Hasta La Gadget!

If you thought Verizon Wireless and Alltel’s marriage underwent a good bit of scrutiny, you’ll soon be swearing that Vimpelcom and Wind Mobile are on some sort of global watch list. The Amsterdam-based Vimpelcom has taken a giant leap towards the completion of a $6 billion merger with Wind Telecom, the latter of which has around 117 million subscribers spread across Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, North Korea and Canada. If and when the two link hands, the combined effort will be home to a staggering 173 million customers, creating the fifth largest mobile operator by subscriber count. Wind Mobile’s head honcho seems more than enthused about the news, and he’s hoping that the tie-up will allow prices to sink for just about everyone involved. Claiming feats such as “more access to international cooperation for roaming and long distance services” and the ability to utilize “more leverage and increased scale” to drive down prices, Anthony Lacavera isn’t showing any public signs of worry when it comes to regulatory hurdles. In months past, the CRTC took issue with Globalive Wireless — operator of Wind Mobile — starting up in Canada, primarily due to the company’s largest lender (Orascom) residing outside of the Great White North. As of now, things seem to be sailing right along, but you can bet this marriage won’t be formally recognized before a borderline-obnoxious amount of investigating goes down behind the scenes.

[Thanks, Kelvin]

Vimpelcom moves forward with $6 billion Wind Mobile merger, intends to hurdle regulatory snags originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 11:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading AT&T tells customers using unauthorized tethering methods to pay up or stop

AT&T tells customers using unauthorized tethering methods to pay up or stop originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We take the Xoom for a spin around the Web. This time, with Flash.

Today, Adobe Flash 10.2 will hit the Android Market for devices running Froyo, Gingerbread and Honeycomb, and by now you’re probably familiar with what it brings — increased performance for dual-core smartphones running Android 2.2 and Android 2.3, and the promise of seriously sped-up Flash content and better battery life for Android 3.0 tablets (not to mention Flash, period). Well, we’ve already spent a full day with the latest build of Flash 10.2 for Android and quizzed the company thoroughly about the release, and there are a couple surprises in store.

First off, you don’t absolutely need a dual-core phone to take advantage of Flash 10.2 — Adobe VP Danny Winokur told us, and we confirmed in testing, that there are slight performance improvements on earlier devices too. With our trusty Droid 2’s 1Ghz OMAP3 chip, we saw a slight but noticeable boost in framerate when playing a YouTube trailer at 480p, which admittedly only took took that particular video from “unwatchable” to merely “fairly jerky.” With the Tegra 2-toting Motorola Xoom, however, 480p videos ran perfectly smooth, even as the tablet had trouble rendering 720p content as anything but a series of images. However, Adobe says even that will change soon, as this beta release doesn’t take advantage of full hardware acceleration — it’s actually turned off right now. Though the Tegra 2 is natively decoding video, Adobe told us that hardware rendering and compositing will be added in a subsequent release, and when they are it “will bring 720p playback to a really smooth, enjoyable level.” We also noticed that phone temperatures seemed slightly cooler with Flash 10.2, which suggests better battery life. The other work-in-progress is Flash integration into Google’s Honeycomb browser, which presently has trouble detecting finger taps when Flash isn’t played full screen, but which will — Adobe hopes — play exactly the same inside and outside the browser when work on Flash 10.2 is complete. Sounds promising, no? Then why not download it yourself this evening and give it a go?

Flash 10.2 hits Android today, Adobe hopes for viewable 720p playback in a matter of weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumors that the forthcoming version of the iPhone will sport Near Field Communication (NFC) technology are back, after being shot down by a number of sites, earlier in the week.

Of course, we’re still a ways from a formal announcement for the handset (that will most likely come in the early summer months), so fittingly, the current batch of rumors are third-hand. Forbes is citing an “entrepreneur who is working on a top-secret NFC product” who is in turn citing “a friend who works at Apple.”

It wouldn’t be a shock, of course, were Apple to offer such a technology on the new iPhone–and Steve Jobs would, no doubt, present such a feature as though his company invented it. Google, as present, is pushing the mobile payment technology, having backed in the latest version of Android.

The technology gives users a simple way to make payments via their handsets without actually touching the phone to a retail terminal.