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Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid

By Darren Murph

Mama always said that some folks just never learn, and we reckon there’s plenty of wisdom to be had from that very statement. Year after year, German police are called in to raid select booths at CeBIT (and IFA, to be fair), and yet again we’ve seen a booth cleared out at the request of powerful lawyers from a few companies you may have heard of. Word on the street has it that Apple, Siemens and Sisvel were all kvetching over patent infringements made by an unnamed company exhibiting at last week’s show, and within an hour or so of the fuzz showing up, the whole thing was stripped and a hefty fine (€10,000) was levied. Unfortunately, the exact details of who was violating what remains clouded in mystery, but for whatever reason, we get the feeling that something extremely similar will be going down in Hannover next year. We blame KIRFers determination.

Updated: Turns out one of our editors at CeBIT saw this whole situation go down at the FirstView booth. Within minutes the entire booth was surrounded by the Polizei, and though we tried to dig further on the situation our inability to speak German caused some communication issues so we decided it best to move on to the next craptablet on the floor. We will, however, always have the shot above to remember the confusing experience.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake: HP Mini 5101 knockoff is almost as good, almost as expensive as the real thing

By Tim Stevens
Keepin' it real fake: HP Mini 5101 knockoff looks as good as the real thing, costs almost as much

Coveting a beautiful new netbook but can’t quite manage the $399 for a new HP Mini 5101/5102? Maybe this knock-off would fit your budget, looking more or less indistinguishable from the real thing. The ports have a slightly different layout (with some of them looking a wee bit askew) and the red hue here doesn’t have quite the same lustre of the real thing — but it is awfully close, right down to the chrome HP logo on the lid. How much would you pay for this piece of impressioned gadgetry? How about $337? Sure, the difference is enough to cover a copy of Heavy Rain, but could you live with yourself typing your e-mail every day on a lie? Beyond that, we have a suspicion this thing wouldn’t last much longer than the Origami Killer’s victims.

Keepin’ it real fake: HP Mini 5101 knockoff is almost as good, almost as expensive as the real thing originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLIX: X-Slim X340 KIRFed, MacBook Air empathizes

By Joseph L. Flatley
The secret to a great KIRF is that it represents not just a knock-off but an homage to a beloved product (at least, that’s what we tell ourselves when we sit in our workshop, trying to build the first ever shanzhai Grippity). Recently spotted in the stalls of Shenzhen, the above device is reminiscent of the MacBook Air, yes, but more tellingly, the MSI X-Slim X340. This 13-inch (1366 x 768) bad boy features a 1.2GHz Intel ULV processor, 1GB of RAM, up to 250GB of HDD, WiFi and Bluetooth, an SD card slot, three (count ‘em!) USB ports, and HDMI out. You can expect to spend about $350 if you ever manage to track ‘er down — or you can just say the hell with it and go back to reading Garfield Minus Garfield. Either way, we support you. Get a closer look after the break.

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLIX: X-Slim X340 KIRFed, MacBook Air empathizes

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLIX: X-Slim X340 KIRFed, MacBook Air empathizes originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone

By Joseph L. Flatley
When one thinks of a PSP Phone, they usually imagine a handset with a number of cool, gamer-centric features, such as some sort of integration with the PlayStation network or — imagine! — the ability to actually play PSP games. What they don’t imagine — correct us if we’re wrong — is some sort of KIRFy cellphone shoved inside what is essentially the shell of a PSP. That said, we do have to give our friends in Shenzhen some props: not only have they beat Sony with this knock-off, but with the way things are going, they might have the PSP Phone market all to themselves in perpetuity. No specifics on this one yet — price, stats, or street date — but you probably weren’t going to buy one anyways. Get a closer look after the break.

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVII: iPad meets Windows 7, sparks fly

By Vladislav Savov

It would seem like we’ve recalled our editor from Shenzhen a little prematurely. The land of Yao has gone and answered all the iPad’s critics in resounding style: TESO’s 10-inch clone tablet features a full-blown Windows 7 install (check), 1024×600 capacitive touchscreen display (check), HDMI output (check), a 1.66GHz Atom N450 (vroom vroom!), 1GB of DDR2 RAM, GPS, 3G, and a 3,000mAh battery. Yep, it’s a netbook sans the keyboard, and it might weigh 1.2kg while stretching to a portly 2cm thickness, but are you really gonna let a few well-rounded edges get in the way of experiencing a grown-up desktop OS on that tablet you so desperately need? Couple more pics await after the break.

Update: 9to5Mac has alerted us to the fact that this clone seems to be sporting the same front plate as the one purported to belong to the iPad in the days before its release. Good to know all the engineering that went into inflating the iPhone’s bezel up to 10 inches didn’t go to waste.

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVII: iPad meets Windows 7, sparks fly

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVII: iPad meets Windows 7, sparks fly originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVI: BlueBerry gets upgraded with optical pad

By Chris Ziegler

You see, this isn’t our first run-in with BlueBerry. Nay — this is a firm that has shadowed Waterloo’s moves for some time, so when it came time for the real thing to make the transition from trackballs to optical pads, the Shenzhen doppelganger naturally had to follow suit. The result is this here BlueBerry 9500, a device that looks more like a Bold 9500 grafted to a Nokia E72 than it does a Bold 9700 — but hey, for folks torn between their Finnish and Canadian loyalties, this might be the perfect solution. The impressive spec sheet includes a TV tuner (complete with 9-inch retractable antenna), dual SIM support, and WiFi, and — most importantly — the optical pad is said to be “decent.” Check out the gallery for a couple more shots — just don’t expect any App World access with this one.

Gallery: Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVI: BlueBerry gets upgraded with optical pad

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVI: BlueBerry gets upgraded with optical pad originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLV: ME600 rips Motorola Backflip down to its shivering Blur skin

By Paul Miller

There are many of us simple humans who “just don’t get” the Motorola Backflip. Their poor minds can’t fathom this oddest of twists on the QWERTY flip, and now here comes the “MOTOROIA” ME600 from Shenzhen to wrap their brain into ever more elaborate pretzel knots. The phone is a pretty faithful reproduction, but it’s a bit thicker, has a mere VGA camera, and doesn’t run Android — despite that hint of Blur on the home screen.

[Thanks, xleung]

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLV: ME600 rips Motorola Backflip down to its shivering Blur skin originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The surprisingly seedy side of microSD production

By Tim Stevens
The surprisingly seedy side of microSD production

That little memory chip serving tunes to your smartphone, the one that’s just a sneeze or twitch away from going where the socks go whenever you take it out, has a far more interesting history than you think. Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, co-creator of the Chumby, explored the surprisingly interesting underside of microSD production in China after being given a batch of questionable memory cards direct from Kingston itself. Huang’s conclusion is that the chips were created during a “ghost shift,” when a rogue employee runs the manufacturing lines after hours to produce authentic looking but decidedly sub-par memory chips using materials of inadequate quality. Huang bought numerous questionable examples on the gray market and watched as vendors took bogus cards and threw them into authentic retail packaging, complete with serial numbers and holograms. If you’re as fascinated by the world of KIRF as we are, it’s a very interesting read.

The surprisingly seedy side of microSD production originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Artificial nose becomes coffee analyzer, sniffs out KIRF Starbucks venues

By Darren Murph

Artificial schnozzes have been sniffing foreign objects for years now, but rarely are they engineered to sniff out specific things. A team of researchers from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign have done just that, though, with a new snout that acts as a coffee analyzer. Reportedly, the device can “distinguish between ten well-known commercial brands of coffee and can also make a distinction between coffee beans that have been roasted at different temperatures or lengths of time.” The significance here is that this distinction is incredibly difficult to make, and it could one day help coffee growers determine whether batches are as good as prior batches on the cheap. More importantly, however, it could help the modern java hunter determine whether or not they’re walking in a corporate Starbucks or one of those “branded” kiosks with two-fifths the menu. Brilliant, right?

Artificial nose becomes coffee analyzer, sniffs out KIRF Starbucks venues originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLIV: HTC Tattoo joins the WinMo gang, or appears to anyway

By Richard Lai

No matter how realistic a KIRF phone looks these days, there’s always a catch somewhere. For instance, this GSM handset is pretty much an exact clone of the HTC Tattoo, except for a couple of debatably important things: the suspiciously-cheerful $169 price tag, and the fact that Windows Mobile (and not Android) is running the show. Oh, and it doesn’t end there: judging by the photo, you’d assume this evil clone runs WinMo 6.5, yet the spec sheet mutters 6.1. A typo? Maybe. Something far more baleful? Maybe. A KIRF OS to go along with the KIRF hardware? Probably. That said, it’s hard to turn down a cheap phone that packs GPS, FM radio, stereo Bluetooth audio, a spare battery and a 2.8-inch touchscreen (240 x 320), but that’s assuming that you’ve no self-esteem to speak of. See if the full kit after the break will seal the deal for you.

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLIV: HTC Tattoo joins the WinMo gang, or appears to anyway

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLIV: HTC Tattoo joins the WinMo gang, or appears to anyway originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ZTE’s Smooth Android slider is a not-so-smooth Pre knockoff

By Paul Miller

We hate to yell “Pre!” at the top of our lungs here, since we’d really like to see further exploration of the portrait QWERTY form factor for Android, but it’s hard to avoid the form factor and stylistic comparisons. The new “Smooth” phone from ZTE is a low-end handset running Android 1.6, with a 2.8-inch QVGA screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and a love for Palm industrial design. The phone, which is being shown off at MWC, should retail under 1000 Yuan (about $146 US) and be released in August of this year as a low-end smartphone contender.

ZTE’s Smooth Android slider is a not-so-smooth Pre knockoff originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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General Mobile’s Touch Stone: how can something so wrong be so right?

By Chris Ziegler

General Mobile — maker of the DSTL1 dual-SIM Android phone — has always walked a fine line between KIRF and originality with its phones, and its latest batch is no different. Normally it’s easy to resist a device widely regarded as a knockoff (for most of us, anyhow), but in the case of the newest model here, General Mobile’s actually managed to answer a question HTC’s failed to so far: where the hell is the HD2 with Android? The so-called “Touch Stone” (deep breaths, Palm) rings true to many of the actual HD2’s specs, from the 5 megapixel camera to the 4.3-inch capacitive WVGA display, but this sucker adds an “optional” analog TV tuner (which won’t do countries with digital transitions any good) and Android 2.0 atop an ARM9-based PXA935 core. Sadly, this phone doesn’t quite exist yet — we were shown a dummy model today with the promise of retail toward the end of the year, at which point HTC and others will undoubtedly have phones like the Supersonic on the shelf. If you’ll excuse us, we need a cold shower, but you’ll find more shots of the Touch Stone along with the Cosmos (launching soon) and Cosmos 2 dummy (launching… well, eventually) in the gallery.

Gallery: General Mobile’s Touch Stone: how can something so wrong be so right?

General Mobile’s Touch Stone: how can something so wrong be so right? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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