Hasta La Gadget!

These shots actually surfaced a few days ago buried in the depths of HowardForums, but given what we know of Samsung’s R900 Craft thus far — particularly the fact that it’ll be a non-smartphone — we have no reason to doubt that we’re looking at a prototype of it here. What makes the Craft most notable is that it’s slated to be MetroPCS’ first LTE-capable handset (and one of the first LTE handsets anywhere in the world) for its shiny new 4G network, and it looks like we can expect full sliding QWERTY along with the typical TouchWiz UI elements. We’d like to hate on this thing for not running Android or Windows Phone 7, but hey — it’s almost certainly going to be the first LTE phone to hit these shores, so we’re willing to cut it just an ounce of slack this once. The carrier’s first LTE markets are lighting up later this year, so we expect to see this with a whole lot less Blurrycam before too long.

Samsung Craft LTE phone spied enroute to MetroPCS? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The second ever 4G phone has added pressure to be better than the first. Aldrin was better than Armstrong at punching skeptics in the face, for example. So is the Epic 4G better than the EVO? In almost every way. More »

Look out, Sprint — if you aren’t careful, you might just end up pulling a Palm. Shortly after Dan Schulman, Sprint’s prepaid business honcho, announced that he’d be leaving The Now Network for a position at American Express, product development guru Kevin Packingham has announced that he’ll be packing out on Monday. The 39-year old is responsible for spearheading some of Sprint’s most highly sought after products, namely the HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Epic 4G. He’ll be leaving his Senior VP office in order to “run another company in Kansas City,” but Sprint’s remaining mum on what exactly that company will be. For what it’s worth, a spokeswoman for the carrier confessed to the Wall Street Journal that the departures aren’t a concern, and that “Steve Elfman, president of Sprint’s network operations and wholesale business, and Fared Adib, vice president of product development and Mr. Packingham’s lieutenant, will share oversight of product development.”

Sprint’s product development guru bolts from yellow pastures, heads to greener ones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have absolutely no idea what this means for iSpot owners’ service plans if they go through with this — for all we know, they’ll detect un-iPad-like amounts of usage and threaten to up your monthly fee — but if you’re the risky type and you’ve got an iSpot lying around, its pesky MAC filtering can be a thing of the past with just a tiny bit of effort. There’s a blog out there that now has concise instructions posted for gaining root access on the hotspot and tweaking config files to obliterate the MAC filter and enable USB tethering (by default it’ll only do WiFi), but if that’s too much effort for you, another site — cheekily named “iSpot instant jailbreak” — just hooks you up with a binary that you can upload to the iSpot to take care of the filtering in one fell swoop. Again, proceed with caution, because it’s anyone’s guess how Clear is going to take all this.

[Thanks, Travis]

Update: We’ve pulled the iSpot instant jailbreak link after hearing reports that it might be doing more harm than good — and there might even be some malicious intent involved because it apparently opens a backdoor that allows remote access to the admin console. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of device hacking, folks.

Update 2: The creator of the iSpot instant jailbreak just reached out to us know that the remote admin issue was “an error on [his] part” and that the latest version of the config file has it removed; we’ve re-added the link to it, but as always with these sorts of things, use caution here and be ready for potential flakiness.

Clear iSpot’s device filtering falls to the hackers in near record time originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Updated to include HTC comment

After Google’s Nexus One, HTC’s Evo 4G phone is the first device to get upgraded to the latest Android 2.2 Froyo version of the operating system. But some users are not happy about it.

The Froyo update has broken the syncing of multiple Gmail accounts on the device. The results is that only the primary Gmail account is updated automatically. Second and third Gmail accounts  have to be manually refreshed to pull in new e-mails, say Evo users on forums such as Android Central and Google’s Android support board.

“My two Gmail accounts have always worked great on 2.1. Moving to 2.2 my primary Gmail pushes instantly. My secondary Gmail account doesn’t sync at all. I have to manually sync to get it to work,” says ‘tommy m‘, an Evo user who first posted about the issue on the Android Central forum.

The problem also means that users don’t see new e-mail notifications from secondary accounts.

A HTC spokesman told Wired.com the company is aware of the bug but does not see it as a widespread issue.

“The good news is that it has not affected a majority of users,” says Keith Nowak. “We are working to find a fix.”

HTC and Sprint, the exclusive carrier for the Evo, started pushing out Froyo to customers on August 3. The update offers features such as voice dialing over Bluetooth, the ability to store apps on the external memory card and browser improvements including a faster JavaScript engine and Flash support.

The problems with syncing of multiple Gmail accounts flared up right after the Evo moved to Android 2.2. Some Froyo users have been offering homebrewed solutions on message boards including deleting the accounts and adding them again with a change to the mail setting of ‘notify once.’  But the solution hasn’t worked reliably for all users.

See Also:

• Storage Bug Hits HTC Evo 4G Phone Just Before Launch
• Wired Video: HTC Evo 4G Dissected
• Overclocked HTC Evo Runs Almost 30 Percent Faster
• Oops! Sprint Says it Overstated HTC Evo Phone Sales
• Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com