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Tag Archives: smartphones

The nGroove Snap Uses Your Car’s CD Slot To Mount Your Smartphone At An Optimal Position

By David Ponce on 05/23/13 • Leave a comment!

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The worst place for your smartphone to be while you’re driving, is in your hands. But let’s face it: very few of us keep it in our pockets. It’s usually lying around in the center console, where you can glance at it if you get a text or a call. The nGage Snap is a mount specially designed to place your phone in the middle of the dashboard, right where you can comfortably see it. It has a specially designed

“microblade, small enough to fit into the slot of your CD player, narrow enough to hide behind your phone, and sturdy enough to withstand the rockiest of roads.

The way we designed the blade is such that it does not go far enough into your CD slot to activate the CD player mechanism, so that means you can still have a CD in your player while the mount is installed.”

Like you, we’re a little skeptical that this would actually work and not break anything, but we’re willing to suspend our disbelief when we consider that we’ve never actually tried it, while the nGage’s designers probably have tested it extensively and found it to be possible. If it works, it’s pretty slick. It does require you to stick a 0.55mm thin, removable, non-permanent adhesive backing on your device, which will snap to the magnets on the mount. If you can stomach that, in the name of convenience, you can head over to the IndieGogo campaign and pledge $25 for yours. It’s fully funded so you should be getting it in July.

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[ Product Page ]

Helios Handlebar Brings LEDs, GPS, Navigation And More To Your Bicycle

By David Ponce on 05/21/13 • Leave a comment!

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Handlebars on a bike can be so much more than rests for your hands, a place to affix the brakes, and a way to actually turn the two-wheeled vehicle. With the Helios handlebar, you can add the following features: button-activated rear-facing LED turn blinkers, 500 lumen headlight, smartphone controlled ambient lighting, speed indication and even navigation assistance. The blinker functionality is pretty straightforward, but the others can use some explaining. The speed indication will have the LEDs progressively change colour as you speed up; red for slow and green for fast. The Helios uses the GPS in your phone (paired through Bluetooth 4.0) to not only determine your speed, but also to give you directions; just load up a course and it’ll interface with Google Maps’ cycling directions to light up the appropriate LED as a required turn approaches. How exactly you’re supposed to see the LED on the rear-facing part of the handlebar we’re not entirely sure, but we trust that some thought has been put into that.

Finally, a low power GPS module is integrated into the handlebar itself. Just pop in a prepaid SIM card and you can track your bike from anywhere in the world, which is great if it ever gets stolen.

All this for $200? That’s a bargain if you ask us. Heck, it’s even $149 in Early Bird pricing on the Kickstarter campaign that should get off the ground sometime today.

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[ Product Page ] VIA [ Engadget ]

Keyprop Fits On Your Keychain, Could Actually Be Useful

By David Ponce on 05/09/13 • 1 Comment

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Props that help you keep your phone at an angle for optimal hands-free viewing are rarely successful because really, who wants to carry an extra item in their pockets? But the KeyProp could change all that. It’s a small plastic key-shaped accessory that fits on a standard keychain and attaches itself to a smartphone to, well, prop it up for convenient hands-free viewing. However, it does make use of your phone’s audio jack so you won’t be able to watch with your earbuds. If that doesn’t bother you, head on over to Kicksarter to pledge $15 for yours.

[ Project Page ] VIA [ LikeCool ]

$250 Case Could Turn Your Smartphone Into A Laptop

By David Ponce on 05/06/13 • Leave a comment!

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The processing power of a modern top-tier smartphone is impressive by any standards. But powerful as it is, a phone is still not anyone’s preferred method for getting any real work done. So why not use the phone as the removable “brains” of a laptop? That’s exactly what the Casetop from Lividesign aims to do. It uses your docked smartphone as the processor, the graphics engine, and the trackpad of a much more work-practical but still very portable 0.8″ thin laptop. Once docked, the Casetop provides a “11.1-inch 720p display, full-sized keyboard, stereo speakers, HDMI input, MHL video input, dual-mode MicroUSB, audio output and “always-powered” USB for charging other devices.” It seems to have room for a gargantuan battery, claiming 30h+ of autonomy, while allowing you to charge your mobile device. Better yet, the device works with any number of phones, featuring a slide-out clamp that should accommodate multiple sizes.

It’s currently doing the Kickstarter dance, seeking $300,000 with $250 pledges, which nets you one case.

[ Project Page ] VIA [ Engadget ]

Tracking Your Blood Alcohol Level Just Got More Social

By David Ponce on 04/23/13 • Leave a comment!

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Data nerds who also enjoy an occasional pint of ale will rejoice in discovering the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer. It goes a few steps beyond your traditional portable breathalyzer by integrating some pretty solid social features, as well as playing nice with your smartphone. It accurately tracks your blood alcohol level (by using the more professional fuel-cell technology, rather than cheaper semiconductors) and plots it on a graph over time. You can see how drunk you’re getting, how fast and more importantly, when you’ll be back to an acceptable level for driving. Take pictures of your drinks, and a personal drinking diary lets you take notes of each as you go along. And if you’re in the mood of sharing, you can set four levels of privacy, from private and personal, to fully social. You can also pick an intermediary step for alerting only a designated driver, and another for sharing, but anonymously. Sadly, the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer only works with iDevices, but at $150, we think is reasonably priced given the feature set.

[ Product Page ]

Breathometer Integrates With Smartphone: Why?

By David Ponce on 03/18/13 • Leave a comment!

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We think that carrying around a breathalyzer is a great idea. You go to a bar, have just a couple drinks and are ready to go home, but you want to make sure you’re legally allowed to drive? Bust it out, and test! The Breathometer is one such device, although unlike the myriad of cheap Chinese versions out there, this one integrates with a smartphone. Plug it into the audio jack on your phone, launch the app, and blow. Now the thing is, we’re not sure why the smartphone is necessary for this. If all it does is use the handset to display the figure… what’s the point? You can get the same functionality from a cheap old LCD! Granted, the Breathometer is small and fits in your pocket easily. But so are many other equally breathalyzers out there! What’s more, it likely uses a semiconductor-based sensor, which is much less accurate than the professional-grade fuel-cell sensors. Why do we think it’s a semiconductor sensor? The $20 price tag, for one.

So we’re not sure where to stand on this product. On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with it (aside from potentially questionable accuracy, a problem shared by all non-professional grade breathalyzers): it’s inexpensive, small and, gee-whiz, it works with your smartphone! On the other hand, why is that an advantage? Maybe there’s some finer point we’re missing here. Whatever the case, feel free to head over to the IndieGogo campaign to make a pledge if you want one for yourself.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Werd ]

94Fifty Basketball Is Rigged With Six Sensitive Sensors

By David Ponce on 03/01/13 • Leave a comment!

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Baketball’s been around for a while, but now that high-tech sensors are super small and cheap, why not stuff them inside a ball and start getting a bunch of metrics on the game you know and love? The 94Fifty basketball weighs and behaves exactly the same as a standard ball, but contains 6 sensors that can communicate with your smartphone via Bluetooth, and feed it data on spin, shot arc, shot speed, dribbling speed, dribbling strength and pretty much anything you’d want to measure to help you improve your game. The app also comes with various challenges for you to complete and social elements to put you up against other 94Fifty owners around the world. Charging of the various sensors is accomplished wirelessly, through a Qi-approved electrical induction pad.

There’s no official price just yet, but this should be hitting the marketplace this month.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Werd ]

DropTag Sensor Could Keep A Check On Heavy Handed Parcel Delivery Personnel

By David Ponce on 02/11/13 • 2 Comments

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There’s been a spate of news lately concerning UPS or Fedex truck drivers mistreating and mishandling various parcels. Whether it’s a Fedex guy throwing a box over a fence or a a UPS dude tossing the parcel at the door, it’s pretty clear that the integrity your goods often lies in very human hands. So, UK-based Cambridge Consultants (which we’ve mentioned before) have developed the DropTag. It’s a Bluetooth-enabled sensor that can automatically tell a smartphone equipped with the related application whether the package being delivered to you has been mishandled. Most people don’t take the time to open a package and inspect the goods while the delivery man is still in the door, which means they can’t send it back right away and have to deal with that hassle later on. With the DropTag, a simple scan of your phone is enough to tell you if you need to take a closer look at your products.

It’s not currently a mass market product, but they will be demonstrating a prototype at Hannover MESSE, April 8-12.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

So It’s Come To This: A Roomba For Cleaning Your Smart Devices’ Screens

By David Ponce on 02/07/13 • 2 Comments

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Did you ever think you’d see the day we got lazy enough, as a species, to invent a tiny robot whose only task it is to clean the surfaces of our smartphones and tablets? Because, what, wiping is too hard now? Don’t get us wrong, we think the AutoMee S is pretty awesome, but only in a “look at that cute thing moving about on my iPad” sort of way. And we suspect that it’s been created precisely because of its cuteness, especially considering it’s being launched in the Japanese market by Takara Tomy. And we all know Japan likes its kawaii. The AutoMee S measures “67 × 73 × 38mm, weighs 82 grams and is powered by a single AA battery which is good for three hours of cleaning.” It takes 4 minutes to clean an average smartphone and twice as long for a tablet. Like a Roomba, it has edge sensors to prevent it falling off the device, and is programmed to move in random patterns, eventually covering every bit of the surface in its allotted time.

It’s going to hit the market on March 28, in Japan, for 1575 Yen ($ 17) a piece.

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[ Product Page ] VIA [ NewLaunches ]

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