Torque

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An embarrassment of riches this time as the 2013 BMW 750Li and Lexus LS 460 hit our garage on the same day. Some assignments are just more comfortable than others! But while both cars are luxurious, one felt much readier to cut it up on the road to my hands, and you might be surprised which.

A great Car Tech 101 in this episode, explaining the rather tricky relationship between horsepower and torque. We're conditioned to think about horsepower, but … Read more

Sprint today announced that the rugged and waterproof Kyocera Torque will arrive on March 8. Priced at $99 with a two-year service agreement, the Torque is the first "Ultra rugged" 4G LTE handset with Sprint Direct Connect push-to-talk service.

Previously introduced back in January, the Kyocera smartphone features a 4-inch IPS display and dual-core processor. Whereas the typical rugged smartphone is hampered by older versions of the platform, the Torque runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This is good news for anyone who has grown accustomed to the Holo theme of Android and its added feature set. … Read more

Owning a smartphone usually means being stuck in an expensive two-year contract, but Republic Wireless is offering an unlimited everything service that will cost you as little as $19 a month.

Most smartphone services start at about $70 a month on one of the major carrier networks. Prepaid providers, like MetroPCS, offer similar unlimited everything deals for $50 a month. Now Republic Wireless is offering an unlimited data, voice and text messaging service for smartphones that is only $19 a month.

Dear Maggie, I'm a college student, and my parents are dropping me from their cell phone … Read more

A new way to manage your torrents puts a bit of Torque in your Web browser. Debuting today from the company that makes uTorrent and BitTorrent, the alpha version of BitTorrent Torque creates rudimentary torrent controls in JavaScript that can be run from your HTML5-compliant browser.

In a blog post announcing Torque, BitTorrent developer Patrick Williams explained that Torque works by providing a JavaScript hook to a custom BitTorrent client backend. From there, developers can write apps that use Torque's APIs.

Currently, there are two extensions for Torque. One is Paddle Over, which integrates drag and drop file transfers … Read more

Your car's dashboard is probably home to a speedometer, a tachometer, a fuel gauge, and -- if you're lucky -- a coolant temperature gauge. However, your car's electronic brain (ECU) is actively monitoring dozens of parameters behind the scenes that you, the driver, could find useful. This is where diagnostics hardware and apps like Torque Pro and Lite for Android step in, putting all of that data at your fingertips.

Torque doesn't require anything more than the hardware already present on your Android phone to function. Without any external hardware, Torque can still pull sensor data … Read more

Torque steer is a phenomenon that mostly affects front-wheel-drive cars where heavy acceleration causes the vehicle to veer to the left or right.

Take a front-wheel-drive car to a wide, open space where you can test acceleration from about 0 to 15 mph without hitting something or someone (perhaps a big empty parking lot). Take both hands off of the steering wheel and give the accelerator a brief but firm squeeze. What did you notice? For most FWD cars, you likely saw the steering wheel twisting to one side and the vehicle lurching to either the left or to the … Read more

I figured since we gave lip service to Ford, we'd do the same for one of America's other automotive competitors: Chevrolet. The gang at GM has been working hard to deliver an updated version of its signature pickup truck, the Chevy Silverado, and not too long ago the production version of this heavy-duty truck was delivered. So what's different or notable about this year's model? This video from PickUpTrucks.com has got the scoop.

One of the highlights covered in this clip includes the Silverado HD's brand-new chassis; in fact it's so new that … Read more

I was recently handed the keys to a fully loaded, brand-new Audi S4 sedan. So, I did what any motorhead would do in this situation and proceeded to put the sporty A4 variant through its paces on the open road, on an autocross cone course, and even on the track at Infineon Raceway at Sears Point.

Our adventure starts with a trip from an uncharacteristically sunny San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sonoma. While in the stop-and-go bustle of the city, the S-Tronic DSG double-clutch automated manual was so docile and the 3.0-liter supercharged V-6 engine … Read more

Turntable manufacturer Stanton recently announced its new T.90 high-torque turntable with built-in USB and S/PDIF digital outputs. Even if you're not an aspiring DJ scratch battle champion, the ability to record your vinyl collection directly into a computer is big convenience. While USB-capable turntables such as the Numark TTUSB have been around for a while, the Stanton T.90 is the first to include features that today's DJ really want, namely digital key locking (the ability to change a song's tempo without changing pitch) and a high-torque direct drive motor that puts an unholy amount … Read more