It’s tough enough to peck and hunt when you’ve only got 26 or so primary characters to fool around with, but trying to construct something meaningful in Chinese just has to be a tad more complex than we’d like to imagine. Hanwang’s latest mouse is looking to ease the pain suffered while penning an email with wildly elaborate characters by offering a more natural approach to keying in text, as built-in top-mounted screen accepts handwritten input via the integrated stylus (seen after the jump). As expected, users can actually write characters on the LCD rather than typing it in, presumably making things a bit easier on those who’d rather handle a writing utensil than fight with a keyboard. No word on pricing or availability just yet, but we’re still not entirely convinced a mouse-sized panel would be classified as “convenient” when trying to pen a dissertation.

[Via EverythingUSB]
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Sure, we pretty much had it all from the FCC’s mouth, but now Motion Computing has come clean about its new LE1700 slate tablet, along with pretty pictures and a couple new deets. First off, prices start at $2200 for 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo and $2000 for 1.2GHz ULV Core Solo versions of the tablet. Options for built-in EV-DO and view anywhere or WriteTouch (finger touchable) 12.1-inch SXGA+ displays will jack the price, and the standard 512MB of RAM will need a considerable boost to handle pre-loaded Vista. Potential accessories include the pictured convertible keyboard and a USB keyboard with a touchpad built-in. If you’re not ready for Vista, or not ready to spring for a RAM upgrade, Windows XP Tablet PC is also an option. Luckily, a/b/g WiFi comes standard, as do plenty of other laptop frills, and there’s a good amount of room to grow here — up to 4GB of RAM and an optional 7 hour extended battery.

[Via Laptop Mag; thanks Rob B]

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It’s been a long time in coming, but after HTC’s long, gradual feature buildup all the way from the very first Pocket PC phone in 2002, they’re finally putting the “computer” in High Tech Computer by making the jump to ultraportable PC-maker. That’s right, HTC’s first foray into the UMPC market, the Shift (codename Shangri-La), is officially announced today. We don’t yet have hard details on release date or price, but we do know it should be available in Q3 (we’d estimate for under $2,000). As for features, we know not to expect anything out of the ordinary (except lots of 3G), although the form factor is pretty notable: not too many UMPCs have a sliding keyboard, and none that we can recall have a tilting display in this orientation. Some specs:

• VIA CPU (the one we tried had a 1.2GHz chip)
• Vista business (yes, it was running Aero)
• 7-inch sliding, tiling wide-touchscreen
• 30GB drive
• Tri-band UMTS / HSDPA, quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE
• WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0
• Biometric reader, front-facing camera

We got a chance to play with an engineering sample of the Shift the other day; while we couldn’t take any shots of it, we could say that the slide and tilt screen felt rock solid. Unfortunately, the full keyboard just had way too many keys packed in to type remotely accurately on. Stay tuned for more on this one; from today on HTC’s playing a whole new game.

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As expected, Sprint has announced the SPH-m620 “UpStage” dual-faced musicphone today, giving Sprint a decided “wow” factor in its lineup — for the moment, at least. Manufacturers seem to be turning to unusual form factors in an effort to gain some differentiation in a crowded high-end and specialty phone marketplace, and the UpStage fills the bill nicely with a full side devoted to traditional phone activities — “calls, text messaging, and contact management” to use Sprint’s verbage — while the entirety of the flip side takes the form of a traditional MP3 player; a button press switches between sides. Naturally, the phone offers a microSD slot for up to 2GB of external storage, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and stereo Bluetooth, while an included 3.5mm jack adapter lets folks use more traditional headsets if they so choose; even cooler, incoming calls are announced via text-to-speech while you’re jamming out. Also included is a Music Manager app for sideloading tunes to the phone via USB and a unique “battery wallet” boosting the phone’s stamina for playing music up to a solid 16 hours or 6.3 hours of talk time (up from 2.5 hours talk time without) — you sacrifice a bit of girth from the phone’s normal, svelte 1.73 x 4.07 x 0.37 inch form, but for music junkies, the tradeoff may be worth it. Simultaneously with the phone’s release in early April, Sprint will be offering 99 cent over the air (nice!) music downloads good on its entire Music Store catalog, which we reckon is just perfect for a phone of the UpStage’s nature. Look for it to hit shelves for $149 on a two-year agreement with a $50 rebate available.

Gallery: Sprint’s Samsung UpStage

    

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Ricoh just announced this, the Caplio GX100 followup to their GX8. The new shooter neatly bridges the DSLR and compact shooter set by offering a 10 megapixel, 1/1.75-inch CCD sensor coupled to a 24 to 72-mm wide (3x) zoom lens with optional 19-mm conversion lens to get even wider. The Smooth Imaging Engine II takes care of the image processing while CCD-shift-type vibration correction helps keep the blurring to a minimum. Around back you’ll find a 2.5-inch LCD with 170-degree viewing angle. Otherwise, you can opt for a hot-shoe attachable electronic viewfinder which, besides being useful on a sunny day, provides 100% image coverage with synchronized focal length and no parallax error. It even supports those new(ish) SDHC cards and AAA batteries for those times you find the rechargeable flat. All this in a highly compact, 25-mm thin chassis with RAW support. When and for how much are the critical questions we’re all asking.

Gallery: Ricoh’s Caplio GX100: not a DSLR, not a point-and-shoot — just hot

    

[Via LetsGoDigital]

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If you like your music done up digital, but would rather leave a computer out of the equation, Sony‘s new GIGA JUKE HDD-based system and deck should fit the bill nicely. The NAS-50HDE bookshelf system (pictured) features an 80GB drive, with room for tracks transferred from your computer, ripped from CDs, or recorded from radio and analog sources. Ripping takes place at a commendable 16x pace, and the system can handle tagging duties as well. There’s a 4.3-inch color display to browse through your tracks, and if you’d rather listen to your musics on the go, you can sync with your Sony Walkman, Walkman phone, PSP or other compatible MP3 player. The NAC-HD1E deck handles all those same duties, but loses the speakers, beefs up the audio componentry, and offers 250GB of storage. We wouldn’t mind a bit of internet radio or PC audio streaming thrown into the mix, but it looks like Sony isn’t interested. These two will be hitting Europe in May and June, respectively.

Gallery: Sony’s GIGA JUKE units store, rip and sync your music

  

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Unlike CES, there is no shortage of newly announced UMPC devices here at CeBIT. Perhaps that’s due to this being the 1st anniversary of the platform’s launch. But if you’re looking for the ultimate in QWERTY portability, then look no further than the new FlyBook V5. This 1.2kg pup packs pretty much everything the discerning road-warrior could want: 1.06GHz Intel Core Duo ULV U2400 processor; up to 2GB of DDR2 memory; Intel 945GM graphics; 8.9-inch, 32-bit color, 1024 x 600 (WXGA) touchscreen display which works with the touch of a finger or included stylus in both landscape and portrait (tablet) modes; 40GB hard disk; 1.3 megapixel swivelling camera built-in to the bezel; Gigabit LAN; stereo speaker; and fingerprint reader. It also brings a reasonable mix of expansion which includes Express card, 2x USB 2.0, and TV-out. The best part, however, is the number of radios packed into this ultraportable. It starts with Bluetooth 2.0, sprinkles in some 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and and then smothers it all with 3.6Mbps UMTS/HSDPA and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM. The V5 measures just 235 x 163 x 30-mm and packs a 1.2kg heft making it feel solid, not heavy in the hand. Good thing too, cause those controls you see between the keyboard and display allow you to pick the unit up while in a traditional laptop config and continue navigating the display. The miniature 80-key keyboard of the working prototype v5 that we tapped upon was seriously springy. The reduced size and key bounce would certainly take some getting used to. A sacrifice we’d be privileged to make if we could call this unit our own. Still, things might stiffen up before the April release – The Netherlands and Italy first with the rest of Europe to follow “soon” thereafter. Sorry, no definite plans for a US release date making us want one even more.

From engadget

Gallery: Hands-on with the Flybook V ultra-connected ultra-portable