When the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard came out in 1980, there was a curious fact about it: It was 74 minutes long. Not 60 minutes. Or an even 70 minutes. Seventy-four. And it was all one deaf man’s fault. Updated More »
Robots at the 2011 Las Vegas show ranged from dancing sweepers to iPhone-controlled spheres. Our favorite: a rolling back massage unit.
LAS VEGAS — Another day at CES 2011, another 4G smartphone announcement. HTC debuted three new 4G mobile devices last week: the Thunderbolt, the Inspire and the EVO Shift.
Release date and price points on the Thunderbolt and the Inspire were murky. As in, HTC didn’t have any. But that’s been par for the course on a lot of smartphones announced at CES thus far. We do know the EVO Shift will be dropping Jan. 9, the last day of CES. All three phones will be running Android version 2.2 (Froyo).
I got to spend some time playing around with the Thunderbolt at the trade show. Here are a few first impressions, broken down by category:
It’s been a big year for big screens at CES, and the Thunderbolt doesn’t stray far from what’s been debuting. At 4.3 inches, it’s a sizable display equal to that of Motorola’s new Droid Bionic, last summer’s EVO 4G and the Thunderbolt’s sister product that debuted alongside it: the AT&T-carried Inspire.
All the advantages of such a large screen come through when using the back-facing 8-megapixel camera. It’s got a nice array of filters to tweak your photos, including the “vintage warm” filter (aka the Instagram effect). And sadly, I didn’t have anyone to video-chat with, but it’s nice to know I can, with the 1.3-megapixel front facing camera.
The haptic feedback on the Thunderbolt’s capacitive touchscreen is a nice touch, but I had a bit of difficulty with pressure sensitivity when trying to scroll through menu screens. On occasion I’d require a little extra effort to choose a widget. This was not a huge deal, but was still noticeable.
The sausage-fingered shopper need not worry. Where the spaciousness of the screen shines is in typing on the Thunderbolt’s keyboard. It’s easy to compose texts fairly quickly, and I made relatively few errors during test texts.
We’ve been hearing lots about 4G network capability lately, and the Thunderbolt is HTC’s Verizon-carried contender. From the bit I did, the phone’s browsing speed is indeed ample. A quick Google search for Wired.com brought our site up in about five seconds. Scrolling downward on the page was fairly smooth, with only minimal clipping.
Under the hood, the Thunderbolt runs on a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, with 768 MB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage. It moved along through the menus speedily, and it pulled up video and pictures without much lag. There’s also a microSD card slot with a 32-GB card included.
The back of the Thunderbolt has a matte finish to it, somewhat akin to HTC’s unsuccessful Nexus One. With the Thunderbolt’s finish, it doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to slipping from the hand that easily.
The little Google-branded kickstand on the back is a nice flourish, especially when you want to watch video on the phone’s large screen. And the metal finish of the kickstand just looks cool.
Overall, I dug the Thunderbolt well enough upon first glance. We’ll have to see how it and Verizon’s 4G network perform when the phone is eventually launched.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
A new video leaked on the Internet shows someone playing Resident Evil on the rumored PlayStation Phone. It looks to be in full working condition.
Originally posted at The Digital Home
Google’s photo-searching app adds some more capabilities, including one that solves Sudoku puzzles.
Originally posted at Android Atlas
by Sam Biddle
Tuesday is the day a lot of you have been waiting for — the iPhone 4 taken under Verizon’s big red wing. We know the announcement’s happening, but what else do we know for sure? And what about those floating rumors?
First, here’s what we’re sure of.
It doesn’t get much more solid than this. Verizon’s sent out invites to tech writers, and, though only through the always-nebulous “people familiar with the matter,” the Wall Street Journal has confirmed.
The odds of Apple giving Verizon anything other than a CDMA version of the same iPhone 4 AT&T has are extremely low. If a new Apple product — say, the iPhone 5 — were about to be loosed on us, you better believe it’d be Apple doing the unveiling, not Verizon. There’s also a whole host of reasons why an LTE iPhone doesn’t make sense right now — poor coverage, battery-life murder, Apple’s early-adoption anxiety, and existing knowledge of a CDMA model’s development behind closed doors. Engadget’s also dug up photos of an adjusted antenna design, likely made with CDMA optimization in mind.
Finally, if Apple had something shiny and exciting to debut, they’d be doing it themselves. So keep your pants on until this summer, when a new version is likely to be announced.
Now we head into slight uncertainty territory. A WSJ report — again, via “a person familiar with the matter” — says Verizon’s planning an unlimited data plan. This makes sense, as it would give Verizon a competitive edge over AT&T, which terminated its own unlimited plan in favor of capped data (except for those subscribers grandfathered in with an unlimited plan that predated the change).
The original WSJ report points to an end-of-the-month release for Verizon’s iPhone, while BGR says sometime between Feb. 3 and 6 (based on a Verizon employee-vacation blockade during that time). Not much of a difference, either way.
All Things D, citing “sources in a position to know,” says Jobs’ appearance alongside Verizon is “likely,” unless there are “unforeseen circumstances” (a flat tire?). The significance of Jobs’ attendance, and what role he might take, of course a whole other barrel of speculation.
The elusive great white whale of mobile electronics! Could it show up tomorrow? ZD Net’s “educated guess” is that, yes, Verizon will indeed land the oft-delayed white model.
This story was written by Sam Biddle and originally appeared on Gizmodo.
Photo credit: jfingas /Flickr
We’ve been begging Microsoft to somehow add Mac compatibility to the Zune for years, and it looks like there’s a tiny little ray of hope buried in Redmond’s Windows Phone 7 Connector for OS X: a simple plist modification will let it sync the Zune HD as well. That really shouldn’t be any big surprise, since WP7’s media interface is built on top of Zune, but at least it’s something — although we’re still hoping and wishing for the full Zune suite (and Zune Pass) to make its way to the Mac someday.
Zune HD Mac support secretly hidden in Windows Phone 7 Connector software originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve been begging Microsoft to somehow add Mac compatibility to the Zune for years, and it looks like there’s a tiny little ray of hope buried in Redmond’s Windows Phone 7 Connector for OS X: a simple plist modification will let it sync the Zune HD as well. That really shouldn’t be any big surprise, since WP7’s media interface is built on top of Zune, but at least it’s something — although we’re still hoping and wishing for the full Zune suite (and Zune Pass) to make its way to the Mac someday.
Zune HD Mac support secretly hidden in Windows Phone 7 connecter software originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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There’s no way it can be pure coincidence that Apple decided to drop the price of its iPhone 3GS the day before Verizon’s rumored iPhone announcement. So, for those of you who have waited patiently to buy an iPhone at a reasonable price on AT&T, now is your time to grab this offer. The 8GB iPhone 3GS starts at $49 with with a two-year AT&T plan — 50 percent less than its original price. This happens a week after AT&T dropped it to $49.
That being said, this is the 3GS, not the iPhone 4, so you’re still not getting the best iPhone out there. It does, however, start at $150 less than the iPhone 4. You may want to wait until after tomorrow’s announcement to see what Verizon has up its sleeves, though.
The day that Verizon gets the iPhone will be remembered as glorious by everybody who’s dropped 12 calls in a row, been taunted by meaningless signal bars and just plain had a miserable AT&T experience. But they shouldn’t buy one. More »
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