Range -- Engadget Mobile

range posts

Deprived of a defective battery, phone resorts to remotely starting oven to satisfy pyromania

by Chris Ziegler posted Aug 24th 2009 @ 11:11PM

Electronics and small, potentially lethal bouts of combustion go together like peas in a pod, but you know phones -- they're always branching out, conquering new markets, getting smarter, and doing things they've never done before. Take the common exploding battery, for instance; what happens when that trick gets played out? One creative option would be to find the closest source of natural gas and ignite it from afar, which is what one New York gentleman's Sony Ericsson (a classic P910i, we believe) has taken to doing. It seems that the phone somehow triggers the burners on his Magic Chef range to ignite when it's called -- in fact, they don't just light up, they go straight to the hellish "HI" setting, as the appliance's display is eager to point out -- and other phones tested have incited similar effects. For its part, Maytag (Magic Chef's parent company) says "this situation is highly unusual," so we wouldn't freak out about setting our phones on unlit ranges just yet -- unless you've already got a healthy fear of burning your $500 phone to a crisp for other unrelated reasons.

[Via Yahoo! Tech]

Callpod's Dragon Bluetooth earpiece sports 100-meter range

by Darren Murph posted Nov 15th 2007 @ 6:56PM

If you're cool with a circular gizmo flanking one of your ears, Callpod's Bluetooth earpiece is probably right down your alley. Aside from rocking a dual-microphone design, noise cancellation technology and multi-device pairing support, this headset promises to stay connected even if you stray 100-meters (give or take) from your mobile / computer. Additionally, you can count on 8-hours of talk time (300-hours in standby) to handle those all-night sobfests, and it's even firmware upgradable should the future hold some extras not yet available. If you're all ready to sign up, hit the read link and throw down your $119.95 -- Callpod says they'll be shipping soon.

[Via Uber-Review]

Japanese mobiles could make satellite calls to massive dish

by Darren Murph posted May 5th 2007 @ 4:45AM

When you're already tracking every kid out there to make sure no one gets into too much mischief, you definitely need a way to make a call whilst in "mountainous areas or at sea," right? Apparently the Japanese government thinks so, as it's planning on bringing satellite calling to the masses by launching a bird that's 50-meters in diameter in order to enable "ordinary handsets" (you know, the ones without the mile-long antennas) to make satellite calls in times of emergency with just slight modifications. The aforementioned sat would be over twice the size of the 19-meter Kiku No. 8, which currently holds the crown for the largest launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, meaning that the newfangled equipment would fit nicely within the confines of today's increasingly shrinking cellphone and still find signal. Interestingly, the ministry isn't looking to get the service going before 2015, so we just might be looking at mainstream antenna-less iterations by that time anyway.

[Via DigitalWorldTokyo, photo courtesy of SatellitePhones]