May's Coolest Gadgets

If the new products we've seen in the last few weeks are anything to go by, we're in for a great year gadget-wise.

In the portable world we've got the first Centrino Atom-based computer and a smartphone from Sharp that will go on sale in Japan. Sanyo's new model of its waterproof Xacti digital still camera has even clearer video and includes the ability to follow your friends' faces underwater! A lot more bulky but equally exciting is NEC's Lui PC. It combines a PC and digital video recorder and makes the entire system accessible over a home network or Internet so you can log into the base PC and access recorded programs or the PC desktop.

And from the research and development labs comes an interesting chip from Seiko Epson that enables e-paper to enter a whole new world: the chip can support a touchscreen, and means that it's now possible to make e-paper than can be written on-- digitally, of course. And finally, just as Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV blew people away with its thinness, the company has done it again with a pair of prototype OLED display panels that are just a few tenths of a millimeter thick. They could mean ever thinner TVs in the future-- definitely something worth staying tuned for.

NEC Lui PC and home media server

NEC has launched a new PC and home media server called "Lui." The Lui can tune into digital high-definition TV broadcasts, and stream both live and recorded programs to compatible TVs and computers. It also allows remote Windows desktop access from portable devices. It's akin to a digital video recorder and PC packed together into a single, large case and is intended to sit in the living room next to a television as a central server for multimedia content. The top-end model has a Blu-ray Disc drive and 1T byte of hard-disk storage for video built alongside a fully-fledged computer running Windows Vista Premium and based on a 2GHz Core2Duo processor and with its own 320G-byte hard disk drive. For this NEC is asking users to pay ¥379,800 (US$3,753). The two thin clients dedicated to accessing the Lui are also available. One model looks like a small laptop PC and has a 10.6-inch screen while a second looks more like an Ultra Mobile PC and comes with a 4.1-inch screen. The former will go on sale for ¥89,880 and the latter for ¥49,980. Their use is dependant on a network connection and link back to the home Lui server. NEC has no plans to sell the Lui PC overseas.

Sanyo waterproof Xacti camera

Sanyo has improved its waterproof Xacti digital still and movie camera. The DMX-CA8 has an 8-megapixel image sensor and the top still image mode outputs a 4,000 pixel by 3,000 pixel resolution image (an effective 12-megapixel image created using pixel interpolation). On the video side the frame rate has been increased to 60 frames per second, so you get smoother video during normal speed or slow motion. The face detection has also been tweaked and can keep track of up to four people while attempting to keep them in focus. The function also works underwater and can track people wearing all but the largest snorkeling or diving masks, said Sanyo. The camera is waterproof at a depth of around 1.5 meters, which means it should work well for snorkeling but not for scuba diving. The DMX-CA8 will go on sale in Japan in mid-May for about ¥50,000 (US$490). It will arrive in other markets around the world later, although precise dates haven't been fixed.

Samsung and LG stylish cell phones

Samsung and LG have both launched their latest high-design cell phones: the Samsung's Soul and LG Secret. The Samsung phone is a slider-type handset that has an eye-catching touch panel under the display. The panel displays navigation icons that change according to the current application being run on the handset. For example, in camera mode, icons such as zoom and brightness appear, while music player functions appear in music mode. LG's Secret uses the same form factor as its Chocolate and Viewty phones-- a keypad slides out from beneath a touchscreen-- and its case is made from carbon fiber. Both support 7.2M bps HSDPA downloading. The Soul is already on sale in Europe for 400 euros (US$635) and the Secret will be out soon.

Willcom/Sharp D4 Centrino Atom PC

Japanese mobile carrier Willcom was first to announce a portable computer based on Intel's Centrino Atom chip. The D4 is being manufactured by Sharp and will be available in June for ¥39,800 (US$395) with a two-year service plan costing ¥2,100 per month, taking the total cost to ¥90,200. The plan includes unlimited data. Willcom will not sell the D4 without the network service. It has a 5-inch widescreen display, 40G-byte hard disk, a slide-out 64-key keyboard and a monitor that tilts up slightly, making it easier to read when typing on a flat surface. It's perhaps a little bulky for making and receiving many calls so Willcom will also offer a smaller Bluetooth phone handset as an option. It will be targeted at business users and students, although Willcom also hopes it will appeal to more general consumers.

Sony prototype razor-thin OLED panels

If you thought Sony's 3-millimeter thick XEL-1 OLED (organic light emitting diode) TV was cool then you haven't seen anything yet! The XEL-1 contained a 1.4-mm thick panel, but now Sony has managed to slim that down to just 0.3mm. It's also managed to make a 3.5-inch prototype screen that's just 0.2mm thick. Both screens started out as a normal OLED screen but Sony ground down the glass substrate on which it was made to reduce the thickness. The razor-thin displays are perhaps some of the most impressive yet shown thanks in equal parts to their thinness and the bright, rich image possible with an OLED screen. The panels aren't Sony's first thin OLED screens. Last year it developed a prototype OLED built onto a plastic substrate, which has the benefit of allowing the screen to be flexible. The latest screens are brittle because they are glass-based. There was no word on when or if the thin OLED screens on show might be commercially available.

LG thin Scarlet TVs

LG Electronics is the latest TV maker to join the thin-TV market with the launch of its Scarlet TV set. The TV is LG's thinnest flat-panel TV yet at just 45 millimeters thick, which isn't thin enough to beat Sharp's X-series LCD TVs that recently went on sale in Japan. The Sharp TVs are 34 millimeters at their thinnest point, and swell slightly to 38 millimeters at the thickest point. The Scarlet sets will be sold in the U.S. under the LG60 brand name and in Europe under the LG6000 name. A 47-inch model in the range is already on sale in the U.K. and boasts a full high-definition (1,920 pixel by 1,080 pixel) screen and 100Hz fast scanning to provide a smoother image when showing fast motion. Other sets will go on sale soon in markets around the world.

E-paper chip allows annotations

A new electronic paper display could allow users to annotate pages in electronic books, make amendments to documents and erase parts of the page with as much ease as using a real pen and paper. The screen combines a conventional electronic paper display with a touch panel and a newly developed control chip. The chip, from Seiko Epson, can control a screen with up to four times the resolution of current "writable" e-paper devices such as iRex Technologies' iLiad and also refreshes the display faster, eliminating the slight lag between movement of the stylus and its effect on the screen. The new chip shortens the update time so the screen can be refreshed 50 times per second. That means lines appear on the screen as they are drawn by the user and interpreted by the touch-panel interface. The chip supports a screen of up to 2,048 pixels by 1,536 pixels and will be available commercially from August.

Fujitsu wooden laptop

Could this be the environmentally friendly laptop of the future? Fujitsu has designed a laptop PC with a case manufactured from wood rather than the more traditional plastic or metal. The laptop, which is only a prototype, uses cedar wood for the case and also makes use of bio-plastics for parts. Bio-plastics are plastics produced from renewable sources such as vegetable oil rather than petroleum used in traditional plastics. The laptop PC carries the names of Fujitsu and Monacca, a Japanese design team that specializes in wooden products. The wood PC is only a concept and Fujitsu has no plans to put it on sale.