Hasta La Gadget!

AT&T’s been extraordinarily coy about its Android plans, right up through our interview with Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega back in February — but rest assured, the carrier does plan to get in the game, and it might just beat a number of T-Mobile’s planned launches to market. Meet the HTC Lancaster, which kinda looks like a Magic when closed — but open, it takes on more of a traditional Touch Pro-ish form factor for a QWERTY slider than the G1 / Dream. It’s got triband EDGE and 850 / 1900MHz HSPA, AGPS, a 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD expansion, and a “unique HTC social messaging user interface” that we’d assume takes cues from that Hero stuff we’ve been seeing recently. It’s lined up for a full six months of AT&T exclusivity and — according to our materials, anyway — has a target availability date of August 3, meaning we could see this pretty shortly. Unfortunately, there’s a note here that “Initial Lab Entry dates were based on Google Mobile Services (GMS) UI, AT&T standard UI has been requested, which puts schedule in question.” In other words, AT&T wants its fingerprints all over the interface, which risks pushing out the launch — and that’s a double whammy of suck. Follow the break for a larger shot of the phone!

Continue reading HTC Lancaster is a QWERTY slider with Android for AT&T

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC Lancaster is a QWERTY slider with Android for AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 May 2009 17:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not that it wasn’t without warning, but we’ve now got some pretty definitive picture proof that HTC ‘s Touch Pro2 is set to bask in Verizon’s CDMA goodness — we guess your Sprint friends won’t be having all the fun, after all. Also caught on camera here is the HTC Cedar, a CDMA version of the HTC Maple / Snap. It’s got a slightly different button layout just under the screen than the Sprint version we recently saw, which itself is different from its initial unveiling. According to 474RPR, who leaked these pics, this one’s bound for Alltel’s network, which while we don’t see any proof from the image, we could totally buy that. Of course, none of these pics give a release date of any sort, so hang tight while we all anxiously wait in unison.

[Via wmpoweruser]

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Touch Pro2 brandishes Verizon logo, poses for camera with Cedar originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 May 2009 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Map the Fallen loaded in Google Earth.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Every year, Memorial Day is when all of us want to honor the men and women in uniform who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom we enjoy. Traditionally, this is the day we want to visit …

Since its sneaky, silent unveiling at February’s Mobile World Congress, the GSM version of the Pre has been a total no-show — good for Sprint publicity-wise, probably, but bad for virtually every other carrier and potential customer in the world. If we had to guess, the silence can be attributed to heated negotiations between Palm and dozens of potential networks; the company knows it has a probable winner on its hands, and it has every reason to play hardball to get the best exclusivity deal that it possibly can. The Guardian is now reporting that O2 has fended off competing offers from Vodafone and Orange to nab the Pre in the UK, meaning that the carrier — Britain’s largest by subscriber count — would be launching the device alongside the iPhone 3G, though rumors only have it pegged for pre-Christmas availability meaning it’d actually be doing with whatever new device Apple intends to bring to the table this summer. Whether it can hold its own against a renewed Cupertino onslaught in the holiday season remains to be seen, but in the spirit of competition and awesome smartphones, we certainly hope so.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Hello, O2: Pre’s GSM flavor finally gets a launch carrier in the UK? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 May 2009 14:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you had your eye the BlackBerry Curve 8520 / Gemini, somehow above all the other number of RIM devices that have surfaced as of late, it looks like the stars have aligned (har har) for you. The gang at Crackberry have gotten a first peep at the Aries, which they say is essentially a CDMA-equipped Gemini that’s likely to go by the eventual name Curve 8530. Not much else to note here, here’s hoping we got some more concrete details — and maybe a committed carrier or two — in the not too distant. As for the naming conventions, we now anxiously await for alliterative darlings like a touchscreen Taurus, slide-out Sagittarius, and 18 megapixel Pisces.

Filed under: Cellphones

BlackBerry Aries spotted: a Gemini with CDMA in its heart originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 May 2009 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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