Posts Tagged ‘neutral’

HTC Incredible is coming to Verizon, better live up to its name

We've just been able to confirm with a trusted source that the Incredible -- one of the codenames found in HTC's leaked Android 2.1 ROM -- is destined for Verizon. We don't know what the Incredible is, but given its... well, incredible name, we can only assume it's going to be a beast -- possibly yet another name for the Dragon / Passion

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RIM’s optical trackpads: they weren’t joking about the ‘optical’ part

Thinking about how your phone's touchscreen operates, you might assume that the so-called optical pads that have been making appearances on recent BlackBerrys ( among other devices ) operate in a similar fashion -- but you'd be wrong. RIM's official BlackBerry blog is chiming in today to drop some knowledge on us dullards, and it turns out that "optical" isn't just a cute nickname -- the pads do actually operate in much the same way as modern desktop mice, using a low-res infrared camera to capture movement across the surface and translate it into movement. In practical terms, what this means is that you don't need a conductive surface to operate the pad -- you can use pretty much anything that the sensor can see, so a gloved hand (for instance) is theoretically good to go

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iPhone nabs 46 percent of Japanese smartphone market, the tiny Japanese smartphone market

So you read a headline like "iPhone grabs 46 percent of the Japanese smartphone market" and the first thing you're likely to think is, "wow, Apple is really doing well for itself." Well, it is and it isn't. While it has made some considerable gains in the smartphone market at the expense of phones like Sharp's W-ZERO3 and the Willcom 03 , it still hasn't gained nearly the same total mindshare or market share that it has over here. That's because "smartphones" as we know them are still a relatively small market in Japan, where carriers' lineups consist of a whole range of offerings including everything from mobile TV-equipped phones to true camera phones to perfume holders

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Tiki’Labs virtual keyboard for iPhone takes shot at Swype, one-handed typing wars commence

One-handed touchscreen typing is the hip new thing, apparently, since mere weeks after getting our first whiff of Swype , Tiki'Labs has debuted its own free TikiNotes app for the iPhone with a proprietary "large target" sort of keyboard. We've seen the idea before, specifically with some accessibility devices, which lets the user drill down into one of six alphabet sectors, and then pick one of six characters. TikiNotes improves upon that by not only predicting the word you're currently typing, but also often correctly guessing the next word you were planning on typing.

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BlackBerry Curve 8530 now available on Sprint

What's this we see here? Looks like the Curve 8530 has made it to Sprint after all. When all is said and done, she'll cost you $50 with a new contract (after mail in rebate).

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FCC extends deadline on Verizon’s ETF response, lets it enjoy the weekend

They're not exactly calling off the hounds, but the FCC's standing down just a wee bit in its hunt to get to the bottom of Verizon's astronomical new $350 "advanced device" early termination fee; the original deadline for the carrier's responses was yesterday, December 17, but instead, the FCC will now be checking its mailbox on Monday. Even in the most extreme outcome, it'd likely be months or years before the FCC would actually go from an inquiry to applying pressure on Verizon to lower the fee. In the meantime, though, failure to respond to the questionnaire will probably result in an entertaining series of strong verbal admonishments and -- if Genachowski's in a feisty mood -- perhaps a flurry of punishing blows to Verizon's torso and upper body.

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Google’s Nexus One lacks multitouch

Our buddy Tnkgrl just had a sit down with Google and HTC's lovedroid, the Nexus One. She "wasn't allowed" to take pictures or video but she came away with plenty of detail. The biggest point of clarification might not be what's included in the handset, but what's missing : multitouch.

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Bluetooth 4.0 finally rolls low energy tech into a shipping standard

Bluetooth low energy and its predecessors (think Wibree ) have been in the pipe for ages now, but we might actually see this tech take off en masse for the first time now that the Bluetooth SIG has officially added it into a release: 4.0. While Bluetooth 3.0 was all about high energy with the introduction of WiFi transfer, 4.0 takes things down a notch by certifying single-mode low energy devices in addition to dual-mode devices that incorporate both the low energy side of the spec plus either 2.1+EDR or 3.0.

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Sprint's HTC Hero and Samsung Moment on track to get Android 2.1 …

So Sprint's backtracking on its promise to deliver Android 2.0 to its Hero and Moment in the first half of next year, but it's backtracking.

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Palm’s Ares SDK goes to public beta

After a brief private testing period, Palm's interesting Ares software development package has made its way into a public beta phase. Breaking tradition from Mojo -- Palm's other webOS SDK -- the big news with Ares is that the dev environment is fully web-based with no additional tools needed for apps to get whipped into reality

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