Ed at HipTop3 is claiming that the LX 2009 that broke cover in an online survey is legit and that it’s the ‘Blade’ everyone but me has known about. One of his readers sent in this screen cap of the LX 2009 to update the previous image that looked to have been taken with a Sidekick. Looks good to me, but I’m not sure I can leave my BlackBerry for the Sidekick. We’ll see when everything gets official or someone has actual specs and photos of the Blade or whatever it’s going to be called.
We really could have guessed as much at this point, but T-Mobile’s Senior Vice President of Engineering Neville Ray has put it on the record that G1 followups are on the way in 2009:
As the year progresses there will be a significant number of HSPA-capable smart phones. We will be launching more G series phones and other products.
We’ve heard from at least one source at HTC that the G-series isn’t necessarily an HTC only gig – if more than one does indeed hit the shelves in 2009, we’d expect at least one of them to be outside of HTC’s doing.
When FlyCast announced during CES that an Android port of their streaming radio application was on the way, hopeful listeners were left waiting with little more than a passive “Coming Soon.” Well, wait no longer – just a day over 3 weeks after the announcement, the beta release of FlyCast for Android is now available in the Android Market.
Of course, that beta flag means rocky roads might lay ahead for early adopters. If you have any issues, FlyCast has set up a special support forum just for you.
Saying goodbye to that “special someone” is never an easy thing to do, especially after many years have passed. But, when the time comes, it’s best just to try and move on.
Take today’s NTT DoCoMo announcement that it will be shutting down its 2G cellular network by March 31, 2012, for example. By the end of 2008, only 12% of its users were still rocking second-gen mobile phones, leaving a whopping 88% having already jumped on the 3G bandwagon.
Clearly NTT DoCoMo understands the circumstances and has decided to break things off before it gets any worse. The Japanese mobile giant will offer the last few 2G stragglers incentives to get out of the stone age upgrade before the old service is shut off in 2012.
Don’t worry – besides the bits in the headline, absolutely nothing about this story is weird. Okay, I lied. It’s all kind of weird.
The BBC is running a piece on something called the “Zumbafone” by IA Technology. Never heard of’em? That’s because you haven’t been studying your “military ejector seat electronics” manufacturers well enough.
DUDE, YOU’RE GETTING A DELL SMARTPHONE! Maybe. If they’re real. And, you know, any good.
It’s definitely not the first time we’ve heard this one before, but word around Rumormill Way is again indicating that Dell’s dabbling with the idea of getting into the battle for smartphone supreme. According to the WSJ’s sources, they’re tinkering with more than one concept – a little bit of Android here, a bit of WinMo there, and maybe a pinch of touchscreen thrown in for taste. None of the involved parties are admitting anything, of course. Dell’s past attempts at branching out of the computer building biz haven’t been mindbogglingly successful, and with next month’s Mobile World Congress looking to be packed to the brim with Android (thereby crowding up the smartphone market for 2009) don’t be too shocked if these mobile experiments don’t make it out of the lab.
I suppose it was only a matter of time. This handset, which will almost certainly never see our fair shores, sports a 3.1-inch 3D screen — 3D capable, to be precise, since I doubt there’s any 3D content ready to go, even in Japan (and certainly not Captain EO). Read More
As many of us were still sleeping off our New Years celebrations back in early January, a team of security experts found a nasty little bug tucked away into S60 handsets. Dubbed the “Curse of Silence”, SMS capabilities on a wide array of Nokia devices could be disabled by sending a series of specially formatted texts.
Were you unlucky enough to be stricken silent by the exploit? Probably not – Nokia and most of the carriers were pretty quick to put up their defenses, blocking these malicious messages at the pass. Still, Nokia has prepped a “Curse of Silence” clean-up application – you know, just in case. If you just happen to have a SMS-less S60 sitting around somewhere, just install the application and give it a run – it’ll handle the rest.
CES 2009 is long since over, but details of the Palm Pre are still trickling out. Take this latest video from MobileDivide, for example – it’s largely a recap of stuff we’ve known for a while, but it packs in two little morsels that had previously gone unnoticed:
Drag-to-unlock: Similar to the iPhone’s “Slide to unlock” mechanism, except optimized for one-handed, ambidextrous unlocking. Simply drag the unlock object out of the circle, and the Pre wakes up.
Spacebar triggered camera shutter: Rather than forcing you to capture that once-in-a-lifetime shot with a easily missed touchscreen button or making you reach for a dedicated Camera button, the spacebar is repurposed as the photo snap button when in camera mode.
Every detail that comes out about the Pre indicates that they’ve put a fairly absurd amount of thought into every granule of the user experience. We can’t wait.
Fancy listening to Backspin on your iPhone? Or maybe you’d like to hear the comedy stylings of Christian Jimmy on The Virus? Soon, friends. Soon. Supposedly. On the way to the App Store, the uSirius StarPlayr, an iPhone app that lets you listen to Sirius XM on your iPhone. Fancy that.
The application has been in development for some time, and the word over at Orbitcast is that it will be submitted to Apple for approval by January 31. Considering there’s no “boobs and booty” here, I can’t see the approval process lasting too long. It’s up to Apple.
After months of rumors and undercover imagery, the Virgin Mobile Helio Ocean 2 is finally just weeks away from hitting the shelves. Don’t want to wait to experience the rush of cracking open the box? Fear not, my friends – we’ve got what you’re looking for. We’ve peeled it apart, piece by piece, and snapped images all along the way. Ready for the unboxing of the Helio Ocean 2? Click on for the gallery.
After word got out that Britney Spears’ next tour would be sponsored by Virgin Mobile and the Helio Ocean 2, the estimated Ocean 2 launch date finally found it’s first deadline: March 3rd, the first day of the tour. We can now confirm that the Helio Ocean 2 will be coming over 3 weeks earlier, launching on Helio.com on February 12.
I was content with letting this press release slip into my trashcan but thought to give it a quick glance and I’m glad I did. Not because it has anything to do with Britney Spears, but the fact that Virgin Mobile dropped launch details surrounding Helio’s unreleased Ocean 2.
VM is sponsoring Britney’s “Circus” tour which starts on March 3 with a private dress rehearsal on March 2 in New Orleans. A group of fans will be able to chronicle their time with an Ocean 2, says VM. The launch date isn’t set in stone according to the press release, but I’m going out on a limb and calling it now. Read More
It’s no secret that I loathe the BlackBerry Storm and for good reason. For my own sanity and to keep Marc M. at bay we won’t get into why, but as a lover of BlackBerrys I’m giving the Storm another shot, but I doubt my initial impressions will change regardless of the firmware upgrades. The touch-screen just hurts my thumbs. A clickable screen? Come on. I know you can do better than that, RIM.
The numbers speak for themselves. Verizon was banking on the Storm and they obviously came up short with roughly half a million units sold in the first month. It’s a respectable number for sure, but compared to what Apple and AT&T did with the iPhone and iPhone 3G is astounding. Read More
Microsoft has a patent floating around for “a universal smart interface and peripheral management system for portable devices such as mobile phones.” You’d dock your phone into this thing, which would connect to a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and just about anything else that could be plugged into it – even your TV.
There is a slight chance that MacRumors stumbled across the first evidence of Apple’s next iPhone. It boils down to a previously unused product code – iPhone2,1 – which suddenly made an appearance in firmware 2.1.1. The current generation iPhone is notated with the product code, iPhone1,2 so they might be onto something. Plus, iPods have seen similar product code increases as new models were released. Let’s put this all together for you. Apple has a new iPhone in the works. Shocking, we know.
Well, isn’t this a kick in the pants. As TmoNews was reporting earlier that a 3G Sidekick could be in the works, Ed over at Hiptop3 just sent this our way. One of his readers sent in an image from a survey he/she/it took at QuizPoints and, well, the title pretty much says it all. Of course, we’ll wait to get some more evidence to say a 3G Sidekick is coming, but it certainly looks legit. So, what’s new or purported for the LX 2009? The print is small so you better hit the jump. Read More
After making the exciting journey from friend-to-friend and scanner-to-internet, a document detailing the launch details for the Samsung Memoir has been leaked for all to enjoy. The good news? In just under a month, we’ll all be able to enjoy the Samsung Memoir in all of its 8-megapixel glory. The bad news? It’ll apparently set you back 300 greenbacks – and that’s after rebates. Yikes.
We’ve known for some time now that the Memoir (or, as those namedropping model numbers will call it so that their friends think they’re super awesome, the T929) carries GPS, Stereo Bluetooth, myFaves support and that, unfortunately, it probably won’t be much of a smartphone due to the TouchWiz (the non-Windows Mobile variant) user interface. Freshly leaked as of late is word that it’ll also rock a Xenon flash, autofocus, 16x digital zoom. Oh, and that it’s targeted at “Family focused amateur photographers, 30-45 years old”.
So what do you think, family focused amateur photographers between 30 and 45 years old? Would you drop 300 bucks for an 8-megapixel shooter with a relatively limited OS when it drops on February 25th?
RIM really dropped the ball after launching the Bold with the shouldhaveneverbeenlaunched Storm. But I’m happy to say that they’ve come back into our good graces with the launch of the T-Mobile Curve II otherwise known as the 8900.
For all intents and purposes the 8900 is a baby Bold. It lacks 3G but makes up for it with UMA support, which means you can use it in a dead zone or take it overseas and not incur horrendous roaming fees. Simply having the ability to use Wi-Fi for the mobile’s signal is a huge plus for T-Mobile. The UMA connection allows the device to act exactly as it would with a cellular signal, including voice, BlackBerry data/email, web browsing, even SMS and BlackBerry messenger. This was one of the major reasons why I chose to stay with T-Mobile instead of jumping ship to AT&T for the Bold.
The following are my first impressions compared to the 8320 and Bold. Read More
Ahhh, the rumormill. Nothing like the smell of freshly minted bs theories and speculation. The latest “hot tip” comes in the form of a supposed Sidekick refresh a la 3G flavor. If T-Mobile is serious about keeping this fading classic around amongst the likes of the G1 and other recent releases, 3G is an absolute must at this point.
What will this new high-speed update look like? How much will it cost? Will it ever see the light of T-Mobile day? Your guesses are as good as ours.
Saying goodbye to that “special someone” is never an easy thing to do, especially after many years have passed. But, when the time comes, it’s best just to try and move on.
