Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review the motorola droid gets a bionic makeover honda raises the bar with a 44 mile per gallon civic hybrid toshiba is back in the desktop pc business and we're not making this up another iphone prototype goes missing it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Hollywood and welcome to the cnet tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech plus offer our own unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good apparently good things come to those who wait because nicole lee and the mobile team have been dying to get their hands on the droid bionic from motorola now you may be tempted to run out in slow motion of course and pick up the droid bionic too but be warned it's going to cost you I'm Nicoli senior associate editor for cnet.com and this is a first look at the Editors Choice winner motorola droid bionic it's been nine long months and we finally have it in our hands you may remember the droid bionic from our CES 2011 coverage however this droid bionic is a little bit different than the one that we showed in fact it's a little bit sleeker a little bit sexier and definitely a lot thinner in fact verizon says that the motorola droid bionic is its thinnest LTE phone it's also the very first dual core phone to support 4G LTE on verizon it shifts at android 2.3 point for which is the latest update for Gingerbread at this time and it is free of the usual motoblur interface it is up to five customizable home screens and the menu is a little bit different as well the 4.3 inch display on the droid bionic mix this phone a little bit big but the screen is amazing the qhd display really pops of color on the back it is an 8 megapixel camera lens with an LED flash it's also the first 4G LTE phone to shoot full 1080p HD video since the drug Bionic has both a 1 gigahertz dual-core processor and 4G LTE speeds the overall phone experience is very fast navigating through the phone is very zippy multitasking was not a problem at all the browser was also impressive it supports html5 content as well as adobe flash video in fact we were able to load a flash video pretty quickly the Droid Bionic has very strong multimedia features not only does it have the 8 megapixel camera and camcorder like we said those as a front facing camera for video calls aside from multimedia features the Droid Bionic also has very good business features it has strong device and data encryption you can also remotely wipe the device as well as the SD card the Droid Bionic comes with an app called zumocast that lets you easily share and transfer files from a PC application you can do this over 4g LTE and 3d not just Wi-Fi like with the atrix you can dock the Droid Bionic into this laptop accessory and use it as a portable pc other accessories include an HD station which requires an external monitor you can also plug it in into a little tiny webtop adapter that you can attach to an external monitor as well the webtop applications definitely extend the functionality of this phone the webtop app allows you to access different apps like Firefox in facebook as well as a variety of office apps like Citrix gotomeeting and Citrix documents and of course the Droid Bionic is all of the usual Android features like Gmail Google Talk and more the Droid Bionic ships with the aforementioned 1 gigahertz dual-core processor it also has one gigabyte of RAM and 16 gigabytes of internal storage it also shows the 16 gigabyte SD card however it is expandable up to 32 gigabytes on the whole the Droid Bionic is a slim slick powerful and fast device the webtop application lets you use all of these different accessories however it's around three hundred dollars of a new two-year service agreement with the verizon wireless the laptop dock is around three hundred dollars as well the HD station dock $100 the webtop adapter is around thirty dollars so is it worth the wait we think so but is it worth the price we have our doubts I'm Nichola this has been a first look at the editor's choice motorola droid bionic no it doesn't cost six million dollars but if you buy into all those accessories you are looking at a hefty chunk of change although I'm sure the phone works just fine without them of course you iphone users are accustomed to spending money too and you're gonna get a chance to do it again very soon Ryan Tom got a sneak peek at the beta version of Apple's new iTunes Match service here's his look at what you can expect when it goes live later this fall hey guys Brian sean here with the cnet com preview we're going to show you a first look at the iTunes Match service that was recently released to developers with new features that Apple hasn't officially announced and will be coming this fall now itunes match is Apple's service for 2499 a year and you can turn on iTunes Match by going into the store menu it matches your own personal music collection with the same tracks on iTunes and then upload your remaining songs that can't be matched to the iCloud and allows you to listen to your entire collection anytime on your iOS devices plus you'll also be able to use this service with up to 10 iOS devices and computers total and a maximum five of those can be computers now once the iTunes Match service completes you'll be able to either stream tracks to your computer by playing them or click on the download icon to store them locally once they're downloaded the icon goes away and the size of the file changes from stream to a physical file size now also here i have my iphone running the latest developers build and i'll go into my settings then music and i can turn on iTunes Match on my phone now jump into the music app and just like in itunes you'll see your tracks with the cloud icon next to each one now I can select a track and it will initially take some time to download it as is streaming and it might also be intermittent because the first play basically behaves as if it's a streaming track but once it downloads it will remain on your phone and you can also click on the cloud icon to download all your tracks locally also if you choose to download an entire album click on download all instead so there's your first look at the iTunes Match beta it's still a little inconsistent playing through songs cleanly on their first play and I've had to jump around traction but overall the service is pretty solid and delivers on its promise of giving you access to your entire collection on multiple devices and we'll wait to see the final product this fall prasina calm i'm brian song once you get all your music in the right place wouldn't it be nice if you could find it here's Richard Peterson with a tip for keeping iTunes organized have you tried listening to a complete album on your iPod only to realize that some of the tracks are missing for some reason they aren't grouped with the rest of the album hi I'm Richard Peterson and today I'm going to show you how to make sure all the songs on your iPod stay grouped in the album they belong now this is a common problem with compilation albums like movie soundtracks or that songs of the 70s CD you bought off the infomercial but this also happens when artists have songs on their albums the feature another artist for example i have britney spears femme fatale album on my friends ipod touch that i borrowed when i look here at what seems to be the entire album you'll notice the track 6 and 8 or missing where are they well they were categorized under a different artist here's track 6 which is Brittany featuring savvy and here's track 8 which features will.i.am right now we're looking at the artist view be even if we look at the album view the same problem exists the ipod thinks there are three separate albums one of them with the majority of the songs and the other two are the two separate songs with featured artists another example is this movie soundtrack which has a different artist for almost every song it has sort of the songs into separate albums this can be really annoying if you want to listen to the entire album from beginning to end to fix this we need to go into itunes click up here to sort your music by album and then locate the album you want i'll start with the soundtrack select all the songs in the album right click and then click on get info click yes when it asks if you are sure you want to edit multiple items now from here click on the options tab and then check the box that says part of a compilation and then yes and now after we sink our ipod and sort by album all of the songs we selected will be grouped together into one album if you sort by artist however they will still be separated this should be fine for the soundtrack album because all the songs really are by different artists but for the Brittany album it's all essentially the same artist with just a couple songs that have a featured guest so I'd rather just have them all categorized under Brittany instead of separated as multiple artists to fix this select all the songs in the album and go back to the Edit multiple item window like we did before now you'll see a field called album artist you can type in the name of the artist here but this will only help you sort your music and iTunes it won't solve the problem we have in the ipod because ipods including iphones currently won't sort by album artist possibly the easiest solution is to just change the artist field so all the selected songs have the same artist this of course gets rid of the featuring artists all together so if you want to give well I am credit for reaching his goal of collaborating with every recording artist in the world you can just add his name in parenthesis next to the song title now the next time we sink our device to iTunes we can find all our music organized by artist and in the right albums they were meant to be i'm richard peterson with cnet com I hate it when I try to look up a song and I can't find it because I don't know the name of the guy who did the guest vocals me come on iTunes you sold me the song why are you hiding it from me anyway while we're in Apple how to mode and spending money mode Sharon Vaknin has one more piece of advice for you get ready to kiss another hundred bucks goodbye hey guys I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com here to show you how apple airplay lets you stream music photos and movies from your iOS device to your TV without any cables to get started you'll need a $99 Apple TV it's a cheapest way to get airplay right now but we expect apple to integrate it with TVs in the future once you've set up your Apple TV and connected it to your wireless network go to the settings menu and make sure airplay is turned on when you're done grab your iPhone iPad or iPod touch before doing anything make sure your device is running iOS 4.2 or above which is the minimum requirement for airplay also make sure you're connected to the same network as the Apple TV once you're all set up streaming a simple just launched a video stored on your device or watch a YouTube video and hit play you'll see a new airplay icon show up click it select Apple TV and the video will be streaming on your TV seconds later you'll notice that once the video starts playing on your TV you won't see it on your device any longer but you can still use it to press pause fast-forward or rewind music works the same way launch a song or playlist and hit the air play button to stream it to your home theater you can't you see that is just and for photos head to an album open a photo and tap the air play button airplay doesn't only work with files stored on your device it's also compatible with some apps and websites there aren't many of them but the list includes iMovie VEVO Ted NPR and IMDb all of which are available on any iOS device to see the full list of apps visit my blog on how to get started with airplay if you have any questions or tips head over to my facebook page and visit how to cnet.com for more videos like this first seen it I'm Sharon Vaknin and i'll see you on the interwebs now there are any number of ways to get videos from your computer or home network to play on your TV but airplay is just so easy I cannot wait for other TV / tablet manufacturers to figure this out you hear that Samsung and Sony and how about you Vizio you too fact I'm sure there are more like toshiba but it's time to take a break and there's a lot more tech review coming up right after this welcome back to the cnet tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at seen it continuing on in the good when it comes to all-in-one desktop PCs the imac remains the one to be but a new offering from a company better known for their laptops is hoping to grab some of the spotlight hi I'm rich brown senior editor for CNN com today we're going to take a look at the toshiba DX 1210 so the first desktop we've seen from toshiba in about 10 years it's decided to come back in the desktop game with an all-in-one and it actually has done a pretty good job with this system goes for about nine hundred thirty-five dollars and for that you get a 21 and a half inch screen a wireless mouse and keyboard relatively fast performance and a generally versatile system it has a touch screen although there's no big touch application that sort of rounds up the touch experience it's more like a series of apps that are pretty good we also like that the system has an HDMI input which means you can use it to connect external devices like cable box now that really makes the system useful in a smaller space like a dorm room or den where you might not be able to have both the desktop and a standalone display so you can see this issue is a fairly clean design it's a basic black here in the front there's some silver gray acts sending down at the bottom here as well as a pedestal base and we can show off the touch interface a little bit here so here we have this to achieve a real-time app which essentially takes your recent application to document history puts it into a carousel that you can control with your finger now of course the standard Windows desktop is a touch base and it works as expected here you'll see it's pretty simple there's an SD card reader so as a couple of analog audio outs and USB 3 Jack's which is actually not very common on all in one so that's a nice touch and over here on this side you can see there's a DVD burner right here now the upper portion of the side here you can see various buttons they control the screen brightness volume as well as swap the video signal if you plug in an HDMI component now on the back here's the HDMI Jack we've got a couple of the USB ports over here as well as an Ethernet jack and that's really about it for the inputs in the back of the system there is one nice touch though behind this little door here is another USB port that has the wireless receiver for the wire mouse and keyboard now we've liked that this is hidden over here but yet it's still available if you say don't want to use these devices you can take out that receiver and you get another USB port now the system doesn't quite hit the sweet spot for this price range it has a relatively fast core i5 CPU as well as four gigs of RAM in a one terabyte hard drive that's a pretty decent hardware loadout but the display is maybe a little bit small for this price we've seen 23 inch monitors for example in all-in-ones for under a thousand dollars it's also no blu-ray drive which is not unheard of an on one's around this price if we were going to improve the system we'd probably get rid of the touch input and use that cost savings to either have a bigger monitor or maybe have a faster CPU or some other feature that's maybe more generally useful overall though toshiba's done a pretty good job configuring the system we recommend it to anybody that needs an all-in-one for day-to-day productivity as well as the convenience of an HDMI input time rich brown this is the toshiba DX 1210 welcome back to sheba it's nice to see you in the desktop game again right now for a look at a story ripped from the headlines let's turn our attention to the bad it's deja vu all over again for apples security squad as yet another alleged iPhone prototype has gone missing after being left in a bar again brian Tong has the story in this clip from the apple byte what's happening Brian song here and welcome to the alpha bite it's all the good stuff and bad stuff inside the world of Apple now I've said that 145 times and sure feels a little like deja vu but so will this story Apple has lost another iphone in a bar now according to cnet exclusive sources say the latest iPhone prototype went missing in San Francisco in late July and may have been sold on craigslist for two hundred dollars and apples attempts to find the device have been unsuccessful details of the device are still unclear such as what version of iOS it was running and even what it looks like but this time the iphone was lost at a mexican restaurant and bar called cava 22 known for their tequila and shrimp lime ceviche yummy and sparking Apple to contact San Francisco police saying the device was priceless so you would think Doug guys why don't you just use Find My iPhone well the big a trace the phone to a home which then led them to a man who had been at cava 22 that night San Francisco police and Apple investigators were given permission to search the home but found nothing then before leaving the house Cena sources say an apple employee offered the man money for the phone no questions asked but the man continued to deny he had any knowledge of the phone so the lesson of the day my friends blame it on the alcohol and keep him away from the bars you crazy alcoholics now one time is bad enough but twice that's a bad apple so the apple byte crew decided you know what we're not going to sit here and do nothing we're going to do whatever it takes to find the missing iPhone you missing iphone missing an iphone i really want to find him wait have you seen this iphone missing I fall have you seen have you seen have you seen this hey we'll keep trying Tim Cook you can count on us and this story just keeps getting better and better so keep an eye on our continuing coverage at cnet news com and now it's time for this week's bottom line now we all know the honda civic isn't the most stylish fastest or best handling car in the world but for just about 40 years it's been the kind of dependable and economical car that people cannot live without and the 2012 civic hybrid is all that and then some when 40 MPG is something you get with a standard gas engine the Civic Hybrid has to do a bit better is 44 enough let's drive the 2012 honda civic hybrid and check the text the new civic hybrid is revised right along the lines of all the new 2012 spot it quickly by blue chrome accents on the outside a couple new screen modes inside but mostly by its bigger engine yet higher MPG now inside the Civic there are barely any cues that tell you this is a hybrid versus the gas engine car which we just looked at a few days ago you've got this econ button over here in this car of course it changes a very different powertrain it makes the hybrid powertrain extremely stingy as opposed to making modest changes in the gas engine car right there dead center is your IMA logo this is Honda's integrated Motor Assist that's their technology that competes with Toyota's hybrid synergy drive up here on the I mid that's a 5 inch LCD that is new on the 2012 Civic there you find some more cues that you're in a hybrid aside from the usual fuel economy and distance to empty you've also got a green gauge here and one that shows power flow on the vehicle stuff you wouldn't have in a gas engine car there's your battery level also and I think unique to the hybrid I'm not mistaken is the ability to set a wallpaper for that I mid display I didn't see that in the gas engine car kind of a weird differentiator if that's the case and what really makes sense in this car because it's a hybrid are those two segmented bars alongside the digital speedo those are the ones that coach you from blue to turquoise to green how efficiently you're driving handy on the gas engine car really makes sense on this one we know this head unit all too well it's an optional navigation head unit if you get that trim level it's an okay nav interface it's not my favorite the whole thing that was kind of busy and dated but make sure you check out our 2012 standard Civic video for a full detailed look at this new cabin one choice transmission on this guy as with most hybrids it's a CVT a continuously variable transmission doesn't have real gears that's just one belt pulley system it varies all the time to keep this guy on the sweet spot now let's go see what's plugging into it quite a few changes here under the hood on this new 2012 civic hybrid they bumped up the gas engine from one point three liters to 1.5 still has the electric motor attached to it of course the totals on this are 110 horsepower all in and 127 foot-pounds of torque perfectly good numbers you're going to get to 60 in 10.1 seconds again not the point on this car the mpg is so here's where they are 44 City 44 highway guess what 44 average and that's up a few mpg from the outgoing model honda's IMA hybrid system hard couples the electric motor to the gas engine so they always turn together but the electric motor can power the car alone a small amount of the time it's something you'll barely detect and like many of the newer hybrids the Civic turns driving into some little video game where you earn leaves as you drive Greenlee and they in turn that up to some vehicle lifetime score but I don't think you can win anything I recall the previous civic hybrid teen kind of a coffee grinder of a thing just kind of crude around the edges this car does not suffer from that it's got electric power steering which is really nice and linear than a very good job on that and everybody who drives this car comments on the ride quality it's got a smooth both in terms of this how it's sprung as well in terms of this how it motivates itself there's no lumpy engagement any more than you normally get with a hybrid which kicks an electric motor in and out from time to time let's check the start/stop technology that can be bulky in cars like this I'm coming to a stop sign now let's see how it goes off and more importantly how seamlessly it comes back on there's my stop it goes right away yeah really quick that's one of the better restarts in the start/stop world right now the power comes on nicely they've dialed in the torque for everyday driving so that it's there when you need it and handling in a car like this is as you might imagine it's fine it's you it's good transportation quality handling really it's the ride quality I think people are going to respond to in this vehicle and the overall smoothness of how the power comes on and of course the mpg I get the feeling there's a little bit less mechanical noise intrusion as well I don't hear things worrying as much as I do in some lower-cost hybrids where you hear things that sound like an elevator mechanism going up and down when you come to lower speeds I'm not picking that up here it's a better sound insulation than some our 2012 civic hybrid this all-new model is going to run you 24 8 base now couple of big options in one small one on top of that the nav package adds $1,500 that's navigation live traffic via FM not XM radio but it does add XM radio in that package and voice command for the nap and also you go leather for 1,200 bucks you're only ala carte tech is XM radio by itself for about 350 the bottom line this week 44 miles per gallon sold now I know you're not going to turn a lot of heads driving a civic as usual but hey you won't be spending much time at the gas pump either alright that's it for this time everyone but come back next week for an all-new cnet tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com see you next time and thank you for watching