Cell Bytes

The latest Palm webOS update is available now via an over the air upgrade and in case you’re wondering about its features, there’s the video below and details after the break. The update was rolled out to all Sprint customers in the US and those using O2 UK, O2 DE and O2 Ireland services, plus Movistar.

You should know that Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus users got the update on Verizon Wireless, while other networks will also get it soon. In case you’re wondering, the new software brings stuff like the ability to capture, edit and share videos via YouTube or Facebook, or even send them via email or MMS.

We also found out that the Calendar, Phone, Email and Messaging features have been enhanced and simplified, so you’ll get a couple of new shortcuts, easing the app zipping and much more. Notifications were also enhanced, with the LED in the gesture area lighting up and pulsing whenever you get a notification. These notifications can also be customized.

[via Palm]

The hottest Android devices right now are undoubtedly Nexus One and Motorola Droid, both pictured recently using the Mozilla Fennec browser. The Mozilla team posted these teaser pics on their Facebook page, available right here.

You can see the Fennec browser running on the Google Nexus One handset (above) and on Motorola Droid (below). We don’t yet have a release date for the public build of this piece of software, but we know it should be coming soon.

This looks like an intuitive browser, that’s user friendly and probably packed with features of its desktop version. It’s also available on Nokia N900, Windows Mobile devices and we hope to see an iPhone version of it some day.

[via BGR]

So, the Sony Vaio P has a clone. Congrats, Sony! Too bad the mimicry ends with the aesthetics:

The appearance is spot on, but the insides are decidedly sub-par. The Atom processor is a less powerful than the processor offered in the Vaio P, and the memory maxes out at 1GB. If you’re comparing, that’s a full GB short of the original.

Since this is a clone however, the price is really the only area where one could say it “competes” with Sony’s premium-priced Vaio P.

The clone offers a 160GB for about $300, as well as a $380 model with 350GB storage, 2Gb ram and 3G.

Aaand scene. [Gizchina - Thanks, Andi]

“Larry, your new speakers look great, really they do. But…something’s off. I can’t put my finger on it, but they just sound, I dunno, kind of wooden. You know?”

Because they’re inspired by trees! Haha. I kill me.

Anyway, really, designer Marcos Ignacio Madia must have gone all Sigourney Weaver in the jungle from Gorillas in the Mist on us, because he just went and designed a line of speakers that look and grow (by stacking) like trees. There’s a woofer, midrange and tweeters, all of which you can stack and…hrm…grow as you expand the collection.

You can even, theoretically, turn the speakers to face different directions as you experiment with sound. Which is just like regular speakers except birds won’t accidentally nest in those.

It’s just a design at the moment, so you audiophiles will just have to put those woodies away for now. [Home Tone Coolest Gadgets via DVICE]

If passed, something called the Digital Economy Bill over in the U.K. could do the unthinkable in this, the digital age: Ban open wifi spots.

The ban comes as part of a bill that seeks to limit copyright infringement, or something. In summary, schools, small businesses and even libraries would have to effectively become their own ISP and manage the wifi hotspot—or face hefty fines. Even if a shop password-protected their wifi and posted the PW publicly (as they probably should be doing anyway), this “management” would also entail detailed record keeping, as the bill requires that hotspot providers log users who’ve been on their network. Sounds fun!

I’d love for any UK-based small business owners to weigh in on this debate, and the bill. Is it really as annoying as the ZDNet article makes it sound? Are daily, detailed user records really too much a burden for the corner coffee shop to bear? Light those torches and brandish your pitchforks in the comments! [ZDNET]

When we previewed the Asus Eee PC T101MT convertible netbook/tablet earlier this month, it was just on paper. The plucky little netbook looked promising, for an Eee PC, but this latest string of hands-on previews is just plain ugly.

The 10.1-inch touchscreen tablet portion, for example, struggles with basic tasks, touch recognition and responsiveness. The previewer rated the T101MT “poor” in these areas. Calibrating the device improved responsiveness slightly, but there were still areas of the screen, like the top, where the software struggled to keep up with the user’s input.

Then there’s the video:

Now, keep in mind this is all pre-production hardware we’re seeing, and could improve before launch. Maybe. [Touchscreen Tablet via Engadget]

Give this Lego Avatar helicopter a few aerodynamic tweaks, a slightly more powerful engine and a pilot spouting off canned, predictable dialogue, and I could easily see it taking flight, literally, to fight the Na’Vi.

I mean, the rotors appear to be spinning at quite a clip in that video don’t they? Enough to sting a stray finger, in any event.

Looks pretty sturdy too, which is incredibly important should the pilot happen to have a James Cameron-sized ego. [Nowhere Else via CrunchGear]

Well, that didn’t take long. Already analysts are crawling out of the woodwork to put the seemingly miraculous Bloom Box fuel cell in its place as yet another energy saving technology that won’t perform as advertised.

This week it was IDC Energy Insights analyst Sam Jaffe, who said that while the fuel cell developed by Bloom Energy CEO K.R Sridhar and his team was definitely “not bogus,” it just doesn’t differentiate itself well enough from already available fuel cell technologies—especially as it pertains to price.

And the device’s supposedly unique “fuel-switching” ability? Not unique at all, Jaffe claimed on his Energy Insight blog, in a post titled “Four Things Bloom Energy Forgot to Tell the World”:

“Any high-temperature fuel cell should be able to do that. The fact that it’s solid oxide and it’s primarily ceramic opens up the possibility of making it much more cheaply, but every start-up in the energy field has an expensive product that they claim one day will be cheap. There is no reason to believe that Bloom has the ability to make it that much more cheaply. I’m pretty pessimistic about it.”

Indeed. Further…fueling Jaffe’s pessimism is the belief that a Bloom Box isn’t really all that green if you’re comparing it to the way we traditionally get power from the grid. At a cost of $7-$8/watt, he contends, the miracle box is no less expensive than photovoltaics that have been purchased at a rate of 100 kW at a time.

Another miracle energy tech bites the dust? Unless Bloom Energy can curb costs and green things up a bit, the answer for now is “maybe.” Unless the unicorns get involved, anyway.

Still confused about fuel cells and the Bloom Box? Be sure to check out our regular Giz Explains column on this very topic! [IDC via CNET]

The Corby series just got a new member, the Samsung Corby Folder model, officially unveiled today. The device has just appeared on its marker’s official site and it’s apparently called Samsung CorbyF. You can see it pictured below and we’ve also got some cool info about the next Omnia, after the break.

Corby Folder is a mid end handset, with a 2.6 inch QVGA internal display, an external LED display, Bluetooth, mobile TV features and a 3 megapixel camera. Video calling is also supported, as well as microSD cards, EVDO Rev. A and HSDPA connectivity.

Samsung Folder (W930/W9300/W9350) will hit South Korea soon in candy pink, lime green and blue black, via SK Telecom, LG Telecom and KT. As far as Samsung Omnia III is concerned, it’ll apparently be called Samsung i9000 and info about it has surfaced on the WiFi Alliance website. All we know about is that it supports WiFi 802.11 b/g and maybe, just maybe it’ll run Windows Phone 7 Series.

[via Unwired View]

MetroPCS has just started offering the Samsung Caliber touchscreen handset, a device also known as Samsung SCH-r860. The phone uses the TouchWiz UI, based on widgets and customizability, social networking apps and full HTML web browsing.

Samsung Caliber supports Bluetooth, advanced voice recognition, the MetroNavigation GPS system, e-mail and mobile IM apps, plus a 3 megapixel camera with video recording and a microSD card slot. There’s also an MP3 player on board, a video player and a 3.2 inch WQVGA TFT display.

As far as the power source is concerned, we learn that the handset uses a 3.7 Volt 1080 mAh battery, with a 4.5 hours time of functioning.

[via samsungusanews]