Hasta La Gadget!

The 4G Veer will undoubtedly sell in the dozens. Photo Jon Snyder / Wired.com

HP’s webOS-based Veer 4G cellphone is coming to AT&T on May 15th. The tiny Palm phone — small enough to be hidden in your own palm — will be an AT&T exclusive. This seems to us to be better than the suicide-by-carrier that Palm committed by giving Sprint the exclusive deal on the original Palm.

The diminutive phones manages to pack in a pull out keyboard. A good thing, too, as trying to type on the tiny 2.6-inch screen would drive you crazy. Other specs include a 5MP camera, 8GB storage and an 800MHz Snapdragon processor. The whole package weighs in at 3.63 ounces.

Don’t let the “4G” part of the name get you too excited. First, it doesn’t support HSPA+, which is widely considered just 3.5G. Instead, it has HSDPA, or enhanced 3G. Calling this a 4G phone is a stretch.

Not that it really matters. Having a 4G phone today is like owning an 802.11n-compatible Wi-Fi device a few years back. It was nice to see on the spec sheet, but as most Wi-Fi networks were still 802.11g, you could never get the extra speed anyway.

The Veer “4G” will be out on May 15th, as I said, and cost $100.

Veer “4G” press release [AT&T via HP Palm blog]

See Also:

• Hands-On With HP's Tiny Veer Smartphone
• WebOS
• HP Launches WebOS-Powered Tablet, Phones
• Wired Explains: What U.S. Carriers Mean by '4G'
• Carriers Bet Big on 4G Phones Despite Network Immaturity

Sure, you still may not be able to easily find an iPad 2 here in the US, but you can now sleep soundly knowing that the Japanese pen pal you had in elementary school could be rocking one by the end of the week. Amidst all the hub-bub about location tracking and pasty iPhones, Apple let slip that the WiFi iPad 2 will be available in Japan on April 28th, just as promised, coming to Hong Kong, India, Israel, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates a day later, then hitting China on May 6th. Local pricing is not confirmed, but suggested retail pricing matches US MSRPs ($499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB). 3G models are said to match US pricing as well ($629, $729, and $829), but Apple isn’t confirming when they’ll be available abroad, so at least you still have something over Katsumi.

Continue reading iPad 2 extends its global reign of terror to Singapore, Japan, 9 other countries this week

iPad 2 extends its global reign of terror to Singapore, Japan, 9 other countries this week originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is your fancy new phone lacking that certain extra G that makes it special? Worry not, it’s not just your device, Verizon’s entire LTE network seems to be having problems as outages have been reported from across the US. We tested our own Thunderbolt in San Francisco this morning and it was indeed making do with only 3G connectivity. It’s important to note that Verizon’s 3G network seems to be ticking along quite alright, it’s just 4G service that’s down at the moment. Some folks have reported losing both 3G and 4G connectivity, but that’s owing to a documented issue with 3G provisioning on the Thunderbolt — we’ve noted the way to overcome that problem in a previous post. For now, just enjoy your regular-speed mobile internet until the super-fast stuff is fixed and back up.

Update: The Verizon Wireless Twitter account has confirmed the issue, and that the company’s network engineers are “working to resolve quickly.”

Update 2: As of 4:13pm ET Verizon has determined the cause and is “working with major vendors to restore connections.” Still no ETA for a fix.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Verizon’s LTE network takes the night off, leaves a bunch of Thunderbolt users bewildered originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skype's new Android app update fixes a recently discovered security flaw in the software. Image courtesy Skype

Skype released a new version of its Android app Wednesday morning, fixing the app’s recently discovered security vulnerabilities.

The new version secures a loophole in which third-party software was able to gain access to data stored on the user’s phone.

“We have had no reported examples of any third-party malicious application misusing information from the Skype directory on Android devices,” Skype’s chief information-security officer Adrian Asher said in a blog post. The company encouraged users to download its software from the official Android Market or the Skype web site, rather than an unofficial outside venue.

Skype’s popular voice-over-internet service took heat last week after a blogger discovered the security flaw in the Android version of the app, which allowed access to sensitive user details including your full name, address and date of birth. The security exploit has existed on Skype’s Android app since its wide release in October.

Skype also included a new feature for Android users in the update: Calls can now be made using 3G networks.

U.S. Skype users could previously use only Wi-Fi connections to make VOIP calls over Skype’s servers, except for those who had certain Verizon-carried phones. Outside the United States, however, Skype users could make calls on both Wi-Fi and 3G.

While this wide availability of 3G calls using Skype is new to Android users, Skype released its 3G calling feature for iOS devices almost a full year ago.

Calls (both voice-only and video chat) as well as IMs between Skype users remain free, while calls made from Skype to non-Skype cell numbers or land lines can be paid by a subscription plan or purchasing Skype credits.

See Also:

• Skype’s Android App Could Expose Your Personal Details
• Skype IPO ‘Delayed’: Wall Street Journal
• Skype Creates Exchange Platform for Teachers
• Skype Delivers Major Mac Desktop Upgrade
• Skype on Fring Is Dead, But Who Killed It?

The one Android tablet that isn’t riding NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core chip and Google’s Honeycomb iteration (but might still be worth buying) has this weekend become available to pre-order in the UK. The Carphone Warehouse is listing a £600 ($983) fee for owning the HTC Flyer, which is more or less a match for the €669 price Amazon.de is offering to German slate lovers. In exchange for a dozen rose-tinted notes with the Queen’s face on them, you’ll get a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 display, encased in an aluminum unibody case and powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm chip. HTC’s Sense UI has undergone some tablet-friendly tweaks and there is of course that Scribe stylus to flex your artistic muscles with. 3G connectivity and 32GB of storage flesh out the Flyer’s hardware offering, while the underlying Android Gingerbread OS is promised to get a Honeycomb-flavored update, most likely some time this summer.

HTC Flyer hits UK pre-order status at £600, comes with 3G and 32GB of storage originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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