Mobile, Internet, etc

Filed under: Handsets, Nokia, Samsung, Symbian, Windows Mobile, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

AT&T’s done us all a favor by doing its own quick hands-on of three of its more hotly-anticipated devices in its just-announced spring lineup — the Nokia E71x along with Samsung’s Propel Pro and Impression — and putting together a little video of the action. Our lovely host Seth (if that is, in fact, his real name) gets ushered to the rear of a corporate-owned store before opening where the new devices lie in wait, and while us lay folk won’t be able to buy any of these for a few days, the dude’s able to give us a quick video tour of each unit’s finer points. Each of the three devices looks exactly as you’d expect it to, but notably, the Impression’s AMOLED touchscreen really seems to shine (literally) with an insane viewing angle and an almost paper-like appearance; in fact, if he hadn’t changed screens, we’d almost have thought he was playing with a dummy unit. Follow the break for the video (don’t worry, the stuff’s in the back).

Continue reading “The stuff’s in the back”: AT&T previews its new lineup

“The stuff’s in the back”: AT&T previews its new lineup originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, Apple

It’s legit; Skype is coming to the iPhone on Tuesday, BlackBerry devices in May. While we’ve seen plenty of Skype-capable apps on the iPhone, the poor, often echo-infected calls should be easily bested by the official Skype App that doesn’t need the extra audio transcoding workaround required by the existing crop of unofficial apps. The Skype app works over WiFi only (not over EDGE or 3G data) and supports calls to SkypeOut contacts in addition to many of the other features you’ve used from the desktop client. iPod touch owners will require earphones with an embedded mic to talk. CNET has a hands-on preview of the App just as long as you can muster the energy required to hit the read link below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Skype App coming to iPhone on Tuesday, Blackberry in May originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, RIM, Verizon Wireless, BlackBerry OS

With the 9630 hopefully right around the corner, the BlackBerry 8830 should be gearing up to take its final curtain call — but Verizon’s not done supporting it just yet. Thankfully, we’ve been assured the device will be graced with an official upgrade to 4.5, up from the build of 4.2 that it’s rocking right now. For what it’s worth, Sprint has already released a 4.5 upgrade for its version of the 8830, so this should come as no big surprise — they’re just keeping up with the Joneses, as it were. Too bad they couldn’t do it a little faster, though, eh?

BlackBerry OS 4.5 on the way for Verizon’s 8830 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, LG, GSM, HSDPA, UMTS

The recent glut of telephony news can mean only one thing: CTIA Wireless 2009 is getting ready to kick off in Vegas baby, Las Vegas. In the runup we have LG upping the hype on its 13.4mm-thick GD900 handset first outed in Barcelona at February’s MWC show. This time, however, the 7.2Mbps HSDPA slider with world’s first transparent glass (not plastic as originally assumed) keypad will be functional, running LG’s new S-Class UI on the 3-inch display. We know that the GD900 features vibrational haptic feedback and that the transparent keypad seems to double as a touch-sensitive mouse pad (like that on your laptop) when surfing the internet or navigating the UI — it also seems to support gestures like writing “M” to launch MP3 music player and multi-touch such as pinch to zoom on photographs. The GD900 will launch in Europe and Asia sometime in May. No US release announced so we’ll have to make the most of our time with it this week in order to clear up all the mysteries presented by the Korean press release. One more pic showing an apparent finger-swipe rotating the UI after the break.

[Via Akihabara News and Engadget Korea]

Continue reading LG’s GD900 with (multi-touch?) transparent keypad gets S-Class UI

LG’s GD900 with (multi-touch?) transparent keypad gets S-Class UI originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Nokia, Samsung, ATT, Symbian, Windows Mobile, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

Kicking off what’s sure to be a fun-filled week of announcements surrounding CTIA out in Vegas, AT&T’s smartphone lineup just got a little beefier thanks to the official introduction of a couple devices we’ve been expecting for a hot minute now. First up, the Nokia E71x is just about ready for shelves, bringing WiFi, AT&T Navigator (which hopefully won’t preclude the use of Nokia Maps and other GPS-enabled apps), and all of the lauded physical design characteristics you’re used to from the original, unbranded E71. The best thing here might be the price — just $99.99 on contract after rebate, thankfully beating rumors of $200 and $150 by a country mile; it’ll hit shelves “in the coming weeks.” Next up is the Samsung Propel Pro, a device that shares very little in common with its Propel namesake other than a form factor, mainly because this sucker’s a full-out smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. It’s got WiFi, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard (naturally) and will be available on April 14 for $149.99 after all your discounts have been applied and your two-year agreement is filed away.

AT&T pulls trigger on Nokia E71x and Samsung Propel Pro originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, LG, Samsung, ATT, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

Outside of the smartphone realm, AT&T’s really stepping up its game in the feature phone game, too — so let’s take this clockwise from the top left, shall we? First up, we have the brightly-colored Samsung Magnet, targeted squarely at the teen audience looking for serious texting power in a cheap package. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but it should be easy on the wallet; it’ll be available in the next few weeks. Next is the Impression — also from Samsung — which we’d previously known as the a877, the very first handset to officially launch on a US carrier with a full AMOLED up front. The screen’s 3.2 inches of organic touchscreen awesomeness, accompanied by a 3 megapixel cam and a full HTML browser, all launching on April 7 for $199.99 on contract after rebate. Down below, we have the LG Neon — a phone that’s already launched up north on Rogers — offering a full landscape QWERTY keyboard in addition to a touchscreen display for a low price, thanks in no small part to its lack of 3G data. The launch day hasn’t been set for this one, but it’ll come shortly. Finally, we have the long-rumored Xenon, featuring 3G, a 2 megapixel cam, QWERTY slide, GPS, and your choice of colors — black, blue, or red — all for $99.99 when it launches on April 8.

LG Xenon, Neon join Samsung Magnet and Impression on AT&T originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Software, ATT, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, Apple, OS X

Well, wouldn’t you know it — there is a DirecTV iPhone application. The cats over at DBSTalk have had the privilege of toying with it, and they even assembled a lovely PDF with setup instructions and images of the show search, recording and show cards functionality. For iPhone lovers with DirecTV, there’s absolutely no excuse to not check this out. Sadly, we’re no closer to figuring out when it’ll be available, but we’re just relieved to know it’ll be here someday.

DirecTV iPhone application gets previewed originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Others, Windows Mobile, GSM, EDGE

Your odds of finding HKC’s Windows Mobile-powered Prado in the Western Hemisphere are slim to none — at least, not in any official capacity — but considering the sheer number of buttons, whirlygigs, and doodads around the phone’s circumference, we’d be doing everyone a disservice by not throwing it in the spotlight for a moment or two. Our colleagues at Engadget Chinese have put the Prado through its paces, using the HTC Touch HD as a benchmark; you step down to a VGA display and a 2 megapixel cam, but on the upside, you get a faster processor and 4GB of storage on board. Of course, you can’t put a price on your phone looking like a cheap MID when it’s actually just a WinMo 6.1 smartphone, so that might be where the Prado really comes out on top.

HKC’s Prado smartphone handled in detail originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, LG, ATT, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

LG’s Xenon has just shown up over at Smartphone Nation in an impromptu photoshoot, and it’s not looking too bad. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here — slideout QWERTY keyboard, resistive touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera — you get the idea, right? Seems to be expected on or around the beginning of April on AT&T, and we hear it will come in three colors — red, black and something else — and that it’ll run somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 after a mail in rebate. Of course, none of that’s official yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? One more shot after the break, hit the read link for the whole set.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Continue reading LG Xenon appears in semi-unflattering photoshoot

LG Xenon appears in semi-unflattering photoshoot originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, LG, GSM, EDGE

These days, there are seemingly dozens of TV technologies a phone can choose to support — take the glofiish V900, for example, which goes the standards-agnostic route and packs frickin’ four of them — so it’s difficult to deduce what sort of circuitry a heretofore-unknown LG with a “TV” button placed prominently below the display might include. That being said, this brightly-colored GM630 flip with a landscape display has leaked on a Brazilian site — one of the few countries where one-seg is in use — so we wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what was going on here. Otherwise, CelularCafe reports that the phone will have an FM radio, Bluetooth, EDGE data, and a 2 megapixel cam; something tells us those specs aren’t good enough to get a US release, and given that the US has as many functional one-seg networks as it has DAB broadcasts, that’s just fine by us.

[Via Unwired View]

LG GM630 does mobile TV of some sort originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Nokia, GSM, EDGE

While the shortly flaunted N83 never did amount to anything back in the day, we can safely say the device you see above is definitely not what the suits in Espoo had in mind. The touchscreen-based smartphone looks about as thick as an N95, though we can’t recall ever seeing a flavor of Symbian look anything like this. If you care to know, the phone sports a 400 x 240 resolution panel, 0.3 megapixel camera (ha!), dual SIM card slots, Bluetooth, FM radio module, about two to three hours of talk time and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. But hey, it’s only a buck ‘o five off-contract, or exactly the price of freedom according to certain puppets.

[Thanks, facelessloser]

Keepin’ it real fake, part CXCIV: Nokia N83 is not a Nokia N83 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Others, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA

Can’t say we’ve ever heard of Emgeton, but we’re liking what we’re seeing here. Admittedly, the Enzo candybar takes a swipe (or two… or three) from Sony Ericsson, but this dual-SIM wonder still packs enough personality to keep things interesting. Said handset reportedly boasts 3G capabilities, a 2.2-inch 320 x 240 resolution display, Bluetooth, 0.3 megapixel camera, a rechargeable Li-ion and a multimedia player. ‘Course, only 50MB of internal memory is provided, but the microSD slot does enable users to carry around a few extra LCD Soundsystem tracks should they choose. The only problems? That $388 price tag and the unlikelihood of this thing ever escaping the Czech Republic.

Emgeton pops out dual-SIM Enzo candybar originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Sony Ericsson, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA

Ah, the natural progression of a handset. Rumor? Check. Official launch? Check. In the wild spottings? As of now, check! Sony Ericsson’s recently outed T707 flip phone has already been acquired and photographed over at DailyMobile, and while there’s nothing here out of the ordinary, it’s still a must-see for any SE enthusiast. Check the gallery in the read link below.

[Thanks, Daniel]

Sony Ericsson’s T707 photographed in the wild originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, Samsung, GSM, EDGE

If you’re liking the look of the Beat DJ but you’re dreading the presumably upscale price tag, Sammy’s got an answer for you: the M2310 and M2710. Both handsets ape key elements of the Beat DJ’s style (okay, at least they do if you squint really, really hard) but adopt flip and slider form factors, respectively. Neither has been officially announced by the company, but it seems that they’re already starting to show up in Brazil with EDGE data, Bluetooth, FM radio, and — on the M2710, anyway — an accelerometer, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 2 megapixel camera. No word on pricing or availability in other parts of the world just yet.

[Via Unwired View and Daily Mobile]

Samsung taking Beat DJ style downmarket with M2310 and M2710 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, Windows Mobile

The past few days have seen the alleged leaks of a couple batches of Windows Mobile 7 screenshots, suggesting Microsoft’s already hard at work on the successor to 6.5 — something we’ve heard in the past, and given the state of 6.x, a rumor that isn’t difficult to believe. To say the leaks look sketchy, though, would be an understatement; most prominently, none of them match, with different styling elements applied to every capture. Best case, we figure these are mockups — not functional shots from an actual device or an emulator, but early, off-the-cuff stabs at a design language from a usability expert’s late-night Illustrator session somewhere deep within Redmond. We like some of what we’re seeing — there are definitely at least a few elements here that look thoroughly modern — but if there’s any basis in reality to these, we’re worried about the ill-conceived idea of putting battery strength and volume (or signal strength, depending on the shot) at the bottom of the display. Needless to say, there are very good reasons that kind of information gets consolidated to the top, not the least of which is that your thumbs aren’t transparent. At least ours aren’t, and if yours are, you should probably get that looked at.

Read - First batch
Read - Second batch

Windows Mobile 7 screenshots (or mockups, or something) leaked? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets, LG, GSM, EDGE

Dolby’s been making a strong push into the mobile market in the past couple years, and the company’s licensing tie-up with LG is starting to pay dividends in the form of this little block of plastic, GSM, and grit, the GM200. The black candybar’s claim to fame is that you can use the FM radio without headphones plugged in — most handsets with radios require the factory headset as an external antenna — and you’ve got a supposedly-decent set of stereo speakers to blast the tunes. Similar to Motorola’s CrystalTalk, the GM200 will automatically regulate earpiece volume depending on ambient noise, a trick feature that LG probably attributes to its work with Dolby. Otherwise, you’ve got a 2 megapixel cam, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, EDGE, and the envy of Dolby fanboys everywhere. Oh, what, don’t look around you, you know who you are.

[Via IntoMobile and Unwired View]

Dolby-powered LG GM200 probably sounds better than it looks originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Culture, Studies, Apple

Ready for the latest dose of facts and figures to chat over at the nerd water cooler? Here goes! The latest AdMob report, which tracks mobile web traffic from a variety of handset models and operating systems, has found some rather interesting — if not completely unsurprising — results. For starters, we’re told that the biggest web surfing phone on each US carrier is a touchscreen model, and breaking that down, we find that the iPhone, Nokia N70 and BlackBerry 8300 take the top three spots (in order of mention) globally. As for OS, Symbian is still leading the pack from a worldwide perspective with 43 percent of requests, though the iPhone ain’t far behind at 33 percent; oh, and in case you were wondering, Apple’s darling generated 50 percent of all US mobile web traffic in February. More numbers in the links below, should you be inclined to visit.

[Via mocoNews]

Mobile web traffic reports show Symbian, OS X on top originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handsets

Sure, we’ve seen all those purtied up renders, but what does the Ulysse Nardin Chairman look like in the flesh? Well, they’re keeping it under wraps pretty tightly at BASELWORLD, not letting photographers near it, but our friendly tipster Greg’s phone “accidentally” snapped a couple pictures. He says there was no way to touch it or see it in action, but he was struck by the sheer enormity of the device. We’re looking forward to selling a few organs for a shot at one ourselves, but for now those two shots up top will have to suffice.

[Thanks, Greg]

Ulysse Nardin’s Chairman caught in the wild! originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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