Mobile Technology

The performance of electric motorcycles may not yet be on par with their fuel-snorting brethren, but our outings on this new breed of two-wheeler have convinced us that they are well on the way. Now San Francisco start-up BRD is throwing its hat into this rapidly expanding ring by announcing plans for battery powered bikes designed to "outperform their gas equivalents." Called RedShift, the motorcycles are slated for production in 2012 and will come in "dual-sport" and "urban" variants with both promising performance that would put them in the same ballpark as a gas-powered 250cc 4-stroke. Read More

Apps can often expand the capabilities of a smartphone far beyond its basic use, for instance, enabling the device to serve as a DSLR remote controller. While the idea itself is not particularly new, such a program hasn't been yet available for Android devices. Although still in the development phase, the DSLR Controller app has already been made available for download through Android Market, priced at US$8.51. Read More

As the number of Android tablets from lesser known electronics companies proliferate it’s no surprise to see companies not exactly known for their electronic device offerings looking to horn in the market. Fashion label Pierre Cardin has launched a 7-inch tablet computer the company claims is “the UK’s first designer tablet PC.” What makes a designer tablet you ask? Apparently a “tasteful case” featuring a metallic Pierre Cardin logo and an “uber-cool black gift box.” Read More

Research In Motion has announced three new smartphones that utilize its updated operating system, BlackBerry 7 OS. The BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 (UMTS/CDMA), the BlackBerry Torch 9810 and Torch 9860/9850 (UMTS/CDMA) all come with touchscreen-based input, and are equal in terms of their Qualcomm 8655 Snapdragon 1.2GHz CPU, 768 MB RAM and NFC support. Read More

A Skype app has been available for the iPhone since early 2009, meaning iPad users have been able to use the app in pixel doubling mode since the iPad's release in April, 2010 - albeit without the ability to make video calls since the first iPad lacks a camera. But iPad users have long been calling for a native Skype app for the iPad and things only intensified following the release of the iPad 2 with its front and rear-facing cameras. Now those calls have been answered with the first iPad-optimized Skype app now available as a free download from the iTunes App Store. Read More

Sitting somewhere between a tablet and a smartphone – minus the phone – is the ICE Smart Media Player from Latte Communications. With a 5-inch display and running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), the device joins the netherworld between smartphones and larger screen tablets currently occupied by the Dell Streak. But unlike the Streak, the ICE Smart doesn’t include have the ability to make calls, making it more like an oversized Android version of the iPod touch. Read More

Positioned as a "low-cost, full-function smartphone," the freshly announced Nokia 500 is the first Symbian Anna-based device to utilize a 1GHz-clocked CPU. The handset is lightweight at 93 grams (3.28 oz) and features a 3.2 inch, 360 x 640 resolution capacitive touchscreen along with a 5 megapixel flash-less camera at the back. Read More

The way we spend our time online is changing fast. While the browser still reigns supreme, more and more people are getting their online fix using apps. Mozilla, the folks behind the popular Firefox browser, has now announced the start of a new project to develop an app-centric, completely open, web-based phone and tablet operating system called Boot to Gecko (B2G). Read More

While a lot of online video has made the move to HTML 5, there are still plenty of Flash videos floating around that leave iDevice users with a “Please Upgrade Flash” message on their displays. With Apple seemingly unlikely to ever support Flash on its iOS devices, Skyfire came to the rescue last year with its Skyfire browser that allows Flash video to be viewed on said devices. Realizing that, despite its lack of Flash support, most people are generally quite happy using Safari, Skyfire has now released a standalone Flash player for iOS devices called VideoQ. Read More