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Since we’ve apparently entered the culling phase of the tablet story arc – goodbye HP slate and Microsoft Courier, we’ll miss your shiny renders – it’s good to know that devices are still entering production rather than being canned. French firm eviGroup have just announced that their Wallet Android MID has entered production and should be on sale, for €199 ($264), from May. Carrypadchased up some details from director Nicolas Ruiz, including how he sees the Wallet facing against the Archos 5 Internet Tablet and what sort of help they’ve had from Google. Ruiz defines the Wallet as a “professional” MID, versus the Archos device’s multimedia focus. ”We want to have the same build quality that Archos 5 but we don’t want to be a challenger” he explains, adding that “we will deliver Wallet with a lot of accessories directly in the package.” A car cradle is one such accessory tipped for inclusion. As for the Google support, think along the lines of “none”. According to Ruiz, eviGroup a

You could be forgiven for assuming the 8.9-inch netbook segment had died; while we’ve seen a few convertible tablet netbooks using sub-9-inch panels, predominantly to shave off a few extra millimetres from a machine intended to be carried around, regular netbooks have gravitated to 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 panels. So, quite a surprise to see the new ASUS Eee PC 900AX , an 8.9-inch relaunch… with a few caveats. Biggest of those caveats is having to fight the nagging sensation that ASUS are charging you for a brand new netbook when all you’re getting is a new badge. Under the hood is Intel’s Atom N270 processor, the 1.6GHz chip that basically kick-started the netbook segment a couple of years back, and here paired with the same old 1GB of RAM and 160GB hard-drive. In fact everything about the Eee PC 900AX screams “classic” (and that’s being kind), with its 4-cell battery (good, they reckon, for just 4hrs use), two USB 2.0 ports, VGA, audio in/out and 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 display. ASUS have

BenQ have outed their latest digital camera, the point-and-shoot DC T1260 , and as well as offering a 12-megapixel CCD, wide-angle 4x optical zoom and the company’s HDR image enhancement technology – which combines multiple frames to work around high contrast images having reduced visibility – there’s also a touchscreen for easier control. The T1260 follows hot on the heels of the DC E1260, spotted earlier this week, which has the HDR system but lacks the 3-inch touchscreen. There’s also 720p HD video recording at 30fps, an ISO range from 100 to 3200, and a minimum shutter speed of 1/2000. BenQ have also squeezed in a few preset modes, including those catering to fireworks and night scenes (which can boost shutter speed to 2s and 15s respectively), while the touchscreen can be used to selectively focus on a portion of the scene and – when you lift your finger – automatically fire off a shot. Alternatively, while viewing photos in the gallery, you can circle sections of a shot to zoo

Apparently tonight is not a good night for tablet devices. Though, if you were to ask a few people, it may still continue to be a very good couple of days for Hewlett-Packard . After the announcement that HP had bought Palm, suggestions of an HP Slate with webOS started coming left and right. It doesn’t help when HP is telling the world that tablets are definitely on the agenda. And now, word is that HP has killed the Windows 7 tablet project, better known as the HP Slate (which debuted at CES this year). Coincidence? According to a report coming out of TechCrunch tonight, a source that’s been briefed with the matter says that HP has canceled the entire project. The source also mentions that HP as a whole isn’t happy with Windows 7, at least not when it’s on a tablet device. And, considering an early review, that may be far more accurate than anyone could have guessed. However, this also may mean that HP is abandoning Intel-based tablets, due to their power-mongering ways. Again, this

How do you make a huge pavilion awesome? You create the building out of recycled CD cases. So, what can you do to make that better? You attach a huge LED array onto the outside of that said pavilion, and you make it just about as bright as is probably necessary. But of course, you have to do more than that, because then that’s just a building with some lights on it. That happens all the time at Christmas. Thankfully for us, the designers of the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion have, indeed, made it better. When we say that the building is covered by an LED array, we mean the entire thing . The entire facade of the building is covered in these lights, making it look ridiculously impressive at night, as you can see from the images. Additionally, the lights can change, including greens, blues, pinks, and yellows, and this is where the real surprise comes in. There isn’t a computer controlling when to change the colors. It’s actually the people inside the building. According to the designers,

Here’s some remarkably bad news. It seems that the Microsoft Courier, the dual-screen digital journal with Tegra 2 inside, has been scrapped. According to the report from The Wall Street Journal , it seems that Microsoft executives informed the internal team working on the Courier that the project was no longer supported by Microsoft, and that it’s been removed from future production. Of course, Microsoft had never officially come forward and publicly announced the Courier, but we know it existed. The Courier first broke cover at the end of last year, and since then it’s caught the love of tablet fans all over the place. The second time we got a real good look at the concept of the tablet, our interest was piqued considerably. It made it all worse when rumors broke that the dual-screen digital journal would be using Tegra 2 under the hood. Simply put, the Courier was one of the best conceptual ideas to come out of Redmond in a long time, and we’re sad to see it go. According to Corpo

Considering the scathing nature of Steve Job’s open letter about Flash Player and Adobe , we’re not surprised to hear that Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, has made some official comments in reply. Courtesy of an interview the man just had with The Wall Street Journal , we’ve got some pretty interesting remarks as to what Jobs said earlier this morning. In the end though, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but that doesn’t make it any less obvious that the two companies are indeed butting heads. When it comes to the open letter itself, Narayen suggests that it’s nothing more than a “smokescreen,” apparently designed to confuse the industry about what’s really happening here. And no, Narayen doesn’t do anything to clear up the situation on his end, either. He openly rebuttals the idea that Flash isn’t open, calling his platform an “open specification.” Perhaps a bit more straight forward though, Adobe’s CEO said that Job’s claims about Flash negatively affecting battery life are “paten

Even more out of left-field than HP buying Palm , Activision and Bungie come out of nowhere and announce that the two companies have just agreed to a multiple-year, worldwide exclusive agreement. Before you jump the gun, though, that doesn’t mean that Halo Reach will be coming to more consoles than Microsoft’s Xbox 360, but it does mean that their future titles will be doing just that. In an official announcement today, Activision and Bungie have come clean on a 10-year, exclusive agreement to work together as publisher and developer, respectively. Bungie, as you’re probably well aware, is the house that created the mega-hit Halo , along with a few other titles like Marathon and Myth , have notoriously been Microsoft bedfellows. For all intents and purposes, many consider Halo to be the game that truly built up Microsoft’s home console. As for Activision, they’re famous for several published titles, but most notably the Call of Duty franchise. The whole deal is designed to signifi

Ubuntu seems to have a nice road map for their updates schedule, and sure enough, here’s another one. Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” has just hit the market, available for download right now. There’s plenty of changes to be had, along with the standard fixes and adjustments to the OS, there’s surprises to be had by the latest edition of Ubuntu. Plus, “Lucid Lynx” is almost as cool as “Karmic Koala,” so that’s worth it. First and foremost, the new OS promises that the system is noticeably quicker on any machine it runs on, especially those that feature SSDs. What’s better though, are the wide range of features that they’ve thrown in: a social networking “Me Menu,” and Ubuntu’s Software Centre 2.0, which provides you an easy access portal for acquiring new software. There’s cloud-based services like Ubuntu One music store, thrown in for good measure. There’s also Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition, which promotes faster boot speeds (even faster than what you’re already getting), along with a few o

You know what's awesome? Cookie dough ice cream. But when it comes to the smartphone market, the 18-month-old, steadily-growing Android platform is equally wondrous. Sure, Google may have a tiny bit of catching up to do when compared with Apple's market share, but at least Android users are already spoiled with a handful of good Twitter apps. Better yet, Twitter has now thrown in its official app to spice up the competition, so we thought it'd be interesting to put it head-to-head against the third-party clients. Read on to find out if we have a winner.

In our experience, about the only thing Google Goggles is good for is telling you that your can of Coke looks like someone's face, but the company's just-released version 1.1 sounds like it might be on a whole new level of awesomeness. Basically, Goggles can now recognize text within the "region of interest" that you specify on the screen then give you the option to translate it to any language of your choosing. Between this and Google's already quite good Translate app, Android devices are getting dangerously close to letting monoglots (thanks for the great word, Google) travel safely and effectively in foreign lands. Other improvements in Goggles 1.1 include better barcode and image recognition (thank goodness), an improved UI, and the ability to initiate identification from your gallery, so it sounds like a must-download if you've got a phone running Android 1.6 or better. It's available now.

The saga of the Milestone's firmware update to Android 2.1 is finally over for one more territory. The United Kingdom is today awaking to the news that Motorola has made the freshest Eclair available to its loyal British users, with the download already awaiting those eager to be surfing along the cutting edge of Android innovation. What else do you need to know, it's the finest software Google has to offer for your phone and it's downloadable at the source link -- get going!

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch says Flash works just fine on the Apple iPhone , thank you very much -- and he thinks that's exactly why Apple keeps on denying it access. Speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, he explained his belief that by eliminating Flash, Cupertino is forcing developers to build apps natively for iPhone OS rather than one of Adobe's cross-platform solutions, and thus creating a "walled garden" of applications that users must flock to an iDevice to be able to use. Lynch compared Apple's control over development formats to 19th century railroad lines that competed for customers by using differently sized rails, and pledged that Adobe would not be part of such a competition. "It's not HTML vs. Flash -- they've been co-existing for over a decade," he said, adding, "We're going to try and make the best tools in the world for HTML5." So, what do you think about that, Steve?

Without going into much detail, Clear wire mentioned on its first quarter earnings call today that WiMAX-capable phones bearing the Clear name from both Samsung and HTC are "expected" to be available before 2010's out, which is a pretty optimistic affirmation of comments the company made earlier this year. It describes the Sammy as "an Android-based 3G/4G/WiFi device optimized for heavy video and video communications use," while the HTC's language leaves out the platform -- it's just called "a 3G/4G/WiFi enabled phone," leading us to believe that this puppy could very well be running Windows Phone 7. If that's the case, we can understand why HTC wouldn't want Clearwire spilling the beans since they've yet to officially announce any plans for jumping into the WinPho 7 game. In fact, Clearwire went so far as to say on the call that the HTC device would not be the EVO 4G, so yeah, we can totally buy that there's some Microsoft ac

We'll be perfectly honest with you: we're not seeing what's "black" about the front of the Desire that Orange UK is now selling, but it insists that the phone is indeed devoid of color; we suspect they're actually just referring to the back, for which the description seems more accurate -- but that would make it no different than any other Desire being sold around the world. What does that mean? Basically, we think it means these guys need to get their eyesight checked. Spec-wise, this is the same Desire you'll find elsewhere... if you can find it, that is -- it sold out in short order on Orange's site since its launch a few days ago, no doubt a side effect of the customer euphoria caused by the realization that they can get a 1GHz Snapdragon running Android 2.1 with Sense on a WVGA display for free on contract. In the meantime, you might want to sniff around stores. Update: Turns out the real, actual, live Orange-branded Desire is black, despite the

This one isn't official just yet, but if some changes in employment status on LinkedIn is any indication, it looks like Motorola may have recently acquired mobile Linux OS company Azingo . It may not exactly be a major player in the mobile OS field, but its Linux-based Azingo Mobile OS does look to be capable enough (complete with a Webkit-based browser and Flash runtime), and the acquisition is especially interesting in light of some recent comments made by Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha. Back during Moto's Q1 earnings call, he said that he has "always felt that owning your OS is important, provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the leading edge," adding that he continues to believe "that at some point, if we have all of those attributes, that owning our own OS will be a very important thing." Is Azingo Mobile that OS? Probably not, but it'll certainly be interesting t

It's been nearly a month since a China Grabber employee drunkenly left his experimental prototype next gen GiPhone at a Sushi Bar in Shenzhen, where it was found and sold to Shanzai.com for several thousand Yuan -- and the gadget world hasn't been the same since. The GiPhone F98 features, as all of these KIRFs do, dual SIM cards, an FM Radio, an "iPhone style" UI, WiFi, Bluetooth, and compatibility with 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz GSM. And it's one of the thickest phones we've seen in a long time! (See for yourself after the break.) Available now for $150, if you dare.

Dearest members of the Upload Generation: the wait to buy the Kin of your dreams is a short one -- provided Mommy and Daddy are willing to pony up the $30 a month in data charges, of course. Verizon will be selling both the Kin One and Kin Two online starting tomorrow, May 6, for $49.99 and $99.99 respectively, after you agree to a two-year contract and come to terms with the fact that you'll be paying $100 more upfront while you wait for your rebate to be mailed to you on a debit card (par for the course these days). If you'd rather play with the devices first, your wait isn't much longer -- you'll be able to score both of them in Verizon retail locations starting a week later on the 13th.

LG's Ally recently got its stamp of approval from LG, but outside of a terse acknowledgment that the phone was real (and had a thing for iron-clad superheroes), little else was divulged. Today, we've stumbled upon the phone's dedicated product page over at the company's website, which not only plugs Iron Man 2 to the nth degree, but also informs us that it'll ship with a 3.2-inch touchscreen, Android 2.1, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a backside camera and a microSD card slot. There's also a link over there to jump into the LG Ally community, so feel free to do just that if this trickling of information is driving you up the wall.

With all this talk of the Droid Incredible ousting the Nexus One from Verizon Wireless, having a better multitouch implementation, and just being newer and shinier, you might think this comparison of cameras is just mercilessly piling on the pain for the original Googlephone. After all, the Nexus One and its 5 megapixel sensor came out a good few months ahead of the 8 megapixel Droid Incredible, so surely this battle would be over before it's even begun? Not so fast, says Android and Me , whose diligent testers have put the two HTC handsets through a side-by-side shootout. As it turns out, the Nexus One rather swept the contest in both naturally and flash-lit shots, while the Incredible habitually exhibited a blue hue in less than perfectly lit photos. Both cameras were adept at taking excellent daylight photos, as is to be expected, but the devil is as usual in the details

While we can't honestly imagine an iDevice user going about their life without connecting to the iTunes App Store at least once in a blue moon -- if not on a semi-permanent basis -- the statistically-significant NPD Group decided to look into the matter regardless. Sure enough, the org reports that a full three-quarters of iPhone andiPod touch users in the US do indeed download apps and entertainment content from the internet. In case you're wondering, that figure beats the pants off those connecting from their video game consoles (19 percent) or Blu-ray players (17 percent), but both of those are obviously biased towards physical, disc-based media. Before you dismiss these findings as obvious, however, let's read between the lines -- if 75 percent of Apple's touchscreen devices are pulling content from the web, that means the other one-quarter have gone without. If not apps, what the heck are those devices being used for?

Since Courier's now a mystery unearthed -- and subsequently sent six feet under -- it looks like we need new secret Microsoft projects to pique our curiosity. Enter the ever-connected Mary Jo Foley with some investigative notes into "Menlo," which seems to be a future replacement of Windows CE "with Windows NT inside of mobile devices." The associated graphics platform would be "Experiment 19" (not quite as interesting a codename, we agree). Presumably heading up Menlo is Galen Hunt, a researcher from the Singular project, joined by other Microsoft brains Ruben Olinsky and (at least at some point) Kerry Hammil. It's always surprising how much info we can glean from LinkedIn, but we digress: Hunt's associated profile says Menlo "[combines] OS, UX, and applications research to explore the future of computing when mobiles becomes users primary PCs." Some bigger picture conjecture seems to center around Menlo having a Silverlight-based U

Make no mistake: the Kin One and Two are coming into the world as the black sheep of the phone industry, and Microsoft would have it no other way. Straddling the fence somewhere between a dedicated smartphone and high-spec featurephone, they've been tricky to understand since the day they were first leaked (even Microsoft seemed unsure of what the devices meant until very recently). Billed as a Gen-Y (the "upload generation") social networking tool -- and sold in advertisements as the gateway to the time of your young, freewheeling life -- the Kin phones have admittedly been something of head-scratcher to those of us in the gadget world. Built atop a core similar (but not identical) to the Windows Phone 7 devices coming later this year, manufactured by Sharp, and tied into partnerships with Verizon and Vodafone, the phones dangerously preempt Microsoft's reemergence into the smartphone market. Hell, they're even called Windows Phones. But the One and Two aren'

The VGA camera on your original Breeze got you down? Time for an upgrade, is it? Fact is, if you bought the original Breeze, odds are good that upgrading hardware is the last thing on your mind -- you're probably the type of individual that waits for something to break before replacing it -- but who knows, maybe AT&T will be able to land a whole new generation of simplephone lovers (yes, we just coined that term) now that it's brought the Breeze II clamshell to market. The slightly upgraded model features a 1.3 megapixel camera and honest-to-goodness 3G data with Video Sharesupport, all while carrying over the three assignable contact buttons below the display that made the original famous (or, you know, notable anyway). It's available now for $20 on contract after rebate.

Apple may have pulled iPhone OS 4 beta 3 soon after it went live, but we're living recklessly -- and hey, is that a set of iPod controls and a screen orientation lock hiding out in the app switcher? The control is accessed by swiping to the far left, and it all does pretty much what you'd expect. That's good news, since we were missing the old pop-up iPod controls pretty badly. We're hunting around for more new stuff, we'll let you know if we find anything.

Up until now, we'd heard and believed that Windows Phone 7 would be based on Microsoft's time-tested Windows CE 6 kernel -- aging, yes, but still considerably newer and more technically modern than the CE 5 upon which Windows Mobile 6.x operates. Thing is, Windows Embedded evangelist Olivier Bloch just dropped the knowledge this week that the company's all-new phone platform will actually be "based on the Windows Embedded Compact 7 core," which sounds a lot to us like Redmond skipped right over CE 6 and went straight for the latest and greatest (and still unavailable to the general public) stuff.

Hey, would you look at that -- we done won ourselves an award! And not just any award, but the People's Choice Webby Award in Consumer Electronics, which is doubly special to us since it was voted on by the general public. Obviously we're pretty happy about the win, but we're even happier to have such great readers like all of you -- Engadget editors work pretty hard, but you're the ones who make our site what it is. So by way of celebration, we're giving away a Droid Incredible, courtesy of Verizon Wireless, and 10 lucky runner-ups will get spiffy new Engadget T-shirts! All you have to do is leave a comment to tell us how happy you are, and you'll be entered to win.

It maybe a very dreamlike, glitzy glam world, this film industry, but if you thought an actor's life was all about partying and socialising and looking pretty then think again. The most adored and loved actor of our industry, who is a power house of talent and versatility is facing what may just be called the occupational hazards. Long working hours and stressful work schedules that is the part of this industry has obviously taken a toll on Amitabh Bachchan who is in some serious pain due to what is being suspected as multiple Hernia in his lower abdomen. The lower abdomen has swollen up and there is an acute sharp pain every time he takes exerts himself. The doctors advised the mega star to go in for a surgery for the same but due to a busy schedule and work pressure the Big B refrained. Speaking about his ordeal, Amitabh blogged recently "... a stomach surgery, indeed two in quick succession always have the possibility of hernia developing. And that is what i

All things in life must change. The beginning of something new means the end of something that was; however, it hurts when it's personal. Priyanka Chopra is mourning the loss of her paternal grandmother. The actress who was shooting in Coorg for Vishal Bhardwaj's Saat Khoon Maaf got the news of her grandma's demise on Sunday night. A very sombre Priyanka tweeted, "Hi guys. Lost my dadi day before. Had to fly in to Delhi urgently.. It's so tough losing grandparents. First my nana and now dadi. RIP dadi.." Bollywood Hungama offers condolences to the Chopra family.

In his very first film Maachis , he impressed the audiences even though the role was not of the main lead. In his next big release, Mohabbatein , he managed to hold his own despite sharing share screen space with two of the biggest stars in Indian cinema- Big B and SRK. He is none other than Jimmy Sheirgill, who is one of the most talented actors in Bollywood and of course a very famous face. As far as endorsement deals go, Jimmy has been signed to endorse Aliva chips. Readers may note that, prior to Jimmy; it was the svelte beauty Chitrangada Singh who was endorsing the brand. Jimmy remained unavailable to comment. One of his close associates said that Jimmy has gone abroad for more than a month, and hence he cannot be reached.