Looks like the licensing nazi has struck again. The slick “Sense” UI on the coveted HTC Hero is not going to be available as an upgrade for anybody in the US any time soon. That’s right, even though my G1 and the MyTouch/Magic are made and developed by HTC, you’ll find it also says Google on the back. Being a Google-branded product apparently precludes the Magic and G1 from using the Sense UI featured on the Hero, by dint of some sort of evil licensing sorcery.
Personally I’m not that offended; the Hero was made to take advantage of the Sense UI, and I think you would get a sub-optimal experience on the G1 or Magic. Sure, I would have liked to give it a shot, but not so much that I’m going to take it to the streets.
Read More
The HTC Ozone might just be one of the best deals at Verizon Wireless. Check out everything you get for only $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate: QWERTY, Winmo 6.1, global roaming, Wi-Fi, and teathering. I don’t think you could ask for a better value out of a brand new Verizon phone.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about the upcoming T-Mobile Dash 3G and earlier today TmoNews posted a shot of the device that’s expected to launch on July 1.
Bombarded with dozens of news sources and code-heavy web sites, mobile news browsing seems to be a daunting task at best. Even on Wi-Fi, some of the most powerful mobile phones take their sweet time rendering. Searching for a solid application that can handle aggregation of popular and trusted news sources can be just as tedious as actually reading news on a mobile phone. Tedium, however, may have come to an end for us Android users with the release of Handmark’s Express News. With 10,000-50,000 downloads, Express News has maintained a 4.5/5 score to an often-critical crowd. With all the buzz on this product, we figured it was time to give it a run.
A man once told me that I could not have my Cupcake and eat it too. He was obviously dead wrong. Today’s big buzz on the Android front is that the official OTA install package for Android 1.5 (lovingly known around the internets as ‘Cupcake’ update) is now available for direct download and manual patching. For those of us who have waited patiently for the official patch but just can’t wait another day for it to come over-the-air, it is our day of rejoicing. At long last, we get to sink our teeth in to that green sugar-coated muffin, complete with video recording, on-screen keyboard, an expanding library of widgets, and stereo bluetooth support (to name a few additions).
Read More
The GPS Navigation system has become a utility that is essential to travel, whether it be daily commute or cross country excursion. Once seen a luxury, this now-necessity has been a sweeping success all around the globe, allowing the world’s atlases right at your fingertip with near surgical precision in tracking and guidance. TeleNav, established veteran of the GPS marketplace, has really taken the time to make a fully functioning turn-by-turn system for the Android platform. Availability is currently limited to the G1, though we assume they’ll branch out to other devices as Android grows.
Read More
Android hacker extraordinaire Haykuro is at it again. Just days ago, he ported a build of Android from the HTC Hero to the G1, showing off a handful of features we’d never seen before. This time around, he has managed to get his hands on a build that looks to have seen a ton of visual polish – but by who? We don’t know if the visual overhaul is an official act of Google for the sake of the platform, HTC for their own releases, or just some guy who is damn good at making things look pretty. What we do know is that we want it.
Just like the iPhone, it took a while to reach Japanese shores, but now Android finally goes Nippon as well. The country’s largest telecommunications company, NTT, has picked up the rights to distribute the first mobile phone that uses the Android OS in Japan.
T-Mobile is betting big on Android this year. Cole Brodman, T-Mobile’s CTO,
We are looking to launch multiple Android-based devices in the second half of this year with three partners,
Three he says? HTC and Samsung have already been confirmed by the leaked Android roadmap, but who is the third?
Read More
We learned the other day from a slightly shady-looking leaked document that the second version of the G1 will be hitting T-Mo some time in the fall. Believable, but the picture for the phone looked all wrong — a little too Ocean-y for us (though we love that phone) [Greg says: I was totally right about the G1v2 image in that document being a fake placeholder]. But BGR appears to have unearthed a picture of the real thing, and it looks a lot more likely to us.
The very HTC-like keyboard (you can tell from the width of the keys), obscured as it is, looks nice, and you can barely tell but there are three touch-buttons at the bottom, possibly with placeholder icons on them. BGR has graciously put their watermark directly over them, but you can see they’re a bit anonymous and probably not final. After all, the “home” and “back” functionality are integral to Android and I doubt they’d use such arbitrary designs to represent them. So we don’t see this as a final design but it’s certainly more slick-looking than its predecessor.
Read More
Lookie, lookie. It seems that HTC’s next Android handset couldn’t avoid the geek paparazzi. We hear that this phone is the rumored HTC Hero and might get a release sometime in Q3 of this year, which sounds ’bout right if working handsets are already in the wild.
Oh, inventory systems. You’re the source of countless pre-release confirmations, open to anyone with a polo bearing the proper logo.
T-mobile hasn’t (officially) confirmed the HTC Magic was heading to their shelves, but it’s been pretty much undeniable for the past few weeks. Now, according to this leaked shot obtained by TmoNews, it’s already in the inventory system.
That’s all fine and dandy, but there’s some bad news. You remember that T-mobile survey that was weighing opinions on 3 possible names for the HTC Magic just a few weeks ago? They picked the worst one. HTC G3, T-Mobile Genius, whatever – those would have been fine. But “myTouch”? Seriously? Look, T-Mobile: Apple doesn’t call the iPod Touch the “iTouch” for a very specific reason. On the upside, it looks like HTC might have snuck in an extra color for T-Mo: Merlot. Everyone will think you’re super classy until you start talking about “myTouch”. Then you’ll just be creepy.
You gotta hand it to the marketing/PR peeps in the mobile gadget space for figuring out how to announce phones, yet hold back just enough to get some coverage out of the details disclosed months later.
As it were, HTC finally announced pricing and (gasp!) availability info for its newest “flagship” devices – Touch Diamond2 & Touch Pro2 – earlier today.
Read More
Tech companies are getting sued for patent infringement regularly, but this recent case of patent litigation might mean serious trouble for HTC, at least in Germany. Munich-based IPCom, which is not your usual insignificant patent troll, says the Taiwanese company is infringing its patents (IPCom doesn’t have a website).
A tipster points out to Phandroid that the Vodafone website confirms the Android-powered HTC Magic, recently announced, is arriving in April.
Here are some of the specs:
* HSDPA
* Built in GPS Navigation
* 3.0 -4.0 megapixel – (meaning 3.2)
* GPRS
* Games
* Calendar
* WiFi
* Full Touch Screen
More after the jump.
Last time HTC used Twitter to confirm something, it was to let everyone know that the HTC Touch HD wouldn’t be coming stateside. This time, they bring good news!
Read More
Could this be an early sign the HTC and T-Mobile will buddy up once again for the G2? Maybe. The T-Mobile logo does sport the one-less dot design that’s unique to the United States market, but that alone isn’t exactly solid proof. So far the only word about the HTC Magic is that it’s a Vodafone exclusive handset, which doesn’t sit well with American mobile users. However, why wouldn’t HTC bring it Stateside?
If we are to believe this Vodafone ad (and who are we to doubt the Internet), the European carrier will be the exclusive provider of HTC’s next Android phone, the Magic. The phone does somewhat resemble early spy shots so we could be looking at the real deal, folks.
It seems like only yesterday (although technically, it was 48+ hours ago) when Qualcomm’s Snapdragon remained a mythical (mobile technology) beast, yet to be discovered by the modern (handset manufacturing) world. However, all that changed after Toshiba shocked the cellular industry by unleashing Snapdragon from its proverbial cave with its TG01 announcement.
Read More
Isn’t funny how everytime you get your hands a super-duper secret phone or random gadget, the one camera nearby is your crappy camera phone? Funny. Anywho, supposedly what you see above, and after the link, is HTC’s next Android-powered phone dubbed the G2. According to Giz, it’s a touchscreen phone that lacks a physical keyboard and will likely find its way into T-Mobile’s stable. Real or fake? Your call.
Read More
