Mobile, Internet, etc

Filed under: Handsets, Others, GSM

OK, OK, perhaps beautiful is stretching it a tad, but Gresso’s Skeleton Gold Phone is definitely interesting, most notably the “polished 42k sapphire glass” see-thru back. While, essentially a twin to the Gresso Sol, it eschews wood for titanium, ceramic, 18K Gold, steel, leather, and baby seal eyelash shavings. Under the hood it ’s a fairly vanilla tri-band GSM / GPRS (really, only GPRS) Windows Mobile 6 handset with 64MB of memory, 2GB of external storage, and Bluetooth. If you’re in the mood to cha-ching your way into Gresso’s world, you’d better act fast as this limited run only reaches 50 devices at a price of about $4400 each. A few more pics can be found right after the break.

Continue reading Gresso Skeleton Gold Phone is oddly beautiful, very transparent

Gresso Skeleton Gold Phone is oddly beautiful, very transparent originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, LG, Rogers Wireless, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

In the States, we’re hearing that AT&T is going to launch this bad boy as the GT365 Etna — but just trade the “G” for a “T” and we’ve heard similar rumblings north of the border up on Fido. Now, it looks like the TE365 (which goes by the Neon moniker instead of the more bizarre Etna) might actually be dropping on Fido’s corporate mommy Rogers, with a HoFo member reporting that we’ll see it hit any day now for a mere $29.99 on a three-year deal. Considering that it’s got a touchscreen, landscape QWERTY slide, and FM radio, that doesn’t seem like a terribly bad deal — but then again, are you really going to still want to be using this 36 months from now?

[Via MobileSyrup]

LG Neon coming to Rogers any day now for $30 on contract? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Messaging, Bell Mobility

While the fact that Twitter’s SMS service is returning to Canada is grand news, Bell Canada’s 15 cent price for admission is most definitely not. Twitter shut down the outbound SMS service in November last year due to rising costs with a note that it was working toward a solution to fix it. Well, it seems the solution’s been found and that’s to pass it down the line to the Twitter users as a premium service that they’ll pay for, both sending and receiving. Our advice here is to hunt down a free client and use it or call Bell and fire up the waterworks, though, we suspect that’ll get you about nowhere.

Update: Just for the sake of clarity, this is in no way related to Bell’s policy on 15 cent incoming SMS costs. Bell’s Julie Smithers said “Because Twitter is a third-party service, the messages are considered premium and not covered by our plans…This aligns with industry standards regarding third-party premium messaging.”

[Thanks, @fruhlinger]

Twitter returns to @Bell Canada for $0.15 a pop originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Multimedia, Peripherals, RIM, Misc

Unify4Life AV Shadow app to soon turn BlackBerry Storm into remote originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Symbian

Sony Ericsson’s Paris wasn’t the only perfectly good handset to go down with the sinking UIQ ship, it seems. Remember that TEXEL from back in the day? Yeah, well, it’s reemerged more than a year later — a year too late, may we add — supposedly branded the ROKR E10, which would fall in line with the company’s recent ROKR branding. Looks like the thing has undergone a bit of a metamorphosis over the course of its development (as all phones do), but let’s not spend too long analyzing it — it’s based on UIQ, after all, which means that very likely been thoroughly wiped clean of Moto’s launch schedule. Doesn’t look half bad, but then again, what would this have that the Sony Ericsson W950 didn’t have three years ago?

Dead phone walking: meet the UIQ-based Motorola ROKR E10 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Studies, LTE, WiMAX

Thinking that there’s only room in this town world for either WiMAX or LTE? Research firm In-Stat would love to disagree, as a new report from it asserts that both will actually live on for at least the next little while. Unsurprisingly, it’s expected that mobile WiMAX will “outpace LTE over the next few years due to its head start on deployments,” and potentially more importantly, the company believes that WiMAX and LTE will take “very different paths.” In fact, it’s stated that most WiMAX support will come from fixed network carriers looking to spruce up their existing offerings, while LTE expansion will likely be pushed solely (or mostly, anyway) by mobile operators. To us, it all boils down to support, and it only takes a quick survey of the field to see that LTE has the most of that. For better or worse, it seems the next-gen data war is but beginning, even though we already thought we were nearing the end.

Research says WiMAX and LTE will live different lives, coexist originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Others, GSM

You know, when we first read the image-less text describing Hyundai’s dolphin-shaped cellphone, our instinctual, caffeine-injected reflex was to launch into an angst-ridden assault on the MB-490i. Then we saw the pictures and, well, dammit, we kind of like it. Somehow Hyundai managed to make the aquatic scroll-wheel on the front mirrored by cascading waves of aluminum along the backside work. Even the pale blue eyeball on the side comes across as tasteful without kitsch. Spec-wise, we’re looking at a 240 x 400 touchscreen display augmented by a swipeable touchscreen surface below, a 2.0 megapixel camera (no flash), Yamaha speaker, Bluetooth, and a €250 price tag when it launches in May. Check the pictures after the break and sound-off in the comments with your opinion.

[Via PMP Today]

Continue reading Hyundai’s MB-490i Dolphin cellphone is ridiculously clever

Hyundai’s MB-490i Dolphin cellphone is ridiculously clever originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, HTC, T-Mobile, Windows Mobile, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

We’re thinking that HTC’s Touch Diamond2 and Pro2 will be available all over the place by the time 2009 draws to a close, but if you want to be one of the first kids on the block to get in on that action, T-Mobile’s European outposts are a good place to start looking. The carrier announced at MWC last week that Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK will all bet getting a version of the Diamond2 — the MDA Compact V — “by” June, while the Pro2 variant — the MDA Vario V — will launch more definitively “in” June. As usual, T-Mobile has chosen to customize its models a bit versus the standard fare that HTC is offering; opinions on the new look will vary, but if they’re the first to launch, we think we can overlook some design niggles.

[Via the::unwired]

T-Mobile bringing MDA Compact V, Vario V to Europe in June originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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