The Toshiba Thrive isn’t exactly a good-looking Android tablet. Sure, it has plenty of ports, a removable battery, and a low price, but it’s also bulky and feels of cheap plastic. Sans the Toshiba logo, it feels and looks just like a random Chinese rip-off. But have no fear, Toshiba fans! Per a pre-IFA leak, there’s a new tablet coming and it’s every bit as sexy as the Asus Transformer or Samsung Galaxy Tab while packing at least some of the I/O ports found on the Thrive. → Read More
The Roomba just got new competition from Japan: Toshiba has announced [JP] a new cleaning robot today, the so-called Smarbo (which is probably short for “Smart Robot”). Just like its US counterpart, the Toshiba robot is primarily intended for use in households.
Toshiba built quite a few features into the robot, for example two CPUs (details unknown), a camera, and a set of 38 sensors (gyro, acceleration, range detection etc.). The company says that the Smarbo cleans an area of 100sqm in about 90 minutes and that electricity costs stand at just 2 yen ($0.03) for a room of that size. → Read More
The Qosmio F755 3D laptop is now available for those who wish to live in the 2D world but – and only occasionally – may also want to view things in 3D. The laptop uses a “15.6-inch diagonal full HD TruBrite® display with Active Lens” to display both 2D and 3D images (sample shown here may not represent actual display, your results may vary, consult a doctor before playing 3D games, 3D gaming could cause headaches, nausea, a feeling that 3D is BS, the croup, accidental ingestion of your wedding ring, dance, Gary Oldman’s Disease, vestigial tail growth).
The laptop runs a Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce 540M and allows for HD video and Blu-Ray playback.
The laptop will start at $1,700 when it is available mid-August. Click through for the full press release. → Read More
Summer is here, and there’s a good chance some of you are thinking of picking up something to document your vacations with. iPhones and point-and-shoots are all well and good, but if you want to take it to the pool or the beach, it’s nice to feel sure that an errant splash isn’t going to disable your camera permanently. We’ve got a few water-hardened Flip-esque pocket cams here for you to choose from, but which deserves your hard-earned cash?
I’m not including image samples because to be honest, all these cameras have tiny sensors and small, weak lenses, which combine to produce noisy images with poor sharpness and so on. But they’re cheap and vacation-proof. You can’t have everything. Let’s take a look, shall we? → Read More
Smartphone cameras have drastically improved in quality in recent years, but they’re still not good enough for you? Then Toshiba’s announcement [PDF] of a new CMOS image sensor, specifically designed for cell phones and other mobile devices, from today should be good news for you. → Read More
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a Toshiba 47-inch TL515 Series 3D LED TV with natural, passive 3D display, choose TriVector 2D to 3D Conversion, 3D Resolution+, 3D Cross Talk Cancelers and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and Toshiba’s first Natural 3D LED TV that creates stunning 3D images using affordable polarized glasses. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and Wi-Fi and Net TV with Yahoo! Widgets.
Choose life.
Find out how to win below. → Read More
While the nuances of this enormous, enormous business deal are certainly lost on this poor tech blogger, I thought it worthwhile to mention that three major Japanese tech companies are considering merging their LCD production divisions, presumably to compete more effectively against major rivals like Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, and big Chinese OEMs. What would the result be? Probably even more price-fixing. But the Japanese government would be investing a lot, so maybe that would add a bit of trustworthiness to the new company. Maybe. → Read More
Back in November 2010, Toshiba introduced the world’s first series of battery-powered LCD TVs. Dubbed Power TV, the devices were initially produced with developing countries or regions with unstable power supply in mind. But now big T has dated and priced [JP] a special version for the Japanese market, as announced in April this year. → Read More
Looking for a low-cost camcorder? Toshiba called, they want your money. In return, they’ll give you one of these two newish 1080p camcorders. I say “newish” because not only were these released in Europe back in April, but because one of them is nearly identical to one I have sitting next to me. The news is they’re finally coming to the US, so you can buy ‘em all day long with real live American dollars. Here’s the skinny in case you missed them the first time around. → Read More
The consolidation process in Japan’s electronics industry continues: Toshiba and Sony are in talks to combine their OLED and small LCD businesses, various Japanese news sources are reporting. The plan is to find synergies in the production for small LCD panels for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in order to catch up with Sharp, which currently holds the biggest share in the world market in this segment. → Read More
Toshiba is distributing a little OLED lamp they designed to quake-stricken areas of Japan. The device is powered by either four AAA batteries or a rechargeable battery pack that can be powered up with solar or USB power. But there’s a catch (for us, anyway). → Read More
Toshiba may have delayed its Honeycomb tab, but the just-announced WT310 shows the company hasn’t delayed all products in this form factor. The Windows 7 slate runs on an Oak Trail Atom Z670 and 2GB while packing a 64GB SSD, 802.11b/g/n chipset, Bluetooth 3.0, 2MP front & 3MP rear camera along with USB 2.0, HDMI, and a SDHX card slot. Sounds great, right? Well, at least for a Windows 7 tablet, that is. There’s a bit of bad news though. Only the Japanese release was detailed and it seems that Toshiba has bypassed the consumer market and is releasing this one only to the enterprise crowd sometime next month for a yet-to-be announced price. → Read More
Toshiba — the diversified tech company best known for its consumer electronics, lighting and HVAC systems — is coming after the smart grid market in Europe and the U.S. with the acquisition of a Swiss smart grid tech firm, Landis+Gyr. Toshiba announced a commitment to acquire Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion today.
The company makes power distribution, metering and smart home software and systems, which will supplement Toshiba’s utility-related offerings and give Toshiba reach into new markets in Europe, the U.S., China, India and Brazil, where Landis+Gyr has already gained some traction, according to a company statement (link, above).
While Toshiba sells hardware used by utilities — in substations, on poles and transmission lines, for example — this is their first major move to grab a piece of the energy management business on the metering and consumer side. → Read More
Toshiba’s second venture into the tablet arena is off to a rough start, as reports have come in saying that the Toshiba slate will be delayed in the UK. Originally, Toshiba had promised that the 10.1-inch Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet would arrive in the UK sometime during Q2. Sounds like that was a bit optimistic. → Read More
The march towards the generic Android tablet has begun. Most of the first Honeycomb tablets are indistinguishable from each other save one or two tiny differences. The Xoom hit the market first and still has arguably the best reviews while the G-Slate made a name for itself with 3D movies. Then there’s the Asus Transformer with its $150 optional keyboard dock and the Acer Iconia Tab with, well, a full size USB port. So now the buying points come down to the minutiae. Take the Xoom and the Iconia Tab. There’s a $150 difference in price with the only major hardware difference being the Xoom rocks 32GB of flash memory rather than 16GB. Still, I’ve found several, five to be exact, notable difference between the two. Spoiler: The Xoom isn’t worth the extra money if you don’t care about storage. → Read More
Need 3 terabytes of storage? Sure, why not? The HDCA-UT30K from IODATA is one of the first commercial 3TB drives available and it can act as a DVR for Toshiba Regza TVs and, presumably, hold thousands and thousands of LOLCat photos. → Read More
Toshiba yesterday announced [JP] an SD card that has a very special feature: it allows users to store up to 1GB of content, but following that, the content can not be erased or modified in any way. Other than that, the so-called Write-Once Card (which, needless to say, can’t be formatted either) looks like any other SD card and can be used just like a conventional card, too. → Read More
Earlier today we saw Samsung’s W200 make its debut, and now Toshiba is entering the ring. That makes three newish candybar-style waterproof camcorders out there (don’t forget the Playsport). So what sets the BW10 apart? Not a lot! → Read More
Do you remember the battery-powered REGZA PC1 Power TVs Toshiba announced for certain emerging markets last November? Today, the company said in Tokyo it plans to launch a similar (but different) 19-inch LCD Regza TV – but in Japan. → Read More
