight. The MacBook Air is 0.74 inch whilst the Envy 13 is 0.8 inch. The Envy 13 weighs 3.74 pounds and the MacBook Air weighs 3 pounds.

The screens on the new Envy notebooks are very bright thanks to what HP calls the Radiance technology and they have the same edge-to-edge glass coating and black bezel as the latest MacBooks.

The Envy 13 is a 13inch notebook that runs on a low power Core 2 Duo and has a battery life of 7 hours. HP has an add-on battery pack that attaches magnetically and increases the life to 18 hours. The Envy 15 is the powerhouse of the two and carries a Core i7 processor that packs quite a punch along with ATI Radeon HD 4830 graphics and support for up to 16GB of RAM. Even with all that performance the Envy manages to stay around the 1inch mark in thinness, making for a very impressive notebook.

They are coming to the US on the 18^th of October.

Asus Eee Keyboard

This is another new portable form factor from Asus. It is something that I would like to call the Netkeyboard, which is essentially made for those people who want to take their system with them and plug into available displays whenever possible. What started out as leaked photos, has now culminated into a full announcement with Asus announcing a release date of sometime this October.

The Asus Eee keyboard is actually a full netbook stuffed into a keyboard. Okay so the keyboard is a bit larger than your average keyboard. There is also the small matter of the touchscreen on the keyboard. This device will probably ditch Windows altogether and go for Moblin, a Linux based mobile phone OS. I will leave it to you to imagine the performance of a mobile OS running on a netbook configuration (hint: really fast). There is more – it has all the standard netbook ports, so you won’t miss out plugging your USB drive in when you type on a disembodied keyboard while sitting on a park bench.

LG GW620 Android Phone

The GW620 has been announced as LG’s first ever Android phone. Even though the company announced that it will make several Windows Mobile phones just the other day, this announcement is far more exciting for obvious reasons.

The phone itself is going to be the usual fare, as it seems from the specs. It will feature a 3inch full touchscreen and a slide out QWERTY keypad. The GW620’s Android OS will definitely be a far cry from what the company has been using in its phones all this time. In other words, Android’s usability and depth will finally give good looking LG phones some semblance of proper functionality.

It is slated to be available later this year in ‘select European markets’.

New TomTom XXL 530S, 540S

Two new TomTom XXL line portable navigation devices (PND) have been released that have über large 5inch screens. The 530S and the 540S are both similar the older XXL devices with the due exception of the larger screen. While both have essentially the same hardware, the 540S is more expensive because it has extra features like Advanced Lane Guidance, seven million preloaded points of interest, preloaded maps of Mexico etc. So if you travel a lot and need every bit of info that you can get, you’re better off with the 540S.

They will arrive in the US this October. The 530S will be priced at $279 and the 540S will be priced at $299 post launch.

Nokia Erdos

Nokia has been at it again with their 8800 line of expensive designer phones. This one is called the Erdos. It is really, really shiny and is carved out of a single piece of solid stainless steel. Yes, it reminds me of Apple’s Unibody chassis too.

The screen is a 2.4-inch, 320×240 pixels OLED display and is actually hidden behind a mirror-finished glass so that it only becomes visible when the screen is turned on. No you cannot have a full HTML browser on it. No, you cannot use it under direct sunlight. But that is okay because its target audience does not see much of direct sunlight in any case.

It has 3G/HSPA,WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss lens with dual LED flash and also video recording. The phone runs the tried and tested Symbian S60 OS, which is starting to feel slightly dated now. Details are a bit sketchy at the moment but it looks like it will be a while before it is out. Pre-holiday season is still a possibility though.

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