According to new research from Pew Internet, 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other similar devices. And 65% of adults who own them say they have slept with their cell phones on or right next to their beds.

Yet consumers don’t know what these devices are made of exactly, and what their environmental and health impact may be. Phone manufacturers aren’t required to share all the details. Some do anyway.

Not Apple, though. The company is keeping secrets as usual, this time from O2 EcoRatings the UK-based initiative to rank… Read More

While it’s far from the most practical of ideas, people just can’t seem to stop trying to make their iPhones more SLR-like. Joining that illustrious group is one Aniebres who, typos aside, has built one of the most impressive contraptions to date. We’re still waiting to see what the end results look like, but the hardware side of things looks to be surprisingly solid, with the iPhone 4 slotting in with a satisfying click, while the entire lens mechanism has been shifted over to line up with the iPhone’s camera (and make room for an Apple

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We’re suckers for wireless speakers, but they have to work. We’re not the least bit interested in streaming technologies that stutter from interference or compress the audio to preserve bandwidth. That’s why Libratone caught our attention here in Berlin with its new Libratone Beat — the “world’s first high-end active speaker with wireless technology,” or so they claim. The speaker features one 5-inch bass, two 3-inch midrange drivers, and two 1-inch ribbon based tweeters. In all we’re looking at 50W of bass output and 2x25W at the tweeter / midrange. There’s even a 3.5-mm mini jack to

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“Rugged” is one of those terms thrown around pretty loosely by the consumer electronics industry. So when Klipsch, a name that’s not exactly synonymous with husky men in the saddle, rolled out a rugged version of its S4i in-ear speakers under the Image S5i Rugged moniker, well, we just had to put them to the test. But first we had to give these $129.99 ‘buds a listen… from the very noisy floor of the Messe Berlin convention center. Fortunately, the oval ear tips did an excellent of job of isolating most external sounds, thus allowing

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According to Apple’s UK website, iOS 4.1 will hit on Wednesday, September 8th. The US website still displays the non-commital “Coming Soon” message, so we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled. We’re going to go ahead and guess that all those shiny new iPods will come to retail that day too… but don’t hold us to that one. Like we said, it’s only a guess.

[Thanks, Luca]

iOS 4.1 confirmed for September 8th on Apple’s UK website originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:09:00 EDT. Please… Read More

Over the past couple of weeks, Plancast has rolled out a new site design, a new plan social invitation system, and Eventbrite integration. On top of that, they’re also testing out two other new features: local plans and a recent activity feed. Each of these features make a great service even better.

First off, as I alluded… Read More

Rumors have popped up over the last 24 hours about the Tab’s price. Some European retailer’s pricing has leaked out although Samsung is saying it’s all… Read More

Twitter is currently internally testing the feature, we’ve confirmed. Interestingly enough, we learned of its existence when the latest version of the app went out yesterday (the universal binary that included Twitter for iPad). It appears that users who have iOS 4.1 installed… Read More