Categories
Gadgets Nokia

Turn Any Display Into TouchScreen With Nokia Plug And Touch

Nokia has showcased some pretty cool upcoming technology at the recently concluded Nokia World conference in London. One such technology that is yet to be available for public consumption is the “Plug and Touch” system that lets users transform any display into a touchscreen display.

Plug and Touch is basically an application that runs on Nokia N8 and it uses the 12-megapixel camera on the phone to detect users’ finger movements over the HDMI-connected display. Based on these finger movements, the application can let users pick selections and process the requests. Check out this video demo for a greater understanding.

Nokia believes that the technology can be made much more sophisticated in the future with the help of Wi-Fi streaming over DLNA that will make it easier for the system to be used without having the phone clamped into position. This definitely looks very interesting.

Categories
HTC Mobile

HTC EVO 4G Unresponsive TouchScreen To Be Addressed In A Patch

There have been several online posters who have observed that their new HTC EVO 4G phone has some issues in registering touch input – especially when the phone is grounded. Several videos (you can find one below) and forum postings have noted this issue with the new HTC smartphone.

According to reports on BGR, HTC has acknowledged that the touch screen sensitivity issue has been plaguing several users from arid regions and that the company is working on a software patch that will fix this issue.

HTC has not had a good night’s sleep in a while. Just a few days back, we had reported of another issue with HTC EVO 4G where customers noticed the bottom part of the screen separating out. The company has however dismissed it as “minor” at this point though they are learned to have made fixes to the assembly line to prevent the occurence of this issue in future productions.

[via BGR]

Categories
Mobile

T-Mobile LG Sentio Launch On June 30

LG’s new touch screen phone, the LG Sentio is heading to T-Mobile. According to a leaked screenshot of the promotional materials, the elegant touchscreen phone could be releasing on June 30. The phone is targeted at the first time touchscreen buyers and is not a smartphone. Nevertheless, the features should have a lot of takers

Display : 3-inch touchscreen display
Camera : 3 MP camera with flash
3G
GPS
microSD card expansion
Auto-rotating screen
Bluetooth
Visual Voicemail
Media Player
Games
Email
Messaging
Stereo Bluetooth connectivity
Video Capture/Playback

[via TmoNews]

Categories
Gadgets How To

How To Install Touch Screen On Laptop

There are several dozens of tablet PCs and touchscreen covertible netbooks launching in the market today that your year-old laptop or netbook may already appear old. Fear not, for you can install a touch screen to your laptop and flaunt a touch-responsive laptop. However, this is definitely not for those who have never broken into a laptop themselves. PC World writes,

“WARNING: Only skilled or daring hardware hackers should attempt this process. Voiding the warranty is the least of your concerns; you’ll have to solder parts together, cut away some of the laptop’s plastic housing, and otherwise make permanent changes that you can’t undo. Make the wrong move, and you’ll break the laptop. We are not responsible for anything that goes wrong with your PC as a result of your following our instructions.”

The process can be quite lengthy and involves unmounting the display, incorporating a touchscreen along the display and then assembling it back. The process is not so simple. Check out the entire tutorial here.

Categories
Mobile

LG Cookie Fresh GS290 UK Launch Date Announced

The LG Cookie Fresh GS290 touchscreen phone may be gearing itself up for a UK launch this month. According to reports on CNET, the official response still remains “shortly“, but that is most probably inside May.

The phone comes with a 3 inch WQVGA touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera and also includes features like speed dialing, and dedicated Facebook interface. Expect the phone to launch in 16 colors and 18 different themes. A boatload of options, if you ask me.

[via CNET]

Categories
Gadgets

Toshiba Portege M780 Twisting Touch Screen Laptop Tech Specs

Toshiba has just unveiled its latest twisting laptop that improves upon its 2008 model Portege M750. The touch screen on the new laptop can be operated with fingers or stylus. Here are some interesting technical specifications you will require
Toshiba Portege M780 Touch screen laptop

Display : 12.1 inch
Processor : Intel Core i3
RAM : 2GB DDR3
Hard Drive : 250 GB
Connectivity : n Standard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, 3 USB 3.0 ports
Price : Not announced
Launch date : End of April

[via ElectricPig]

Categories
Gadgets Samsung

Samsung NB30 Touch Netbook Technical Specifications And Price

Samsung has introduced a touch screen version of its NB30 netbook announced earlier this year. The new touch screen enabled alternative comes with features very similar to the original Samsung NB30 netbook though the price is on the higher side.

Here are the crucial tech specs of the new touch screen based netbook device

Dimensions : 264 x 188.9 x 39mm (1.26 kg)
Processor: Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz
Operating system: Windows Starter Edition 7
Internal Memory: 1GB DDT2
Display: 10.1″ WSVGA screen, 1024 x 600 pixels, LED without gloss
Storage : 160GB or 250GB at 5400rpm
Graphics processor : Intel GMA X3150
Connectivity : WiFi 802.11b/g/n, LAN, Bluetooth 2.1
Battery : 6 Cell Lithium Ion
Price : €399 (about $545)

The only thing to brood is that the price is way higher than the non-touch screen version (€279 or $380)

[Notebook Italia via Electronista]

Categories
Acer Gadgets

Acer Frameless Laptop To Have Touch Keyboard

Acer is reported to be working on a ultra-thin notebook that shall come without a frame, will have color printed on the back of the glass-substrate to act as the cover and might have touch keyboard replacing the conventional model in order to reduce cost.

Folks at DigiTimes write that inside sources have told them that this “next-gen” notebook could be launched as early the second half of 2010.

“Acer is expected to adopt Corning’s reinforced glass substrate and simply print color on its back to allow the substrate to function like a notebook cover for a frameless design. The design will help reduce the thickness of the ultra-thin notebook and can also reduce material costs.”

While a frameless design to reduce material costs sounds interesting, it is also a point to note if the company is looking at compromising vital features for lower cost. Nobody’s going to like it if the notebook they purchase for a few hundred dollars is going to drop and break at the first instance, I tell you!

[via DigiTimes]

Categories
Google Mobile

New Accelerometer Based Navigation In The Works For Google Maps Mobile App

Navigation through the Google maps app on your smartphone can get even more exciting as a new patent from Mountain View reveals. In this patent application titled “Navigation In a Three Dimensional Environment Using An Orientation Of A Mobile Device“, the company illustrates a 3D navigation system that does not require touch based input and instead makes use of the device’s accelerometer input to navigate.

There are some interesting input methodologies described.

Helicopter Module

The new helicopter module on Google Maps could offer a navigation from an altitude..Tilt your smartphone in the direction you want to navigate and the helicopter module will take you through in that direction

Google Maps Helicopter module navigation

The patent is not about accelerometer based navigation alone. Here are a few touch screen based methodologies described

Anchored Navigation

“With one free hand to navigate, several user interface gestures may use two fingers. This section describes two user interface gestures using two fingers–anchored look-around and anchored helicopter. Each user interface gesture has one finger initially stationary with the other moving. The stationary finger may touch the screen before the moving finger. The initial relative position of the stationary and moving fingers may determine whether the user enters an anchored look-around navigation mode or an anchored helicopter navigation mode.

Google maps anchored navigation

There are a lot more navigation methodologies described which you may check out from the patent application.

Categories
Mobile Nokia

Nokia N87 Smartphone Specs Leaked?

French website, BeGeek has published pictures of what they claim to be internal documents from Espoo that details technical specifications of the company’s upcoming N87 smartphone.

According to these rumors, the Nokia N87 will come with

12MP autofocus camera
Xenon Flash and night view mode
600MHz ARM Cortex 8 processor
3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen
Wi-Fi, A-GPS
FM radio and transmitter
16Gb/32Gb storage
256MB RAM
Symbian OS

While it sounds impressive, we are still not convinced with the credibility of the information. So, as for now, take this with a grain of salt.

[via BeGeek, SlashGear]