The good word of the rumor mill said we’d be hearing about Push-to-talk on the Verizon BlackBerry Tour soon, and sure enough: ol’ VeeZeeDub has just made it official.
The Push-to-talk application should land in the Tour Application Center on March 30th, at which point anyone lookin’ to get in on the fun can add PTT service to their plan for 5 bucks a month. There appears to be some sort of 90-day trial available to anyone activating a new BlackBerry plan – but chances are, long-time BB users will be able to get in on the deal if they ask real nice.
Once activated, the convenience key becomes the “push” button referenced in “push-to-talk”. Now go! Go and act out your wildest dreams of being a contractor with important things to say into your walkie-talkie phone!
Here’s what we know: Come March 31st, all Sprint retail employees will be huddled around their computers, tuning into a meeting we’ve heard called “top secret”, “mandatory”, and “company-wide”.
Here’s what we don’t know: What its for. Even the retail managers don’t seem to know whats up. The current theory is that they’ll be discussing the EVO 4G (hopefully with some new details thrown in, like pricing and release date), and/or whatever changes are necessary (i.e. plan pricing) for their first 4G phone. Sprint doesn’t generally pull everyone away from the sales floor for nothing (that’s what memos are for), so lets hope it’s something worthwhile.
What do you think it is? Let us know in the comments below.
The second Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 last month, the same question began pouring in en masse: “Will this run on my current Windows Mobile 6.5 device?” Microsoft was quick to crush everyone’s hopes , saying that no WinMo 6.5 devices were up to snuff. “But what about the HD2? That things like brand new and crazy powerful! Surely it must be upgradeable!”, said the masses. “Nope!” responded Microsoft. Then some pundit insisted the HD2 would be upgradeable (his insiders said!), then Microsoft denied it again, rinse/repeat/etc.
While everyone else has been asking a bunch of silly questions over and over, it seems that a group of hackers have managed to get the job done. Unless this is a seriously well-executed series of fakes, you’re looking at an early, early build of Windows Phone 7 on the HD2.
Is it perfect? No. But for a freshly started project on a brand new, beta OS running on unauthorized hardware, I’d say its a damn good start. I can’t even begin to fathom how this was possible without some serious leakage out of HTC or Microsoft — but you know what? I’m not asking questions. Check out the videos below for some pretty convincing evidence that this is all legit.
Man oh man! Remember the LG Rumor Touch? The touchscreen feature phone Sprint announced all the way back at CES in early January? If you’d had asked me yesterday when this thing was going to launch, my response would have been a blank stare followed by “Holy crap, that hasn’t launched yet?”
Sure enough, it hasn’t – but it’s just about to. Sprint’s cutting it pretty close, but it looks like they’ll just baaaarely make it within the first quarter launch window they promised at the beginning.
Sprint has just announced that the Rumor Touch will be hittin’ the e-shelves of their online store come March 28th. It won’t hit the meatspace stores until April 4th (which isn’t part of the “first quarter” – but we’ll forgive’m). It’ll be available in blue at first, with red and purple color options launching on April 18th.
When the LG Rumor Touch was first announced, no price was disclosed. We guessed that it’d be somewhere between $100 and $150 — and we were right. The Rumor Touch will set you back $129 on a 2-year contract, with a $50 mail-in rebate knocking the price down to $79.99 for anyone who remembers to actually mail it in.
Bags have been packed, poker chips have been cashed, and planes have been boarded – and with that, the mobile-focused CTIA 2010 convention in Las Vegas has come to a close.
Each time an event like this blows through town, tech heads do their best to distract themselves from their hangovers by writing monstrous posts on which platform or technology “won” the show. When it comes to CTIA 2010, the winner is clear cut and undisputed: Android. They could have called this year’s show “Android Week” and no one would have questioned it.
When we said Android went “undisputed” above, we meant it in the literal sense. Windows Phone 7 handsets are still too early in development to come out and play. Palm was only showing the AT&T versions of the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus, which they’d announced in the days leading up to the show. BlackBerry’s biggest news was that their new Twitter client is launching on March 31st. Apple didn’t even show up — not that anyone expected them to, given that these deafeningly noisy shows aren’t exactly their style.
Meanwhile, Android launched on no less than five major handsets:
Samsung Galaxy S – The Galaxy S is big, beautiful, and bright as all hell. Really — I can’t imagine a screen brighter than this one, a 4.0″ Super AMOLED screen made by Samsung themselves. I’m fairly confident that it could be used as an impromptu flash grenade, need be. The 1Ghz CPU and 5.0 megapixel camera don’t hurt, either. See our hands-on here.
Motorola i1 – Motorola has finally managed to make a rugged, push-to-talk phone that doesn’t look like a rugged push-to-talk phone. There’s no absurd bulk here, and no monstrous antenna. We haven’t put this one through the paces yet – but if Mike Rowe says it can take a beating, we’ll believe it. (Fun Fact: Motorola demonstrated the durability of this phone at a private press event by having people play shuffleboard with it)
Kyocera Zio – The big selling point of the Kyocera isn’t necessarily its specs – it’s the price it brings them in at. At a price coming in somewhere between $169 and $220 — without contract, mind you — Kyocera has managed to stuff in a 3.5″ 800×480, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo bluetooth, and the same 600mhz processor as the Motorola Devour. Look for this one to launch on Cricket later this year.
AT&T Dell Aero – Essentially a reskinned version of the Dell Mini 3i that launched in China last year, the Dell Aero is AT&T’s second Android phone, Dell’s first Android phone in the US, and purportedly the lightest Android phone to date. We spotted this one on the showfloor — but unfortunately, Dell wouldn’t let anyone turn it on.
Sprint EVO 4G – if we had to declare one handset the winner of the show, it’d be this one. We fell in love with this one months ago, when it was known around the rumormill as the HTC Supersonic. Sprint chose to go all out with their first WiMax phone, and it has paid off; with a 4.3″ 800×480 screen, 1Ghz CPU, 1GB of internal storage, 802.11b/g, HDMI-out, and the ability to act as a WiMax-powered WiFi router for up to 8 devices, the EVO 4G is now the Android handset to beat. See our hands on here.
That’s all, folks. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go throw my life savings at a man standing behind a green felt table and hope for the best. Wish me luck!
We’ve known for a few weeks now that the Sprint HTC Hero would probably be getting the bumpgrade up to Android 2.1 sometime in April — but really, was anyone expecting the launch window rumor to stay that vague?
Phandroid just dug up this alleged internal Sprint memo, detailing a “maintenance release” coming to the HTC Hero on April 9th. While “maintenance release” makes it sound like something trivial, that’s probably not the case. Sprint tends to be pretty intense about certification, spending weeks testing out updates before they release them. It seems pretty unlikely that they’d release a minor update just days before the major update to 2.1.
Go ahead, Sprint Hero owners: sit on the edge of your seat. If this all plays out right, you probably won’t be there much longer.
EVERYBODY PANIC! A new exploit has been found in Safari, allowing hackers to rip the entire catalog of text messages (received and sent, deleted or not) from your iPhone for their perusal and personal privacy perversions. You load the malicious website, and it goes to work, no user interaction required. In theory, this same exploit could extend to picture messages, contacts, and all sorts of other data that most people would probably rather wasn’t uploaded to some hacker’s server.
NOBODY PANIC! Fortunately for us, it was discovered by two gents (Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann) who were duking it out for $15,000 smackers at the Pwn2Own hacking competition in Vancouver. By the very nature of the competition, all of the details of the exploit are being sent straight to Apple and Apple alone. Thank God for the good guys.
While it’s still worrisome that such a bug exists, this seems like something that Apple will make a top priority. Lets just hope that someone with lesser intentions doesn’t go digging the bug up before Apple puts the clamp on it.
The news out of CTIA just won’t stop. AT&T has just announced their roll out plans for their cell-tower-in-a-box, signal-boostin’ 3G MicroCell service, which they’ve had in testing since September.
Not sure what the MicroCell is? Don’t sweat it – it’s a bit of a weird concept. If you’re in an area where signal is spotty, you can pick up one of these boxes, connect it to your home broadband, and it’ll act as a miniature, low power cell tower. Your signal goes up, and the stress on AT&T’s towers goes down.
Here’s what we know so far:
They’ll be moving from their limited testing phase to a national roll out beginning in April, with the service lighting up in unnamed cities around the US “in the coming months”
The MicroCell unit will come at a one time cost of $149.99
The unit can be self installed; AT&T is offering tech support, but they’re not insisting that their guys plug it in for you
There’s no monthly fee if you don’t mind that connecting through the MicroCell still uses your AT&T minutes. If you do mind, you can tack on an unlimited MicroCell calling plan for 20 bucks a month. On the upside, it looks like selecting that plan at purchase will score you a $100 mail-in rebate, dropping the long-term price of the unit to $50.
MicroCell owners can support up to 10 different lines, with 4 of those lines talking simultaneously.
So what do you think, dear readers? Are these prices fair? Are you ready to put a little tiny cell tower in your house?
The first day of CTIA was pretty crazy, scheduling wise. Yesterday afternoon, we had the choice between going to Samsung’s press conference, Sprint’s press conference, or Skype’s press conference. I managed to bend time and space just enough to cover both Samsung’s Galaxy S event and Sprint’s EVO 4G (HTC Supersonic) event — but unfortunately, time can only be bent so far before the fabric of the universe starts to tear, so Skype’s event went uncovered. You don’t want the fabric of the universe to tear, do you?
With that said, what they announced is still worth mentioning.
Skype announced back in February that they’d be partnering with Verizon for a carrier-endorsed release of their mobile app, and they’re wasting no time bringing said partnership to fruition. Skype for Verizon will be launching on BlackBerry and Android handsets tomorrow, Thursday the 25th.
Remember: this version of the app works over Verizon’s data network, saving you precious minutes without forcing you to find a WiFi hotspot. If you’ve never signed yourself up for Skype and tracked down all of your friends, now’s probably a good time.
With Slacker Radio being one of the few music-discovery/custom-radio-station type dealies that I use almost every day, I figured I ought to stop by their booth at the smaller, press-only CTIA gathering called MobileFocus. I’m glad I did.
Though it hasn’t gone live just yet, the gents reppin’ the floor for Slacker let us know that their long-awaited Windows Mobile app will be launching today. With that release, Slacker will be available for every major smartphone platform.
We got to spend a bit of time with the app last night. Maybe it was the fact that I was a drink or two in; maybe it was the fact that it was running on the monstrous screen of an HTC HD2. Either way, it looked glorious. Album art was massive, the user interface was as simple as ever, and the whole app seemed to breeze along with ease. It had most of the features we’ve come to expect from Slacker (Artist bios, album reviews, song lyrics, liking/banning songs, etc), save for the offline station caching feature (which lets you listen to your favorite stations without a data connection) from the BlackBerry and Android builds.
Slacker also confirmed that a Windows Phone 7 port of the application is currently in the works.
Speaking of station caching, it’s coming to the Slacker iPhone app. Soon. They weren’t showing it off at the show on any official level – but when we spotted an iPhone lurking behind-the-scenes and asked about caching, they were more than willing to show it off. The caching-enabled version is awaiting Apple’s approval.
We just got back from the Sprint EVO 4G announcement, where ol’ Yeller just happened to have a few devices on hand. I spent a few minutes getting to know the device (far less than I wanted to, trust me) — read on for my first impressions and a quick demo video.
I was genuinely surprised at how light it is; with it packing a 4.3″ display, I expected it to be a brick. It’s about the same weight as a Nexus One, if not lighter.
The kickstand pops in and right back into place with ease. HTC’s really starting to get this mechanism down.
Video looked incredible, especially when pushed out of the HDMI-out cable.
The demonstrator kept warning us that there might be bugs due to the early state the device is in, but we didn’t see any. It was running Android 2.1 with a brand new, 2.1-friendly version of Sense. Even with a few months before its Summer release date, this thing seems pretty dang solid.
The screen is gorgeous, though not as outright, mind-blowingly gorgeous as the Super AMOLED on Samsung’s Galaxy S. You could probably blind a man with the Galaxy S if you really tried.
Even in the fairly low light of the demonstration room, the video recorded via the 8 megapixel camera on back was crisp, clear, and silky smooth.
Everything that relied on the 4G network, from pulling down Youtube videos to browsing, seemed to clip along at breakneck speeds. While it could very well be due to the fact that there aren’t that many devices on Sprint’s 4G network just yet, this thing was simply soaring.
We’re live from Sprint’s press announcement at CTIA in Las Vegas, which is scheduled to begin in just a few minutes.
What ever might they be announcing? All signs are pointing at the HTC Supersonic, a brand new touchscreen smartphone packing a massive display and support for Sprint’s 4G WiMax network. Follow along with our live notes below, won’t you?
We literally just had our hands on with the just announced Samsung Galaxy S — and boy, was it a beauty.
Read on for our first impressions.
This is without a doubt the most gorgeous screen we’ve ever seen on a handset. It’s massive, vibrant, and just so, so bright. We can’t wait to see how the Super AMOLED screen performs in the sunlight.
It’s a bit of a monster in the hand due to the 4.1″ screen, but its surprisingly thin and light
The entire Android interface has been overhauled, but not in anyway that destroys the core Android experience. They haven’t replaced much here – they’ve just made it prettier
There was one little bug involving video playback during our hands on demo — the video just didn’t want to start. Once it did, however, it was smooth as butter.
One odd thing we noted: the apps drawer has been paginated. On most Android phones, all of your apps are stored on one vertically scrolling page; here, they’re broken into horizontally scrolling pages, just like the homescreen.
Just about every screen transition has an animation — and thanks to the 1Ghz CPU, the animations are stunningly fluid. We didn’t see one ounce of stutter.
Update: Pictures now up; the video is processing as we speak. The player is embedded below – as soon as YouTube’s done processing it, it’ll go live.
Good news, everyone in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis! You’re getting Sprint’s 4G network by the end of 2010! With Sprint expected to debut their first 4G handset at CTIA this week, this news probably couldn’t be timed much better.
This brings the total number of cities getting WiMax in 2010 up to 15, with Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C being announced as roll-out cities earlier this year.
Look at you, Kyocera! After essentially shuttering your smartphone division for years, you’ve jumped back in with a bit of a splash.
Today at CTIA, the low-to-mid-range handset manufacturer announced the Zio, an Android-powered touchscreen phone. What makes the Zio special isn’t its specs — it’s the price it brings the specs in at. For somewhere between $169 and $220 (and that’s before contract!) Kyocera has managed to stuff a 3.2 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 512 megs of on-board app storage space behind an oh-so-pixel-packed 800×480 screen.
Whuhp! Looks like that i1 banner didn’t go up all that early after all. A day before CTIA 2010 even begins, Motorola has just come along and made the Android-powered i1 and its push-to-talk features official.
The Android-powered and push-to-talk points were already confirmed, but Motorola’s release throws in a few new fun facts: it’s rugged up to Military 810F standards (dust, shock, and rain), has a 3.1″ “tough” touchscreen, WiFi, 5 megapixel camera, and comes preloaded with Opera Mini 5. No pricing or specific availability announced just yet, but expect it to hit the shelves sometime this Summer.
Oh, Samsung. For as long as I can remember, your banners have flown on the outer walls of the Las Vegas Convention Center during CTIA. And for as long as I can remember, your banners have given away mammoth chunks of what you were announcing at the show, days before said announcement actually happened.
Not this year.
Though there’s still a day left before the lights go on at CTIA, the banners have just begun to go up all around. We’ve spotted three Samsung banners so far, all of which say the same thing: What’s S Life?.
We’re wondering the same thing, to be honest. We got an invite to Samsung’s S Life press conference, but all it has to say is a bunch of gibberish: “Enrichment through technology, simplicity through innovation, ‘S Life’ is as much a feeling as it is an incredible achievement”. We’ll know more by tomorrow at 11:30 AM, when Samsung’s S Life press conference goes down.
So, it looks like Samsung has managed to keep their secrets secret. You know who didn’t do quite as well? Motorola.
Right across the street from the Convention Hall was this gem, confirming that Motorola will be using CTIA to launch their first Push-to-talk smartphone, the Android-powered i1. Oh well; at least the poster’s got a good tagline!
Ever since Swype (an alternative keyboard for touchscreens which has users drag paths through the letters of a word rather than tap them out individually) debuted at TechCrunch 50, I’ve been asked the same question a near-regular basis: is it really any faster than just typing words the old fashion way?
Well, it’s apparently fast enough for a Guinness World Record.
Looking to play up the fact that the Omnia II comes with Swype installed out of the box, Samsung set out to find the fastest Swyper on the block. They didn’t have to look far. As luck (and logic) may have it, Swype just happened to know one of the fastest Swypers off-hand: one of their employees, Franklin Page.
Guinness gave Page the official challenge phrase:
“The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human,”
35.54 seconds later, Page had blasted out the thumb-twisted text, securing himself the record for Fastest Text Message on a Touchscreen Mobile Phone.
Alas, there’s a bit of a catch: this is a brand new record category. Texting speed records were previously all encompassing; be it T9, physical QWERTY, or touchscreen, they used to just lump it all together. That wasn’t exactly fair, so Guinness has begun to separate things out into proper categories. Page’s was the first record attempt for this category; in theory, he could have taken 20 minutes to type the message and still claimed the record.
How long do you think this record will last? Given the number of text-obsessed teens out there unknowingly training to beat this record all day, every day, it probably won’t be too long.
Remember last week, when we mentioned that Bluetooth headset manufacturer BlueAnt would be launching their first Android app at CTIA? The one that would read your incoming text messages aloud over your Bluetooth headset?
Well, we just touched down in Vegas for CTIA 2010, and sure enough: they’ve just launched the application.
We didn’t know what the application’s name would be last time we wrote about it. According to BlueAnt, it’s called “The BlueAnt Q1 Android application”. Original? Not exactly — but given that it’s an Android application that seems to only work with BlueAnt’s Q1 headset, I’d say it’s fitting.
We forgot to pack our Q1 amongst the plethora of gadgets we bring to trade shows; if you just so happen to have one (and an Android phone), give it a run and let us know how it is. Keep an eye out for lots more CTIA 2010 coverage right here.
Well, that was unexpected. Tacked on to the news of the Palm Pixi Plus and Pre Plus finding their way to AT&T was a passing mention that AT&T would soon be pulling back the curtains on their second Android-powered phone, the Dell Aero.
Here’s all they’ve said so far:
AT&T also will soon unveil an Android-based smartphone the Dell Aero. This will be Dell’s first smartphone available in the U.S., and will feature a new, beautiful custom user interface developed by Dell and AT&T. To learn more about the Dell Aero, visit www.att.com/aero.
At the time this post was published, that “learn more” link was not live. I’d expect it to go live in the next few hours, with more details trickling in during CTIA (which, by the way, begins tomorrow.) Until more details find their way out, we can only assume that the Aero is AT&T’s version of the Dell Mini 3i which launched in China last year.
Update: AT&T just sent over this picture of the Aero confirming our suspicions: it’s the Mini 3i hardware, complete with its intense overhaul of the Android UI. They also confirmed that the page linked above should be live soon.
