Archive for April, 2009
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Here we thought that Verizon was going to ace out the US CDMA market by announcing the 8230 first, but alas, it ends up being Alltel — the divested chunks of it post-acquisition — that becomes the first American carrier to trumpet the device. Unlike its GSM sibling over on T-Mobile, the 8230 is a 3G handset equipped with EV-DO, but otherwise, it looks pretty much the same with a QVGA primary display, love-it-or-hate-it SureType keypad, and 2 megapixel cam. It’ll hit the “new” Alltel’s 2.2 million subscribers in 91 markets come early May for a seemingly reasonable $79.99.
Tags: 8230, Alltel, engadget, games, joystiq, network, podcasts, Samsung
Posted in Verizon | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Apparently some shady
hackers and cyber-criminals have recently started offering upwards of $30,000 for the Nokia 1100 which were manufactured at a specific plant in Bochum, Germany. You may ask yourself, “why?” Well, beyond the obvious answer (style), certain makes of the
super-popular handset can apparently be reprogrammed to use someone else’s phone number, allowing them to receive text messaged bank passwords (common in parts of Europe), thus making it much, much easier to steal people’s money. The software flaw has been pointed out by Ultrascan Advance Global Investigations, who were contacted by police who had noted the curiously high offering prices on the old-timey candybar. Nokia has contended that it has not identified any software problems which would allow such use, so it’s hard to say what exactly is going on at this point, but we’ll let you know if we hear anything concrete.
[Via SlashGear]
Tags: culture, engadget-mobile, games, handsets, messaging, mobile, network, Nokia, podcasts, rogers-wireless, softbank-mobile, television, video
Posted in Nokia | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
It’s pretty hard to get excited about a device introduction when its successor has already been announced — but alas, the original Touch Pro is still a pretty awesome phone, and we’re sure it’ll do pretty well for US Cellular. The regional has caught up with Sprint and Verizon in launching HTC’s VGA display-equipped landscape QWERTY slider, bringing a 3.2 megapixel cam, 288MB of RAM and 512MB of ROM (meeting Sprint’s specs and exceeding Verizon’s), WiFi, and all the TouchFLO 3D you can handle for $249.95 on contract after mail-in rebate. Just avoid casting envious gazes toward the Pro2 over in the GSM realm, and you’ll be all set.
[Via MobileBurn]
Tags: culture, engadget, engadget-mobile, handsets, HTC, joystiq, messaging, TouchPro, us-cellular, Windows Mobile, windowsmobile, windowsmobile6.1
Posted in HTC | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Two computer science professors at Washington University have produced a USB ultrasound probe which is compatible with Windows Mobile smartphones. The project, funded by Microsoft, has developed and optimized probe that uses less power, and is enhanced for data transfer rates on cellphones. The devices could be especially useful in on-the-go situations — for ambulances, emergencies, and for use by traveling medical staff. The makers also foresee that the device could postively effect medical practice in the developing world, where equipment and doctors can be scarce, and a small, but cellphone access is ever increasingly prevalent. We don’t know when these might be commercially available, but they are hoping to sell them for around $500 — significantly cheaper than many portable ultrasounds, which can cost almost $30,000.
Tags: culture, davidzar, digitalimaging, doctors, engadget, engadget-mobile, games, imaging, network, ultrasound, windowsmobile
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, April 10th, 2009
We’d already heard that right about now was a great time to be in the prepaid cell business, and that’s being proven quite definitively by MetroPCS’ Q1 subscriber results. We’re told that the firm saw a net addition of 684,000 customers in the first three months of 2009, representing an astounding 51 percent increase year-over-year. While celebrating mightily, the company also saw fit to introduce a “one-call communication solution targeted at families and friends who are trying to save money in today’s economy by ‘cutting the cord’ and replacing their landline telephones with wireless phones.” Said “landline replacer” is called GroupLINE, which enables up to five MetroPCS Family Plan subscribers to receive calls on a shared GroupLINE number while still maintaining their individual mobile numbers — all for just $5 per month. So, anyone looking to tighten the belt by going prepaid? Your options are getting good.
[Via GigaOM]
Tags: business, economy, engadget, games, growth, japanese, MetroPCS, network, Nokia, podcasts, prepaid, rogers-wireless, softbank-mobile, television
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
We wouldn’t recommend speculating too much here, but a patent Apple filed back in October 2007 has surfaced, describing a “movement-based interfaces for personal media device.” If that’s not enough of an explanation, in a nutshell it’s for interacting with a device by tilting and shaking. Chances are this is just for accelerometer-based commands like switching to landscape, steering virtual go-carts, and undo — but hey, if the gang at Cupertino devise a way to control an iPhone entirely by waggle, we’ll be more than happy to witness a demonstration.
[Via Unwired View]
Tags: Apple, browser, engadget-mobile, features, Linux, News, Nokia, patent, uspatentoffice, waggle
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
We couldn’t get the thing to turn on — prototype buffoonery, zapped battery, or a classic case of trade show jitters, we figure — but Inventec’s curious V112 was on display inside Qualcomm’s booth at CTIA. Why Qualcomm, you ask? Well, Qualcomm owns Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, which has been pushing its mirasol display tech for several years now; the main draw is that it’s super high-contrast which eliminates the need for a backlight in many situations where a traditional LCD would need a little help, and the WinMo-powered V112 uses a small mirasol strip as a secondary display surrounded by nav controls. Even though we weren’t getting any Windows Mobile action, we did manage to engage the mirasol display (also known as “the cool part”) where we saw an example of what the V112 might be able to do without turning on the battery-destroying LCD up top: show basic status information and the current time. It’s a good idea; we’re not sure that the V112’s implementation is perfect since there’s zero tactility to the d-pad, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and mirasol could use as many commercial implementations as it can get.
Tags: ctia, engadget-mobile, features, handsets, Inventec, mirasol, mobile, network, qualcomm, v112, WinMo
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Looks like the uproar over AT&T’s recently-tweaked wireless terms of service banning video streaming and p2p activity caused some hasty rethinking in Dallas — the company just sent us this statement:
The language added on March 30 to AT&T’s wireless data service Terms and Conditions was done in error. It was brought to our attention and we have since removed it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Well, that settles that, at least for now — high fives all around, Internet friends.
Tags: accessories, AT&T, browser, culture, engadget-mobile, games, podcasts
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
