Hasselblad is typically known for everything but price cuts, and sometimes goes in the opposite direction. As such, we're more than a little caught off-guard by a round of price cuts on what's usually considered the definitive medium format camera line. The 'entry' H4D-31 has been cut down by as much as 23 percent; we're not sure we'd call it a steal at $11,995 without a lens, but it's now an option if you think even a Nikon D800's full-frame sensor is puny. Price slashes aren't reserved for the bargain models, either, as even the 200-megapixel, status symbol H4D-200MS shaves enough off the cost (now $35,995) to be a worth look for those sitting on the fence. You can get the full details at the source link, and you won't have to survive on ramen noodles for a year to shoot billboard-sized photos.

Hasselblad cuts H4D prices by up to 23 percent, might let you afford rent originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 20:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hasselblad is typically known for everything but price cuts, and sometimes goes in the opposite direction. As such, we're more than a little caught off-guard by a round of price cuts on what's usually considered the definitive medium format camera line. The 'entry' H4D-31 has been cut down by as much as 23 percent; we're not sure we'd call it a steal at $11,995 without a lens, but it's now an option if you think even a Nikon D800's full-frame sensor is puny. Price slashes aren't reserved for the bargain models, either, as even the 200-megapixel, status symbol H4D-200MS shaves enough off the cost (now $35,995) to be a worth look for those sitting on the fence. You can get the full details at the source link, and you won't have to survive on ramen noodles for a year to shoot billboard-sized photos.

Hasselblad cuts H4D prices by up to 23 percent, might let you afford rent originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 20:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While we were off at NVIDIA’s GTC 2012 conference seeing NVIDIA’s latest professional products, NVIDIA’s GeForce group was busy with some launches of their own. The company has quietly launched the GeForce GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 into the retail market. Unfortunately these are not the Kepler GeForce cards you were probably looking for.

As NVIDIA was already reusing Fermi GPUs for GeForce 600 series parts for the OEM laptop and desktop market, it was only a matter of time until this came over to the retail market, and that’s exactly what has happened. The GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 are all based on Fermi GPUs, and in fact 2 of them are straight-up rebadges of existing GeForce 400 and 500 series cards. Worse, they’re not even consistent with their OEM counterparts – the OEM GT 620 and GT 630 are based off of different chips and specs entirely.

At the bottom of the 600 series retail stack is the GeForce GT 610, which is a rebadge of the GT 520. This means it’s either a GF119 GPU or cut-down GF108 GPU featuring a meager 48 CUDA Cores and a 64bit memory bus, albeit with a low 29W TDP as a result. This is truly a rock bottom card meant to be a cheap as possible upgrade for older computers, as even an Ivy Bridge HD4000 iGPU should be able to handily surpass it.

The second card is the GT 620, which is a variant of the OEM-only GT 530. With 96 CUDA cores we’re not 100% sure that this is GF108 as opposed to the 28nm GK117, but as NVIDIA currently has a 28nm capacity bottleneck we can’t see them placing valuable 28nm chips in low-end retail cards. Furthermore the 49W TDP perfectly matches the GF108 based GT 530. Compared to the OEM GT 620 the retail model has twice as many CUDA cores, so it has twice as much shader performance on paper, but because of the 64bit memory bus it’s going to be significantly memory bandwidth starved.

The final new 600 series card is the GT 630, which is a rebadge of the GT 440. Like the GT 440 this card comes in two variants, a model with DDR3 and a model with GDDR5. Both models are based on GF108 and have all 96 CUDA cores enabled, and have the same core clock of 810MHz. At the same time this is going to be the card that deviates from its OEM counterpart the most. The OEM GT 630 was a Kepler GK107 card, so this rules out getting a Kepler based GT 630 retail card any time in the near future.

As always, rebadging doesn’t suddenly make a good card bad – or vice versa – but it’s disappointing to once again see this mess transition over to the retail market. We hold to our belief that previous generation products are perfectly acceptable as they were, and that the desire to have yearly product numbers in an industry that is approaching 2 year product cycles is silly at its best, and confusing at its worst.

George Graves built this Constant Current Dummy Load Project based on this blog post over at the EEVBlog. It was built from a single sided board which was designed using ExpressPCB. That software is very nice to draft something up fast and it allows for an easy screen grab to etch what you see quickly.

Thanks for sending this in Jim.

“The only change I really made was running the opamp at 8 volts (7808) for a bit more range. It seems happy at 1 amp. Two amps and things start to really heat up.”

Going by Microsoft's Greater China COO Michel van der Bel, the launch of Windows Phone in China is off to an auspicious start -- enough to give Apple the shakes. He claims that devices like the Nokia Lumia 800c have helped Windows Phone reach seven percent of the Chinese market, or just enough to get past the six points of the iPhone. We're waiting on hard data before we take van der Bel's word: the top smartphone makers worldwide aren't depending much or at all on Windows Phone, and the iPhone has a thriving gray market in China that masks some of its real numbers. Having said this, we've seen signs of Windows Phone enjoying a bit of a surge even in an iOS- and Android-loving Europe, so we'll be watching to see if there's an uptick in the number of buyers saying ni hao to Microsoft in the near future.

Continue reading Microsoft exec says Windows Phone outselling iPhone in China

Microsoft exec says Windows Phone outselling iPhone in China originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 18:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Borders. Here at the Engadget Mobile Podcast, we're so over them. That's why we let former Engadget Mobile CEO-in-chief Chris Ziegler come back and hang out on our side of the fence for a few hours, no matter where he comes from. You know who's NOT over border? The United States Border Patrol, Division of Potential Patent Infringements on Apple Intellectual Property. Be a fence-sitter with us for a little while: it's not so bad up here (and we get great reception).

Hosts: Myriam Joire (tnkgrl), Brad Molen
Guest: Chris Ziegler
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Tycho - Coastal Brake (Ghostly International)

00:01:06 - Best Buy expects EVO 4G LTE to land May 23rd, HTC remains cautious
00:03:00 - Apple, HTC ordered by judge to sit down, try and make nice on August 28th
00:07:00 - HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE delayed at customs due to ITC exclusion order (updated)
00:13:15 - HTC EVO 4G LTE for Sprint review (updated)
00:30:00 - T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm issues memo discussing restructuring plans, more jobs affected
00:48:06 - HTC confirms One X multitasking tweaks in Sense 4
00:51:30 - NTT DoCoMo's Galaxy S III to ship with 2GB RAM?
00:59:27 - LG shows off UI 3.0 for Ice Cream Sandwich devices, says it's 'unobtrusive and simple'
01:06:22 - Google reportedly planning stable of Nexus devices with Android 5.0, will sell 'em direct
01:15:48 - Verizon CFO says grandfathered unlimited plans on the way out
01:18:07 - WSJ: Apple moving towards larger iPhone screens
01:30:05 - Report: Apple dumping Google for own Maps app in iOS 6 (update)

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Engadget Mobile Podcast 138 - 05.19.2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The prize this week is a non contact AC test pen. This pen can be used to test if AC voltage is present in a wire without needing to touch the bare conductor. This contest will run for one week (May 19 – 25, 2012). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for.

Please do not give the answer in the comments.

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message body consisting of:

• The name of the item in the above picture
• An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

Below is a picture of the prize.

What does one do after generating billions from an initial public stock offering? Go shopping, of course. After falling short of expectations following its somewhat helter-skelter IPO debut, Facebook simply shook off the whole thing and acquired itself some good Karma. No, we're not talking about that Karma. Instead, Facebook purchased the startup responsible for the Karma social gifting app. The move was apparently made to bolster Facebook's mobile chops -- an area the company considers ripe for opportunity. Just recently, Facebook also acquired mobile stalwart Instagram and the Lightbox team, for example. As for its newest purchase, Karma will be allowed to "continue to operate in full force" despite its recent status change, according to a blog post by co-founders Lee Linden and Ben Lewis. Details weren't disclosed about how much the deal was worth but judging from celebratory nature of their post, it doesn't look like Linden and Lewis will "Unlike" the agreement any time soon.

Facebook likes Karma app, buys the whole darn thing originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 16:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

38 Studios is the game developer behind Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and was started by former Major League pitcher Curt Schilling. The game has enjoyed a reasonable amount of success, selling nearly 1 million copies. However, not everything is looking up for the company or the state of Rhode Island which provided a $75 million guaranteed loan to help lure the company to the state from Massachusetts. The deal that looked promising from the start with the star power of Schilling and the down economy of Providence hasn't panned out. The company has reportedly missed a $1.1 million interest payment due at the first of this month and claims it doesn't have enough money to pay its employees. 38 Studios is scheduled to pay $12.7 million to the state per year until 2020, but at this rate it looks like the taxpayers of Rhode Island might be on the hook for the money.

The other day Ubisoft announced the Far Cry 3 multiplayer beta will go live this summer for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. You may notice the PC is missing from that list and could have just been a small oversight. However, when reached for comment Ubisoft declared there will be no Far Cry 3 multiplayer beta for the PC. That is a major bummer considering the series originally started on the PC, but has been slowly drifting away from the platform once Crytek was no longer at the helm. This is just another dagger in the heart of PC gamers everywhere, as Ubisoft has no plans for a Far Cry 3 beta of any kind on the PC. It could be that Ubisoft just does not want to deal with any potential backlash if a PC beta included DRM, but at least PC gamers will get to experience Far Cry 3 when it arrives on September 4th.