Battery life seems to be a common problem amongst modern cell phones, so how do we tackle it? Well, Sharp is certainly looking into solving the issue, and with its SH6230C cell phone, it might have a nice work-around until a real solution is found. It’s the first solar-powered cellphone by Sharp for the overseas market, and will be hitting the Chinese market in February. With the solar panel located at the back of the phone, you’ll be able to leave it by the window so that it can soak up the sun’s rays, though you might run into a little problem if your cubicle isn’t by the window. The SH6230C will sport Sharp’s proprietary solar cell module, along with a 2.9-inch LCD display, and 5-megapixel autofocus camera. It’s good to see companies focus on going green nowadays, though we’d still like to see some significant improvements in battery technology.

Permalink: Sharp Introduces Solar Powered Cell Phone from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

Are you unhappy with the current design of the electric cars on the market? If you are, you’ll just have to wait until the Trexa modular vehicle platform becomes available, and you’ll be able to come up with something that’s really unique. Instead of offering you the whole vehicle, the Trexa modular vehicle platform solves this by letting the buyer custom design the vehicle. What you get is an all wheel drive lithium-ion powered frame, which on a full charge, it can provide you with up to 105 miles of clean driving, though that’ll obviously depend on what you stack on top of the frame. If you opt for a sporty configuration, the Trexa will be able to sprint to 60mph in less than 8 seconds, and onwards to the top speed of about 100mph. You can expect to see a prototype version of this as early as Q4 of 2010, so that should give you a little time to save some pennies in the bank.

Permalink: Trexa Allows You To Build Your Own Electric Car from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

So you’ve seen Nokia’s N900 dual booting Maemo and Android, nothing too special about that, right? Well, what about a full blown Mac OS X 10.3 installation? Now that’s a rather impressive feat, wouldn’t you say? Thanks to the help of PearPC, a Power PC emulator, this was achievable, though there are obvious downsides to this approach. The most noticeable would be that it took nearly 2 hours to boot the operating system. You’ve really got to give credit to the person who had the patience to pull this off, after all, most people would walk off halfway after waiting for such a long boot time. So what is next for Nokia’s N900, Windows 7?

Permalink: Mac OS X 10.3 Running On Nokia N900 from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

Are you satisfied with the $9.99 price point of eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle, or do you think that publishers should be allowed to price the books higher? Every consumer wants to get the best deal, us included, unfortunately it seems that Macmillan are in the midst of a little dispute with Amazon at the moment, as Macmillan wants to offer some eBooks at $12.99 to $14.99, but Amazon would like to keep it at $9.99. When you look at the upcoming competition, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple iPad, it’s understandable that Amazon will want to keep the price attractive, though it will also need to make sure it doesn’t hurt the publishers too. Unfortunately Amazon has stopped directly selling Macmillan titles, which is certainly a result of the dispute.

As a result, Macmillan CEO, took out a paid advertisement in Publishers Marketplace to voice out on the issue. Whether it was directly related to the ad he put out or not, Amazon seems to have relented, and will give in the Macmillan, allowing it to sell eBooks at a higher price, even though it considers the price too high. Do you think that Amazon should be the one to control the pricing of these eBooks, or should consumers be the ones to give feedback (via their wallets) on this issue?

Permalink: Amazon Relents On Macmillan Price Dispute from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

Apple’s newly announced iPad is still a good 2-months away, or 3-months if you want the 3G version. Do you have to wait? If you want the real deal, then yes; if not, you could always go ahead and have some weekend fun by coming up with your own Lego iPad. It won’t make you look super cool when you whip it out in public, but you can be guaranteed that you’ll get lots of attention. This Lego iPad was built by Joe Meno, who is obviously a Lego fan, and now that you’ve seen it created, you’ve got a rough guideline to create one of your own, right?

Permalink: Make Your Own Lego iPad from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

Motorola should be launching its Motorola Backflip on AT&T sometime soon, but it seems like the folks over in China have managed to get this strangely-designed phone earlier. The Backflip is listed as the Motorola ME600 on Motorola’s China website, and is listed at about $629, unlocked, with an 8GB memory card and car charger thrown in for good measure. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how folks take to this rather unique phone design. In case you were wondering, specifications of the Motorola Backflip include:

• 320 x 480 pixel touchscreen display
• HSDPA
• Wi-Fi
• GPS
• QWERTY keyboard
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• 5-megapixel autofocus camera
• MotoBlur
• Android 1.5

Permalink: Motorola Backflip Already Available In China As The ME600 from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

It looks like the market certainly is getting flooded with tablet computers. Next up is the ExoPC Slate, which looks rather similar to Apple’s recently announced iPad. Since the ExoPC Slate is powered by Windows 7, you’ll be able to do more than a few things that the iPad can’t do, such as multitasking. This 8.9-inch multitouch tablet is priced at $599, which should put it on par with the 32GB iPad, in terms of price point anyways. Specifications of the ExoPC Slate include:

• Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor
• Powered by Windows 7
• 2GB of DDR2 memory
• 32GB SSD with SD card expansion.
• 4 hour battery life with the included user-replaceable battery.

Permalink: ExoPC Slate Looks Vaguely Like The Apple iPad from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

There is no denying that the HTC HD2 is an extremely capable and powerful smartphone, especially with its 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU. Despite its already impressive specs, which include a nice 448MB of ram, nobody is going to complain about more RAM, right? Surprisingly, some folks have discovered that their HTC HD2 units have a little extra memory (576MB), albeit in a disabled state. Of course, it’s not like it’s a huge difference like a 1GB bump or something, but every little bit helps, right? Those of you who own a HTC HD2, have you noticed this issue?

Permalink: Some Editions Of The HTC HD2 Have More RAM? from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

Are you a huge camera collector? Well, if you are, you’ve probably heard of the Giroux Daguerreotype camera, the world’s first commercially produced camera. This is probably your best chance to get it, as the camera, produced in 1839, will be going up for auction on 29th May in Vienna for a starting price of just €200,000 ($277,000) at the auction house WestLicht Photographica Auction. It’s estimated that the camera might end up going for as high as €700,000 ($970,000). Considering that we’ve seen an iPhone go for $3.2 million, this should be pocket change for some people, right? The Daguerreotype camera sports a sliding, or “double box” body. You’ll be able to achieve a fixed focus by pulling the smaller inner box away from the front-mounted achromatic landscape lens. It’s said to be in excellent original condition, and will even come with the original 24-page instruction manual, which is written in German. Do you think this camera deserves a place in your collection, or would you be better off putting that money aside from the super expensive iPhone 3GS Supreme?

Permalink: First Mass-produced Camera Heading For Auction from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

Robots used to look cool and all, just look at robots like Robocop, Transformers and whatever. Now it seems the trend is to build robots that look creepy, rather than cool and robot-like. The folks over at Advanced Robotic Systems Laboratories (ARSL) are busy showing off their new Proto-2 robot, and it’s just as creepy as the robots that most people are coming up with nowadays. It is designed partly to aid in the study of human-robot interaction, and thus packs an expressive face, complete with moving eyebrows and a (more) natural walking gait, thanks to a new dynamic toe-joint that they developed. If this trend keeps up, we’re going to have to ask the folks we meet by the roadside in the future if they’re robots.

Permalink: Proto-2 Humanoid Robot from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review