Interested in seeing this thing for yourself and in the US? Come on into the Giz Gallery when it opens on Wednesday. And bring your dog, too. I still have doubts that any dog would actually go to town on this thing, so I’ll tell you what: If your dog has sex with the sex doll for dogs, you’ll win a prize. No raffle for you! If you own a shameless dog, you can skip to the front of the prize line. Prizes include camcorders and laptops, not the throwaway stuff. We have to be able to get the carnal act on video, because we are gross and need proof.

Also, admit it, you’re a little curious.

Read more about our Giz Gallery 09 here and see what else we’ll be playing with at the event.

The answer is… recently fabricated Upcycle furniture and display cases for the Gizmodo Gallery! Wild!

Now, was this post wildly self-promotional? Of course it was, and I’m officially having a conversation with myself. In my defence, the euphoria I’m experiencing over this event (which runs from this Wednesday to Sunday), has gotten the better of me. But that’s neither here nor there. Seriously, there was an alien head spotted last night, and Blam was eating an iPhone in a Pop Tart case that looked more delicious than a real Pop Tart.

There’s also some celebrity gear on hand too, in case you’re into that.

We found out that the camera’s unfortunate placement (on the lower left of the back, if you’re holding it normally) is due to there not being enough space to cram it in under the screen. The accelerometer adjusts if you want to hold it some other way, but the natural position for taking video is made harder by the location of the lens.

Why can’t the Nano take still photography? Let’s hear it from Steve Jobs himself, via the New York Times:

The sensors for doing video are fairly thin. The sensors for doing a still camera, at much higher pixel resolution – and we’d really like to have autofocus – they are just way too thick to ever fit inside the Nano.

This is the “cyborg” filter. Very geeky and cool, and matches perfectly with the tunes we were blasting (it’s LP by Discovery, for the record). Notice that you can actually hear the click of the button right as the video stops.

The scratchy film-strip filter is great for arty shots of the back of Brian Lam’s head.

This one’s a security-cam type filter that makes these innocent passersby seem suspicious.

This is the normal setting (no filter) on a bright and sunny San Francisco day. You can see that the colours are a little washed out and due to the awkward placement of the lens itself, my finger blocks part of the shot.

These next two are for comparison. This one is taken by the Nano, a simple rotating panoramic with differing light and a lot of color. The next is the exact same video, but taken with a Flip Mino.

This is the Flip. The colour reproduction is definitely better on the Flip (most notably in those flowers outside the window), and the video is noticeably sharper as well. But all in all, it’s not a huge difference, which is very much to the Nano’s credit.

Low light, predictably, is not the Nano’s strong suit. It’s serviceable, and obviously pocket camcorders like the Flip and Vado aren’t all that much better, but you’re going to want to have some decent lighting when using the Nano’s camera.

Closeups are also a weak point for the Nano—its 640×480 resolution, with no macro mode, is just not detailed enough to pick up the nuances of this gold sparkly thing on Brian’s bookshelf. But like the low light shows, if you’re looking for the Nano to have amazing video capabilities, you probably haven’t noticed that it’s actually a super thin mp3 player and not an HD camcorder.

X-ray mode is actually cool and glosses over some of the Nano’s lack of detail, not that it’s particularly practical.

This is thermal mode, so you can tell that Brian and Lisa are red-hot. Literally.

Tunnel vision is another filter brought over from Photo Booth. It’s one of my favorites, so I’m glad to see it on the Nano.

The Warthog, which is essentially a Nissan Patrol combined with some fancy hydraulics, is a one of a kind wonder that was constructed by Weta back when Peter Jackson was supposed to be making a Halo movie. It has three different driving modes: normal, four wheel steering and crab mode, and it’s as easy as pressing a button to switch between them.

The hydraulic system inside lets you raise and lower the body of the Warthog over any wheel, making it great for real off-road action (even if I didn’t get to enjoy it off-road). Because of the monster tyres, driving over small things like gutters is barely noticeable though. As one of the PR people at the event said to me, it’s just like driving the Warthog in the Halo games.

Apparently the guys from Weta have had about 20 or so requests from wealthy Americans wanting a Warthog of their very own. The problem is that it was a custom build – they don’t have any casts to rebuild the vehicle, so to really rebuild one it would take about $200,000, and really need a new company to do the building.

Another interesting fact worth mentioning is that the turret on the back of the Warthog isn’t the actual turret the Weta guys built – apparently the insurance company wasn’t willing to cover the chance of Australian customs confiscating the replica weapon, so they got some Aussie dude to build one locally. He did the job in about a week, and the only thing letting it down is the short barrel. Aussie FTW!

The attention to detail is breathtaking, from the bullet holes tracking across the back of the car, to the body count on the front window. There are even fake registration stickers on the side to fit the Halo universe.

You can check out the Warthog for yourself this weekend, as well as having a bit of a play with the upcoming Halo: ODST game. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, I’d highly recommend it.

Halo is a concept by French designer Aissa Logerot. Shaped like a bottle of spray paint, the LED light can change colours on the fly and while it’s powered by an internal battery (that recharges with a simple shake of the can—a cutesy but awesome idea).

Combine this LED light with slow-shudder photography and you can freeze light graffiti in thin air without ruining a facade in the process. Of course, that non-destructive practicality probably eliminates any incentive for about 99.9% of graffiti enthusiasts.

[Halo via Core77]

Like Creative’s introduction video before it, CNET’s hands-on is more about seeing the hardware than showing off new features—this is the same Android we’ve been using since last year, after all. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on inside the Egg—720p video playback support by means of on in-house chip, promises of long battery life, the expandable storage potential—but most of this isn’t apparent in a short demo like this.

What we’re left with is an attractive piece of hardware that is just begging to live out its destiny as the first mainstream Android PMP, but which Creative can’t seem to make up its mind about, at least publicly. The Zii really looks like a consumer products, from its styling to its specs, and I’d love or Creative to take it to market, or to sell the design to someone else to do the same. But even though it seems obvious that such a product would represent the first real competitor to the iPod Touch, their line, still, is that this is for developers. Click through for video. [CNET Asia]

[News.com.au; Image: Charlie Brewer]

The Price: $US3000

The Verdict: The problem is that this set dims the sidelights whenever the program material gets dark, and it does it in the most ungraceful way ever. Check out the menu that I popped on screen, merely to show you what happens to white material on screen when the backlight is dimmed to increase black level.

See how everything white goes dark, too?

So, if there’s a scene in a movie where there’s a moonlit night, the lighting in this set would crank everything down, including the moon itself. Backlit LED tvs can turn off individual lights to increase blacks, yet keep LEDs lit in the area around the on screen moon; this set idiotically turns everything off. (*Some other sets do this for energy savings, but there’s always a way to set the backlight to a consistent brightness level.)

I didn’t even benchmark the set after this, as there was no need for me to measure other features when the set had such a glaring problem, which Samsung claims is not a bug. Oddly, many technical reviewers glossed over this fact, giving this set editor choice awards while brushing away the issue.

My impressions of the rest of the set are here, however:
• The TV’s colours are inflated like a lot of LCDs but the picture and motion handling are pretty damn comparable to any modern late model LCD.
• There are no buttons on the set, so if you lose your remote, you’re fucked.
• The TV is about 1.2 inches thick, and all the ports are tucked nicely away on the side. But because the case is so thin, the speakers sound terribly thin. Worse than on an old 22 inch TV I have in the back of the house.
• The case’s translucent edges are among the best designed cases of any modern gadget, in my opinion.
• The internet widgets and content take a long minute to boot up and include Flickr, twitter and weather apps. They aren’t worth the $US150-$200 over the 6000 series which eliminate these extras. There’s a media streamer (which I didn’t test) recipes, simple video games, exercises, art and animated children’s songs, like this really freaky one about having the munchies.

• Off axis viewing isn’t great, but isn’t bad.
• If you have noise reduction on on this set, it will strip the grain from movies, practically, making everything look like it was shot on a cheap digital camcorder. Turn it off.
• It’s worth repeating that this set is generally gorgeous.
• Like all LED sets, they’re energy efficient. But again, there’s no localised dimming with this set, which is side, not backlit.

The good news is that Samsung can fix this dimming issue by firmware. The bad news is that I haven’t heard they even believe its an issue yet. I’ve never been so irritated by such a beautiful TV and recommend you steer clear.

A nice picture

Super thin

Dimming sidelight issues.

Sounds thin

Expensive

It looks cool, but I have a hard time imagining this titan moving at a decent speed using these technologies. On the other side, if Cousteau’s Alcyone ship—with its wind towers—can work, maybe this design could work too.

I would pass even if I had the money to buy it, though. Why would I get a cold, super-expensive super-yacht for a gazillion dollars when I can use the same money for a fast 100%-wind-powered three-mast schooner, with fully automated sail deployment, and have a crew of Scandinavian sailorettes with unbuttoned white shirts, short navy blue skirts, and no panties for the rest of my life? See? Rich people don’t know how to spend their money.

OK. Perhaps that was way too much. Screw the automatic sail deployment. Let the sailorettes do their job. [Callender Designs and SolarSailor]

The X2 is expected to get a hefty, if not groundshaking, guts upgrade from the X1, with a 3.5-inch WVGA screen, 512MB of RAM, a faster processor, an 8.1-megapixel camera and, for god’s sake, finally, Windows Mobile 6.5. Spec updates like this are always welcome, but I’m not so sure about the new styling: Sleek lines and a deceptively thin-looking angular design were strong points for the X1, so it’s disconcerting to see a blobbier, altogether fatter-looking X2. Of course, none of these things will matter if Sony Ericsson continues to blindly price this line into oblivion. No word on that front, unfortunately. [XDA via BGR]