Microsoft worked with Vodafone late last year to deploy Surfaces to a few dozen stores in several European countries (much as AT&T has done in the US), and one of those units happens to be set up at the carrier’s IFA booth this week. The basic idea here is that each available model appears as a card that can be twirled, resized, and flung around the screen. When the software first starts, the cards start in a deck from which you can “deal” onto the table — but when we first approached it, the Surface had obviously already been played with because the cards were in complete disarray. Not too helpful when you’re a befuddled buyer trying to browse models and make a choice from a dizzying selection of handsets, but that doesn’t mean it’s not cool — if nothing else, parents, it’s something to babysit the kiddies for a few minutes while you go about your business in the store. Follow the break for video of the Surface in action.
Continue reading Vodafone’s Microsoft Surface: like Go Fish for phones
Vodafone’s Microsoft Surface: like Go Fish for phones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Boy, we’ve gone from rumor to hands-on experience in just a couple of days with this thing. Microsoft’s November 9-bound Xbox 360 controller refresh couldn’t escape the clutches of Joystiq, who have put together a neat photo gallery and video overview. That chrometastic new D-pad is clearly the headliner here, and the early feedback is that it works well — it takes a bit of effort to transform from a flat button to the elevated four-way navigator you see above, but that’s apparently a good thing as it means you’ll never flip modes by accident in the middle of a hot and heavy gaming session. The analog buttons have also been subjected to some nipping and tucking and there is of course a new desaturated color scheme to explore as well. You’ll find a shot of the retail packaging after the break and a lot more at the source.
Continue reading Xbox 360′s transforming D-pad controller gets handled on video
Xbox 360′s transforming D-pad controller gets handled on video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As beta testing programs go, Microsoft’s Kinect venture has been kind of… leaky. No surprises, therefore, that we’ve now received our first in-the-plastic pictures of the motion-tracking camera peripheral, replete with a few select shots of its packaging. Redmond’s promise that hardware was en route to testers was clearly not a hollow one, and we can now probably expect a bunch more unauthorized disclosures about the user experience with what should be final retail units. The outside of the packaging includes a couple of teasers encouraging users to pick up some of those bodacious PDP stands and wall mounts for their Kinect — presumably the start of a tidal wave of Kinect accessories.
Microsoft Kinect starts making home deliveries to beta testers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Samsung may be one of the big players that Microsoft is pinning its hopes on for Windows Phone 7, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to the company at IFA. Speaking to Reuters at the show, Samsung’s head of marketing for its mobile division, YH Lee, said flatly that “we are prioritizing our Android platform,” adding that, “Android is very open and flexible, and there is a consumer demand for it.” Lee further went on to note that the company will continue to focus on its own Bada platform (at least outside of North America), but seemingly downplayed Windows Phone 7 when asked about it, saying only that “there is still some professional, specialized demand there.” Ouch. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Samsung also says it’s “not seeing visible demand for Symbian.”
Samsung: ‘we are prioritizing our Android platform’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Missing your oldie Xbox 360′s bright and airy white finish? Well, Microsoft’s still not willing to sell you a slimmified 360 in any color other than black (excepting the limited edition Halo gear), but at least you can gaze upon the singular example of what a white one may look like above. This seemingly repainted Xbox 360 250GB (to give it its official, and ridiculous, name) has been lovingly put together over in China and really makes us wonder why Microsoft is depriving us of such snowy good looks. Perhaps it wanted to draw a clear between the old and the new? Either way, hit the source for the cheapest way to peek an all-white slim 360 without giving the Colorware crew a call.
[Thanks, Anthony]
Xbox 360 slimster made over in white, just for the hell of it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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“If you see it, just say it,” says Microsoft’s Kinect, but only in the US, UK, Mexico and Japan to start — those are the only four countries that will support Kinect voice control by the motion-sensing peripheral’s November launch. So said Microsoft PR manager Lidia Pitzalis in an interview with Eurogamer Spain, adding that Germany, Italy, France and even Canada and Spain would have to wait for a Spring 2011 update for additional language support. Microsoft claims it’s a matter of accents throwing off the voice recognition, as the company’s already had to build separate software versions for US and UK English, but if you’re an Italian who can fake a good Cockney, you’re still out of luck, as Microsoft’s reportedly disabling voice control entirely in said regions until it can formally support it. And game companies wonder why we try so hard to hack those DVD drives…
Update: Canada will in fact have voice support, according to Microsoft. So long as you speak English and not French.
Kinect won’t support voice recognition in some countries until 2011, putting on airs won’t help originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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“If you see it, just say it,” says Microsoft’s Kinect, but only in the US, UK, Mexico and Japan to start — those are the only four countries that will support Kinect voice control by the motion-sensing peripheral’s November launch. So said Microsoft PR manager Lidia Pitzalis in an interview with Eurogamer Spain, adding that Germany, Italy, France and even Canada and Spain would have to wait for a Spring 2011 update for additional language support. Microsoft claims it’s a matter of accents throwing off the voice recognition, as the company’s already had to build separate software versions for US and UK English, but if you’re an Italian who can fake a good Cockney, you’re still out of luck, as Microsoft’s reportedly disabling voice control entirely in said regions until it can formally support it. And game companies wonder why we try so hard to hack those DVD drives…
Kinect won’t support voice recognition in some countries until 2011, putting on airs won’t help originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Zune HD continues to rank among our all-time favorites in terms of industrial design, so it’s good to hear that Microsoft isn’t entirely abandoning the PMP sector for its new Windows Phone 7 hotness. Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet has consulted her tea leaves (and in-the-know tipsters) and emerged with the strong feeling that some new Zune hardware is brewing up in Redmond. Little specificity is available, beyond the obvious postulation that a new ZHD would probably be driven by an ARM CPU and take some software pointers from WP7, but we’re told to look toward to the early 2011 horizon and see if we can’t spot any sexy new media players emerging. A mirage is as likely as the real deal right now, but it’s always fun to look to that horizon, no?
Zune HD could have all-new model in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you’ve been holding yourself back during these early rounds of the smartphone wars in anticipation of Windows Phone 7, your wait just got a tiny bit shorter. Today Microsoft is announcing that its fancy new mobile operating system has been released to manufacturing, making the idea of you holding an actual WP7 device in your hands that much closer to reality. The finished product is now rolling out to partners around the world where it will be getting carrier and manufacturer tweaks and additions, and going through the kind of pre-launch testing you would expect for a release of this scale. If you had any doubt that the Windows Phone 7 onslaught was close at hand, feel free to abandon them now.
Furthermore, the folks on the 7 team have managed to cram a few last minute goodies into the OS, one of which we’re particularly excited about. As you probably know from our in-depth preview of an early version of the software, we had a lot of issues with overflowing Facebook contacts in our phone. Microsoft has now solved that problem by enabling a contact filter system which looks for pre-existing matches to your Facebook contacts. If it doesn’t find a match, it doesn’t pull that contact into your address book (kind of like how Android filters Facebook friends). It’s a welcome addition and should make the Facebook / Windows Phone 7 combo a lot more palatable to a lot of people. Furthermore, Microsoft has added functionality into the People Hub which will allow you to “like” someone’s posts, and you’ll be able to comment directly onto someone’s Wall right in the hub. The company has also made tweaks and fixes focusing on feature discoverability (another issue we pointed out in the early look), along with the expected set of polishing and finish you’d expect from a product that’s gone gold master.
Windows Phone 7 goes gold master, begins rolling out to partners for final launch preparations originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Ooh boy, do we have a good one for you today. We’ve been tipped off that the HD3 — HTC’s mythical successor to the wildly popular HD2 — is not only alive and kicking, but headed for a bright and sunny Windows Phone 7 future, starting as early as October 18. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, all the evidence we have for now is the above spreadsheet, which we’re told is an internal planning doc from UK carrier O2. It’s not exactly the hardest thing in the world to forge so keep your skeptical wits about you, but as silly as this inflationary renaming to HD7 may sound, we find it strangely believable. After all, why wouldn’t the company that brought us the Incredible Wildfire of Desire jump ahead a few numbers to keep up with the hot new OS’ numbering?
[Thanks, ZaK]
HTC HD3 to be named HD7 in honor of Windows Phone 7, launch October 18? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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