A day before we expected, Sony’s 24.6-megapixel full frame DSLR, the a900, just quietly got official. Shockingly, while it doesn’t touch the US$2000 mark, it slides in at just US$3000. Billed as rocking the world’s highest resolution 35mm CMOS sensor, it’s the first full-framer to use in-body image stabilisation (Sony’s SOP). Unfortunately, as DP Review’s sample gallery makes clear, all those pixels make for a touch of noise, especially compared to Nikon’s D700.
If this press event invite is any indication, that’s the way things are looking. The date is set for October 2, and it all goes down at the Bookmark Lounge of the Library Hotel here in New York. Hmm, there couldn’t be any book connotation to all of that, could there? On this day of press events, it seems like Sony’s jumping into the fray as well to update their year-old Reader hardware before Xmas. We’ll keep you posted. [Sony Reader]
AppleInsider claims to have two independent sources confirming identical information about upcoming Apple iPod refreshes. The biggest overhaul appears to be on the iPod nano, which would explain all of the rumours we’ve seen on the device. It will come in nine colours and be the first non-touch iPod to support a motion/orientation sensor.
We know the LHC won’t end the world, but in an amusing note before its big switch-on tomorrow Stephen Hawking (he of the physics brain the size of a planet) has admitted he’s got a US$100 bet that the machine won’t succeed in one of its big goals: finding the very mysterious Higgs boson.
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We have received these two images of the iPod nano showing a new interface. They look like Apple’s own product illustrations and the iPod itself looks like the unconfirmed leaked picture, but of course we don’t know if they are real or not. They are so polished and we like them so much that we hope they are real, but for now, they are just a couple of images out of nowhere. Check the playback screen after the jump and tell us what you think.
We’ve already seen phones like the HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro, but according to some legit-looking internal documentation, the HTC Opal is the official sequel to the original HTC Touch. Word has it that the Opal will ship with the 3D TouchFLO interface we’ve seen in the latest HTC products (which makes sense), but unfortunately, the spec sheet dated from July shows that the Opal still lacks 3G and features the same 200MHz processor as its predecessor.
Hoo-kai. We are almost there. The usual suspects are voicing their last minute, most obvious predictions for what is looking like the most boring event in Apple’s history ever. At least, since Gil Amelio decided to give an exclusive interview to The Minnesota Carpets Quarterly Journal on the new flooring at One Infinite Loop. New colours, roomier iPod nano this, updated iPod touch that, flashy iTunes visualiser that other thing… Hereto we present you with the things that we think are going to happen today for sure, straight from our Rumour-a-thing machine. Pick yours and vote in our Special Giz Event “Let’s Poll!” Poll:
It took 10 months since we showed you the N95 R/C car hack, but now someone’s done the inevitable thing and made an iPhone version. The DIY hack is pretty inventive: the iPhone’s Wi-Fi link is used to send data to a PC, where some software sends serial data to an Arduino board which then adjusts the original R/C box for the toy car. Convoluted, but neat: the tilt-to-turn feature being priceless. There’re some pretty good guidelines at the project page if you’re in the mood for some DIY gadget fun, and I’d just like to point out that the iPhone has 3D accelerometers, which might be fun for aircraft… [Project via Hacknmod]
Sony’s just come up with the official word on its new G705 slider handset, and it’s not a bad looking gizmo at all. There’s a 2.4 inch TFT with auto-rotation, A-GPS, DLNA, quad-band GSM and AGPS, Bluetooth 2.0, FM radio, 3.2-megapixel camera with flash and a Java-based OS. The phone’s also got a full HTML browser, Exchange ActiveSync for email, a Google shortcut key for Google Maps and suchlike, and YouTube viewing and direct upload. Tri-band HSDPA gives it “turbo 3G speeds,” according to Sony Ericsson’s global product marketing manager, which is a little misleading to say the least, but there is an interesting G705u version which is SE’s first UMA-enabled phone… though it’s a UK-only edition. The US version is expected early 2009, pricing info still to be decided. [Softpedia] galleryPost('SEg705', 4, '');
Cycling and listening to an iPod can be pretty dangerous as the music masks the road sounds, and fiddling with the controls can have you veering all over place: iBikeConsole is designed to help with some of that. It’s a handlebar iPod nano mount that houses your PMP in a shock and rain-proof case, and comes with remote controls you mount near to the grip locations so you don’t have to move your hands far. Neat… and it even functions as a bike computer, tracking your ride time, speed and distance and so on. Available now for US$76. [Product page via UberGizmo]
