Dell Streak. Froyo. Need we say more? If you’re not already getting giddy, let us remind you that said tabletphone’s technically still stuck on the aging Android 1.6 OS, so this is obviously great news for all anticipating (and presumably very patient) users. Well, the handful of us anyway, given the majority’s distaste for this five-inch device’s abnormal form factor. Here at Engadget, we’ve been fortunate enough to give this final 2.2 build a thorough and exclusive test over the weekend, but has it fixed the bugs that plagued the 2.1 release? And will it make the Streak relevant again? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Dell Streak Android 2.2 (Froyo) update review

Dell Streak Android 2.2 (Froyo) update review originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

At a 30,000-foot level, the global mobile phone sales numbers for the third quarter of 2010 just released by Gartner match up with what IDC posted a few days ago, but you might say the devil’s in the details. These guys have all of the top five players — Nokia, Samsung, LG, Apple, and RIM — at noticeably lower total market shares than IDC did, suggesting that second-tier players like Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and HTC (if you can really call them “second-tier”) are grabbing more hearts and minds. And hey, considering Motorola’s prominent role at Verizon and HTC’s ever-growing global presence, we could totally believe it. Notably, Nokia is well below 30 percent in Gartner’s report at 28.2, a whopping drop of 8.5 percent year-over-year — way more than the 4.1 percent drop that IDC’s got pegged. Of course, there’s no way of knowing which of the two reports is more accurate — and you know how margins of error work with these things. Hey, at least the rankings are the same, right?

[Thanks, Tad]

Gartner’s global phone sales rankings match IDC’s, but say the big guys have less of the pie originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Let’s try to untangle this Facebook mobile phone mess, shall we? Mark Zuckerberg has recently sat down with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch — the source of the original rumor — to try and dispel some of the confusion that has arisen as a result. The first thing the Zuckmeister says is that Facebook isn’t looking to build its own OS or hardware and is absolutely opposed to competing with the likes of the iPhone and Android. What Zuckerberg wants is deeper social integration, positing the question, “What could we do if we also started hacking at a deeper level?” While there’ll be no single answer or solution for all phones, Mark firmly believes that social elements have to be designed in from the start:

On phones we can actually do something better. We can do a single sign-on if we do a good integration with a phone, rather than just doing something where you go to an app and it’s automatically social or having to sign into each app individually. Those are the two options on the web. Why not for mobile? Just make it so that you log into your phone once, and then everything that you do on your phone is social.

Notably, he fails to deny rumors of such deeply integrated devices being in the pipeline, and Bloomberg has trotted out a trio of insider sources who claim INQ Mobile has been engaged to produce two smartphones with just that purpose in mind. One is said to feature a QWERTY keypad and a touchscreen while the other is an all touch affair, and both are reputedly headed for an early 2011 launch in Europe, followed by a late 2011 arrival in the USA. AT&T is the carrier that’s closest to picking them up, we’re told, though deals haven’t been finalized on what could be sub-$100 phones after subsidies are distributed. So, whatever happens, we’re staring down the barrel of a couple of glorified featurephones with deep social integration. Kin 2.0, anyone? Anyone?

Facebook phone rumors resurface, Mark Zuckerberg fails to deny them originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 05:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

DeviceFidelity’s mobile twist on Visa’s payWave system is a nice little solution to the fact that nobody’s bothered to build contactless payment chips into US mobile phones just yet — DeviceFidelity just stuffs the Visa smart chip circuitry into a microSD card and lets you on your way. Of course, this supplants the much needed additional storage on an Android handset, and requires a chunky add-on case for the iPhone, but at least it’s a start. Visa will now start allowing those payWave-enabled devices to make contactless payments at subway turnstiles and taxi backseats in New York City as part of a new trial for the tech. Of course you’ve been able to do this with all sorts of chipped credit cards already, but there’s something very future-ey about swiping your phone to make a payment — now how about ditching the clunky add-ons and building some of this circuitry in by default?

Continue reading Visa rolling out payWave mobile phone payments in NY subway and taxis

Visa rolling out payWave mobile phone payments in NY subway and taxis originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Oh snap! This is exactly what Nokia needs right now — another cheap Android handset to gobble up its wallet-friendly stronghold. What we’re looking at here is Orange’s oddly named San Francisco, a

When we first caught wind of Fring a while back, Skype compatibility was the draw, but as the years progressed and Fring grew some, the VoIP services didn’t exactly get along. Today, the company’s taking matters into its own hands with the not-so-subtly named FringOut, which appears to provide even cheaper calls to landlines and mobile phones than its powerful namesake. Starting on Nokia’s S60 platform and “coming soon” to Android and iPhone, FringOut’s promising as-low-as one-cent-a-minute calls. Sounds like a deal to us, but of course, call quality is paramount — let us know if you like what you hear if you happen to try it out. PR and video after the break.

Continue reading Fring reveals FringOut for cheap VoIP calls, challenges Skype head-on

Fring reveals FringOut for cheap VoIP calls, challenges Skype head-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

LG Electronics CEO resigns in wake of waning mobile phone sales originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Microsoft employee profile hints at possible Acer Windows Phone 7 device originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Continue reading Apple Peel 520 coming to US shores shortly for an undisclosed amount

Apple Peel 520 coming to US shores shortly for an undisclosed amount originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Good news for UK mobile addicts: Orange’s long-anticipated HD Voice service has officially made it to the Land of Hope and Glory. Starting today, British customers can pick up a HD Voice-enabled handset — including the Nokia 5230, X6, E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro at launch — from Orange, and start buttering their ears with “crystal clear” phone calls while within the carrier’s 3G coverage. Prior to the launch, we were fortunate enough to try out the new service on a couple of Nokia E5 prototypes, and boy, that was some pretty impressive stuff there — the wider speech bandwidth really added a lot of clarity to the caller’s voice, and additionally, the noisy traffic from the caller’s end was well suppressed at where it’d otherwise crackle over a normal call. Perhaps the easiest way to put it is that this is much like jumping from a bad FM radio broadcast to some sweet CD audio, thus making conversations a lot easier to interpret, even if the recipient is in a noisy environment or has hearing problem (as proven by Orange’s public trial). As always, hearing is believing, so do check out our sample audio clips after the break.

While Orange remains a dominant driving force behind this mobile revolution, the carrier assured us that it expects other companies to pick up this open standard. That said, it’s rather disappointing that current owners of the aforementioned handsets won’t be getitng a software patch for the HD upgrade (we were told that no extra hardware is involved), but we can understand — the manufacturers do need to sell new phones to stay alive in this rapidly changing market. Anyhow, here’s hoping that the forthcoming flagship Android and Windows Phone 7 devices will also get a taste of this crystal clear call quality.

Continue reading Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video)

Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink