Each week you can get different sales, free shipping offers, financing deals, and exclusives on BestBuy.com. This week Best Buy has a ton of marked-down items in categories such as Cameras & Camcorders, Home Theater, and Car & GPS. I’m going to focus on four products in these categories: a 12-megapixel Samsung digital camera, a Pure Digital pocket camcorder, a Garmin GPS, and a Sony Bravia HDTV.
Find out the deals you’ll want to grab and the ones you’ll want to avoid, after the jump.
Comcast on Monday announced that it will launch its 4G mobile broadband service in the Portland area via the Clearwire network starting Tuesday.
The service, dubbed 2go, will only be available if bundled with one or more of Comcast’s Internet, phone, or cable services.
Comcast is offering two data cards and service plans: 2go Metro, which offers 4G service in the Portland area; or 2go Nationwide, which offers 4G service in Portland, and 3G service nationwide via Sprint’s network.
The 2go service will be bundled in “Fast Pack” offerings.
Fast Pack Metro will be available for $49.99 and includes Comcast’s 12 Mbps Internet service, a Wi-Fi router, and 4G service with up to 4 Mbps download speed. Fast Pack Nationwide will run $69.99 per month with the same services, plus Sprint nationwide.
Triple Play customers who subscribe to voice, cable, and Internet will be able to add 2go starting at $30 per month.
A version of 2go will also be available for small- and medium-sized businesses.
In May 2008, Sprint agreed to take over the combined WiMAX operations of Clearwire in a deal backed by tech titans Comcast, Google, Intel, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks. In June 2009, Clearwire quietly launched its Clear WiMax service in Las Vegas today, but Sprint demurred, keeping the two companies’ WiMax systems still separate for now.
iPhone 3GS owners (of whom there are already over one million, according to Apple) won’t be able to Jailbreak their smartphones to run unauthorized applications for a little while.
The Dev-Team, who regularly issues software to Jailbreak and unlock iPhones, is delaying the hack for iPhone 3GS. Why? Not enough people own the phone yet, the team says, and the hack will be easy for Apple to plug. (If you want the explanation in l33t hax0r lingo, visit the Dev-Team’s blog.)
Unlocking an iPhone does require Jailbreaking it first. So that means in the United States, T-Mobile users will have to wait a little while before they can unlock the iPhone 3GS to work on their carrier. Better later than never though, right?
Photo: Stéphane Delbecque
Dell has begun developing a pocket-sized, ARM-based device powered by the Android operating system, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The Journal article carefully avoided calling the device a smartphone, and positioned it in the context of the Apple iPod touch, a handheld music player and computing device that lacks the native ability to place and receive calls.
What the device is, what it does, what it will be priced: all questions that the Journal‘s source was unable to answer. The plan could also be scrapped entirely, the Journal reported, essentially offering the story with a somewhat large grain of salt.
What’s interesting, however, is that the Journal reports that Dell began work on the device last year. That’s certainly before AT&T Mobility’s chief executive reported in Feburary that Dell was working on a smartphone, which may or not be the same thing.
Rumors about Dell doing something with Android or smartphones have been swirling for over a year now, fed in part by similar unsourced stories in the Journal.
A story in the British magazine MarketingWeek had a Dell Android smartphone appearing in February 2008 – yes, 2008. We debunked that one right here on Gearlog.
The Wall Street Journal then claimed in January 2009 that Dell would “move into cellphones as early as next month,” which clearly didn’t happen. The next step in the Dell vaporware rumor chain came this April, when a market analyst said carriers had decided to pass on Dell’s invisible, chimerical smartphone.
Finally, this May, Dell showed off a Mini 10 netbook running Android–just to stoke the flames.
[Via PreCentral.net]
Filed under: Cellphones
Palm Pre finds fan off the grid originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Just a week after the release of Apple’s new iPhone, a few owners have complained about the handset’s high temperatures, which in some cases are high enough to start browning the white plastic on the back of the phone.
Only a small number of iPhone 3GS customers have reported their handsets are reaching very high temperatures. But because more than a million iPhone 3GSes were sold in the first weekend, the issue could put tens of thousands of new iPhones at risk, a component specialist told Wired.com.
Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair, which performs teardowns of iPhones and iPods, said overheating is likely an issue due to faulty battery cells, and said he expected it could spur a recall of up to hundreds of thousands of iPhone 3GS units.
“My guess is there’s going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these [iPhones] are from very large production runs,” Vronko said. “If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it’s probably going to be spread to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.”
Apple has not returned phone calls and e-mails requesting comment on the reports.
Of all hardware-related failures, overheating batteries have historically posed the greatest safety risks — in extreme cases causing fires, exploding and even killing consumers. The issues of overheating batteries are typically traced to faulty battery cells provided by a component supplier.
Apple products in the past have had battery-related woes. In 2006, Apple issued a recall for iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 notebooks, because their batteries contained cells provided by Sony that were causing some batteries to explode.
Also, Apple in August 2008 issued a recall for defective iPod Nanos, which caused three fires in Japan. In that incident, Apple said only 0.001 percent of iPod Nanos were affected. Even so, that’s still a large number of consumers, considering the millions of iPods sold.
Over the past weekend, a small number of iPhone 3GS owners reported in forums and on blogs that their handsets were reaching oddly high temperatures. The issue was most visible in white iPhones, which were turning brown as a result of the high heat (right).
“At some point, I became aware the handset had become very hot,” wrote Melissa Perinson, senior editor of PC World, who felt high temperatures while gaming and browsing the web on her iPhone 3GS. “Very, very hot — not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too…. Toasty doesn’t even describe how surprisingly hot it got. It was too hot to even put the phone against my face.”
Vronko said the iPhone 3GS’s heat problem is evidently tied to the battery, because the pictures of discolored white iPhones reveal the outline of the battery. He noted that although thousands of iPhone 3GS users probably own defective handsets, the risk of causing fire or explosion is low because the iPhone’s battery cell is extremely small.
“[An overheating iPhone] is much less dangerous than a laptop,” Vronko said. “It’s extremely rare for a cellphone battery to explode. A little bit of smoke eventually is probably the best bet.”
He stressed, however, that overheating will more likely cause complete failure of the iPhone 3GS over time. When a battery overheats, it’s getting a runaway reaction that produces gas, causing expansion to occur inside the sealed battery. This expansion puts pressure on components, damaging them and eventually killing the iPhone.
Wired.com polled iPhone 3GS owners via Twitter asking if they were experiencing any problems with their new handsets. Only one out of 21 respondents said his iPhone 3GS felt like it was overheating.
Eleven of those respondents, however, reported the iPhone 3GS had poor battery life — even shorter than its predecessor — a different topic Wired.com will investigate soon.
Wired.com will continue examining the iPhone 3GS’s battery issues and keep you posted. Look forward to a battery test comparing the new iPhone to its predecessor in the near future. Meanwhile, e-mail any of your iPhone 3GS-related problems to Brian_Chen [at] Wired [dot] com.
See Also:
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com, Le Journal du Geek
It’s no surprise that Dell’s been dipping its toes in Android-infested waters as of late, and now the Wall Street Journal‘s reasserting a previous claim from early April that the company’s hard at work on a MID powered by Google’s mobile OS platform. Multiple sources have reportedly likened it to a slightly larger iPod touch, while one went so far as to suggest a very tentative second half 2009 target release window, assuming the project doesn’t get 187’d before then. Despite its history with Intel and the chipmaker’s penchant for MIDs, the report pegs ARM as the processor of choice. As for how this jibes with rumors of Dell’s smartphone plans, that’s where things get interesting, as WSJ quotes a source who said Dell’s thinking about selling it through cell carriers like it’s currently doing with 3G-equipped netbooks. The article repeatedly calls it a MID — meaning a phone might still be in the cards, but given past whispers, it kind of makes you wonder.
Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops
Dell working on iPod touch-esque Android MID, says WSJ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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[Via SlashGear]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
ASUS unleashes USB 2.0 Blu-ray drive — government denies knowledge originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This article was written on August 15, 2008 by CyberNet.
As mentioned back in June, T-Mobile is set to be the first mobile phone carrier to launch an Android powered mobile phone. We were originally expecting it sometime in the 4th quarter, but it looks as though we may get it a little earlier than expected. Gizmodo reports that September 17th is the big day. It’s the day that T-Mobile and HTC will be launching an HTC phone powered by Android.
Another big topic of discussion is the rumored price of $150 which isn’t too bad. It’s cheaper than the iPhone by about $50, but isn’t going to have the storage like the iPhone does. Here are some specifications we can expect:
The New York Times’ prediction of when the phone would launch is a bit different from what Gizmodo reported. They’re saying it could happen as early as October and that the date all depends on how long it takes the FCC to give approvals.
Remember how we said that T-Mobile is rumored to be preparing their own app store for the new phones they will be launching like Apple has done? Could their push to do this possibly be because of Android? The iPhone’s popularity has increased with the availability of applications, and Google is already assuming Android users will want to be able to personalize their phones with applications and services.
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The Samsung Saga SCH-i777 on Verizon is a nice smartphone with excellent ergonomics, at least hardware wise–and now Engadget Mobile has word that Saga owners can download an official Samsung software update as well.
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