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The newly announced Asus P565 will include one of the fastest processors in a smart phone in the market but it will not be the fastest overall phone out there.

There are two reasons why: The maximum HSDPA 3G connection speed of 3.6Mb/s is slower than the 7.2Mb/s available in other phones and it’ll be handicapped by (surprise!) the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.

The Asus P565 comes with an 800MHz Marvell processor, 256 MB of flash memory (plus 128 MB of DDR SDRAM), and a 3 megapixel camera that can also take video at 24 frames per second. Other processors come close in speed, but are not at the level of the P565: the iPhone, for example, has a 620 Mhz ARM processor.

The P565 will play most of the major video and music files types, and comes with a SiRFStar GPS chip that will help you track your movements around the grid. Not surprisingly, the phone’s UI will also be a touch screen type, on a 2.8" VGA screen (at 480 x 640 pixels).

But it’s the WinMo terrain navigation that will surely prove to be a challenge and significantly downgrades our excitement for this phone.

Even with Asus’ Glide touch software that is built on top of it (and it has attractive small design elements similar to the iPhone’s, like a gray ‘scroll ball’ when you select an item), it still seems to be another phone trying to circumvent the flaws of the OS. Remember, these are still smallish devices and the simpler the connection to the most important applications, the better the experience.

There is no word yet on the price for this phone, but expect it to become available by the first quarter of next year.

When 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and his crew went to China to record the black market dismantling of electronic waste, or e-waste, the experience was almost as hazardous for the 60 Minutes team as working with the toxic material is for poor Chinese workers.

Jumped by a gang of men overseeing the e-waste operations who tried to take the CBS team’s cameras, Pelley’s crew managed to escape and bring back footage of the hazardous activities. Pelley’s investigation will be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

The Chinese attackers were trying to protect a lucrative business of mining the e-waste — junked computers, televisions and other old electronic products — for valuable components, including gold. “They’re afraid of being found out. This is smuggling. This is illegal,” says Jim Puckett, founder of the Basel Action Network, a group working to stop the dumping of toxic materials in poor countries that certifies ethical e-waste recyclers in the United States. “A lot of people are turning a blind eye here. And if somebody makes enough noise, they’re afraid this is all going to dry up.”

E-waste workers in Guiyu, China, where Pelley’s team videotaped, put up with the dangerous conditions for the $8 a day the job pays. They use caustic chemicals and burn the plastic parts to get at the valuable components, often releasing toxins that they not only inhale, but release into the air, the ground and the water. Potable water must now be trucked into Guiyu and scientists have discovered that the city has the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. Pregnancies in Guiyu are six times more likely to result in miscarriages, and seven out of 10 children there have too much lead in their blood.

…

Originally posted at Green Tech

We’re not particularly sold on non-phone touch screens yet here at Gadget Lab, mostly because of the Gorilla-Arm problem, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a market for them.

The folks at Hoda Technology know this, and they also see the willingness amongst netbook buyers to open up their cheap machines for warranty-voiding hacking projects. The TouchKit is a fairly cheap ($95) kit that adds resistive touch (not the fancy iPhone and G1 capacative touch) to your Acer Aspire One or your Eee PC 900/901.

And a hack this certainly is. Although no soldering is required, you’re going to have to get pretty deep into the innards of your machine to fit these things. Happily, netbooks are pretty simple and, in our experience of the MSI Wind, at least, pretty easy to take apart.

The screen hooks into the computer’s USB interface, and there are drivers for Windows and Linux and Mac. That last shows that the Hoda folks are aiming clearly at the hacker market, as currently the only Mac netbooks are Hackintoshes.

The kits are currently available through Ebay, and Hoda promises that “TouchKit will be available in other netbook models such as Dell Inspiron, MSI Wind, etc.. in the coming year”. We can’t wait. The original Gadget Lab Hackintosh is going touchscreen, gorilla arms be damned!

Product page [Ebay. Thanks, Joe!]

A slew of fake iPhones are being sold in China, and Gadget Lab couldn’t
help but feel curious enough to order one. Our HiPhone arrived today,
and our early impressions aren’t too positive — because, well, we
can’t figure out how to power up the dang thing.

Something the HiPhone has that the iPhone doesn’t is a replaceable
battery. That’s pretty cool, but the problem is we can’t figure out how
to insert it. (The instructions just say "remove battery case"
without saying how exactly to do that.) We’ll drop an e-mail to the seller
ActFind, but we don’t expect a response for another day due to the time
difference.

For now, here are some photos of the HiPhone (below the jump).

You’ll notice the HiPhone
is considerably thicker than the original iPhone, and lengthwise it’s
about two centimeters taller. On the back is a rather conspicuous
camera contained in a blue square, along with two speakers labeled "3D Sound." The sides contain volume controls
and a USB input. Most interestingly, the bottom-left corner holds a stylus.

Holding it in my hand, the HiPhone feels surprisingly light — but we won’t make
any judgment on weight until we actually succeed to get the battery
inside. Overall, the phone feels pretty cheap, though: instead of using metal like the iPhone, the HiPhone is completely composed of plastic.

All for the low price of $160 ($118 for the phone, $42 for shipping from China.) What a deal.

We’ll keep you posted on our experience testing the HiPhone as soon as
we figure out how to use it. For the mean time, do any of you have any
ideas how to open up the battery case? We’re kind of stumped, and the
handset feels so cheap that it might break if we use too much force.

Update 3 p.m. PDT: Dylan managed to pry off the battery case with his marvelous kung-fu hand strength. I’m in awe. We’ll have an update Wednesday.

See also:

• Chinese iPhone Knockoffs Described With Hilarious Engrish
• Avoiding a Faux Pod: Five Tips for Spotting Fake Electronics

Photos: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/vista-logo_02.png” width=”150″ height=”145″ align=”right” align=”right” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Eager to try out Vista Service Pack 2 but don’t feel like waiting until it leaves beta? Weblog CyberNet a href=”http://cybernetnews.com/2008/10/30/download-vista-sp2/”details how to download Vista SP2 via Windows Update/a by joining the SP2 Beta program using a small batch file. SP2 promises improved search, better Bluetooth support, native Blu-Ray burning, and more. If you’ve tried it out, share your experience in the comments./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/vistumbler.png” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”494″ height=”284″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /Windows Vista only: Free, open-source application Vistumbler scans wireless networks within range of your Wi-Fi antenna, tracks signal strength over time, and handles pretty much everything else that other a href=”http://lifehacker.com/5061856/inssider-detects-wireless-networks”apps of/a a href=”http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/detect-wireless-networks-with-netstumbler-266486.php”this kind/a do. What sets Vistumbler apart from the rest is its support for GPS and live Google Earth tracking, which plots hotspots on a map. The whole thing is really cool, but unfortunately I (and I suspect many of you) don’t have the tools on hand to try out the really impressive features. Still, Vistumbler is an excellent tool even without without the GPS to Google Earth mapping. Vistumbler is free download, Windows Vista only. If you’re on XP and you want similar Google Earth integration with a href=”http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/detect-wireless-networks-with-netstumbler-266486.php”previously mentioned NetSumbler/a, check out a href=”http://mboffin.com/earthstumbler/”Earth Stumbler/a. emThanks a href=”http://lifehacker.com/5061856/inssider-detects-wireless-networks#c8280085″VashtiDunlop/a!/em/p div class=”related”a href=”http://vistumbler.sourceforge.net/”Vistumbler/a/div br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/2008-10-30_121946.jpg” height=”77″ width=”158″ align=”left” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″/ Music search engine Hushie scours the web to find MP3s for your listening enjoyment. The search interface and results are similar to previously reviewed a href=”http://lifehacker.com/399101/mix-turtle-creates-online-music-playlists”MixTurtle/a, but while you can’t build a playlist with Hushie like you can with MixTurtle you can save the music you find there. Listen to the song immediately or right click and save the file for later playback. div class=”related” a href=”http://www.hushie.com/”Hushie/a [via a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/hushie-listen-favorite-songs-online/"MakeUseOf/a]/div/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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First, Intel decided to go with Linux for its MIDs, and now it’s giving the bird to Microsoft again by revealing a contender to the Zune’s social music aspect. TuneWiki, a “social media player” software based on Intel’s Atom processor integrates music and video with synchronized lyrics and a social network.

Besides using a wiki-based community to contribute content, TuneWiki also displays real-time music popularity lists, the locations of other TuneWiki users based on your favorite songs and artists, and the ability to check out music from other countries with translated lyrics. It’s an interesting new app for the (MID-using) international crowd, but will it take off States-side?

TuneWiki brings its Next Generation Social Media Player
to Intel-based Mobile Internet Devices

TuneWiki for Moblin revealed today, at a keynote speech for the Intel Developer Conference in Taipei. TuneWiki successfully ported its award winning software to the MID, based on the new Intel® Atom™ processor.

TuneWiki’s social media player is the first to integrate music and video with synchronized lyrics and a social network. The lyrics data and synchronization are contributed by the community, using wiki technology. TuneWiki MusicMap displays the location of users based on songs or artists. LiveCharts allows consumers to access a real-time music popularity list by country or state, and listen to music from other countries with lyrics translated to their preferred language.

“Mobile Internet Devices are projected to have hundreds of millions of users,” said Rani Cohen, founder and CEO of TuneWiki. “We offer the experience of social playback anywhere, and our integrated music solution allows consumers to enjoy music in a completely new way. TuneWiki is committed to becoming the leading media player for Linux powered devices, with current offerings for Android, iPhone, Moblin, Windows and OSX, and with the MID we use a great open source platform developed by SongBird.”

“Mobile Internet Devices represent an innovative platform that enables users to take their entertainment media, social network and Internet with them,” said Pankaj Kedia, director of global ecosystems programs in the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel. “With TuneWiki’s media player optimized for MIDs based on the Intel® Atom™ processor and Moblin-based Linux OS, mobile users will be able to create and share lyrics with their friends and family while on-the-go.”

With TuneWiki and the ‘connect anywhere’ capabilities of the MID, enjoying audio or video will no longer be a solitary activity, but a shared social experience among friends, and the worldwide music community. TuneWiki’s built-in translation capabilities enhance this experience and are an engine of discovery and expansion of outstanding music in all languages.

About TuneWiki
TuneWiki Inc, is the first social media player for mobile and PCs, with the community enhancing the experiance. Additional information about TuneWiki is available at www.TuneWiki.com

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Browser bakeoffs are never without a certain amount of controversy, but we’re sort of into Pocketable’s latest comparison since the devices on the bench represent three very different points on the spectrum of touchscreen devices. Having used them all, we’ll say upfront that the results are surprising: the Archos 5 smokes both the iPhone and the N810, and not always by small margins — the 5 loaded Engadget 18 seconds faster than the N810. (We did the same test with our 5 and iPhone 3G and the results were basically similar.) Now, that’s not to say that makes the 5’s Opera-powered browser the best or even the most usable, since in our experience scrolling is painfully choppy and hard to do with the resistive touchscreen, but it’s interesting that the hotrodded PMP managed to load pages consistently faster than either the smartphone or the Linux-powered tablet. Take a peek at the full results at the read link.

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