Author: Greg Kumparak

Its only been around 8 months since the xpPhone — a phone which, as the name implies, runs Windows XP — made its online debut, but its already caused quite the rift between the mega-geeks. One camp seems to think its the coolest thing since air-conditioned underpants; the other seems to think it’s a big pile of nonsense.

Throughout all of this dweeby disputing, one important item remained a mystery: the price. Consider that mystery solved.

Various elements of the phone (color, Windows XP/Windows 7, etc) are customizable, so the price varies a bit. But according to the manufacturer, the phone will always come in somewhere between 2999 and 4500 Chinese RMB; on this side of the pond, that works out to 400-650 bucks.

What say you, dear reader? Would you drop right around 500 bucks for a brick-sized handset that runs Windows XP?

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Surprise! There I was, staring at my inbox, wondering when the invites to Apple’s may-or-may-not-be-happening tablet event would go out, when.. BAM! An invite appeared – but not from Apple.

Turns out, Nokia’s announcing something big — or at least big enough to hold a press event — this Thursday in San Francisco. The invite doesn’t offer much insight; it shows a couple of rocks lined up like some sort of trail, while the top reads “Join us to see what’s behind the bend”.

I think we just might, Nokia.. we just might.

Update: Nokia UK is also holding an event on the same day on the other side of the world, but they’re being pretty open about the topic of that one: Ovi. Will our announcement be a mirror of Nokia UK’s, or is this a whole different shindig? We’ll find out in just a few days.

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When it comes to touchscreens, you just can’t beat the feeling of a nice, high-quality capacitive screen. If you’ve been using an iPhone, Motorola Droid, or any one of many capacitive smartphones made in the past few years, try to hunt down one with a resistive screen; the difference is almost shocking. Touches to a capacitive touchscreen are registered with the lightest tap, while moving things around on a resistive screen requires you to press down so hard that people probably think you’re angry at it.

Of course, resistive screens have their benefits; namely, they play friendly with styluses. As predictive text gets better, this isn’t too big of a deal for English speakers – we only have so many characters to deal with. But for the many languages of the world in which there are simply too many characters to squeeze into any sort of usable user interface, character recognition is the only option. As a result, a stylus — and thus a resistive screen — is a must. HTC wants to combine the best of both worlds, and have just launched a stylus that plays friendly with capacitive screens.

They’re certainly not the first to do it (POGO has had a stylus that plays friendly with iPhones for a long while now), but this is the first time we’ve seen a company of HTC’s magnitude get into the space. HTC pumps out a whole lot of handsets each year – if they’re doing this in preparation of bailing on resistive screens once and for all, this may very well mark the death of resistive touch screens in the mobile space.

The stylus is only being sold as a stand alone item for now, at the grand price of $28 bucks. With that said, don’t be too surprised if HTC starts including these in the box sometime in the near future, if only for the sake of us with big ol’ meaty digits.

[Engadget Via Phonescoop]

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Remember the good ol’ days of being a cell phone owner? Back when you could probably name every color your screen could display, 2G data connections were mind blowing, and gettin’ your firmware flashed meant taking a trip to the good ol’ neighborhood carrier outlet? Yeah – we’re back to that.

Sprint’s making a throw back to that last practice of yesteryear, with the release of a firmware update for the Samsung Moment. Awesome! Everyone loves new software! Here’s the catch: you can only get the update if you’re willing to cruise on over to a Sprint store and get your handset flashed manually.

What’s that you say? Android is supposed to be capable of over-the-air updates? Yeah, you’re right. It could be that part of this specific upgrade just doesn’t play friendly with the OTA system, or it could be that Sprint isn’t armed with the infrastructure to get it done for this specific handset; whatever the reason, I’d be willing to bet it isn’t something that Sprint is happy about.

The new update brings AGPS improvements (allowing in-door positioning), updates to a handful of the built-in Sprint apps, a few little bug fixes, and an increase in battery performance. If all that sounds worthwhile to you (the battery performance improvement would sell me on it all by itself), head on over to the nearest Sprint store. Be sure to tell them to read MobileCrunch (and send us pictures of fun new stuff!) while you’re there.

[Via AndroidCentral]

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Look, I don’t want to sound like a baby or anything, so a huge congrats to Pedro Matias of Portugal for breakin’ the texting speed World Record. Congrats out to our pair of ladies from the US for their performance as well – walking home with 2nd place $20,000 heavier is nothing to laugh at.

What is laughable, however, is the way the contest was set up.

Watch the video below, and check out the handsets they’re using; see the QWERTY keyboards? We’re big fans of QWERTY keyboards on handsets around these parts and all — but like our buddies over at Engadget, we just don’t think you can call that “texting” in the competitive sense. This is just typing on a smaller keyboard. Where’s the limit? If I hook up a Bluetooth keyboard to my smartphone, is it still texting as long as I send an SMS?

Shenanigans. Yeah, I said it.

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If you’re an Android handset owner who happens to double as a Rhapsody customer, you might have spent the last few months feeling like you’ve been left out in the cold; more specifically, you might be a bit chuffed that the iPhone has a Rhapsody application while Android phones don’t.

We’d heard tales that Rhapsody was all set to launch for Android by the end of 2009, but, as anyone with a calendar could tell you, that just didn’t happen. It may be a bit later than we expected, but Rhapsody took their first big step into the Android-waters just minutes ago by launching the Rhapsody for Android Beta program.

They’re not making it available on the Android Market just yet — but beyond that, it looks like they’re only limiting testing to those who: A) Are Rhapsody-to-go members (there’s a free 7 day trial – don’t forget to cancel!), and B) know the proper URL. Speaking of which, you can find the Rhapsody for Android Beta download at: http://www.rhapsody.com/android/download. The Android app appears to give you access to Rhapsody’s 8-million-plus catalog of on-demand music, along with features like Rhapsody Radio.

Remember, of course: this is beta software, so it’s not without its flaws. Amongst the known bugs so far: folks rocking HTC Heros or Nexus Ones might see a few freezes here and there, tracks may end a bit abruptly while streaming over a 3G connection, and there’s an issue with purchasing MP3s while the handset is connected to a computer via USB. If sketchy bugs freak you out, stay away for a while; otherwise, dive on in.

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Uh oh, Motorola Droid – you better look out! The Nexus One is going to cut you — Wait, no, that’s not right. The Nexus One is going to snag one of your flagship features. I always get those two mixed up.

Google didn’t make any mention of accessories when they were launching the Nexus One, but the proof is in the pudding – and by pudding, I mean this Google support document.

You can use Car Home whether or not you have a Nexus One car dock (coming soon).

There’s just about no room for interpretation there – but what about other accessories? A gent over at the Nexus One Forum asked about the availability of “docking station, car dock, or other accessories”, and got this response from a Googler:

The docking stations for Nexus One are not available at this time. Stay tuned though, they should be available soon.

While the helpful responder may very well have been talking about the same car docks mentioned in the support documentation, the original question distinctly separated “docking stations” and “car docks” into two categories. The guys over at Slashgear are assuming that this means desktop docking stations are on the way soon – and you know what? We’ll have to agree.

We first saw the car dock and docking station mentioned in some pre-release product page leaks. At least according to those leaks, the docking station would set you back $39.99, while the car docking station would come in at $49.99.

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There are hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of D.I.Y articles on the internet, some more useful than others. I read maybe a dozen or so a day, solely for the sake of expanding my knowledge bank of obscure solutions. Every once in a while, one sprouts up that is just so damned simple, so face-palmingly obvious, that it makes me feel downright stupid for not thinking of it.

This is one of those.

The trick is simple. Armed with nothing but a pint glass, you can make the sound coming out of your iPhone (any smartphone should work, really – the iPhone works especially well because the speaker is on the bottom) about twice as loud. Does it sound beautiful? No. Is it a replacement for even the cheapest of speakers out there? Nope! But if you ever find yourself in a bind — like needing to blast a conference call just a wee bit louder — this little trick just might get you out of it. Check out the video below for an example.

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So there you are, on your way home after purchasing the brand new smart phone you’ve been wanting for weeks. You’re reading the specs on the side; “Supports microSD cards up to 32 Gigabytes”, it boasts. “32 Gigabytes? That’s like a million!” you think to yourself as you pull up your handset’s browser. You hop on the Googlenets with your heart set on snapping up one of these 32GB cards to call your own. You check Amazon, Tiger Direct, New Egg.. and.. there’s nothing.

We’ve been hearing about these 32GB cards for months now, but no one (at least as far as I know, and I’ve looked pretty hard) has managed to get them to productions. That’s all about to change next month, thanks to good ol’ Samsung.

They’re not releasing any pricing info just yet, but Samsung is claiming that the mass production of their 32GB microSD line is all set to start in February. Sample units are already floating about for compatibility/quality testing sake.

Also worth noting, Samsung has also disclosed that they’ve been building 64GB moviNAND chips (in other words, ultra-slim, low-power 64 gigabyte drives that can be built into mobile devices by the manufacturer) since December 2009. If there’s an Omnia III anywhere on Samsung’s horizon, you can be pretty dang sure it’s going to pack a whopping 64 gigs inside.

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Are you rocking a Nokia N900 yet? If you hail from the US, probably not — they do sell’em here, but the carrier-folk (read: T-Mobile) have yet to put it on their shelves. If you plan on buying one in the near future, however, be happy: it just got a wee bit better.

In its second software update this week, the Nokia N900 packs a bunch of small but worthwhile goodies. They’ve tucked in Exchange 2003 support, global address lookup, a UI overhaul for the Ovi Maps application, and performance tweaks all around.

So how do you get it? Sit tight – it’ll come to you over-the-air sometime soon, and you’ll be prodded to confirm the update when it’s ready. If you’re the anxious type you might be able to nab it a bit early with the Nokia Software Updater, but I can’t promise that.

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Deploying multitouch on handsets in the US is.. well.. touchy. Patents and licensing issues scare a number of hardware manufacturers away from deploying it, even when the hardware itself supports it. Take the Motorola Droid for example; the European variant, the Milestone, packed multitouch support out of the box, whilst the US Droid was limited to one finger’s worth of input at a time.

Some hardware makers — Palm and HTC, to name a few — have the chutzpah to look at these patents and scoff them off as the nonsense they are, either rolling out their own multi-touch technology or just daring someone to pull them into court for it. It looks like Motorola might be about to do the same.

In an interview with Laptop Magazine, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha had this to say:

I think you will see us deliver multitouch in the majority of our devices going forward. There’s a complex set of factors, not all of them technical. But I think you’ll see us being proactive on multitouch because the user feedback on multitouch is very good.

So there you have it – Motorola will support multitouch on the “majority” of their devices from here on out. Sure, this could very well mean “the majority of our devices [outside of the US]“, but considering that Sanjay specifically mentions the non-technical factors — that is, the aforementioned licensing holdups, which really only apply in the US — we’ve got hope.

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Currently only supported in around 30 cities in the US, Sprint’s WiMax service (as powered by Clear) isn’t exactly widespread. It’s a great service (in theory) and likely to pick up some fans as it rolls out to another 50+ markets by the end of this year – but for the time being, it’s probably a pretty hard thing to sell.

Looking to make it a little more enticing — or as a Sprint spokesperson put it, “a no brainer” — Sprint has just lopped $10 off the price tag, bringing it down to $60 a month. This marks the second time Sprint has dropped the price; back in August, they shaved it down from $79.99 to $69.99.

[Via FierceWireless]

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If you’ll pardon my terrible photoshopping skills for a second (Hey! I was using a trackpad! Also, my hands were tied behind my back, my eyes were closed, and, uh, my house was on fire), you might be looking at a fairly close representation of Aliph’s next Jawbone headset.

You see, the gents over at HTCPedia spotted a listing for this never before seen, as-of-yet unannounced Bluetooth headset on.. wait for it.. Craigslist. Weird, right? It happens more often than you’d probably imagine.

According to the original poster of the contraband headset, this guy is called the Jawbone Icon – and according to the few pictures they’ve released, it looks like a weird mash-up of the short-and-stout Jawbone 1 and the sleek-and-textured Jawbone 2. If the pictures are representative of the real deal (that is, if this isn’t just some really, really intense bootleg), it looks like Aliph’s sticking with the same packaging design they’ve used for the past few generations.

One interesting twist: it looks like they might be switching toward using a microUSB port on the headset, instead of Aliph’s proprietary magnetic-grappler-thing. That’s good news for the travelin’ folk, as that generally means one less cable to carry (and subsequently lose.)

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Making 8 different handsets is no big feat — Hell, Samsung will probably launch 4 or 5 by the time I’m done typing this post — but getting 8 handsets onto one carrier in one year? Not too shabby.

That’s what HTC will be doing in 2010 with T-Mobile, says one of Boy Genius’ boys. It’s important to note that not all of these handsets are necessarily new – we’re counting SKU by SKU here, some of which are already in the system. The myTouch 3G and myTouch3G Fender edition probably count as two separate handsets here, and the third is most likely the HD2. You can’t buy the Nexus One through T-Mobile yet, so that might not count; but if they start selling it anytime in 2010 (which doesn’t seem too insane), that’s number four.

As for the other four? Your guess is as good as ours, though the original source says it should be about 50/50 in terms of Android/Windows Mobile handsets.

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Look at your hand for a second. No, closer than that. Really close – like an inch for your face. Okay, now lick your hand.

Didn’t do it? Good. Because your hands are friggin’ disgusting. All of our hands are. I feel like I brought half of Vegas back with me from CES underneath my fingernails.

Looking to help cut down on the amount of nasty that transfers from your hand to your iPhone — or perhaps just lookin’ to make some cash off of the mysophobiac crowd –cell phone accessory manufacturer Proporta has the SteriTouch Antimicrobial iPhone case. As the name implies, this thing wraps the back of your iPhone edge to edge in a germ-killing antimicrobial surface, protecting it from all the nasty bacteria (and little tumbles) you can throw at it.

You can get it for £14.95 from Proporta if you’re in the UK – if you’re stateside, you’ll have to go hunt one down on the ol’ Googlenets.

[Via PhoneArena]

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Just as all of us yanks were riding high on our brand new upgrade to webOS 1.3.5.1 , Palm goes and gives all our Pre-toting brethren over in Europe webOS 1.3.5.2. Considering that it’s a trivial enough upgrade that it only bumps the overall numbering up an earth-shattering zero-point-zero-point-zero-point-one, we’re not all that jealous – but we’ll admit that we might be a little bit jealous.

So what’s new? They’ve made minor improvements all around, primarily focusing on bug fixes. The calendar has been sped up, the App Catalog now supports the simultaneous download of multiple applications, fonts have been tweaked, and they’ve added “better handling of prepaid SIM cards.” As a bit of a treat for folks who find themselves outside of WiFi/3G range often, they’ve also tucked in the option to manually update to new versions over EDGE.

[Via PreCentral via EngadgetMobile]

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Drooling over the Android-powered Lenovo Lephone? Bask in it while it lasts, friends – as far as we know, these brand new press shots (and our fantastic hands-on with the device) are about as close as any of us outside of China are going to get with it any time soon.

If you’re not drooling yet, you might want to get those ol’ salivary glands checked. With a detachable keyboard and a downright gorgeous reskinning of Android, this is one handset we certainly wouldn’t mind seeing come stateside.

[Via SlashGear]

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There are few buzzkills as harsh as tearing open a much-anticipated new gadget only to find something glaringly wrong with it. It doesn’t happen all that often anymore, with the big players all having some pretty rigorous Q&A practices in place. Unfortunately, all the reassurances in the world that something “shouldn’t happen” doesn’t help cool the burn when it actually does.

A good number of new Nexus One owners are feeling that burn this week. They sifted through the hype for weeks, took the plunge, and.. something’s wrong. According to this post over on the T-Mo support forums, Nexus Ones around the country are bouncing back and forth between 3G and EDGE like some sort of depressing tennis match (or not connecting to 3G at all) in places where the 3G signal is usually bountiful.

It took a few days, but Google and T-Mobile are on the case. According to an itty-bitty blurp statement straight from T-Mo’s mouth:

Google and T-Mobile are investigating this issue and hope to have more information for you soon. We understand your concern and appreciate your patience.

Good luck, guys – lets just hope this isn’t something that will require a hardware replacement. Those tend to get pricey.

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You know, the grass really is greener on the other side. Take the HTC Hero, for example; Russia’s got it, and so do we – albeit with a slightly less awesome body. No discrepancies there, though – we’ve both got the same basic phone, so we can all be happy. But now Russia has an HTC Hero made of chocolate.

Over the past week, a few members of the Russian press have been surprised with these sweet treats. Why is HTC sending out chocolate Heros? No one’s really sure. Could they could be launching the device on a new carrier? Might they just be trying to make me jealous of my Russian colleagues? At the very least, it’s a damned good way to make LG feel silly for not doing this with every model of the LG Chocolate ever.

[EnglishRussia via Engadget Mobile]

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Our buddies over at Phonescoop spotted a handset running a copy of the as-of-yet unreleased Windows Mobile 6.5.3 floating around at CES, and were nice enough to snap some footage for everyone not living in the Las Vegas Convention Center this week. They run through just about everything 6.5.3 has to offer, from the new finger-friendly UI to the brand new, seemingly much improved onscreen keyboard; if Windows Mobile is your thing, be sure to check it out.

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