Author: Greg Kumparak

When it comes to leaks in the gadget world, when it rains, it pours. In just shy of 20 days, the HTC Supersonic — an absolute beast of a phone — went from non-existent to deeply detailed and fully photographed.

Whether you’ve missed a screenshot or two or just had no idea the Supersonic existed, don’t sweat it – we’ve got your back.

The world got its first hint of of the Supersonic on January 8th, when a listing for the HTC A9292 WIMAX BAR showed up in Sprint’s inventory. The listing confirmed the bar form factor and that it would run on Sprint’s WiMax network, but that was all we knew.

Shortly thereafter, a tipster spilled the beans to Engadget. The details they shared:

• 4.3″ display. It’s nice and big, but the bad news: It’s not AMOLED.
• It runs Android 2.1, made all the better with HTC’s Sense interface overhaul.
• Like the HTC Imagio, it has a kickstand on the back
• No date revealed
• Looks similar to the HD2, but in white

WiMax? 4.3″ display? Android 2.1 on an HTC device? We’ll take 3, as long as it looks good – but as no shots had leaked yet, the looks were still in question.

And then…

Bam! The above shots leaked by way of AndroidMobileOs.com. They’re not exactly the most flattering shots in the history of leaks – but hey, the pretty much confirmed the previously leaked details: it looks like an HTC HD2, and has what looks like an Imagio-esque kickstand on the back.

Not satisfied by noisy, blurry pictures? Lucky you! Just hours later, our Russian friends over at YouHTC.RU managed to dig up a considerably clearer shot of the front:

Last but not least, a clear-as-day render showed up over at Androphones. No one seems know if it’s HTC-made or just the work of a dedicated and rather talented individual, but it sure looks legit to us:

So what do you think – could you see yourself toting an HTC Supersonic? If not, what’s holding you back? Lack of keyboard? Sprint as the carrier? Let us know in the comments below.

[Sources: Engadget Mobile, SlashGear, YouHTC.ru, Androphones]

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Man, these HTC Bravos are floating around everywhere. A semi-decent shot of this oh-so-Nexus-One-esque Android handset leaked just yesterday, and today another (markedly better) shot has found its way to the interwebs.

Not only that, but it brought a friend!

According to the whisper train, HTC was showing off the Bravo at a gathering of some sort in Poland. Some time during the meeting, a second unannounced handset was pulled out; no shots of the second handset have made their way out yet, but a few details have.

Dubbed the HTC Legend, it’s purportedly a bit smaller than the Hero, comes encased in a full aluminum body, and packs an AMOLED screen and a 5 megapixel camera. It’s by no means official yet, but word from Poland indicates that the Legend is all set to replace the Hero in various regions when it launches in March.

[Source: Android.com.pl via Android Community]

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We knew Nokia was preppin’ something for launch today, thanks to some loose lipped execs – but what would it be? Announcing something just one day before a much hyped Apple announcement is always risky; either Nokia thought the product was a big enough deal to overshadow Apple’s goods, or it was small enough that they weren’t too worried about it.

Looks like it’s closer to the latter.

Nokia’s announcement for today? A 16 gigabyte version of the X6, previously only available in 32 gig form. Interestingly, Nokia has decided to strip their all-you-can-eat “Comes with Music” service from this model, but they make up for it with free turn-by-turn navigation.

No pricing is available yet, but we do know that it’ll hit the shelves sometime before the end of March in various finishes: all black, all white, white with pink highlights and white with yellow highlights.

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Hey! Guess what? The Palm Pixi Plus and Pre Plus are now available for Verizon! You sure as hell wouldn’t know that from looking at Verizon Wireless’ front page today, where there’s no mention of either handset in sight.

This “Eh, whatever” launch approach is the same one Verizon took with the BlackBerry Storm 2, which launched with practically no fanfare – especially when compared to the Droid’s marketing campaign.

As expected, the Palm Pixi Plus and Pre Plus will set you back $100 or $150 respectively. Pick one up already? Let us know what you think so far in the comments below

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Considering that the much heralded Nexus One is being sold as a pure Android experience by Google themselves, it wasn’t at all surprising to see that it didn’t sport HTC’s oh-so-awesome Android interface overhaul, Sense.

Surprising? No. Disappointing? A bit. The 2.1 build of Android that the Nexus One runs is pretty dang solid – but in the end, we’re still longing for Sense. Looks like we might be in luck.

The guys over at Omio managed to dig up this spy shot of the HTC Bravo, an Android-powered piece of kit they claim is headed for T-Mobile (in the UK, at least). It’s packing the same 3.7″ display as the Nexus One, the same 5 megapixel camera, and a strikingly similar body. The only physical difference, as far as we can tell from this shot, is that it’s toting an optical trackpad instead of a trackball. And check out what’s running on the screen – sure looks like Sense to us!

Alas, there are still things that can’t be told by a single picture alone; will T-Mobile US pick it up? Will it pack the same blindingly fast Snapdragon processor as the Nexus One? Hit is up on our tips line if you know anything – in the mean time, we’ll keep an eye out for updates.

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Motorola’s by no means a stranger to phones with wonky form factors. I mean, just look at the Moto Backflip – the keyboard! It’s on the back! What is this, the future?

It gets crazier, friends.

Engadget just got their hands on the above shot, purportedly portraying something called the Motorola MOTOSPLIT. The fact that its a rough render combined with the fact that its twelve kinds of ridiculous makes us think we may very well never see this thing hit the light of day outside of Moto’s concept labs any time soon – but to be honest, I sort of hope we’re wrong.

If it does come out, the rumors indicate it’ll be Android-powered with a Snapdragon processor under the hood.

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As successful as some may be, single-purpose apps (like fart machines, flashlights, and tip calculators) tend to be the butt of a lot of jokes – but here’s one with a pretty righteous purpose.

With a bit of elbow grease and a downright impressive amount of haste, the folks over at Mediafly have thrown together an application specifically built to let people tune into tonight’s Hope For Haiti Now telethon. The event itself was just announced on January 15th – that means this app went from concept, through creation, and right on past Palm’s moderation process in less than a week. Consider us impressed.

Palm’s got the free application featured in the App Catalog at the moment, so go enjoy the show – and if you feel the urge to donate, you can do so right within the app. Enjoy!

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Over the past day or so, reports have been pouring in from around the Internet that Motorola Droid users were suddenly seeing a surprise over-the-air update hit their handsets. “Better battery life!” they said, “And Facebook bugs have been fixed!”

This wasn’t an isolated reported, by any means. Dozens upon dozens of forumgoers proclaimed that they’d received it, and a few other blogs confirmed it. And yet.. Motorola has just decried talks of such an update on Twitter, claiming that they “have not released a new [OTA update] since December.”

So whats going on? Was an update released either on accident or with little communication from the techs? Are people just imagining things, like some sort of geeky version of the Dancing Plague of 1518? It’s like the most boring and awkwardly niche episode of the Twilight Zone ever.

I haven’t seen any updates hit my Droid handset, nor have I personally heard any tales from anyone I know not to be crazy. We’ll update you if that changes.

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Not too long ago, HTC announced — much to our excitement — that they would be putting 3.5mm jacks in all of their handsets. In non-geek speak, that means that you wouldn’t need some annoying little one inch, easy-to-lose cable adapter just to be able to use your own headphones.

One of the last phones to sneak out with a non-3.5mm jack was the HTC T-Mobile myTouch. It was actually a pretty decent handset — but that useless jack really killed our buzz when we reviewed it. Fortunately, it looks like HTC and T-Mobile are going back to fix the error in their ways.

When the just-released Fender edition of the myTouch came down the pipes with a 3.5mm jack, folks got their hopes up that the original might see a revision. Sure enough – pictured above is the myTouch “v1.2″, an upcoming re-release of the myTouch complete with 3.5mm jack. The Fender edition also purportedly packs a RAM upgrade – no word yet if the new standard myTouch is getting that as well.

Don’t expect much fanfare when T-Mo releases the revised handset, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be too much longer before it happens.

Source: T-Mo News

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Like this – except, you know, with cell phones.

If you were planning on buying two Verizon Palm Pixi Pluses (or, if you’re feelin’ nutty, one Palm Pre Plus and one Palm Pixi Plus), get excited. It looks like you’ll be walkin’ out of the Verizon store with a bit more cash than you expected.

Yesterday afternoon, Palm sent us a note to confirm the pricing of the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus – which, as we expected, will set you back $100 and $150 respectively. Tucked inside that same e-mail, however, was one little detail we overlooked.

Turns out, Verizon’s continuing their ongoing trend of buy-one-get-one deals. Anyone who buys a Palm Pre Plus or a Palm Pixi Plus between January 25th and February 14th will walk away with an extra Palm Pixi Plus in tow. You’re not getting something for nothing, of course: it’s a mail-in rebate deal, so you’ll have to front the change up first. But hey – that’s $99 bucks back in your pocket eventually, right?

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Whoo! Looks like free turn-by-turn navigation wasn’t the only good news to come out of Nokia’s press announcement earlier today.

In a once-in-a-blue-moon event, the guys over at Pocket-Lint asked for details about when Nokia might be launching new hardware and actually managed to get an answer. According to Nokia UK managing director Mark Loughran, Nokia will be launching something new on January 26th – just one day before Apple launches their something new.

Alas, the date is all they could squeeze out of him. When the sentries PR flacks got wind that Mark was spilling the beans on something unannounced, they appeared from a cloud of smoke to shut the conversation down. Oh well!

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Ever since RIM got their act together with the BlackBerry Storm 2, we’ve been pretty excited about their new-found interest in touchscreens. When word got out not too long ago that RIM was cracking away on a half-touchscreen/half-keyboard hybrid handset (think BlackBerry Bold, with a touchscreen), we started getting all hot around the collar. Word on the street (the cell phone rumor street. It’s a tough place.) indicated the handset’s nickname was “Dakota”.

Aaaaaand here it is – or at least an early prototype which the guys over at CrackBerry say has been scrapped in lieu of something “nicer”. You know, I think I’d be just fine with the one pictured up above – but hey, bloggers can’t be choosers.

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For the past few days, Nokia has been trying to get everyone excited about.. something. They piqued our interests by sending out press event invites (for separate events in the UK and the US, no less), then revved the hype machine with a good ol’ fashion countdown timer.

The US announcement is still a few hours away, but they just pulled back the curtain over in the UK — and while we can’t say for certain, I’m pretty sure the talk of the event will be the same on this side of the pond. The big secret? Free turn-by-turn navigation is now available for roughly 20 million Nokia handsets around the world.

To dive a bit deeper into that “20 million.. handsets” number, we’re talking about users speaking 46 different languages across 74 different countries. If Google didn’t kill the standalone GPS market when they announced free navigation for the Android platform, Nokia may very well have just pushed the knife that last inch.

Some of the features of the new, free Ovi Maps with Navigation:

• Maps are stored locally, and no continuous data connection is needed
• Traffic Information in 10 countries
• Lane assistance, speed trap warnings
• Pedestrian mode, including shortcuts only possible on foot
• Free Lonely Planet/Michelin travel guides

So why did Nokia suddenly decide to make turn-by-turn navigation free to anyone rocking a compatible handset? Besides making the somewhat antiquated S60 platform that much more competitive, it’s all a part of Nokia’s plan to snatch up a chunk of the location-based service market before things get too crowded. We had been hearing rumblings from our sources that Nokia would be putting a focus on this space, and I get the feeling this isn’t their only move – we’ll check in with our sources and see what else we can dig up.

In the mean while, anyone toting a Nokia X6, N97 mini (Note: Not the standard N97 just yet), E72, E55, E52, 6730 classic, 6710 Navigator, 5800 Xpressmusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, or 5230 can grab the new Ovi Maps with Navigation app here.

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By the time Palm announced the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus at CES earlier this month, there wasn’t a whole lot left to reveal. From the names, to the specs, all the way down to the carrier the handsets would launch on — just about everything had made it into the realm of public knowledge by way of the rumor mill.

However, there was at least one feature that Palm managed to keep hidden up their sleeve: Mobile HotSpot. With the flick of a switch, the Mobile Hotspot application turns the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus into a WiFi router for up to 5 users simultaneously, fueled by Verizon’s 3G network. We’ve spent the last few hours tinkering with a pre-release copy of Mobile HotSpot – read on for our impressions.

The Setup:

Attempting to explain how simple it is to set up Mobile HotSpot is probably more difficult than actually setting it up. You install it, flip the switch from “off” to “on”, and then choose a password. Bam! Within about 5 seconds, you’ve got a new WiFi hotspot waiting for you in your list of available networks. Remember the first time you plugged in a mouse via USB and it fired right up while you were digging around for the instructions on what to do next? It’s like that, except you’re not even plugging anything in.

Operation:

Like the setup process, keeping it all running couldn’t be much simpler. Want to change the name of the network? Tap the name, punch in a new one. Want to change the password? Same deal. If you forget your password or need to share it with a friend without shouting it to the entire room, they’ve got a “Show Passphrase” button right at the top – tap it once and your password is revealed, tap it again and it’s obfuscated. Palm has made this as absolutely, drop-dead simple as they possibly could have, and it’s a really great experience.

Oddly, there’s no way to manage connected users. While you’re alerted the instant someone connects and there’s a running list of everyone who is currently connected, there isn’t any means of disconnecting users without changing the password. This probably won’t be an issue as long as you play it smart with your security info, but it’s still something we expected to see.

Also strange: there’s no data usage meter. Considering that Verizon’s charging $40 bucks (on top of the normal voice/data plan fees) for 5 gigs of 3G Hotspot access with an overage fee of 5 cents per megabyte (or roughly 51 bucks per gigabyte), I’d imagine that people are going to want to keep a close eye on just how much data they’re gobbling up. Sure, you can find these numbers in your Verizon account pages – but why can’t the application pull that same information down, or at least provide the data for the current session for the sake of keeping tabs on things?

Battery:

This is not something you’re going to want to run all the time, unless you’re near an outlet. As we probably could have expected out of any application that is simultaneously pulling and pushing a ton of data, Mobile Hotspot hammers the battery. Even when no clients are connected, we were noticing the battery drain about 50% faster than it otherwise would.

The more people you’ve got connected simultaneously, the faster it’ll drain the battery; with 2-3 people pulling down a fair share of data, you can probably expect to drain this thing dead in about 3 hours.

Speed:

Ah, speed. Once you’re all setup, it’s the most important factor.

Unfortunately, our tests in this department were.. inconclusive, to say the least. Verizon seemed to be having some issues in my little corner of Central California today; while the network seemed stable enough at first glance, the speeds I was seeing were considerably slower than normal.

I ran speed tests across the Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, and Verizon Mifi, all of which were averaging about 85 kilobytes per second for both upload and download. I generally see download speeds that are very, very much faster than that. With that said, I’ve seen no evidence that suggests the Mobile HotSpot app pushes data out at speeds any slower than a MiFi or a dedicated Verizon mobile broadband dongle; as far as I can tell, it’s matching them kilobyte-for-kilobyte. Up until we sat down to do the formal testing, Verizon’s network — and the Mobile HotSpot app — were awesomely fast.

Your mileage will obviously vary from region to region, but I wouldn’t expect Mobile Hotspot to be the bottleneck. I’ll run a few more tests in other locales over the next few days and update accordingly.

Conclusions:

Simple to set up? Check! Simple to use? Save for a few trivial nitpicks, check! Nice and speedy? Well, as much as my local Verizon towers will allow at the moment.

While AT&T continues to promise that tethering on the iPhone is just around the corner, Verizon and Palm have launched what is quite possibly the slickest tethering solution to ever grace a mobile handset. The $40 monthly price tag seems a bit steep considering the 5 gigabyte cap, but that same 5 gigabyte plan would set you back $60 if you instead opted for a MiFi.

At this price, it’s certainly not for everyone – but if you’ve got a need for multi-person mobile broadband and were already looking to pick up a Pre Plus or Pixi Plus, it’s your best bet.

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Earlier this week, Skype offered up a few bucks of SkypeOut credit to anybody in Haiti; shortly thereafter, Google announced that any calls made to Haiti via Google Voice would be free of charge. Now, Verizon Wireless has joined the effort to connect people with their Haitian cohorts, without charging a dime.

Verizon Wireless has just announced that any fees accrued for long distance calls made to Haiti until January 31st will be waived. Taking it one step further, they’re retroactively waiving any charges for calls made to Haiti from the day the earthquake hit (January 12th) until today. The only catch: you’ll need to be on a monthly bill (in other words, not prepaid) for Verizon to be able to waive the charges; we’re guessing that’s more of a technicality than it is Verizon’s choice.

For more details, check out the press release here.

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Don’t you just hate it when some big dumb press release company spills the beans on your top secret product long before you intended? Wait, you’ve never experienced that? Well, neither have we. We were just trying to, you know, connect with our readers or something.

Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, has felt that burn. Just today, in fact! We’d already heard rumors and tales of an 8 megapixel Symbian phone called the Sony Ericsson Kurara; thanks to some mis-scheduling, it’s now about as official as things get.

Here’s what we learned before they pulled down the presser:

• The Kurara is now called the “Vivaz”. We liked the old name better; it reminded me of that “your crew run run” line in Notorious B.I.Gs “Hypnotize“.
• It will launch sometime in Q1 of 2010 — in other words, sometime in the next 2-3 months.
• Four colors: Silver Moon, Cosmic Black, Galaxy Blue and Venus Ruby.
• 8.1 megapixel camera, capable of recording video at 720p, with continuous autofocus, geotagging, smile detection, and image stabilization.
• It’ll run S60 5th edition with the same stylistic tweaks as you’d find on the Sony Ericsson Satio

One detail the press release skimped on was the price. According to the dudes over at PhoneArena, we should expect it to come in somewhere between $670 and $750 bucks.

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Between UI enhancements, bug fixes, and neat new features like smooth scrolling, Skyfire has been slamming out the updates as of late — but only for one platform. While the Flash/Silverlight-capable mobile browser is available for both Windows Mobile and Symbian, the latter edition hasn’t seen any updates in months… until today.

Just minutes ago, Skyfire pushed version 1.5 of their browser out for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition phones. This update makes Skyfire for Symbian a feature-for-feature match with its WinMo counterpart.

So what’s new? Two things, primarily: the UI has been tweaked dramatically to be less stylus-centric and more finger-friendly, and they’ve added “Kinetic scrolling” (a fancy way of saying “it scrolls like the iPhone”) to both the S60 3rd and 5th edition releases. The S60 5th edition release, however, gets a few bonus tricks: full screen browsing mode, and accelerometer-based auto-rotation.

If you’ve never checked Skyfire out, it’s absolutely worth a look. It pipes the web through a remote proxy before sending it to your handset, shrinking everything down to a more mobile-friendly size. In the end, that works out to faster page loads than you might see elsewhere – oh yeah, and a little something called Flash/Silverlight playback support, which is still a mostly mythical beast in the mobile world.

You can get skyfire at get.skyfire.com

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As someone who makes a living babbling about cell phones all day, I can’t complain too much about my job. With that said, the dudes over at the Ericsson Labs don’t have it too bad either. Their job, as I see it:

1. Make something really cool
2. Release the source code for aforementioned really cool thing
3. Start making something else that is really cool

The latest cool thing to come out of Ericsson Labs is “3d Landscape”, a set of APIs for pushing 3D maps to web services and Android applications. It’s still super early in development — maps are only available for Stockholm, for example — but Ericsson’s engineers promise that more locations are on the way. Should we expect 3d map goodness to hit all of our favorite location-based Android apps? Probably not just yet – but if this project keeps progressing, we wouldn’t mind it one bit.

Check out the video after the jump.

[Via Android Community]

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We knew it was coming, and we knew when it came – what we didn’t know, however, was that one was going to show up on our doorstep today.

I’ll be giving Aliph’s latest-and-greatest headset Bluetooth headset a runthrough over the next few days, so expect a full review within the week. In the mean time, feel free to peruse our quick little gallery of the deboxing process after the jump.

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Traveling overseas can be such a pain – there’s just so much to remember. Did you board the dogs? Did you turn the oven off? Did you remind your fight club buddies that your basement would be unavailable that week? Did you remember to get your handset unlocked by T-mobile so you could use a different SIM card overseas?

Gettin’ ol magenta to hand over the unlock codes has always been a bit of a pain; while it’s totally within your rights (according to your contract, at least), you’ll more often than not get an operator who needs to be convinced that you fit the criteria. Well, that just got a wee bit easier.

Starting this Thursday, T-mobile will be relaxing their unlock guidelines. Whereas you once had to be a T-Mobile customer for 90 days before you could request an unlock, FlexPay and PostPaid customers can both now call in for a code at just 40 days. Folks on prepaid plans will have to wait 60 days and will need to have at least 10 bucks in their account (though as long as you’ve refilled within the past 30 days, you should be set).

Have you tried to unlock your T-mobile phone before? Let us know how it went in the comments below.

[Via TmoNews]

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