Not sure what to make of this Droid-alike but it seems Verizon has another Droid on its way, this time called the Saygus VPhone V1. It looks very much like the standard droid but a bit smaller and with a 624MHz Marvell processor.
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Tethering has always been great for the consumers and bad for the companies – ostensibly because it overloads the bandwidth but really because most tethering has been done under the radar by hax0rs and it essentially circumvents the limitation of bandwidth providers put on there in the first place.
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Long-suffering handset maker Sony Ericsson is all about the UX, people, and they’ve got the screens to prove it. The new system does basically what everyone else is doing and it brings all of your friend’s content into something called TimeScape (there’s another one for media called Media Scape.)
Their new UX UI looks pretty amazing – you basically drag cards all over the screen with your finger, which is quite interesting and it’s made all the better by having some lady and two dudes show you how everything works.
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Not amazing news but interesting nonetheless: Billshrink, a site dedicated to “saving you money” compared the total cost of ownership in the 3GS, the Pre, the MyTouch 3G, and the Droid. They found that TCO for an unlimited rate plan costs $3,799, the same as the iPhone 3GS. Both the Pre and the MyTouch are over $1,200 cheaper.
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I was Tweeting with Gartenberg last night about all the great Android games. After all, the Android Marketplace has so many great titles like Civilization Revolution, Canabalt, iShoot, and… oh… wait…
All kidding aside, the reason there is such a dearth of great games has to do with some programming choices in Android itself and it’s a problem that can – and should – be fixed before the Droid comes to market this November.
Here you are, friends and Romans, the Motorola Droid from Verizon, the phone you’ve been salivating over for the past few months. It’s now sitting quietly on the desk next to me, wondering where you are. The Droid wants you.
Verizon just confirmed that the Moto Droid will arrive next week for $199 with a new, 2-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate. Customers will need a voice plan starting at $39 and a web and email plan for $29 per month.
See our full Droid coverage here and look for a full hands-on later today.
Get out your buying wallets because the Palm Pixi is coming to Sprint stores on November 15.
Pricing details are as follows:
It will cost just $99.99 with a two-year service agreement, after a $50 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate and be available at Sprint stores, online at www.sprint.com, through telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1, and at Best Buy, RadioShack and select Wal-Mart stores.
To refresh your memory, the Palm Pixi is the second WebOS phone, this time with a Treo-esque keyboard. The current WebOS device, the Pre, now costs $79.
Want an iPhone but don’t want to put up with an on-screen keyboard? Are you also kind of fuzzy on the whole “what is a real iPhone” thing? Do you also have $149 to spend? Well, you’re in luck because China as the answer.
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Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards,” which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it’s hard to tell what Nokia’s real problem is here.
Nokia’s shares are down 6.02 percent today on news that Nokia suffered an $834 million loss due to falling handset sales. In this environment it’s easy to wave this away as a crisis blip but there may be something more afoot.
Nokia blamed the loss on component shortages, a valid concern. Apple has been buying up all the flash it can eat and companies like LG and Samsung are blowing out feature phones to directly compete with Nokia’s lower-end models faster than anyone thought possible.
The Short Version
Motorola has released the phone it should have released a few years ago to compete with phones like the Helio Ocean and feature phones from LG and Samsung. Android brings this phone into the 21st century and the QWERTY keyboard and BLUR UI tweaks will please those looking for a keyboard Android phone with social networking features.
The Long Version
This last half-decade has been hard on Motorola. It launched the RAZR in 2004 and essentially riffed on that ground-breaking clamshell for another four years. Now it’s 2009 and it’s time to move in a different direction. Can this creaky ship of a company take up the line, hoist the mizzen, and tack to starboard? Is the Motorola CLIQ the answer to their deepest, most secret prayers, prayed in anguish under a stifling cover of imminent collapse? How many more metaphors can I use here before I sound like I’m writing for a business magazine?
First, I finger wag. Motorola, you have been very bad. You squandered your massive lead (110 million RAZRs sold by 2005) on a strategy that included, but was not limited to, trying to copy the magic of the RAZR while the rest of the industry was going the way of the smartphone. Then you tried to build out some Windows Mobile phones that no one wanted and, in the end, lost out to just about every rival you’ve ever had. This is bad.
So here’s your hail Mary pass, your Radio Free Europe, your return to four-letter naming conventions. I present the Motorola CLIQ.
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I can’t stand it, i know you planned it
Ima set it straight, this Watergate
I can’t stop textin’ when i’m in there
’cause your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear
So, while you sit back and wonder why
I’m missing my pics when I slide my ‘Kick
Oh my god, it’s a mirage
I’m tellin’ y’all it’s sabotage
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Not only does the term “Windows Phone” just sound wrong, now they’re trying to equate all your Windows apps with puffy little men who love you but don’t want you to leave.
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Amazon has confirmed that they are making the Kindle DX international as well. No word on pricing or availability but you can expect it sometime next year.
According to a J.D. Power study, Apple has been named number one in consumer satisfaction in the consumer and business smartphone market while LG is number one in the traditional feature phone market.
First, a bit of explanation of terms. In this case, a smartphone is a phone with an operating system that is able to run more than the built-in application deck. A feature phone is a phone with a pre-set deck that perhaps can allow downloads but is not considered a smartphone. The Blackberry is a smartphone while the Moto RAZR is a feature phone.
Based on a set of criteria, Apple scored highest over LG and Blackberry in the business category and highest in the consumer smartphone category, over second-place RIM.
LG ranked highest in satisfaction in the feature phone market.
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Remember the Dell Mini 3i, Dell’s China-only Android phone? Well it’s not China-only anymore.
Rumor has it that Dell will bring the Mini 3i to the U.S. in the next few months to compete with other Android phones coming down the pike from HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.
The phone, presumably still in its Chinese trade dress, felt “cheap and plasticky, like the Pre,” according our tipster. He believes it will be upgraded for the American market.
What do you get when you add Android to TouchWiz? WizDroid! Samsung’s new Behold II is running a nicely modified version of Android with some unique UI improvements.
We’ve known about this old girl for a few weeks now but it’s finally been announced on T-Mo. No pricing or availability date.
Following the success of its predecessor, the Samsung Behold®, the Behold II will be available exclusively from T-Mobile and is currently scheduled to launch before the start of the holidays. The sleek touch-screen phone is the first from T-Mobile USA to feature a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, which provides crisper colors and wider viewing angles. In addition, the Behold II is equipped with Samsung’s innovative TouchWiz user interface, allowing easy customization with widgets located in a slide out tray on the left side of the home screen and providing one-touch access to a customer’s favorite and most commonly used features and applications. The Behold II offers three different home screens to drag and drop widgets onto the screen and organize the different workspaces with favorite widgets and application shortcuts. Samsung’s intuitive cube menu also provides quick access to six top multimedia features, including music, photos, videos, the Web, YouTube™ and Amazon MP3 for music downloads.
If you’ve rooted and modded your Android phone you’ve probably found Cyanogen, one of the best sources for modded Android ROMs out there. All of his ROMs are stable, usable on the G1 and MyTouch, and well-designed.
Google, however, takes issue with him releasing closed-source Google apps like Gmail, Maps, and YouTube and has sent him a cease and desist. They’re not particularly mad about the ROMs, mind you, just the apps inside them.
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According to a recent FCC filing, this is an embeddable WWAN and WiFi module that could be the first step in creating an internal MiFi like device, a system that would allow those sitting around you to share your WWAN connection.
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Like it or not, Windows Mobile is a predominant mobile OS. It rules the roost, along with Symbian, and although Android will shortly beat its butt – I’d expect it to reach parity in about 2012 – we’re still going to have to live with up to 30 million WinMo 6.5 devices by the end of the year.
It was written that a great Hero would rise from the East. He would be clothed in the sun and his unique user-interface would redefine the user experience for countless fans of social networking and his majesty would reign over all over Android phones forever. That Hero is here, and he’s on Sprint.
I love the Hero, even in the form that the phone took in Sprint’s able hands. While the comparisons to another Sprint phone will be rampant, I’m here to tell you that this isn’t the Palm Pre and that this phone is my favorite phone, other than the phone that starts with “i” and rhymes with iPhone. The Hero, in this incarnation, is a perfect mix of form and function.
First, for an earlier look at the Hero drop over here for my original review.
Rumor has it that T-Mobile UK and Orange UK will merge, creating a 28.4 million customer uber-carrier. The next largest carrier will be Telefonica’s O2, the former heavyweight.
The deal will be signed by November and the merged company will share networks and CRM services in the UK. This does not directly effect T-Mobile’s German parent company except in that it will lose its subsidiary in the UK.
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HTC’s naming conventions are kind of funny. I was almost hoping that after the Hero they’d call this the HTC Ninjastar or the HTC Hobo, but sadly it ended up being the Tattoo. The Tattoo runs the Sense UI, which is great++ and it has a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headset jack, and MicroSD memory slot.
The phone will be available in Europe in October and, as we all well know, may or may not come to our shores in some form or the other in the next few weeks. Full PR after the jump.
[PSGallery=3bl10ansj10y]
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