Envious of all of the good Android 2.1 phones flying out of press releases this week? Well, if you happen to own an Android phone made by HTC or Samsung on Sprint you’re in luck. On Twitter Sprint tweeted the above message, and hopefully unlike others they’ll live up to their promises. This should be an OTA update, so you’ll know exactly what to do, come second quarter of 2010.
[Twitter via PhoneScoop]
There wasn’t much we were expecting from RIM, but today we’ve been proven wrong. Today co-CEO , Mike Lazaridis, and Director of Developer Relations gave us a sneak peek of what a future web browser on a BlackBerry might look like. Which is impressive; the browser had a score of 100/100 on the Acid3 Test. Hopefully that was real and not a phony, but you can decide that for yourself in the video embedded for you after the break. [CrackBerry]
Heard of the HTC HD2? Okay then, you know the Mini too. With a 3.2-inch HVGA display, it’s crisp enough to not make you feel really small against the HD2′s 4.3-inch super touchscreen. Besides the petite appearance, and usual HTC charm (HTC designs some of the best phones you’ve ever seen), you have Sense UI, and in true imitation of the HD2, it uses Windows Mobile 6.5.3, and will not get the new Windows Phone 7 Series announced yesterday. Let me rephrase that: “the disgraced Windows Mobile 6.5.3″. There, that’s better. But remember that when WM7 launches, you’ll want the best hardware you can get right? This isn’t it. Back to the drawing board HTC, you have a Windows Phone 7 smartphone to design. Oh, and it uses 7.2Mbps 900 / 2100 HSPA bands, with a European and Asia release in April. No word on real specs and carriers, but this is MWC 2010 after all, we’ll know soon enough. Promo vid is waiting for you after the jump.
Here it is folks! The HTC Desire, a Nexus One with the same specs and Snapdragon CPU, same 5 megapixel camera, except with more Sense in mind, and a little more style, only excluding the dual-mic feature that its cousin the N1 has. The same 3.7-inch AMOLED screen is also carried over, but instead of the nearly-useless trackball, you get a much cooler trackpad. Things get really cool though on the flipside with the software, where you’ll have the Weather and News widgets, as well as the new HTC Sense UI Friendstream, which allows you to stream your friends from Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Helicopter view is also present, and wait for, wait for it — Flash 10.1. So tell me what’s better on more practical here, the Nexus One or the Desire? I think I found my next Android phone, that I will buy. But review it first of course. Promo vid after the break.
The true successor to the HTC Hero, the Legend is made out of a single piece of aluminum. Running Android 2.1 with an updated version of Sense UI, a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen with 320 x 480 resolution, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, 600 MHz processor and 512MB ROM (with microSD card slot), as well as 384MB of RAM. GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a 1300 mAh is also included. One smart feature that the Legend adds to the Sense UI, as well as the HTC Desire also announced today is “helicopter view”, as HTC calls it. It’s essentially like Expose on your Mac. Pinch the screen and you can see all 7 homescreens with ease. It’s expected late March/early April in Europe with a worldwide launch to be announced. Promo video after the break. [HTC]
With all of the MWC 2010 Coverage you might be thinking “Where’s my daily dose of Apple rumors?”. Here it is! While maybe the previous BestBuy shot was a phony, this time MacRumors has found a couple of dummy SKUs in BestBuy’s system. Probably for new Macbook Pros with a Core i5 processor, but maybe it’s just the Wi-Fi iPad messing around? Either way, at this point we don’t know if the shot is legit, and we might never know what these SKUs are for. But at least you got your Apple coverage for the day??
[Via MacRumors]
If you really, really want to know about Windows Phone 7, then please watch this video after the break by MSDN with Joe Belfiore (VP of Windows Phone Program Management), explaining each and every one of its single features. But if that’s too long for you, then take a look at this, which should only take you 5 minutes to read. [MSDN]
We’ve been waiting for the Samsung Wave, Windows Phone 7 Series, and others, but now here’s one of the highlights of MWC 2010: HTC. And we have the official specs and pics for the Legend, Bravo, and Touch HD Mini. Starting with the Bravo (formerly the Desire), it will get a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen and will run Android 2.1 with HTC Sense. The eagerly-awaited HTC Legend will feature a 3.1″ HVGA screen, 5 megapixel camera, 600 MHz CPU, and HTC Sense with Android 2.1. The Mini HD finally is more like a homage to the HD2 and will run Windows Mobile 6.5 (what?), will pack a 3.2″ HVGA screen, 5 megapixel camera, and HTC TouchFlo 3D. Full specs for each smartphone are featured after the break.
Feel free to browse around the site for now, but first watch the 3 minute roundup of all of Windows Phone 7′s main new features. You’ll get a good taste of the UI, social integration, Internet Browser, XBOX LIVE, contacts, and everything else, including the awesome-looking on-screen keyboard. [ Phone YouTube Account]
Windows Phone 7 Series. It’s a lot to say, but brings a lot to the mobile computing scene. Windows Phone 7 will bring a Zune-influenced UI, and has completely ditched Windows Mobile touches all together. Windows Mobile is dead. Windows Phone 7 Series has come to life. Debuted at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft wants to be a major player, and partnerships with carriers and manufacturers is far and wide: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, while hardware partners include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm.
Third-party handsets will not appear at MWC, but Microsoft is showing off its dev units of unknown originality. A main feature that will be present in all Windows Phone 7 Series phones is a high res touchscreen, three front-facing buttons (back, start, and perhaps a Bing key), and minor additions from the handsets themselves. Besides this, there will be strict requirements for specs in the phones (CPU speed, memory, resolution, aspect ratio, multitouch, and even button placement), and 3rd party UIs no more. No TouchWiz 3.0, no Sense UI.
As for social integration, it will be like XBOX on a phone, with LIVE games, avatars, and profiles, all being present, and also things like the Zune HD’s FM Radio. Social networking will get you integrated contact pages which will be present on the new “tile” UI. These “tiles” will be widgets, shortcuts, links to contacts, and all scroll vertically. As for the Outlook email app, which of course has support for Exchange, makes Blackberry email users look questionable.
The browser is Internet Explorer, and will not be as fast as Apple’s Mobile Safari, but will have multitouch right out of the box. Last but not least, all Windows Marketplace apps from previous versions will not be compatible in Windows Phone 7 Series. Sorry devs, it’s for the better. But the new Marketplace will still be where you download apps, once they’re available.
All in all I am in awe from Windows Phone 7 Series, and now we officially have 3 main players in the smartphone market — Apple, Google, and — Microsoft. Windows Phone will debut this holiday season in handsets that support it. Press release after the jump.
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