Author: Greg Kumparak

Waaay back in April, a handset with strikingly similar specs to the beastly Samsung Galaxy S showed up in the Bluetooth certification database. The big difference here, though, was the model number: SGH-i897. Through good ol’ fashion science (and by that, I mean looking at the model number), we deduced that this guy was headed for AT&T — and we were right.

The titular guys over at AndroidGuys managed to unearth themselves some shots of the i897, and the branding couldn’t be any clearer.

Along with the shots came some new details:

• 5-megapixel camera
• Android 2.1
• Snapdragon CPU. The clock speed couldn’t be confirmed, but it’s presumably running at 1Ghz.

This, in addition to the specs we already knew (Bluetooth, a 4.0″ AMOLED display) are chalking this up into what could very well be AT&T’s first worthwhile foray into Android. (There’s a reason I didn’t review their first Android phone, the Motorola Backflip. My mom always told me: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.)

Check out a few more shots at AndroidGuys.

Early this morning, the rumormill went a bit bonkers. A hole to a parallel universe apparently ripped open outside of an analyst’s office. Through this hole, the analyst saw a world where Steve Ballmer presented something at Apple’s WWDC 2010 keynote. Alas, the analyst didn’t realize that this was a parallel universe, instead interpreting it as a glance into the future. “Steve Ballmer will be presenting at WWDC! Steve Ballmer will be presenting at WWDC!”, he shouted.

People were skeptical, and rightly so. It’s all a bunch of nonsense, says Microsoft.

In a brief statement issued over Twitter (what else?) this afternoon, Microsoft straightened things out:

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

Good. Between starring as the next Bond villain and training for the Olympics, we figured that Ballmer’s schedule was already getting stretched a bit too thin. While Microsoft could very well make an appearance during WWDC keynote as a partner, it probably won’t be Ballmer’s mug staring back at the audience.

Just in time for the launch of the EVO 4G (and its front-facing camera) next week, Fring has tossed 2-way video calling support into their free Android app. It’ll work on Android devices regardless of whether or not they have a front-facing camera — if yours doesn’t, you’ll be doing a lot of flipping back and forth if you want anyone to be able to see that sweet, sweet face.

In what may very well be considered the geekiest sort of fandom possible, I consider myself a fan of Matias Duarte. As I’ve written before: “Wherever this guy goes, awesome user interfaces follow.” He and his team at Danger built a tremendously usable interface for the Sidekick, his work at Helio (especially the stuff that went to waste at the end, never to be seen by the public eye) was incredible, and then.. then there was webOS.

Say what you will about the Palm Pre and Pixi from a hardware standpoint, but the software that runs on’em is pure user interface gold. That’s largely because of the work of Matias and his team. Alas, Palm just lost Matias to the lil’ green robot that could: Android. Google has confirmed to AllThingsD that Matias is joining them as the Android team’s User Experience Director.

Score one for Google.

This talent acquisition could be incredibly important for the folks in Mountain View. Android has a lot of fantastic selling points, but its user interface has never, ever been one of those. Since day 1, users (and nay-sayers) have been vehemently complaining about the interface. It is — and I say this as a pretty huge fan of the platform — rather ugly, and far from intuitive. (Every time I speak to someone who just got their Android phone within the last few days, its the same story: showing them how to reveal the (very important) notification bar results in wide eyes and gaping maws, as if I’d revealed the key to time travel. That’s not good.)

And what does this mean for Palm? Given their recent buyout by HP, it’s probably a bit of a mixed bag. HP has their own team of designers — failing that, they’ve got the money to hire replacements. No matter how talented said replacements may be, though, it’s an uphill battle. webOS has very finely tuned design messages; throw a new cook in the kitchen, and half of their work will be learning the old cook’s recipes.

Making things worse, Matias doesn’t generally roam from company to company alone. When he left Danger for Helio, he brought members of his team. When he left Helio for Palm, he brought members of his team. When he leaves, a good chunk of his team tends to go with. Neither Palm nor Google has confirmed any shifts beyond Matias; with that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Palm lost 2-3 more designers to Google in the coming weeks, if they haven’t already.

Yesterday was a sad day for me, albeit one that was a long time coming. Yesterday, Helio, a wireless MVNO co-operated by EarthLink and South Korea’s SK Telecom, let out its final death cry. As I predicted in March, Virgin Mobile, who had acquired the failing company just two years prior, was pulling the plug on the post-paid side of their service that Helio had become. The lights were dimmed, the blinds were closed, and accounts were terminated. Just like that, Helio was dead.

As a small (yet lovely) chunk of our MobileCrunch readers may know, Helio was of some importance to me. On a whim one weekend, long before I became a writer here, I founded a community called Heliocity — which, as you could probably guess by now, was focused on Helio. It was a pretty tightly knit group of 10 thousand-or-so of the geekiest geeks you’ll ever meet, hacking at — and nerding out over — every Helio phone we could get our hands on. That community got me into blogging, which took me to all sorts of industry events, where I in turn met all the people who eventually lead me to my job here at TechCrunch.

To celebrate this nostalgia and recognize the rather cool company that once was, I present: the Helio Ocean 3. This is the phone that was to be Helio’s savior; this is their unfinished magnum opus. Prior to today, it was a myth; no one outside of the company had seen it, and the number of people within the company who had seen it could be counted on two hands.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Two of the three iPhones released thus far have been launched in June. WWDC, where Apple generally announces iPhones 2-3 weeks before they’re shipping, starts on June 7th. If you had to guess, when would you wager that the new iPhone was coming?

If you said “June”, awesome — you’re probably right, and click on after the jump to find out more. If you said “October”… well, I’m not quite sure what to say to that.

According to BGR, AT&T HQ has internally confirmed to certain employees that there will be an iPhone launch next month, with the device hitting the shelves before the month is out. According to their tipster, “it won’t even be late June.”

Sure, it’s vague. Sure, you probably could have guessed as much, or thrown a dart in the dark and nailed it. But this is the good word of a random, unidentifiable AT&T employee who could very well be talking out of their arse, dammit — and we respect that word in this house.

We’ll start with the bad news: according to some early stage testing done by PCMag, the HDMI output on the HTC Evo might kinda-sorta suck. While they haven’t quite pinned down the source of their woes, various TVs are all showing various issues.

On the upside: it looks like the HTC Evo is getting a fancy-pants micro-HDMI docking port, making it super easy to blast content onto your TV without having stray cables everywhere.

Them crazy cats over at AndroidAndMe scrounged up the shot above. That image up top contains just about everything we know so far: HTC EVO Docking Station! Coming Soon!

No pricing or availability details beyond “soon” unfortunately — but seeing as the EVO 4G isn’t.. you know, available yet, there probably aren’t too many people dying to buy this. Except for I/O attendees, of course.

You know what’s coming up in just a few days? Apples Worldwide Developer Conference. With WWDC comes new iPhones.. and with new iPhones, comes the death of an old one. Apple may very well still offer the 3GS after the fourth-generation iPhone is on the shelves — but offering the fourth-gen iPhone, the 3GS, and the 3G? Probably not going to happen.

The first herald of the iPhone 3G’s impending death has come.

Sometime early this morning, Apple pulled the “Select” button off of the iPhone purchasing page. If you want an iPhone from Apple’s online store right this second, you’re buying a 3GS — or, you know, waiting a few weeks and getting the new toy, or at least getting the 3GS a few bills less after the inevitable price drop.

[Via Engadget]

Note to self: keep an eye out for unreleased smartphones in ridiculous places. Hanging out in a random beer garden in Palo Alto? Oh, hello there, fourth-generation iPhone. Hitting the gym? Lookie here, it’s the unreleased Motorola Shadow Android phone for Verizon!

The tale, as it goes so far: an employee at a Verizon corporate gym in Washington was doing his rounds, and stumbled upon the handset you see above. He unlocked it — presumably to identify who owned it — and spotted a text confirming that the handset was unreleased.

He snapped a pic and sent it off to Gizmodo, dialed up the person they figured was the owner, and away it went into the hands of an unnamed Verizon employee — but not before the spy-shot taker was allegedly able to confirm the 16 gigs of internal storage, Snapdragon processor, 4.3 inch screen, and the 8 megapixel camera.

When we dug up some evidence yesterday that Boost Mobile would be getting the US’s first pre-paid Android phone in the form of Motorola’s crazy-tough, push-to-talk i1, there was one bit we were missing: the price.

Fortunately, that didn’t stay a secret for very long.

MobileCrunch reader Tyrel found the item lurking around on the depths of Best Buy’s own site. As of right this second, this pre-paid, no-contract handset is set to cost you $349.99 out the door.

Alas, still no word on a launch date.

Android 2.2 might already be rolling out to the Nexus One — but what about it’s nearly-identical European brother, the HTC Desire?

If a random HTC customer service rep is to be believed — which we generally wouldn’t recommend — the Desire should be seeing Android 2.2 in all of its Flash-packin’, performance-boosting glory within the next month.

Our buds over at Phandroid spotted this gem on XDA-Dev. The tale, as its told: a grumpy customer decided to ring up HTC about his Desire’s inability to store applications on the SD card — an issue which is nullified in Android 2.2.

The CS Rep initially refused to budge on any info, but Grumpy McCustomer kept on pushing. After a quick chat with his supervisor, the CS Rep dropped this litle tid-bit:

But you never heard this from me…. A new update is coming the 23rd of June and you will be able to put some apps on to the micro sd card.

So, in other words: according to a forumgoer who purportedly spoke to a CS rep who allegedly had inside info on the HTC Desire’s update plans, Android 2.2 is coming to the Desire on June 23rd. Take it as you will, won’t you?

The BlackBerry 9800 Slider.. leaked? Preposterous! I can’t imagine such a thing happening. Except for that one time. Or that other time. Or any of those other times.

And now, the leak to end all 9800 slider leaks: a video walk through of the handset, including BlackBerry OS 6.0.

Along with showing off a bunch of the tricks OS 6.0 has up its sleeve — multitouch support, the new WebKit, a brand new homescreen — it also pretty much cements one bit right off the bat: it’s coming to AT&T, as shown by the handset startup animation.

[Source: BerryFix Via: CrackBerry]

Back at CTIA 2010, Motorola announced the world’s first rugged Android handset with iDEN push-to-talk functionality: the i1. At launch, Motorola was only willing to spill the beans on one carrier who’d be getting the handset: Sprint.

We just unearthed some pretty irrefutable proof that someone else will be getting the i1: Boost Mobile. Yep — say hello to the first pre-paid Android handset in the US.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Google didn’t invent giving stuff away. Oprah did that. Google just made — or at least greatly popularized — the trend of companies giving their latest and greatest handsets to all the attendees of the developer events in hopes of spiking their interest.

The latest company to pull a Google: Samsung. At a Developer Day in South Africa, the company just passed out Bada Wavesto everyone around.

They also revealed a number of new details — some good, some.. not so good.

• The Bada app store will be manually moderated — if its got drugs, sexually-suggestive content, or anything that “incites violence or hate”, it’s a no go.
• In a one-on-one chat with PhoneReport, a Samsung rep confirmed that the next Bada phone will look much like the Wave with a sub-$200 pricetag, while the one after that will rock a full QWERTY keyboard. This is inline with what we saw on that leak back in April.
• The Bada App Store will launch in South Africa and 19 other (unspecified) countries, with plans to hit 80 countries within just a few months
• Apps can be free or paid
• Paid apps are paid for via credit card, though Samsung says they’re working with carriers to implement carrier billing.
• Samsung hopes to sell 10 million Bada handsets this year, and 20 million by the end of next year.

[Via PhoneReport]

Sure, the EVO 4G might not be seeing its official nationwide release until June 4th — but since when do silly matters like release dates bother the Android hacking community?

To make a short story shorter: one of the EVO 4Gs given away at Google I/O ended up in the mitts of a trio of hackers. Armed with nothing but a few hours to kill and a bit of elbow grease (and presumably, some beer), they managed to crack this thing wide open nearly two weeks before it’s even available to the general public.

The lads responsible aren’t release details of the hack just yet, presumably to prevent last minute patches (not that we really have to worry about quick patch work.. it is Sprint we’re talking about, after all)

Once the leaks start, they just don’t stop. After the first (and massive) leaks regarding the fouth-gen iPhone made their way out, more and more shots have been unearthed. As of late, however, a new variation has been poking its head up: a white-faced model.

While a few different shots have made their way out over the past few days, these ones are easily the clearest and most complete we’ve seen so far. Note that the face on the white model doesn’t seem to be pushed on completely. Apple’s been offering black/white options since the iPhone 3G, though the face is black in both models.

What do you think? Real? Not real? All I know: if this is real, I’m going to carry the white model. I’ll carry it hard. (Though I’m not even sure what that would entail.)

[Source: Apple.pro]

Oh, LG Fathom; like the HTC HD2, you’re one of Windows Mobile 6.5’s last hurrahs — a final spirited cry as the hawks circle over head. Packing a 1Ghz processor, a full touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, it’s a solid piece of hardware prematurely plagued to obsolescence by a dying operating system. Ah well.

On the upside, you’ll be able to get this thing for (relatively) cheap. One of our sources just sent over a shot of an LG Fathom shelf tag freshly printed from Best Buy’s inventory system, price and all.

As long as things don’t change before the launch (which another source indicates is tentatively set for May 27th), you should be able to walk out with a Fathom for $99.99 on a 2-year contract. If you opt to buy it out right, that’ll set you back a cent shy of 500 smackers.

If you trekked down to the local Verizon store for an early morning camp-out in order to pick up an LG Ally yesterday, you might have left a bit upset — and empty handed. While Verizon initially said that they’d have’m in stock by the 20th, they were a no show.

If this note purportedly being sent out to pre-orderers rings true, would-be Ally owners might have right around another week (or more) of waiting.

According to the note, first posted by the folks over at the oh-so-focused LG Ally Forums , the phones initial availability has been pushed back until “on or after May 27th”, with pre-orders now running until the day before.

I blame Iron Man. Damn you, Tony Stark! Damn you!

Dear Valued Customer,

This notification is to inform you that Verizon Wireless has received your pre-order of the LG Ally. We have extended the pre-order period for the LG Ally until May 26th.

Since you have pre-ordered, you will be the first to receive the phone upon initial availability on or after May 27th.

We appreciate your business, and we will send you another confirmation email as soon as your LG Ally ships.

Sincerely,

Verizon Wireless

We’ve all been there. You’re out and about. You look down at your iPhone, and the battery indicator is screaming. No sweat; you’ll just pop into your favorite spot and charge up. But wait! You forgot your charger at home! How are the honeys gonna hit you up on the two-way if the two-way is dead?

The Scosche flipSync, released today, solves all of our dead two-way (I’m seriously going to call it that from now on. Or at least the rest of this post.) problems, without bulking up your bag.

As if the gents up above don’t do a fine enough job explaining it: the flipSync sits on your keychain, and takes up about the same amount of space as a car remote. Pop it apart, and you’ve got a full-fledged iPhone (or microUSB, if you go that route) charger. It goes on sale this afternoon at Best Buy for $20 a pop. Expensive? A bit — but remember: you’re doing it for the honeys.

Two-way.

At first, there was one. One rumor to rule them all. According to this rumor, the myTouch Slide would be hitting store shelves on June 2nd.

And then.. another was born. The sky darkened and the sun fell black; according to this second rumor, the myTouch Slide would be reaching stores not on June 2nd, but June 16th.

Turns out, they’re both sort-of-right. Hurray!

T-Mo has just officially announced that the myTouch’s QWERTY-packin’ brother, the myTouch 3G slide, will be launching at T-Mobile stores, t-mobile.com, and a handful of authorized dealers on June 2nd. Come June 16th, it’ll be made available at all of the dealers/outlets that didn’t get in on the first run, with T-Mo firing up a marketing campaign focusing on the device at that time.

As predicted, the Slide will come in three colors: Black, White, or Red. Props to T-mobile for not dubbing these colors “Ghostly White”, “Butt-spank Red” or any of those other nonsense names generally associated with hue variants. Expect to drop $229.99 out the door, with a $50 mail-in rebate bringing the final price down to $179.99 on a 2-year contract.