As mentioned back in August, Motorola is releasing an updated version of its Motorizr Z6 slider, dubbed the Motorizr Z6tv. You have three guesses as to what the new addition is. Give up? Yes, it’s loaded up with V CAST Mobile TV, allowing you to watch Verizon’s walled garden of “TV.” It’ll hit on October 5 and will set you back $180 after $50 mail-in rebate (boooooo) and 2-year soul-selling contract. Full release after the jump.
The three GPS manufacturers, Garmin, TomTom and Mitac, are considering adding Mobile TV functionality to their portable GPS devices, reports DigiTimes. Whether all three, or even one, will eventually allow you to watch TV while driving is still up in the air, but their reasoning is that your time spent navigating is small in proportion to the total time you spend driving with your car with the nav system off. Unfortunately, having a video device in the view of the driver while the car’s in motion is illegal in many states here; when watching TV while driving is outlawed, only outlaws will watch TV when driving. [Digitimes]
newVideoPlayer("Apple_wont_support_it.flv", 475, 376); Here’s a video of a guy named Jean being surprised to find out what we learned earlier in the week: Any sort of iPhone app installation, unlocked or not, won’t be supported by the warranty Indian Givers at Apple. No Service for You! What brings the whole situation home for me is to see the loss and pain this guy’s face expresses as he finds out he’s SOL. That is, until the hackers figure out how to reverse the bricking. (Which this kind Apple Genius agrees is the only hope, as he’s rendered unable to help.) Turn up the headphones, this one is muddled. The Lesson is, if you’re going to try to slip one by Apple, play dumb: “What’s an app?”
newVideoPlayer("elmosapien_gawker.flv", 475, 376);Holy shit. Robots Rule developed a new Elmo personality for the ElmoSapien, essentially turning the RoboSapien we love so much into an Elmo doll that haunts our every waking and non-waking moment. To install it on your own RoboSapien—although we don’t know why anybody would—just download the instructions, sound files, and follow the guide on their site. Christ, why not make a GoatseSapien instead? That’s the only way this could get any worse. [RobotsRule]
The HTC Touch Slide, previously known as the HTC Nike—is the slide-out version of the HTC Touch we reviewed back in June. On the inside, there’s 3G HSDPA, 400MHz processor, 2-megapixel camera, and a microSD expansion slot.
That 20-inch Dell SP2008WFP LCD monitor we told you about has finally launched, complete with the 1680×1050 resolution, 2ms response speed, and a 2000:1 contrast ratio. The best part, besides the great display itself, is the built-in 2.0-megapixel webcam, which makes it pretty unnecessary to purchase another webcam. Unless of course you’re not happy with this current webcam a couple years down the line, in which case go right ahead. And instead of the $400 we guessed, this retails for just US$289. Not bad for a 20-inch with these specs. [Dell via Laptop Logic]
AU: Brace yourselves, AU crew. We get hit by some nasty local pricing from time to time, but Dell has rarely been a major culprit. A positive is that we are getting this new monitor at the same time as the USA. The terrible news is that the Australian price is a 107% mark up, at $599. NASTY! This doesn’t compare favourably at all with the very nice Samsung 206BW, which offers very similar specs plus a higher contrast ratio (but no USB hub) and can be found for around $350-$400. C’mon Dell, use your awesome powers of Supply Chain Management and give us a better price conversion. -SB
newVideoPlayer("ReanultGermany_gawker.flv", 475, 376);The slo-mo car ballet has been an effective advertising technique for years, but you don’t often see those synchronized cars crashing into each other. Not so in this German Renault commercial, which builds up to some pretty spectacular wrecks. I don’t speak German, so I don’t know what it says at the end, but I assume it’s something like “Our cars look awesome when they crash.” [Neatorama and Jalopnik]
Kotaku reports that they’ve gotten tips from their GameStop employee readers that an email got sent out telling store managers to take down any signs relating to the Xbox 360 Core version (that’s the gimped, hard-drive-less model). There haven’t been any reports yet of the same thing going on in other retailers, but unless this is a GameStop-only thing, it seems like the Core is going to be discontinued this holiday season in favour of either only the Premium and the Elite, or a new Core-like bundle we’ve yet to see. [Kotaku]
It’s about 3 months after the iPhone launch, and happy with the improvements, I was planning to change our “Wait” verdict to a full-on and rabid “Buy”. That wasn’t because of Apple, but because of the cool apps being offered by independent developers. All that came to an end yesterday after the new Apple firmware 1.1.1 neutered the handset. Sure, unlocked iPhones were broken. But more importantly, Apple wiped away the powerful programs that helped push the iPhone to greatness. With this, I’m going to have to move our recommendation from “Wait” to “Don’t hold your breath.” I’m done with this handset until third-party apps come back.
A HoFo user got his hands on an AT&T Tilt, also known as an HTC Kaiser or the HTC TyTN II, and took a few shots of its exterior hardware buttons and its fairly standard Windows Mobile 6 UI. From the shots, you can’t tell whether the phone has the TouchFlo topscreen UI like the standard HTC TyTN II does, but the default WM6 home screen along with Push-To-Talk is still there. The same HoFo user says that an October 1 launch date “seems right”, but we’ll have to wait until next week to be sure. In the meantime, hold off on any Windows Mobile phone purchases to see how this one pans out. [Howard Forums]
