Surprise of surprises! On the day that Europeans finally got to dig into the Windows Phone 7 cake in earnest, Twitter’s official app for the hot new platform has also gone live. We’ve downloaded it to our own WP7 device and are having a play around with it now. If you need a refresher as to what it looks like, check out the video after the break.

Update: Okay, we can neither log in nor get signed up at present, though others have clearly achieved the feat already. Twitter.com itself keeps alternating between its new and old versions, so we suspect there’s quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes at present. To answer your queries, loading time from the live tile menu to the top tweets page above is approximately three seconds, while scrolling is basically identical to the perfection available on WP7′s own apps. Swiping laterally gets you into Trends, Suggested, and Nearby categories which take a couple of moments to load up their tweets, but otherwise match the performance.

Exiting to the live tile menu throws you out of whatever you were doing and re-entering the app — as is par for the Windows Phone 7 course right now — means starting from scratch. The only way you can save you state is by locking the phone, which takes a second or two to resume when unlocked and returns you to the exact point you were at. Great, now let us in, Twitter!

Hold up, reader David Gordon points out that you can hit the live tile menu via the Windows/Start key and then return to Twitter through the Back button, yay, that works too.

Update 2: There are still errors being thrown up, but we finally got ourselves logged in. Well, it looks just like the vid promised it would and the app itself is working flawlessly, there are no processing delays that we can see. Oh, and there’s a landscape mode. Our only bugbear is that there’s no differentiation between your own tweets and those of your friends. Ah well, check out the gallery below.

Continue reading Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live (update: hands-on)

Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live (update: hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, Europeans, say it with us: “finally!” Yes, having played extensively with the EVO 4G over the last few months, we can definitely say that the Desire HD is an authentic recreation of the American blockbuster, though it lacks the kickstand around back — likely in an effort to reduce thickness, we suppose. In fact, HTC has eliminated the battery cover entirely, replacing it with a Legend-style slot (side-mounted this time) — take a look at a shot of it both open and closed after the break. The phones HTC had on display here felt extremely smooth and snappy… though, as we all know, Android tends to bog down a bit over time, so the proof will be in the pudding after these things have been in customers’ hands for a month or two.

Continue reading HTC Desire HD first hands-on!

HTC Desire HD first hands-on! originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 08:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In Europe, it was a good year for cell phone GPS — ComScore, an organization that tracks painful sounding concepts like penetration and market share, just reported that an estimated 21 million Europeans stopped to ask their phone for directions last year. That’s up 68 percent from the 12.5 million who did so in 2008. With two-thirds of mobile map users saying they accessed their phone GPS in a moving vehicle, ComScore thinks the stats suggest phones might replace standard PNDs as well. Too soon to tell, perhaps, but judging by recent events, we expect 2010′s numbers will be stellar nonetheless. Haven’t tried smartphone GPS yourself? Direct yourself to our comparison guides and see what you’ve been missing.

ComScore: European cell phone navigation on the rise originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We already caught a fair amount of play time with Inbrics’ Android-based M1 at CES, but it looks as if the company is fixing to “officially” reveal it next week at Mobile World Congress. We’re still debating whether or not this thing is a bona fide smartphone or yet another MID that’ll have a tough time gaining acceptance in this cruel, cruel world, but either way, it’s apparently on track for release later this year. According to details scooped up by Pocket-lint, the company is hoping that the M1 will double as a media controller for AV junkies, and if all goes well, Europeans could get their hands on it “in 2010 or early 2011.” Just as long as it’s prior to 2012, we’re cool.

Inbrics’ Android-based M1 slated to ship this year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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