Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington Smartbike startup Vanhawks, part of the Y Combinator Winter 2015 class, has raised $1.6 million from Real Ventures, Olympic triathlon gold medallist Simon Whitfield, Brenda Irwin of Relentless Pursuit partners and various angels. The company will use the funding to help deliver its Valour smartbike, which raised over $820,000 on Kickstarter last…

By Matt Burns This is common and one of the chief concerns Garmin is addressing with the Fenix 3. It looks and works like a normal watch. Just don’t call it a smartwatch. It sports some basic smartwatch functionality, but it’s mainly a glorified activity tracker. And I like it. After two weeks, I’m still…

By Darrell Etherington Samsung and Oculus have been treating Gear VR and the Oculus Rift in a similar manner, meaning both pieces of hardware are clearly labeled as developer or enthusiast devices, and not meant for the general public. Oculus CTO John Carmack said Gear VR will get a proper, full consumer launch with Samsung’s…

By Darrell Etherington This new gadget is called simply the Nvidia Shield, which means the company probably wants it to lead the lineup that also includes the Shield Tablet and Shield Portable, and it’s powered by the new Tegra X1 processor Nvidia debuted at CES this year. More important than all that, however, is that…

By John Biggs “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years,” I told HTC’s mild-mannered demo wrangler at MWC today. “And this is the first time I’ve been actually excited about a technology in five.” He had just walked me through one of the best demos I had ever seen. It was the HTC Vive, a…

By John McCann The Honor 4X will be landing in Europe sometime between April and June this year with a strong spec list and attractive price tag. It’s a tier below the Chinese firm’s Honor 6 and 6 Plus smartphones, yet the 4X still sports a large 5.5-inch display. The resolution isn’t full HD, rather…

By John McCann The Honor 4X will be landing in Europe sometime between April and June this year with a strong spec list and attractive price tag. It’s a tier below the Chinese firm’s Honor 6 and 6 Plus smartphones, yet the 4X still sports a large 5.5-inch display. The resolution isn’t full HD, rather…

By John McCann Archos has several mid-to-low range mobiles and the fear of them merging into one untidy mess clearly isn’t a concern with the arrival of the 52 Platinum. With a price tag of just £129.99 (around $200, AU$250) the 52 Platinum certainly falls comfortably into the “affordable” bracket, finding itself mixing with the…

By John McCann Archos has several mid-to-low range mobiles and the fear of them merging into one untidy mess clearly isn’t a concern with the arrival of the 52 Platinum. With a price tag of just £129.99 (around $200, AU$250) the 52 Platinum certainly falls comfortably into the “affordable” bracket, finding itself mixing with the…

By Darrell Etherington The YotaPhone 2, an innovative Android smartphone with a standard full-color display on the front, and a low-power e-ink screen on the back, will finally make its way to the U.S. market beginning this summer with an Indiegogo campaign kicking off soon. The company will use the crowdfunding site to sell the…

By Sarah Perez A company called Ambit Networks has just launched its own take on wearables aimed at children with the debut of the AmbyGear Smart Watch, now live on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The new watch includes built-in GPS and alerts for parents as well as educational content and games for kids. It’s initially available…

By Ron Miller Rumors of Google Glass’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Google Glass is not dead. It’s not hospitalized. It’s not gravely ill. It is not even convalescing. In fact, it’s alive and well, hard at work and living in the enterprise. The enterprise, you say? What came over it? Google Glass had its…

By Natasha Lomas Nokia is showing off the Android tablet that’s part of its post-mobile phones strategy here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’s only available in China right now but the company tells TechCrunch it’s “looking at European markets” to consider whether to bring the N1 here too. Read More …read more Source:…

By Darrell Etherington Parrot has a brand new drone on the market, featuring a 1080p video camera that captures motion at 30FPS, and that can take stills at 14MP. The camera has built-in stabilization, letting it avoid the kinds of shakes and jitters that can normally add up to nausea when dealing with moving camera,…

By John McCann Don’t let the design of this handset fool you, while the Archos 50 Oxygen Plus may appear to be styled on Apple’s flagship smartphone this is a distinctly mid to low-end device. In fact with a SIM-free price of just £149.99 (around $230, AU$300) for the 3G model the 50 Oxygen Plus…