Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones  I am a Sprint user. In the past, Sprint has had very poor smartphone choices. I picked up the Instinct when it came out, and for the time, it was a good phone. Now, I go yesterday to check out the Evo 4G, Sprint’s only comparable offering to an iPhone. I knew it was popular, I knew it was bound to be sold out, but I had hopes because it wasn’t in a too large area. Of course, I go and ask someone and they tell me they are sold out and they have a rather large waiting list for it. Sneaking a peak at that list as he puts my name on it, it was at least 40 names long and that was only on the page I could see. Same thing when I went to the local Best Buy. And of course, this is happening everywhere; the Evo is Sprint’s most popular phone and may be the one to slow down the rate of people leaving for AT&T’s iPhone. It is being sold faster than they could be made. But this isn’t the only phone to be in that same situation.
Take the HTC Droid Incredible on the Verizon network. As reported by Gadgetell earlier in the week, sales are as strong, if not stronger than ever. The Incredible, just like the Evo, is being sold faster than they are being made. Android is being adopted by every carrier in the states including AT&T and LG which are more typically known for the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones respectively. Android’s app store is growing every day; gaining new developers, including your’s truly, all the time. Thought it’s market share is around 10%, I can’t see that staying still in the future. The only thing that could really slow down that growth would be if the iPhone were to become available on more carriers. Fortunately (or unfortunately), this doesn’t seem to be gaining much ground as we have had rumors of a Verizon iPhone forever and now there are new claims of a T-Mobile iPhone. Personally, if AT&T’s network can’t handle the iPhone, I don’t know how T-Mobile is supposed to. Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Smartphones, Computers, Software / Applications  On Wednesday, Adobe made claims that over 250million smartphones would support Flash by 2012 despite claims by Apple’s Steve Jobs that Flash is unsuited for touch devices. Right now, it is predicted that 200million smartphones will be sold in 2010, 10% of which will support Flash.
Flash has gotten a lot of heat lately from Apple as it has been banned by them as a developmental solution for iPhone OS. And with iPhone OS having the second largest market share in the smartphone market only to Blackberry, it is hard to see Flash on the rise. But something that could easily explain it is the growth of Android and the birth of Android 2.2, Froyo. Google has always put the customer first and with this new Flash-fiasco, Google has made the world publicly aware of its situation on Flash and HTML5 by heavily supporting both of them. It can be assumed then, that as long as Flash doesn’t cause too many problems on their phones, that every Android build after 2.2 will have flash support. So as Android grows, so does Flash. And since, unlike iPhone OS, their is an Android OS phone for every one of your personalities, Android is slated to grow much more than iPhone. Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy states that, “You’re going to see Flash not only on Android. Consumers will see devices from Palm, Research in Motion Ltd’s Blackberry, Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft (MSFT.O) Windows Phone 7 support the full Flash Player.” So if Blackberry continues to keep its share, you can easily see atleast 50% of phones to support flash by 2012. Read [Reuters] Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile  Motorola and HTC seem to be owning the Android market at this point in time. But according to Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s CEO, Motorola is planning not only to push the limits of what an Android phone can do, but pushing what smartphones can do in general.
On Wednesday, Jha announced that Motorola was taking on the task of putting a 2Ghz processor inside of a smartphone. Now is this even possible? First of all, even Apple’s own A4 chip is set at a frequency of 1Ghz. And at this point in time, the most common processor that we see in the most snappy of phones today is the Snapdragon 1Ghz processor which you find in the Evo and Nexus One. Qualcomm, another very high-end chip manufacturer has boasted speeds of up to 1.5GHz but has never broke the 2GHz barrier. Secondly, will consumers even want this speed? If you are even remotely aware of hardware, you know that powerful processors suck on battery life. With no new battery technology coming soon, this device will no doubt have to have one heck of a power source to even make it through the day. Despite these hurdles, 2GHz is encroaching on laptop-level speeds. If Motorola can pull this off, there is no doubt that the limits of computing will be reset and the bar for every phone after it will be higher than we have seen before. Read [Conceivably Tech] Via [Wired GadgetLab] Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Computers, Netbooks, Software / Applications  For netbooks, it’s obvious that Windows Vista is not the optimal operating system. Many people choose to downgrade to Windows XP as it runs faster and better than Vista when on those tiny computers. It also doesn’t come with the reputation that Vista received in its early days as a highly incompatible OS. But now with Windows 7 on track to receive its first service pack, XP will be thrown to the wayside. It was announced back in April, but as a reminder, if you plan to buy a netbook and don’t want 7 or Vista, you have till October 22 to do so. Now, I personally use all three operating systems daily and find 7 to be my favorite. It isn’t news that 7 has the best of both worlds when it comes to Vista and XP. 7 boots up nearly as fast as XP, has the security and the updated features of Vista, all on a stable platform. So if you haven’t already, get acquainted with it because I know you don’t want Vista on your netbooks.
Read [WindowsTeamBlog] Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Web, Google  Google has always been known for experimenting with its homepage. Adjusting the colors slightly, rearrangements, etc. But last night Google made one of the larger changes we had seen in a while with background images. Of course, on first sight, these background images resembled those of Bing.com, Google’s closest competitor and the morning welcomed the changes with an onslaught of nay-sayers who cried plagiarism. Despite the fact that I quite enjoyed the change, Google has officially killed the experiment just hours after it began. For those who still enjoyed the change you can still have it if you look at the bottom left of your screen when you visit Google.
Read [TechCrunch] Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Video, Accessories, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, HDTV  Sony is now taking pre-orders for their 3D capable BRAVIA HDTVs at Sony Style stores. Sony will also have 3D devices for sale in July along with a free firmware update for two Blu-ray Disc players and two home theater systems. Sony’s gone 3D crazy.
“3D is revolutionizing the entertainment industry and only Sony is involved in every stage of the ecosystem,” said Chris Fawcett, vice president of Sony’s television business. “Leveraging deep 3D expertise from the company’s theatrical and professional groups, Sony products are optimized to offer the best possible 3D home entertainment experience.” In all, Sony will have 19 3D capable BRAVIA® HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players and theater systems, and audio/video components. 19 sounds like an overload but Sony explains each has it’s own niche balancing price and performance. How is Sony bringing 3D to you? It’s the glasses. Sony 3D capable BRAVIA HDTVs will use glasses with active shutters to create the 3D effect. The line up maxes out with a 60” full HD (1920 x 1080) for $5,000. Some of the models feature built in sync transmitter while other models will offer this as an option; other models will be 3D ready, requiring the sync transmitter and shutter glasses to be purchased separately for 3D. Press release: [Virtual Press Office] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile 
With the onslaught of Android phones that seem to be launching every week, Motorola Droid, Verizon’s first and most advertised is still going strong. Despite not being updated to the latest version of Android, Motorola is still making as much as they can. Typically, as a device ages, it’s sales decline - but the Droid seems to be going strong. According to Mr. Jha, “if I could build more, I’d sell more.”
Mr. Jha also indicated Motorola would be rolling out 2-4 devices this year with front-facing cameras designed for video chat. Can the iPhone’s hype around FaceTime (and perhaps it’s WiFi-only restriction for 2010) create a market for this feature popular in Asia? It could be embarrassing for AT&T to restrict this while Verizon pushes it, and you know they’ll target that in at least funny commercial. Read: [Engadget Mobile] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Web, Websites According to a source “with knowledge of the matter,” Hulu plans on expanding its service to numerous devices within the next couple of months. Two of these devices are rumored to be the Xbox 360 and the iPad. As it turns out, Hulu will charge only for “older episodes and other content,” while brand new shows will continue to be free. This subscription service may also be applied to numerous devices in the near future. Although Apple didn’t break any such news during its announcement of the new iPhone 4, it seems as though only time will tell which companies will brace Hulu’s new subscription service. Hulu, which generated an estimated $100 million in advertising revenue last year, will be gunned for as the top dog in the worldwide online video market (which is expected to hit $16.1 billion through paid and ad-supported services by 2012) according to ABI Research. Companies like Hulu and Nextflix are threatened most by cable and satellite operators that are revamping video on-demand in fears of losing customers.
I knew watching those free episodes of Glee were too good to be true. Here’s to torrents… Read [Reuters] Full Story » | Written by Tarun Kunwar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Reviews, Features, Originals I have spent a few weeks trying out the HTC Droid Incredible from Verizon Wireless and I am fully satisfied with the latest Verizon smartphone. It is truly one of the greatest phones on the Verizon network, and I have been impressed with the phone even after a few days of checking it out. What is it? The HTC Droid Incredible was first available on April 29 for $199 on a new two year contract. It runs Android 2.1 with HTC Sense performance enhancement, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 8GB of onboard memory, Friend Stream app, 8MP camera with dual LED flash, 3.7 inch WVGA AMOLED touch screen, optical joystick, integrated GPS, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Another feature I found interesting was its embedded FM radio, however, only a few stations came in clear for me. It comes with the normal native apps, but the Android Market allows you to download and install better apps (such as a better Internet browser app and texting app) if you so desire. With HTC Sense, the Friend Stream compiles data from Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr and displays it in a neat and organized fashion. It also allows users to switch across the seven home screens with ease and have apps running in a different screen. The Good The first thing I noticed about the HTC Droid Incredible is its sleek appearance. As soon as I took it out of the box I noticed how light it is and the screen seemed huge. It was ultra responsive and any app I touched opened quickly. I did not get a true sense of the 1GHz Snapdragon processor until I began opening many apps (such as Internet, Pandora, Marketplace, Weather) and switching between them with ease. Each of the seven home screens can serve a different purpose if you so choose. Like all Android phones, syncing your Google Account is a must and if you have a Facebook account, you should sync that right away as well. I’m used to texting on my LG enV 3’s physical keyboard, so getting used to texting via touch screen took a little bit of time, but in the end texting was very easy on the touch screen. In addition, HTC uses its own keyboard which has slightly bigger buttons and it is easy to save commonly used words that might not be in the dictionary. The 8MP camera with dual flash takes excellent pictures and records superb videos. 8GB of onboard storage is definitely enough for pictures, videos, apps, and music, but it can always be expanded if you have a large collection of media. With the seven home screens, you can place many apps and widgets depending on whether you want a work home screen or a play home screen. With HTC Sense “leap view” you can access each different home screen by pressing the home button twice. Another nice feature is “scenes” which basically saves all seven home panel screens under a name that you can switch between. For instance, you have a dedicated business scene and a play scene, and you can customize the apps on those screens any way you wish. The Bad There aren’t too many negative things to say about the HTC Droid Incredible. It is definitely one of the top phones, if not the top, on the Verizon network. My only complaint is the phone overall is not as intuitive as the iPhone and it does take some time getting used to. Granted, I have had experience with Android phones in the past and I usually know what I’m doing with new phones, so I didn’t have too much trouble figuring things out. But, if I gave this phone to my mother, she’d probably get frustrated with it in minutes and end up breaking it. I wished the FM radio had better reception, but that could be a location based issue. I’ve heard some complaints about battery issues with the phone not charging all the way through, but my phone seems to charge fine. Also, for some reason my phone sometimes randomly shuts off and immediately turns back on. That could be a software issue or perhaps a hardware issue, but it only happens once in a while with my phone. Final Thoughts Overall, Verizon has an excellent phone in the HTC Droid Incredible and it is definitely their flagship phone, replacing the Motorola Droid. The 3.7 inch touch screen makes navigating through the phone and reading text fun and easy on the eyes. The camera takes great pictures and can easily replace bringing along a standalone camera if you are a casual photographer. Hopefully HTC can keep up with consumer demand because shortages are definitely frustrating for Verizon as a company trying to sell a product and customers trying to buy a product. Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Web, Web Apps, Google  Back in April we learned how Google was rumored to be internally testing a desktop app for Google Voice. Well, flash forward to today, and it looks like Google has begun to test Google Voice integration with Gmail.
According to the Google Operating System blog; “Google tests a new feature that makes Gmail chat more useful: users are able to make and receive Google Voice calls from Gmail.”
It seems as if the Gmail chat window is offering a new icon in the form of a phone, which will allow the user to open a dialpad and make a call. As well as find a contact. Unfortunately as of now this is not yet available to the public, and like the Google Voice desktop app story from back in April, we have no idea when this will go public. Via [Google Operating System] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile The Pixi Plus launched with AT&T back on June 7th, at which time I had noticed it was free on-contract, then later in the day it was $49.99 on-contract and to add a little more confusion. Yesterday afternoon it was free again. Well, it seems as if the Palm Pixi Plus is BOTH free and $49.99. That is, depending on which color you choose. As of this posting the blue model is free and the black model is $49.99. In other words, as you as you are ok with getting blue, then you can get a free Pixi Plus from AT&T. Otherwise, if you are really into the black model and are not stuck with AT&T, you can also head over to Verizon and get the Pixi Plus in black for free. And as a bonus, Verizon is also giving you the Mobile Hotspot tethering for free. Product [AT&T] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Web, Google Since its launch, Google Voice has been a free service which is similar to just about everything else that Google is offering. That said, there are some paid upgrades in the Google world, such as storage for things like Picasa. Not to mention, I paid a $10 premium to Google Voice in order to change my phone number a while back. That aside though, using Google Voice was free for calling, SMS and ringing multiple phones however there was a recent discovery that is causing some speculation that the freeness of Google Voice may be changing. The news comes by way of the Google Voice for iPhone master Sean Kovacs, who recently discovered "free_sms_remaining" and "free_minutes_remaining" in the HTML5 SMS data feed. According to his posting; “While poking around in the HTML5 SMS data feed, I discovered that there is an attribute labeled "free_sms_remaining". I don't recall seeing this before, but none-the-less it's there now. To verify my findings (before Google removes it), you can spoof your User-Agent to "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16" and navigate to https://www.google.com/voice/m/x?m=list&l=sms&o=0&lm=10 (I would sign-in to Google Voice before hand). Cheers!”
Of course, lets just hope that these references will be for a sort of premium and the service that many have come to love will remain as free as it had been. Via [Sean Kovacs] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers  It looks like AT&T had a little issue yesterday afternoon in which the email address of some 114,000 iPad users were revealed. The news comes by way of Valleywag who are reporting that a hacker group called Goatse Security was able to figure out how to manipulate the AT&T website and trick it into giving up those emails.
“Goatse Security obtained its data through a script on AT&T’s website, accessible to anyone on the internet. When provided with an ICC-ID as part of an HTTP request, the script would return the associated email address, in what was apparently intended to be an AJAX-style response within a Web application. The security researchers were able to guess a large swath of ICC IDs by looking at known iPad 3G ICC IDs, some of which are shown in pictures posted by gadget enthusiasts to Flickr and other internet sites, and which can also be obtained through friendly associates who own iPads and are willing to share their information, available within the iPad “Settings” application.”
The good news however comes in the form of the statement from AT&T claiming that the loophole has since been closed and that “the only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device.” In other words—it appears as if your personal information such as name, address and credit card are safe. Additionally, if you were affected, it looks like AT&T will be sending you a little note shortly. “We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained.
We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted.”
And although I am an AT&T 3G customer for the iPad, I have yet to receive any such note. Though, I am not sure if that means my account was not on the list, or if they have not begun sending these notices out as of yet. Via [Valleywag] and [Valleywag] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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