Originally, it was code-named the Flip II, but I guess they decided that name was too sequel-ish. I’ve never really seen a phone like this with a 320 x 480 HVGA main display, a secondary display, and a QWERTY keyboard that is split down the middle like that. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that both screens are touchscreens.

Not much else is known about this phone, and I suppose that it was just a matter of time before someone created a flip-phone with two screens. I would have thought that the designer of such a phone would have phased out a QWERTY keyboard entirely, and have gone with a touchscreen keyboard on the secondary screen.

We do know that the phone has a 5 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash, as well as a front facing camera. We don’t know the resolution of the front-facing one, though.

The LG Doubleplay is planned to launch on November 2nd for a price of $150 with contract. It looks like users will have to go through T-Mobile to get it, and it will be running with some Android.

Originally, it was code-named the Flip II, but I guess they decided that name was too sequel-ish. I’ve never really seen a phone like this with a 320 x 480 HVGA main display, a secondary display, and a QWERTY keyboard that is split down the middle like that. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that both screens are touchscreens.

Not much else is known about this phone, and I suppose that it was just a matter of time before someone created a flip-phone with two screens. I would have thought that the designer of such a phone would have phased out a QWERTY keyboard entirely, and have gone with a touchscreen keyboard on the secondary screen.

We do know that the phone has a 5 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash, as well as a front facing camera. We don’t know the resolution of the front-facing one, though.

The LG Doubleplay is planned to launch on November 2nd for a price of $150 with contract. It looks like users will have to go through T-Mobile to get it, and it will be running with some Android.

The Japanese company REAL-f can help you as they have a 3-D printer that can make a very detailed replica of your face. They can print out everything from the skin tone, freckles, and eyebrows, and put them all on molded resin.

Hey, if you and a friend want to go in together, you can dress up as…each other! Granted, the effect will probably be like putting a realistic mannequin’s face on your own, but it will leave people guessing.

Granted, this will be pretty expensive, as it will cost $4,000 to just get one face mask done. By the way, additional face masks cost about $780 to $2,000, so you can save at least some money if you and a friend want to change faces.

By the way, a full head will cost you $6,000. I have no idea if they will some day have masks like on Mission Impossible, but give it time.

Maybe one day we will all have 3D printers, and we can all print our faces out. Okay, that sounds pretty weird, but if I could get a 3D printer for less than $200, I would do it.

The Japanese company REAL-f can help you as they have a 3-D printer that can make a very detailed replica of your face. They can print out everything from the skin tone, freckles, and eyebrows, and put them all on molded resin.

Hey, if you and a friend want to go in together, you can dress up as…each other! Granted, the effect will probably be like putting a realistic mannequin’s face on your own, but it will leave people guessing.

Granted, this will be pretty expensive, as it will cost $4,000 to just get one face mask done. By the way, additional face masks cost about $780 to $2,000, so you can save at least some money if you and a friend want to change faces.

By the way, a full head will cost you $6,000. I have no idea if they will some day have masks like on Mission Impossible, but give it time.

Maybe one day we will all have 3D printers, and we can all print our faces out. Okay, that sounds pretty weird, but if I could get a 3D printer for less than $200, I would do it.

Hardware:

After the build quality disaster that is the Sony Ericsson Arc, my biggest fear was that the SGS II would be the same: super-thin and cheap build, resulting in a very unpleasant feel in hand. But, my first contact with the phone was actually a pleasant one. I took the phone out of the (very small) box and the phone actually felt quite good. Sure we still talk plastic here, but the build quality is really nice. Nothing like you could break it with some brute force. And WOW, that thing is ultra thin! 8,49mm thin that is. I felt that Samsung has hit the nail on the head with the extreme thin, yet 4,3″ big device. The feel in hand is perfect.

The front of the phone is dominated by one big piece of glass, spanning over almost the whole device, and the most breathtaking screen I have ever seen on any device. Samsung promised a lot with it’s new screen tech and boy, have they delivered. This 4,3″ super AMOLED plus brings black levels and eye-crushing colors unlike anything I have ever seen. Yes you can nitpick now, and say that its 800×480 pixels resolution is less than the HTC Sensation, but that’s pretty much the tech audience of today: “Sure the SGS II has this resolution, but device XYZ has a better one, so it’s not that good”. Pah, sure, grow up. You know what? I don’t care, the Galaxy S II screen is perfect as it is, and i don’t need the extra few pixels. Speaking of the display, this was one of the major factors why i actually skipped the HTC sensation. It is absolutely brilliant for all day to day tasks, even in sunny conditions, as I have tested last weekend. Pictures, Videos, even browsing around is nothing but fun on this gorgeous piece of touchscreen. I absolutely love it.

Underneath the screen is a physical Home button, with a capacitive menu- and back-button on either sides of the home one. On top of the screen you find the phone speaker, front facing 2MP camera and light-sensors. The whole front is kept in black, which makes the device a lot more stylish in my opinion, and in different lightning somewhere even difficult to tell where the screen ends and the device begins. lovely. Furthermore, Samsung has worked on the coating of the front, as the SGS II is not as much as fingerprint magnet, than any other device I had so far. The sides of the SGS II feature the power-/screen lock button on the right, the volume keys on the left side, a 3,5mm audio jack on top, and the microUSB charging- and data cable connector on the bottom. All very clean, the phone never feels too overloaded. I would have appreciated a physical camera button on the SGS II, but Sammy probably went with the masses here and skipped it, relying solely on a touch cam shutter button.

Turning the screen around, reveals a very welcome surprise, as opposed to Nexus and Galaxy S – the battery cover this time has a nice texture, making the device a LOT more grippier to handle. The battery cover itself is a touch of nothing on this device and is actually quite scary when pulled off, but placed on the device it sits super tight, so I don’t have issues with that. The speaker sits on the slightly raised lower part of the SGS II, being very slightly curved. It’s loud enough for your calls and notifications, although will eventually get a lot more quiet when laying on softer undergrounds. Speaker Quality was good, although slightly creaky when on full volume.

The camera on the SGS II has been cranked up to 8 megapixels, with a single LED flash. The camera shutter is operated via touch and can be either used with the big cam interface shutter button, or via touch to focus. There’s a gazillion of settings and scene modes, spanning from party pics to autumn colors and even a setting for visibility on the outside, cranking up the display brightness to a maximum, and going back to normal after closing the cam application. Nice! Videos are recorded in 1080p at 30fps, a very rare combination for mobile phones, but will eventually appear more often on those powerful high-end smartphones. The autofocus while shooting videos was actually quite usable, something that i always missed on my preferred camera phone, the Nokia N8. Interested in how the camera actually performs? Well, it surely isn’t a Nokia N8, and it never claims to be, but I gotta say, the camera was better than expected. Pictures turned out to be crisp in normal light conditions, while expectedly not reaching the good low light capabilities of the SE Arc or even Nokia’s EDoF camera units. I will be posting a post later on this week, with sample camera shots and some short video clips, showing you the video quality, in 1080p of course.

Price & Availability

Samsung Galaxy S2 is available in India. The price starts at Rs 33000/-.

Hardware:

After the build quality disaster that is the Sony Ericsson Arc, my biggest fear was that the SGS II would be the same: super-thin and cheap build, resulting in a very unpleasant feel in hand. But, my first contact with the phone was actually a pleasant one. I took the phone out of the (very small) box and the phone actually felt quite good. Sure we still talk plastic here, but the build quality is really nice. Nothing like you could break it with some brute force. And WOW, that thing is ultra thin! 8,49mm thin that is. I felt that Samsung has hit the nail on the head with the extreme thin, yet 4,3″ big device. The feel in hand is perfect.

The front of the phone is dominated by one big piece of glass, spanning over almost the whole device, and the most breathtaking screen I have ever seen on any device. Samsung promised a lot with it’s new screen tech and boy, have they delivered. This 4,3″ super AMOLED plus brings black levels and eye-crushing colors unlike anything I have ever seen. Yes you can nitpick now, and say that its 800×480 pixels resolution is less than the HTC Sensation, but that’s pretty much the tech audience of today: “Sure the SGS II has this resolution, but device XYZ has a better one, so it’s not that good”. Pah, sure, grow up. You know what? I don’t care, the Galaxy S II screen is perfect as it is, and i don’t need the extra few pixels. Speaking of the display, this was one of the major factors why i actually skipped the HTC sensation. It is absolutely brilliant for all day to day tasks, even in sunny conditions, as I have tested last weekend. Pictures, Videos, even browsing around is nothing but fun on this gorgeous piece of touchscreen. I absolutely love it.

Underneath the screen is a physical Home button, with a capacitive menu- and back-button on either sides of the home one. On top of the screen you find the phone speaker, front facing 2MP camera and light-sensors. The whole front is kept in black, which makes the device a lot more stylish in my opinion, and in different lightning somewhere even difficult to tell where the screen ends and the device begins. lovely. Furthermore, Samsung has worked on the coating of the front, as the SGS II is not as much as fingerprint magnet, than any other device I had so far. The sides of the SGS II feature the power-/screen lock button on the right, the volume keys on the left side, a 3,5mm audio jack on top, and the microUSB charging- and data cable connector on the bottom. All very clean, the phone never feels too overloaded. I would have appreciated a physical camera button on the SGS II, but Sammy probably went with the masses here and skipped it, relying solely on a touch cam shutter button.

Turning the screen around, reveals a very welcome surprise, as opposed to Nexus and Galaxy S – the battery cover this time has a nice texture, making the device a LOT more grippier to handle. The battery cover itself is a touch of nothing on this device and is actually quite scary when pulled off, but placed on the device it sits super tight, so I don’t have issues with that. The speaker sits on the slightly raised lower part of the SGS II, being very slightly curved. It’s loud enough for your calls and notifications, although will eventually get a lot more quiet when laying on softer undergrounds. Speaker Quality was good, although slightly creaky when on full volume.

The camera on the SGS II has been cranked up to 8 megapixels, with a single LED flash. The camera shutter is operated via touch and can be either used with the big cam interface shutter button, or via touch to focus. There’s a gazillion of settings and scene modes, spanning from party pics to autumn colors and even a setting for visibility on the outside, cranking up the display brightness to a maximum, and going back to normal after closing the cam application. Nice! Videos are recorded in 1080p at 30fps, a very rare combination for mobile phones, but will eventually appear more often on those powerful high-end smartphones. The autofocus while shooting videos was actually quite usable, something that i always missed on my preferred camera phone, the Nokia N8. Interested in how the camera actually performs? Well, it surely isn’t a Nokia N8, and it never claims to be, but I gotta say, the camera was better than expected. Pictures turned out to be crisp in normal light conditions, while expectedly not reaching the good low light capabilities of the SE Arc or even Nokia’s EDoF camera units. I will be posting a post later on this week, with sample camera shots and some short video clips, showing you the video quality, in 1080p of course.

Price & Availability

Samsung Galaxy S2 is available in India. The price starts at Rs 33000/-.

Think you are hard on your mobile phone? Nokia’s 3720 is built to take it. Engineers incorporated stainless steel into the phone’s casing, locked the battery compartment with a screw, and sealed the case to protect against water and contaminants. During stress tests, the 3720 was pounded with weights and dropped from various heights to ensure it could stand up to the dunks, bumps, and crashes a phone endures in harsh environments like a beach or even a dusty construction site. Despite the tough exterior, ?there is room inside for a 2-megapixel camera, an LED flashlight, and a 1-gigabyte microSD card. The battery is built for endurance too: Talk time reaches 7 hours, 18 days standby. No price has been set yet for the U.S. version of the 3720, but it is selling in Europe for 125 euros (about $180).

ALIPH JAWBONE PRIME BLUETOOTH HEADSET

Eliminate wind and street sounds from your mobile chats with the $130 Jawbone Prime Bluetooth headset. One microphone handles your voice while another eliminates the racket around you, resulting in a 6- to 9-decibel reduction in noise. 

ENERGI TO GO XP4001 POWER PACK

If you keep finding your phone’s charge running low during important calls, Energizer’s $70 XP4001 Power Pack could become a valued travel companion. Rechargeable 500 times, it has dual USB inputs to power two devices at once. When charging them separately, the Power Pack can add 25 hours of talk time for your phone or 136 hours for a Bluetooth headset.

LOGIC BOLT V 1.5 PROJECTOR CELL PHONE 

Logic Wireless’s cell phone/LCOS projector turns any wall into your personal display. The $500 unit projects a 640 x 480 resolution image onto a surface, creating a 34- to 64-inch picture—with adjustable focus to boot. Operating time is 2 to 3 hours in phone mode and 2 hours as a projector.

NOKIA 3720 CLASSIC MOBILE PHONE

Think you are hard on your mobile phone? Nokia’s 3720 is built to take it. Engineers incorporated stainless steel into the phone’s casing, locked the battery compartment with a screw, and sealed the case to protect against water and contaminants. During stress tests, the 3720 was pounded with weights and dropped from various heights to ensure it could stand up to the dunks, bumps, and crashes a phone endures in harsh environments like a beach or even a dusty construction site. Despite the tough exterior, ?there is room inside for a 2-megapixel camera, an LED flashlight, and a 1-gigabyte microSD card. The battery is built for endurance too: Talk time reaches 7 hours, 18 days standby. No price has been set yet for the U.S. version of the 3720, but it is selling in Europe for 125 euros (about $180).

ALIPH JAWBONE PRIME BLUETOOTH HEADSET

Eliminate wind and street sounds from your mobile chats with the $130 Jawbone Prime Bluetooth headset. One microphone handles your voice while another eliminates the racket around you, resulting in a 6- to 9-decibel reduction in noise. 

ENERGI TO GO XP4001 POWER PACK

If you keep finding your phone’s charge running low during important calls, Energizer’s $70 XP4001 Power Pack could become a valued travel companion. Rechargeable 500 times, it has dual USB inputs to power two devices at once. When charging them separately, the Power Pack can add 25 hours of talk time for your phone or 136 hours for a Bluetooth headset.

LOGIC BOLT V 1.5 PROJECTOR CELL PHONE 

Logic Wireless’s cell phone/LCOS projector turns any wall into your personal display. The $500 unit projects a 640 x 480 resolution image onto a surface, creating a 34- to 64-inch picture—with adjustable focus to boot. Operating time is 2 to 3 hours in phone mode and 2 hours as a projector.

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop".

In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.\

Source : Times of India

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop".

In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.\

Source : Times of India