Certainly seems like Canadian carriers are a good deal more friendly toward launching European handsets than American carriers are, doesn’t it? Motorola’s Milestone and HTC’s Desire Z are both prime examples — and now it looks like another hot HTC, the Desire HD, is on its way. MobileSyrup appears to have scored a shot of a Desire HD running Telus firmware, claiming that it’s currently tracking for release in either January or February — presumably with most or all of the specs that grace its European cousin: 4.3-inch WVGA display, HTCSense.com integration, a 1GHz second-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon core, and 8 megapixel camera, just to name a few luscious spec line items. Unfortunately, the skeptic in us doesn’t think January / February gives either HTC or Telus enough time to turn out a skinner Gingerbread firmware here — but considering what a minor release Gingerbread really is, we’re sure plenty of buyers will be able to overlook the indiscretion (particularly with a little help from xda-developers, if you catch our drift).

HTC Desire HD for Telus in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell’s keeping up its usual habit of sneaking devices out with today’s announcement of the Dell Venue for launch in South Korea. Local carrier KT has revealed the details of this 4.1-inch Android 2.2 device (sans keyboard, unlike its WP7 cousin the Venue Pro), which is set to arrive by the end of this month at a price of 700,000KRW ($606). Formerly known by its codename of Thunder, this has actually been one of the most hotly anticipated Android handsets of the year, though the only other information confirmed by KT so far is that it’ll have a curved Gorilla Glass screen. We’re sure a US launch can’t be far behind.

Dell Venue Thunders into Korea this month with Android 2.2 and 4.1-inch Gorilla Glass screen originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It wasn’t long ago that buying a smartphone meant spending at least a Benjamin and committing to an expensive 2-year contract. But things are changing, and shopping for a smartphone on a budget is getting easier than ever, thanks in great part to a recent flood of reasonably-priced Android devices that are pouring into the market. We’ve already talked about the HTC Wildfire, Huawei Ascent, ZTE Racer and Blade/San Francisco, and the Motorola Citrus — not to mention the lovely Comet (and its international cousin, the Ideos) on T-Mobile. Enter the LG Optimus T ($30 post-rebate on T-Mobile) and Optimus S ($50 post-rebate on Sprint), two Android siblings that might prove once and for all that “affordable” doesn’t mean “cheap.” Let’s dig in.

Continue reading LG Optimus T and Optimus S review

LG Optimus T and Optimus S review originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wow. That’s the feeling that hits when you pick up the Nokia E7 for the first time. That 4-inch “Clear Black” display really pops as you’d expect from AMOLED and the full QWERTY slider is packed into an incredibly svelte and attractive form factor. Impressions coming up shortly. Until then, check out the E7 next to its N8 cousin and iPhone 4 foe.

Update: Follow the break for some quick thoughts on this bad boy.

Continue reading Nokia E7 first hands-on

Nokia E7 first hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Observe, the rare BlackBerry Pearl 3G feeding in its natural habitat. Just look at the majestic display of vibrant colors as it attempts to court the journalist in a mating dance never before captured on camera! All kidding aside though, here’s a quick look at the user interface on the 20-key version of the Pearl 3G; it’s stock OS 5.0, so you’re not really going to notice anything fresh here, but what we did see worked smoothly and without delay — the delightful result of pairing a responsive optical pad, 624MHz processor, and what we would assume is a pretty well-optimized build of the platform. As we mentioned earlier, we’re pretty sure the keyboards on these things are going to be a polarizing experience for users — some will love them, others will hate them, still others will tolerate them at first and grow used to them over time. To be fair, the peak-shaped keys are probably an improvement over flat keyboards of Pearls gone by; when you’ve got five keys per row on a fairly narrow body, you need all the tactile help you can get. For some reason, we weren’t able to connect to RIM’s open WiFi network with the particular unit we were given — the Bold 9650 next to it fared just fine, so we’re not sure if the 802.11n-capable radio in this bad boy is a little dodgier than its cousin, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. Follow the break for the video.

Continue reading BlackBerry Pearl 3G video hands-on

BlackBerry Pearl 3G video hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look familiar? Yep, this is precisely what we expected HTC’s rumored Legend to look like based on the renders we’d seen so far. We don’t have any information here other than the pictures themselves, but from what we can gather, it seems to carry over Sense as we know it today without a trace of that freshened look we’ve caught in recent months (not unlike its Incredible cousin). Maybe more importantly, the Legend looks like it might be kicking off a new styling direction for the company with a big, bold, chromed company logo around back and an aluminum shell that we suspect feels awesome in the hand — particularly if it’s pre-production aluminum. More on this one as we get it; in the meantime, check out a shot of the back after the break.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Continue reading HTC Legend spotted just hanging out, playing it cool

HTC Legend spotted just hanging out, playing it cool originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that we’re being blessed with our second in-the-wild shot of the alleged HTC Bravo, we’re just going to go ahead and call it: this Nexus One-alike is almost certainly real. Of course, there are a couple key differences against its Google-sponsored cousin — first you’ve got the optical pad (or so it seems) in place of a trackball, and perhaps more importantly, Sense makes its Android 2.1 debut. Apart from a quickly-retracted remark from 3 Sweden that we’d see this in March, we don’t really have any intel on when (or where) this’ll drop, but hey, it’s looking pretty production-ready to us.

[Thanks, Carl]

HTC Bravo spotted again, looking as real as ever originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saying that CDMA-based Virgin Mobile Canada is “launching” a network is a bit of a stretch, actually, since it just rides atop Bell’s airwaves — but for what it’s worth, it looks like we now have a date for an official HSPA launch. Bell, of course, has been wasting no time aggressively building out and marketing its HSPA network the past few months, and to get Virgin switched over, they’ll likely be getting a variety of BlackBerrys and iPhones — a far cry from the low-end fare its American cousin offers. Anyhow, the wholly-owned MVNO has scheduled a shindig for the evening of February 2 to launch its “huge new HSPA+ network and some of the world’s sexiest phones” — and hey, even if you don’t like the new hardware, any party with Jay Sean sounds like a win to us. For what it’s worth, Virgin’s site is now listing both the iPhone 3GS and Bold 9700 as coming soon, so yeah, it’s definitely about to get real up in here.

Virgin Mobile Canada launching HSPA network on February 2? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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