eK-gadgets info

HTC Corp., maker of popular Microsoft Windows Mobile-based smart handsets, today announced the global launch of the HTC Touch; a mobile phone that makes use of touch screen navigation and Windows Mobile 6 Professional.

HTC says that its Touch phone represents extensive research and development into “fingertip control” TouchFLO technology that enables more efficient, natural and intuitive touch screen navigation.

Users simply sweep their finger up the display to launch an animated, three-dimensional interface comprising three screens: contacts, media and applications. The interface can be spun by swiping a finger right or left across the display, while web pages, documents, messages and contact lists can be navigated in a similar way, like the Apple iPhone. The HTC touch goes a little further though, as it is able to distinguish between finger and stylus input and responds accordingly.

“With the HTC Touch, access to your most commonly used content, contacts and features is only a simple finger flick away,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer of HTC. “Mobile phone makers have done a great job of cramming ever-more exciting features into ever-smaller phones. But the way in which one accesses these increasingly sophisticated features has not kept pace. That ends today with the HTC Touch.”

Dimensions of the HTC Touch are 99.9mm (L) x 58mm (W) x 13.9mm (T) with a weight of 112g with battery. On board memory is 64MB RAM and 128MB ROM, plus a 1GB microSD storage card bundled in. The 16-bit LCD touch screen with backlight measures 2.8 inches and has a 240 x 320 resolution.

A rechargeable 1100 mAh Li-Ion battery will provide standby time of up to 200 hours and a talk time of up to 5 hours. The HTC touch will also be able to take pictures with its 2.0 megapixel CMOS color camera. Connectivity options include GSM/GPRS/EDGE Tri-band 900, 1800, 1900, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0

The HTC Touch is now available in the UK and will be released later this month in Asia and throughout Europe. The North and Latin American version of the HTC Touch will be available in the second half of 2007.

Apple MacBook Pro updates for you to love or hate depending upon your fanboy affiliation. First the 17-inch which now features new NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics and a new 1920 x 1200 pixel display (for $100 extra)… at last. Both the 15- and 17-inch models now sport Intel’s Santa Rosa platform — Intel’s latest take on Centrino featuring an 800MHz front side bus which changes dynamically to save power. Apple was also kind enough to finally loose a MacBook Pro with LED backlighting just like Sir Steve promised. However, that appears to be limited to the 15-inch model. So now we’re looking at a 15.4-inch MBP with a 1440 x 900 pixel display topping out with a new 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 160GB 5,400rpm disk, 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (up to 4GB supported), pre-enabled 802.11n of course, a new 256MB of NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics option, 8x (up from 6x) slot-loading SuperDrive, and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR. It maintains the same dimensions while tipping the scales at 5.4-pounds (down from 5.6-pounds). The 17-inch meanwhile tops out with the same 2.4GHz proc and up to 250GB of disk. Much newness, at least for the 15-incher, for the same entrance fee of $1,999 starting today — that’ll only get you into the cheap seats but the faithful have to sit somewhere.

Asus’ new 7-inch ultraportable runs on an Intel chipset, and features Windows XP or Linux while offering a stripped-down barebones OS that features internet browsing. In case you’re wondering what Eee means:”easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work.”

The Eee PC 701, which will sport 802.11b/g WiFi, and ethernet while offering a webcam, 512MB of RAM and a 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive.

Believe it or not, this Asus laptop will start at a cool $200. Not bad huh?