Gadgetory

this week on the scene that tech review get touchy feely with the new Nook eReader how to make the switch from iphone to android home inventors show off at maker faire and the droid x2 and Xperia Play leave us wanting more it's all coming up right now hey everyone welcome to the scene that 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 and we also offer some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line I'm Brian Tom filling in for Mollywood who's on a very special assignment this week but as usual let's start things off with the good first up there were a couple of big announcements in the Windows Phone and ereader worlds this week here's Bonnie sean-david car noise to tell you all about them hey everyone I'm Banita senior editor at cnet com and we are here in New York where Microsoft just previewed their new windows phone mango update there are actually over 500 features coming with the update but they're concentrating on three key areas and that's communications the browser and apps some of the highlights of update include a group contacts now and as well as linked in boxes so you can now link your personal inbox loop which is something we've been looking forward to with the internet browser you now get ie9 with support for html5 and as for apps you get third-party multitasking and they gave a demo here and it looks pretty easy so that's a big feature we've been looking for a couple other highlights include Twitter and LinkedIn integration into your peoples hub as well as dynamic live tiles for your app so you can see which means right on your Start story all these features will be coming with a mango update due out this fall they're not talking about handsets yet but we do think it will hear more about it in late summer or fall so look forward to some more hardware and mango update i'm bonnie chen this has been your preview of the windows phone video hi I'm David Carr nguoi and I'm here with the new nook this is being branded as the Simple Touch reader it has a touch screen that has neo node infrared technology that's the technology that's in the sony reader and also the new Kobo touch edition this device comes with two gigabytes of internal memory as well as an expansion slot and microSD expansion slot so you can add up to 32 gigs on a card and that allows you to sort literally thousands of books the one of the big deals here is the battery life Barnes our noblest saying you can go up to two months on a single charge and that means that's about twice as long as the Kindle right now as you can see there are very few buttons on this device there's one main nuke button and there is a power button that's really it you navigate everything through the touch screen there's a homescreen of shopping all the things that you would expect from the old nook but it is on a touchscreen device this runs on android 2.1 it weighs 7 point 5 ounces that's just a shade heavier than the Kobo touch edition but it is a very light device marginal has had sort of this soft touch paint to the back so it's got a little bit of rubberized feel to it there's also some buttons on the side of the screen that allow you to do things like go fast forward through a book in terms of font sizes you get seven different font sizes and there are six different styles of fonts it reads PDF files but does not read Word files and there are no nook apps available for the device this is really a strictly and emitting device it has a Pearl Earring screen that's readable in direct sunlight that's the same inch screen that's in the kindle as well as new kobo reader and sony readers one of the big issues with ink is that you get sort of a ghosting effect but Barnes and Noble has really taken a lot of care into making sure those flashing has been reduced this is really a pretty quick device it has a 800 megahertz texas instruments omap processor in it this is a Wi-Fi only device there is no 3g is a hundred thirty nine dollars that's the same price as the kindle Wi-Fi over it is twenty-five dollars more than the kindle with special offers barnes noble is making a big deal about these social networking features in those dice there's something called nuke friends that allows you to share what you're reading what's in your library with friends one of the nice things about having the touch screen is you can do the dictionary lookup you can actually tap and hold on a word and that word will come up and it'll automatically look up the word so there you have it the new nook the Simple Touch reader will soon find out whether it is a kindle killer it is a smaller device than the kindle and the touchscreen certainly adds a navigational element that the kindle does not have right now will be interesting to see what Amazon's response to it is i'm david carr nguoi and that's the new Nook the Simple Touch reader thanks for watching that new touch screen is pretty nice but the Nook isn't the only ereader that has one as David mentioned he also got a look at the new Kobo touch and you can see more of it over at Cena TV com now tourney from touch screens to touch pads next up Scott sign brings us a look at the latest in the thinkpad edge series from Lenovo though not as slim or as light as some of its competitors this new edge does feature a new touch pad design plus many other features thinkpad fans have come to expect from a business laptop hey I'm Scott Stein senior editor at cnet com and this is the lenovo thinkpad edge e 2 20's now what good is a laptop if it's not portable and sometimes it's nicer for a laptop to be even more portable did this thinkpad edge 2 20 s kind of falls into that ultraportable category what does that mean well it's a little bigger than a netbook it's a little smaller than a full-size laptop it's kind of that strange middle ground for the 12.5 inch screen and these dimensions it means that's going to feel more compact in your bag and it's not going to feel quite as heavy it's about 3.2 pounds which is a nice way to carry around and it's under an inch thick and really what the 12.5 inch screen amounts to is it kind of compresses the edges here making for that small sighs and lying the keyboard to fill the space and it is a full-size keyboard which is nice going into that why do you get a thinkpad while you get it for its business features and its business software but also a lot of people like its ergonomics the thinkpad edge keyboard is a new raised keyboard we saw this on the thinkpad edge design last year it's also on the thinkpad x1 that we just reviewed it's great it's a really nice raised keyboard got concave keys we won't go too much more into it but if you're a keyboard nut you're going to like it also there's a trackpad on here that's a click pad there are no more buttons on the bottom here this is a dual click zone area there are buttons up here but what those are for is for this red nubbin that is known as the trackpoint this is on most think pads and it's some people like it because on a plane they don't have to move their finger around as much anyway there's not as much cramping here because those buttons have been removed so there's more finger space there a couple of upscale features on this edge 2 20's to that put it a little bit above the standard thinkpad line infinity glass glossy display Dolby sound and it's speakers there's also a neat little light that comes up that lights up your keyboard we've sent that under the thinkpads before but it's a nice feature to have and it comes complete with your basic ports through USB 2.0 it's got hdmi it also has full laptop specs inside from about 4 gigs of ram in this one a 320 gigabyte hard drive it's got a core i5 processor that's second gen intel core i5 although it is low voltage which means it runs at a slower speed it's actually the same processor that we saw on the samsung series 9 really thin laptop that we reviewed earlier this year the starting price on the edge 2 20's is 749 that's a lot cheaper than the sixteen hundred dollars of the samsung series 9 now does not as thin a laptop and the battery life is not as good but when you can get a laptop like this at that price that's really nice and it's a lot more affordable than the thinkpad x1 the super high-end 13-inch laptop that we reviewed recently that's about as thin in a nutshell this is a thinkpad would carry around with us i really love the ideapad you to 60 which came out earlier in the year almost the same design but was on the ideapad side of things had a really nice slick look but last year's core i5 processor and worse battery life the battery life improvements on this are nice gets it over four hours plus it's got a faster processor you probably like that total package and at under eight hundred dollars for two gigs of RAM in that configuration it's hard to complain I'm Scott Stein and this is a look at the lenovo thinkpad edge e 2 20 s so looks like lenovo has redeemed itself after that nasty beating the thinkpad x1 suffered in last week's tech review now I'm just glad molly was the one who said it and not me now you might know I host a show called the apple byte and we're not going to make this an apple vs android battle but there are plenty of reasons why you might want to switch from apple to android drop calls yeah so here's Sharon Vaknin with some of the tips to make the process less painful hey current iphone users I'm Sharon Vaknin since you've probably already decided to switch to Android I'm not going to tell you all of the benefits of doing it you already know that you're getting a highly customizable interface and that you can choose from a huge selection of phones I also don't need to tell you that you're probably getting a faster processor and a better camera along with free turn-by-turn navigation you know these things and more so now it's time to figure out how to get all your iphone data to your shiny new android phone all right get your iphone android and computer out in front of you the least you need to do before following these steps is add your google account to your new phone by going to menu settings account and sync Add Account Google and then following the steps on the screen if you don't have a Google account there's also an option to create one let's start by transferring your contacts connect your iPhone to your computer and launch itunes click on your phone's name then go to the info tab check sync contacts with google contacts and now enter the same gmail account associated with your phone then apply the changes your contacts are now being transferred from your iphone to gmail and from gmail to your android calendars and notes are also easy to transfer on your iPhone go to settings and then mail contacts and calendars if the gmail account you're using with your Android isn't here at it then go back to mail settings tap the account and turn sinking on for calendars notes now your calendar will transfer to your new phone and your notes will be filed under a label and gmail called notes you can't sync notes back to your Android but they're safe and gmail and searchable if you ever need to find them now it's time for some bad news there's really no easy syncing for Android like there was for your iphone through iTunes everything is done with manual dragging and dropping mostly for photos videos and music let's start with photos and videos we first need to get them off your iPhone and onto your computer Mac users just connect your iPhone to your computer and launch image capture put the photos in a new folder on your desktop and hit download all if you're on Windows plug in your phone and open my computer you'll see the phone show up as an imaging device right click it and hit explore then drag and drop all the photos and videos into a new folder on your desktop now connect your Android phone to your Windows or Mac computer mount the phone and you'll see it show up on your desktop open it and find the pictures folder sometimes it's called DCIM but if you don't see one just create it you can name it photos then just drag and drop the files from your hard drive onto the android pictures folder and let it transfer once it's done the photos will show up in the gallery app on your phone and of course you can also add other photos and videos from your hard drive using the same drag and drop method the same method applies to putting music on your Android you might be thinking about your text messages and voicemail right now there's no simple way to export these items from your iPhone it's possible but the process itself really deserves its own how to if there are specific text messages you want to keep you can forward them to your email account by going to messages opening the conversation hit edit and then tap the messages you want to forward hit forward and send it to your email address that's really the only easy option with your contacts calendars photos music and videos on your new Android what are you going to do with your old iPhone well you can keep it and basically use it as an ipod or you can sell it somewhere online like gazelle or you can make mom happy and give her a nice gift for cnet I'm Sharon Vaknin and i'll see you on the interwebs see you guys that's just too complicated you'll be much happier if you just stay with your iPhone trust me I promise and thank you seriously though if you do decide to make the switch and you've transferred all your music to your new phone or to the cloud you'll probably find the standard Android music app a little bit lacking luckily we've compiled the top 5 android music player apps that you can use instead if you recently bought an android phone and about half of all smartphone buyers lately did exactly that you know it's a Swiss Army knife of a thing but how are you with the music player that comes with it mmm I'm Brian Cooley with the top 5 android music players that will make you forget how to even spell ipod courtesy of a list done by cnet's josh goldman number five is the amazon cloud player this freebie is hot new stuff by store and play the music from the cloud that's the internet or you can download the files if you like so quick five gigabytes of space is provided to you for free from amazon 20 gig if you buy just one mp3 album from them now it's not that well developed as a player in terms of managing your music just yet but it's a healthy taste of where things are going number four is called mixing this guy has something akin to the genius technology you find it itunes so it's kind of spooky how it can suggest music based on just a song or two you feed it it'll make and tune playlists that keep getting more and more like you the more you use it it also has built-in artist information of direct links out to youtube videos of their music videos and also a graphic eq and it's free but if you pay five dollars the ads go away number three is tune wiki now in my view people are either music people or their lyric people and this apt is for the ladder it'll show you time to paste lyrics subtitles while the music's playing while also getting the album art up there along with player controls you can drive it by voices well through the android voice layer and you can use it to map the locations of other tunewiki users nearby so that whole spooky obsession with lyrics thing that you've got going on can we got someone other than just your former friends oh and it's free number two is called powering now in spite of the title it doesn't just play death metal it's totally about quality sound with a 10-man eq that sweetens just about every audio format it plays just about all you can even set eq per song which given the variable quality of most of our mp3's is a welcome feature bottom line poweramp just sounds great five bucks but there is a free 15 day trial before I get you to number one don't think there are just five great audio players for Android check out Josh Goldman's full ten app slideshow on cnet com oh by the way if you have questions about using your Android phone as your in-car audio player check out the Android Atlas podcast that's at two o'clock on Thursdays that's two o'clock pacific at cnet com / live there you'll find my car tech colleague antuan goodwin and he knows how to connect all the dots between cars and android okay the number1 music player we love for android is called player pro the features what doesn't it have search download and save lyrics great tag editing 10 band EQ social network integration I love this lots of really usable home screen widgets and different lock screen widgets with customizable control options so your phone really works and feels like a true ipod this is the do-all player for android it costs an odd four dollars and fifty-one sense hmm but there is a free five day trial you're gonna love it and want to pay for it great music players for android just one more reason the smartphone will eventually eat the entire tech industry for more videos like this go to top 5 cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching wow those are some pretty good apps you know I wish itunes did all of that fine well guys it looks like it's time to take a break we'll be right back for more tech review right after this welcome back to the scene at tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at Cena TV now we've already seen some of the good stuff so you know what it must be time for the bad this week we've got a couple more android phones for your consideration now our editors had high hopes for these handsets when they were announced but it turns out they really couldn't live up to the hype the motorola droid x was one of verizon's most popular phones last year but the tech world moves fast and it's time for a new model to step in hey everyone I'm bonshaw senior editor at cnet com and I'm here with your first look at the motorola droid x2 the successor to the droid x so you really wouldn't know it just by looking at it the two phones pretty much have identical designs the x2 is the same size and weight as the original model so you're looking at a good chunk of hardware here but I wouldn't say it's any worse than the other 4.3 inch touchscreen models out there if anything the bump on the back adds just a little extra bulk while the phone looks the same Motorola did upgrade the display on the x2 from a wvga screen to a higher resolution qhd display it's a very good-looking screen but not quite a sharp or smooth as the iphones retina display or samsung super amoled plus screens still you're not going to have any problems reading what's on screen and the extra space makes it great for viewing websites and videos one other quick difference about the X tues design is that Motorola remove the dedicated camera button on the right side so now you have to use the touchscreen too not too happy about side from the display the biggest approve Minh that the x2 offers is the addition of a dual-core processor the benefit of this is that the smartphone offers snap your performance particularly when it comes to browsing and gaming I was able to play 3d games with no problem and it handled most websites with no problem the unfortunate thing is that the droid x2 isn't forgy capable so you'll have to browse on 3G speeds which isn't horrible but it would have been a nice addition for this upgraded phone because of the lack of 4G obviously the droid x2 is going to turn some people off and to be honest I was disappointed too and if you fall into that camp I'd say take a look at the HTC Thunderbolt or Samsung Droid Charge maybe wait for the Droid Bionic but if you're okay with just 3d I think there's a lot to like about the x2 it's got fast performance good call quality and battery life so you're getting a very solid performer here the motorola droid x2 is available now for 1 99 99 with a two-year contract I'm Bonnie Tom this has been your first look at the motorola droid x2 i'm nicole a senior associate editor for cnet.com and this is a first look at the sony ericsson xperia play this is essentially Sony's answer to the much-touted and much height playstation phone this phone does indeed have a slide-out gaming pad as you can see here the gamepad looks very similar to Sony's PlayStation dual shock controller you get the d-pad on the one side here and the usual PlayStation face buttons on the other side you also get the same select and start buttons on the bottom right here in the middle instead of two analog joysticks you get to touch sensitive circles these circles essentially act as the analog controls you would use these analog controls to control things like movement and camera viewing angles as you might expect the xperia play comes with a few games with it comes with bruce lee Dragon Warrior s46 a racing game as well as an old playstation classic crash bandicoot if you wish to get more games for the xperia play you can select the little button down here and that will lead you to a featured list of xperia play games on the V CAST App Store as far as the gameplay experience goes we do think these physical controls offer a Richard gameplay experience over the usual touchscreen controls of most phones however we thought the analog joystick controls just were not as responsive as we would like we ended up just using these physical controls for the most part however not all games are configured to use these gameplay controls so make sure you find the games that are meant for the xperia play on the whole we found the gameplay experience very immersive using these physical controls it's definitely much more of a richer gameplay experience than just using the touchscreen controls also on the side of the phone here are the left and right shoulder buttons the Xperia Play ships with the latest version of android gingerbread 2.3 they did not clutter up the phone with any fancy interface on the front of the Xperia Play is a very bright and colorful 4-inch capacitive touch display you get up to five customizable home screens you also get all the usual gingerbread features above the display is a front-facing vga camera and on the back is a 5 megapixel camera lights and LED flash so it's the sony ericsson xperia play for you if you're a serious mobile gamer that wants to take your gaming to the next level then this does offer a Richard gameplay experience but there are a few faults the phone doesn't have 4g LTE and the analog joysticks are wanting we do think it's a better game play experience than most other touchscreen smartphones but we don't think it's enough for you to give up your PSP or nintendo DS just yet these sony ericsson xperia play is available for around two hundred dollars of the two-year service agreement with verizon wireless i'm nicole unas has been the first look at new sony ericsson xperia play alright so those phones aren't total failures but come on motorola no 4g seriously and like Nicole said I'll pass on the Xperia Play and stick with my PSP now let's wrap things up with this week's bottom line each year Maker Faire events across the country give home inventors and artists the opportunity to show off their creations to the public now last weekend the crew from the crave podcast took a tour of the Bay Area edition of Maker Faire and here's what they found hey I'm Donnell Bell and i'm eric franklin and we're at the 2011 Maker Faire in San Mateo California this is a celebration of inventors and their inventions crack enos all kinds of cool stuff and there's always some cool tech to see so let's go inside and check it out so as originally started as kind of a goofy halloween costume project is a shareware program and the models are available from google sketchup there's a halo costuming wiki what is this exactly this is a kinetic sculpture kinetic artist to do a different sort of a wide range of kinetic work there's a button here that you can push and hold and when you do that cause we bobble up and down beautiful as they should be you're here to show off awesome robot sculpture Ella term we use is kinetic sculpture my particular approach is to use only things that I can find key hole covers ukulele knobs the whole head is a voltage meter that's been flipped upside down and cut it out this one's name is doubtful because that's the center line reading on this gauge here I know there's a story behind how you've actually come to create this i disassembled typewriters exclusively and i reassemble them into human figures and animals I don't solder I don't blue I don't weld I don't wire things together I just use the existing parts of typewriters and reassemble everything this is the plasma Drive of the Reagan gothic rocket ship which is a 40-foot tall retro-styled rocket ships which is currently installed on the pier of San Francisco the science fact is this is the platform for studying a high-voltage phenomena called the dielectric barrier discharge as it turns this crackles with with high-voltage electricity and you're going to do that for us right now no unfortunately we can't turn off high voltage here I think there's probably it's probably the wait wait wait again it requires darkness and it's something of an intimate affair but there's some great pic videos of it on my webpage almost scientific locom it's kind of fun I've never done anything vaguely artistic in my life this is a send-up of the typical tract home of an urban sprawl the chassis is a Jewish water pipe it runs it about a good jogging speed something you don't want the flamingo's to blow off so these are the boxing all the different routines are stored in the Android phone is that and that's sending that information out to another microcontroller inside the baton motor is a transference and the controller through the motors alright come on give me the hug I'm ready ok what are you showing here at maker faire today so we're showing fire gym which is a rock experience using rock van which is a video game basically the way it works is we have we have my friend John over here playing the guitar we took that guitar you plug into the computer it sends data to the Arduino which is a little microcontroller that uh basically controls anything you want to it's completely open source you can program anything on take start five volts that you got from there do we know and puts it on and sends it to the relay which gets which makes the dot five volts 120 right so 120 volts goes into one of these solenoids and the solenoids make it open up when they get when they get electricity and then the propane flows right through and out the top the bottom line this week I want a robot hug but that's it though you know guys I won't let this thing get past first base that would be just weird or not okay folks that's going to be our show but we'll be back next week with a brand new cnet tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com see you next time and thanks for watching