Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review iphone 4 madness on the streets of New York City motorola shows off the droid x the xbox 360 goes on a diet and our definitive first look at the new iphone it's all coming up right now hey everyone I'm Hollywood and welcome to the cnet tech review the show where we run down the hottest videos of the week tell you which ones are good which ones are bad and offer some tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's get started with the good it seems like just weeks ago we were standing here talking about the announcement of Apple's iPhone 4 and now finally after two whole weeks it's here CNET's Maggie Reardon was on hand Thursday morning in New York when the iphone 4 went on sale hi I'm Maggie ridden with cnet com and i'm here at the apple store on Fifth Avenue where the fourth generation iphone is about to go on sale even though there were some hiccups earlier this month with pre-orders it doesn't seem to have dampen enthusiasm in fact people have been camped out for days waiting for the new phone as you can see there are hundreds of people the line is wrapped around the block what has brought you out on this hot day standing in line waiting for the iphone why iphone 4 because all the iphones are the greatest and i flew away from chicago just to be in New York cuz I never been in New York and I want an iphone in New York so here I am if you buy a song on iTunes it goes straight to your phone I don't gotta sync up multitasking and folders everything do you realize some of these things you could have gotten just with the upgrade to your 3gs yeah I know how many iPhones are you getting well two will come into my house as we speak and I'm online for the third one which features are you most excited about with the new iphone 4 new style the shape of it to practice a little bit lighter and the fact that it's 4g well did you know that's actually not 4g it's it's just the fourth generation dude does that change your mind no I still like the fact that it's a different look see some when you're talking to over the phone kind of late with the Jetsons is about sound a growing after cell phone of the way for every year I'm really excited about the video chatting feature because my dad's in Atlanta he's getting one today too so we'll be able to talk to each other I'm just looking to be cool and it's really hard at my age but I'll try he tried to pre-order your act on what happened it was very hectic you again error messages I guess we know the different kosas we're just trying to preorder oil at the same time we tried to pre-order and just the system failure and so you know we decided that we would come down meet people enjoy the festivities actually seen it has been the place where I have brokered most of my information about technology as well as the iphone i'm in the apple store in a steady stream of customers are coming in to get their new phones unlike years past the activation process has been going pretty smoothly customers are in and out about 20 to 25 minutes what are your first impression it's amazing it's really fast and it works really efficiently in what's your favorite feature now that you have it in your hands I think the camera actually you just got your phone you're here with your friend um and you're going to try out the facetime adeline let's see how it goes goes Chris what's your phone number your friend doesn't have AT&T service in the Apple Store not the problem AT&T sucks they can have it on verizon it'd be awesome to me for me really good but a teensy is hard well I don't get service in my house can you believe that in my house so far folks you've been playing around with the phone are very happy with the exception of a few glitches trying to get its new feature store I'm just wondering what Apple's going to do next year maybe they'll just bring it to verizon I'm Maggie Riordan with CNN com so which do you think was more of a hassle waiting in line for however many hours are trying to get through the pre-order process either way there's got to be an easier way to buy a phone and in other really tiny computer that makes phone calls news Motorola has stepped up its game with a new droid in fact they held a big party for the sole purpose of unveiling the droid x to our very own Bonnie cha and like a few other people hi everyone I'm Bonnie tuck senior editor at cnet com and I'm here with your first look at the motorola droid x for verizon this is the carrier's newest droid device and i'm gonna walk you through the design really quick on front you've got a 4.3 inch wvga capacitive touchscreen looks really gorgeous it's running a revised version of motoblur so it's not quite like the cliq or anything like that it's a very subdued which I like a lot better below the screen you've got four hard buttons you got the menu button the HOME key back and search on the side here we've got the microUSB port as well as an hdmi port so you will be able to hook it up to an HDTV and watch video as well as your photos speaking of photos it has an 8 megapixel camera and can record 720p video so it's HD video there is no front-facing camera but Motorola has said that they will come out with other devices with front facing cameras later on here on the left side there's a volume rocker and also a dedicated camera key and finally on top we've got a power button and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack now as far as software like I said it's running motoblur it's gonna launch with android 2.1 but android 2.2 froyo will be coming to the droid x as well as the droid later this summer and this will also bring the flash 10 capabilities for the other things on here all the wireless oxygens 3g bluetooth gps as well as Wi-Fi and you can use the joy 2x as a mobile hotspot for up to five devices but that will run you in additional twenty dollars a month on top of the $30 data plan just FYI multimedia is going to be huge on this so they are launching with a dedicated blockbuster app a lot like the hd2 so you can rent and buy movies from the phone it'll also have V CAST video as well as NFL mobile and all other verizon services the droid x will be available starting to buy 15 for 1 99 99 with a two-year contract and after a hundred dollar mail-in rebate and it'll also be available other retail outlets I'm Bonnie Tom this has been your first look at the motorola droid x for verizon that is a good-looking phone but see Bonnie just reminded me that I am still waiting for my Froyo why can't it just be here already come on moving on during Microsoft's Xbox 360 keynote at e3 last week it was announced that everyone in attendance would receive one of the brand new slimmer xboxes brian Tong was there and his 360 showed up in the mail on Monday so now here's his first look Brian song here with cnet com and this is a first look at the new xbox 360 250 gig model so let's take a look at some of its cosmetics it's now sporting a piano black finish that's really a fingerprint magnet it has more of an edgy design with sharp lines and vents but this is clearly a more male gear design now this new 360 is packed with a 250 gig hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi with 802 11 n microsoft says it's a whisper quiet and it's definitely quieter compared to the previous 360 model which is a good thing for Xbox errs now on the front side the buttons on the 360 are all touch sensitive now there are no physical buttons here so two powered up just press your finger on the silver button and it fires up to open up the game disc tray you just swipe your finger over this little notch and you'll also be able to find two USB ports here on the front on the side the hard drive is different so it won't be interchangeable with your old one all you have to do is pop this side plate off and then just pull this tab to pop out the 250 gig drive you have the xbox transfer cable you can use it to move your game saves and files over from your old xbox to this new one but if you don't there will be one available for 1999 now if we flip it to the back you'll see your connection for power optical audio the standard a/v connection for the 360 composite or component cables and HDMI this port here is an auxiliary connection specifically for Microsoft's Kinect previous models will have to plug in the connect with USB and then have a separate cable running to power and you'll find your Ethernet and three additional connections giving the 360 a total of five now when you compare the new xbox side by side with the previous model Microsoft has cut off some of the fat with the design it actually can fit inside of the original 360 and they've trimmed down the sides of the power supply as well the new xbox 360 retails for 299 and his new redesign packs more value into the system for the same price i'm brian Tong for cnet com with their first look at the xbox 360 250 gig model we also found out this week that the xbox will no longer suffer from the dreaded red ring of death because they took out the little red LEDs yeah it's kind of like the way taxi drivers cover up their check engine light with a piece of paper they do that as we learned last week one of the major highlights from e3 was microsoft kinect for xbox which allows players to put down their controllers and just jump around like total goof balls so here's Jeff Bakalar with his hands off first look hey what's going on everyone on Jeff Bakalar for sina com we've got a first look here with Microsoft Kinect Microsoft's motion control system that they unveiled at e3 2010 had some first hands-on with two games connect joyride and I also got to play kinect adventures there's a little bit of a learning curve with all the new motion control there's no physical control involves you're gonna have to learn how to sort of play the game without anything in your hands it's a lot of fun you're going to get a good workout because you're moving around a lot and we played a few games I was a big fan of Kinect Adventures had me in a raft and I was jumping around to collect pins there's a lot of fun you really have to move around a lot it's not just your hands you have to move your entire body around really good time also got the check out connect Joyride which is a racing game where you use both your hands to control the car you're driving and body motion to create boosts and to perform tricks while your cars in the air had a lot of fun with that too so that's our first look at Microsoft Kinect you could try it out for yourself when it comes out November fourth for the xbox 360 I'm Jeff Bakalar for cnet com thanks for watching hi I'm Scott sign and it's the first look at officemax 2011 preview now Mac users might want an experience with office that matches a little more of what you can get out of office for windows and the good news is that later this year officemax looks like it's gonna be promising an experience that's a lot like office for windows and gives a few new wrinkles and features that we haven't seen before notably outlook and one of the advantages of outlook should be that the database file is actually going to be saved as a bunch of files instead of one large one what that means it's easier spotlight searching and in addition should work better with time machine now on the Microsoft Word side a cool thing is that it works a lot more seamlessly with Microsoft's web apps now Apple has a lot of great software but one thing they're not so fantastic with us working in the cloud one nice thing about word on office mac 2011 is that it works seamlessly with microsoft's web apps allowing you to save to its its cloud environment and also pull documents off from light editing to actually bring it down in a word for more full-featured editing we'll find out a lot more as we get closer you should expect it later this year and it should be a nice surprise for anybody who's looking to really turn their Mac into a full office machine I'm Scott Stein and this has been a first look at officemax 2011 preview so Jeff gets to play xbox and Scott has to talk about office for mac sorry Scott you got host still on the fence trying to decide if it's time to upgrade to an iphone 4 well if you've got an iphone 3g or 3gs or even a newer ipod touch you too can start using some of the iphone 4s features right now in fact here are some tips from brian Tong for you to enjoy while your update is downloading many of you have loaded your iphone or ipod touch with the latest iOS four and you're playing around with all the new features like multitasking and folders but there are a lot of hidden gems you might not know about in the settings with the latest OS you now have the ability to turn off your cell phone data usage while still using the phone just for calls and text messages all you have to do is go into your settings then general and then network and you'll see the cellular data option and this is a big deal for people who want to save data now I'm messaging on my phone a lot and there's a couple new features here as well go to your messages settings and then you can turn on the character count function if you're on a tight text message plan you'll be able to tell if you're about to go over the character limit and avoid an extra message from being sent you also have the ability to search through your messages so if you don't see it just pull down to reveal the search bar type in a word and voila there are your messages with that word in them and while we're talking about search when using the universal search in iOS four when you type in a word you now have the ability to search the web or Wikipedia for that term now let's shift over to photos your pictures can be organized into albums but if you sync your iphone with apples iphoto your pictures can also be organized by faces and places and it's just kind of fun to see where your pictures have been taken on a map moving it around and looking at all of them and to any pictures in your camera roll that you decide to email right after you hit the send button you'll see a prompt that lets you choose the size of the picture that you can send off i'm brian Tong for cnet com and there's still more iOS secrets we have for you and you might even find some for yourself so use them wisely i know brian has a few more tricks up his sleeve but it is time for a break we'll be back with more iOS four secrets and a lot more right after this welcome back to the cnet tech review your weekly digest of all things good and bad from cnet TV before we get to that which is bad here's another batch of secrets to help you get the most out of iOS four hey guys i'm brian Tong from cnet com and i'm back with more little secrets you might not know about that are hidden inside of iOS four now i know this may not be the sexiest one but anyone with an iphone 3gs third gen ipod touch or the new iphone can now take advantage of iOS force data protection feature that enhances the built-in hardware encryption all you have to do is go to your settings then general and passcode and create one once you do that scroll down to the bottom and you should see data protection is enabled and you are good to go now folders is a big deal for iOS four fans but a fun little trick is that you can now bring folders down into the dock as well and access them from there in the mail app the new threaded emails is a favorite feature of mine but you might not like it so in your settings go to mail contacts and calendars and you can toggle on or off the organized by thread option once inside the actual mail app you'll also see that contact pictures will display within the email in the corner which is a nice little touch now we all play music on our iphones and ipod touches and you can now create and edit your own playlists directly in the music app and they will sink back to your computer the next time you connect it this is another killer feature and if you're also searching for songs by album there's a whole new layout with artwork and additional information now if you're the type of person who thinks lyrics or podcasts information just gets in the way you can turn them off in your settings by going to iPod and switching off the lyrics and podcast info option I'm Brian song for cnet com with another batch of iOS four tips for you use them wisely I think I'm gonna stick with my on the go 17 playlist I love that one oh hey this screen changed I guess it's time for the bad so many phones play HD video these days it's shocking but are you worried that your portable device does too much well if you get yourself a cool TV video player that will never be a problem again hey I'm Tom Bell for CNN com and today we're taking a first look at the kula TV this is a touchscreen portable TV priced at one hundred ninety nine dollars that streams video over a Wi-Fi internet connection you get access to over four hundred channels from all over the world and all the content is free the premise is pretty neat but the execution needs some help design-wise you get a 4.3 inch screen with decent viewing angles but it's a little dim and there's no way to adjust the brightness on the top yeah buttons for volume and power and a fold-out antenna that one seems a little odd for a Wi-Fi device to doesn't help much with reception and three uses a fragile plastic design you may as well glue this thing down and pretend it isn't there on the back there's a speaker and a reset switch and on the side is a headphone jack microSD slot USB port and a socket for the included power adapter which you'll need for charging the internal battery you also get two gigabytes of internal memory which you can use to load up photos music or videos though the sound quality isn't great and videos lack any kind of control for pause skipper rewind as far as the interface goes they kept things simple with only four options on the main menu streaming TV stored media clock and settings the settings page really only has one useful option for configuring the Wi-Fi connection but it works and it gives you a little keyboard for inputting passwords we wish that same keyboard would have made its way to the TV section though as a way for searching through all the stations for something worth watching instead stations are listed by language location or category which can make for a lot of trial and error for example to look up a local California station I can select USA but then all the stage for alaska arizona california and other states get lumped together once you select the station it will buffer and play after a few seconds but video quality is unpredictable and sometimes choppy to the point of being unwatchable even when signal strength is good our experience overall was disappointing the same price and ipod touch includes more features better design and arguably offers just as much free video content when you factor in podcasts and video apps you also have the option to buy and directly download premium TV content on an ipod touch which is something that the cool TV doesn't offer so that's the cool of TV from sun Gail you like the idea of taking the world's free streaming TV content and putting it in your pocket but for this price the hardware and the UI just doesn't cut it Christina calm I'm Donnell bell so yeah good idea bad execution sorry kula and that brings us to this week's bottom line so far this week we've seen people online waiting for the iphone people buying the iphone tips for using the iphone well i think the time has come to pass judgment on the iphone 4 so here's kent german to do just that hi I'm Kent German senior editor here at cnet com today with say a first look at the Apple iPhone 4 this of course is Apple's newest iPhone has a lot of new features has a redesign first we're gonna take it out of box though just pop it off the top their annual there it is so from the start you see this is a very different iPhone and design take it off the lid there and inside you have a course a small instruction sheet you get the small wall plug that we've seen a normal USB cable and the standard iphone earbuds so pretty standard as far as the box goes now will the iphone 3g and 3gs merely were tweaks of that original iphones design this is a lot different it's flat on both the front and the back so the nice thing is is it doesn't well but when you put it on the table anymore we can pair at the iphone 3g that we have here you'll see that it is a bit thinner it's actually a 25-percent thinner apple says this is a thinnest smartphone around that certainly may be true for now but you know the thin iphone the thin smartphone race changes constantly so i don't think we'll hold that title for long it does have glass on the front and on the back I do notice the back of particular tracks a lot of smudges and fingerprints that we didn't see on the previous phone so you want to watch that you see a metal band and circling the entire phone it actually is a new antenna as well you do see a couple of notches on the top on the side but its Apple didn't say that this would improve call quality they didn't actually promise that perhaps this redesign is an effort to make those things better some of the other changes to see is there's a new noise cancellation microphone here right on the top that's next to the 3.5 mm at headset jack and the power switch here on the side the sim tray which used to be on the top is moved to the side of course that is a micro-sim slot the volume rocker has been redesigned it's now split volume buttons a small change but I like it actually the silence button has been read them just a little bit about you to barely notice it and down here in the bottom you see that same 30 pin connector jack the speaker and the microphone and of course the home button is completely the same the phone is four point eight ounces so it actually is the same way as the original iphone the iphone 3g and iphone 3gs were just a little bit lighter you don't really notice it it definitely is smaller though and I Lotus how mediately taken out of the box it is a bit narrow and measured across the front face and I already told you that it is thinner I do think that when i look at it alone it certainly looks small and of course you particularly notice it when you put the phone side-by-side a couple other changes in design you see that there's a camera right here that is a VGA camera you can use that for self portraits or for the facetime video calling feature it is 5 megapixel it also records HD video the iphone 4s and the first handset to offer this feature but it certainly works well we recorded some quick videos and they looked really great there's still no white balance or brightness or color tones or anything like that but kind of used to seeing that from Apple but never really taken the camera and add a lot of customization with it but I think what these updated certainly makes a camera pretty good along with the new camera you will know a couple tweaks to the interface there is the control for the flash you also see a small control for switching between the front and rear cameras so everything is really accessible in front so it's pretty cool the facetime feature is Apple's new video calling feature that's of course the video chat service that you can use with another iphone 4 person and be able to chat over the air it do you need to be on Wi-Fi to use it just for the time being they say through the end of this year the video can be a little pixelated it can be a little jerky I think it works pretty well though and it's certainly fun I just can't imagine it lasting much past the novelty stage yeah the other restriction is don't get too close also we need to talk about that display of course this is apples Retina display and the reason they call that is they think they say that it's resolution is beyond what's perceivable by the human eye there's been some debate about whether that's really true but I can say that the display is absolutely stunning you can't see any pixels at all colors are fantastic text looks great websites photos videos everything I was looking at was really really great when you put it next to you really need to get zoom in to see it but you do see a definite difference there Apple certainly stepped up the display and made something that's really competitive so glad to see that the iphone four does have a new processor and from the start I can tell you that it was completely faster doing anything opening apps going between menus especially that camera shutter actually that was really really quick but this phone is certainly faster than what we've seen before as I said the iphone four does have a bigger battery of course we haven't had done a full battery drain yet but interest in the brief testing I've done it seems like it's doing it well with the multi task and we saw with iOS four there of course is the concern that that will put a drain on the battery faster I've the way Apple Design multi-tasking they say that its nascent going to do that and I haven't found anything yet but it's always nice to see a bigger battery so certainly welcome those of course the feature wise to the iphone 4 brings a lot of things and with the added iOS four it brings even more I won't get into the iOS four changes here but if you want to learn more about the iOS four changes i did a first look at the Iowas for so you can check that out on the whole this is the biggest upgrade to the iphone since the iphone 3g I think we've took them independently if you took the iphone 4 you took the AOS for you took those independently they be great but we need to add them together you really come with a compelling sleek and really nice device of course there are so many great smart phones out there so not going to say that it's the best is to do that to do that would really ignore so many smartphones and how fast the technology world develops if you're an iPhone fan and if you like what Apple has designed as a smartphone experience this is a great phone i'm kent german and this is the apple iphone 4 the bottom line this week get a bumper I know they don't look that cool but they could help prevent scratches and we're already hearing some reports of signal loss when your hand comes into contact with the external antennas oops and that's our show for this week everyone tune in next week when we'll have a car tech prizefight mashup between the nissan leaf and the chevy volt until then don't be afraid to check out more great seen that video like kent's full review of iOS four at Cena TV com see you next time and thank you for watching you