Sprint inks another three years’ worth of iDEN infrastructure support with Motorola, ‘several’ new phones coming in Q1
Even as Sprint starts to dream up ways to sunset its aging (but still popular) iDEN network , reclaim the spectrum, and migrate its push-to-talk customer base to something CDMA-based, there's still a network to maintain in the short term -- and to that end, the company has re-upped its contract with Motorola to keep the system in tip-top shape for at least another three years. Amazingly, this will mean that the network is some twenty years old by the time the agreement is up in 2013, after which they'll either need to be ready with their CDMA replacement (bearing in mind that QChat already failed) -- or we imagine they'll need another contract renewal. Oh, and this won't just be a run-out-the-clock situation, either: there'll be at least some new hardware, with Sprint saying that "several" handsets are on tap for the first quarter of 2011 including the i886 ("stylish," rugged, and landscape QWERTY) and the i686, an update of the i680 with improved waterproofing
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: cdma, contract, customer, entry, i886, landscape, mobile, quarter, qwerty, result
Motorola Bravo and Flipside both go live on AT&T today
Windows Phone 7 might be getting the lion's share of the attention on AT&T this week, but the Samsung Focus and HTC Surround aren't the only big launches: the carrier's also hauling in Motorola's Bravo and Flipside today, beefing up its Android lineup just a tad. The full-touch, wide VGA Bravo goes for $129.99 on contract after all the rebates and discounts have been applied, while the landscape QWERTY Flipside comes in at $99.99 with a two-year signup -- not bad if you're in the market for a 3.1-inch HVGA display and a gloriously large trackpad up top.
Categories: Android, htc, Mobile Phone Tags: att, attention, bravo, engadget-mobile, flipside, landscape, lion, mobile, moto, motorola, phone, two-year-signup, windowsphone7
LG Octane texts its way onto Verizon for $100
You might think $99.99 on contract after rebate is a little pricey for a phone with such a tiny display, but the new LG Octane's got a secret: it's a bit like the enV series with a secondary display inside the landscape clamshell accompanied by a full QWERTY keyboard. Other features include a 3.2 megapixel autofocus cam with flash (yes, autofocus, not fixed), a new email client, microSD expansion up to 16GB, and Bluetooth 2.1. Look for it online and in stores starting tomorrow
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: autofocus, autofocus-cam, clamshell, entry, landscape, tiny-display, vzw
MetroPCS goes live with LTE in Detroit
Verizon has yet to go live with its 4G network in even a single market, but regional carrier MetroPCS is now on its third -- and yes, it's still the only company in the country with any commercial LTE presence whatsoever. Having already taken Vegas and Dallas to the promised land, Detroit is the latest city to sup on the sweet, sweet nectar that only a next-generation network can provide; unfortunately, MetroPCS has yet to deliver any smartphones or modems capable of taking advantage of it, but that's another story for another time.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: Carrier, detroit, engadget-mobile, keyboard, landscape, market, mobile, modems-capable, network, presence, start-out-slow, time, verizon
TweetDeck for Android goes public with version 1.0
It's not quite as full-featured as the desktop version, but it's here nonetheless -- TweetDeck for Android has just left beta with version 1.0.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: app, apps, beta, engadget, flow, landscape, landscape-mode, mobile, quite-as-full, tweetdeck, tweetdeck for android, tweetdeckforandroid, unified, video
LG Quantum first hands-on! (update: video)
LG's representing the QWERTY slider sector for AT&T during this Windows Phone 7 launch with its new Quantum handset (formerly known as the C900), which goes by the Optimus 7Q moniker outside the US. It's a little frumpy at first glance, but it's just as impressive under the hood as the rest of this lineup, so we'll give it some more time before we form our full impressions.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: after-the-break, entry, landscape, lg c900, moniker-outside, optimus7q, qwerty, under-the-hood, video, windows, windows phone 7, windows-phone, windowsphone7, wp7launch
Categories: Android, htc, Mobile Phone, nexus one Tags: desire, desirez, froyo, glance, google-android, google-backed, googleandroid, handsets, landscape, mobile, nexus, partnership, review, seen-the-likes, stock-android
The revolving door: Froyo for Droid Incredible coming tomorrow, Froyo for EVO 4G gets rooted
The rich landscape of Android versioning just got a bit richer, with word of an official Froyo update for the Droid Incredible being launched tomorrow (based on the screencap pictured above), while the EVO 4G's recent Froyo software just got rooted. If you're crazily impatient, an Android 2.2 ROM for the Incredible just leaked out into the wild, and can be installed with a bit of work, but from the official-looking-ness of this leak from Droid Life , a painless official update is not far off
Categories: Android, htc, Mobile Phone Tags: droid incredible, droid-life, entry, freedom, froyo, htc-sense, inevitably, landscape, revolving-door, root, sense, sprint
LG talks up Optimus smartphone line: 10 devices by year end, NVIDIA’s Tegra for high-end model, tablet will be ‘productive’
LG's Ally might be scratching at the boring end of the Android landscape right now, but LG certainly isn't stopping with one smartphone on the market in 2010. LG stated on Wednesday that it's pouring some mega cash on R&D and marketing to play catch up, and it plans to release a whopping 10 smartphones by the end of the year, projecting sales of 5 million units in that time. The low-end Optimus One kicks things off in September with a whopping 120 carriers globally, but LG also said it has a dual-core Tegra based handset in the works for the performance minded.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: ally, certainly-isn, from-the-ipad, froyo, landscape, landscape-right, one-smartphone, optimus, optimusone, performance, smartphone, supposedly, tegra2, u2300-optimus
Motorola Charm hitting T-Mobile on August 25 at an ‘affordable’ price
T-Mobile USA just dropped the knowledge on Twitter that it'll be carrying the Motorola Charm starting next Wednesday, August 25 -- but what it failed to mention is pricing. For what it's worth, the company does specifically say that it'll be "affordable" -- and although a marketing department's definition of "affordable" can be very different from ours, we're encouraged by a handful of previous rumors that there would be ways to get it for free on contract . If you need us to jog your memory, the Charm is a cute little portrait QWERTY Android device with a Kodak-branded 3 megapixel cam and landscape display, giving it a rare form factor that could very well appeal to a whole new audience (read: BlackBerry folks).
Categories: Android, BlackBerry, Mobile Phone Tags: BlackBerry, breaking-news, breakingnews, definition, handful, Kodak, landscape, megapixel, memory, motorola, motorola-charm, twitter