Hasta La Gadget!

Got yourself a big new Windows Phone 7 device and need something to fill its screen with? Sling Media has your back with its SlingPlayer Mobile app, which has hit the Marketplace just in time to earn its Launch App Partner achievement. Pricing for the software is set at $30 in the US, C$32 in Canada, £23 in the UK, and €21.10 in Europe plus local tax, though you’ll obviously need to have a Slingbox to communicate with as well. It ain’t cheap, but good things rarely are.

Update: We’ve also just come across a signup page for news updates on an iPad version of SlingPlayer Mobile. It’ll be priced identically to the company’s smartphone offerings, at $30, and looks to be coming soon. Thanks, Blake!

Continue reading SlingPlayer arrives in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, headed to iPad next (updated)

SlingPlayer arrives in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, headed to iPad next (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Details of the Garmin-ASUS breakup are slowly being revealed. We now know that ASUS has obtained exclusive rights to license Garmin navigation and location based services on its Android smartphones with a Garmin navigation trademark slapped on the back — other Android handset makers need not apply. ASUS will go back to selling its own-brand handsets in January, including models equipped with 3D for gaming and connectivity with ASUS ebook readers and tablets, according to DigiTimes. For its part, Garmin’s official blog says that it will be expanding its mobile application handset development by offering navigation and other applications through “certain consumer application stores.” According to DigiTimes, that means Apple’s iTunes App Store and RIM’s App World. So, in other words, Garmin and ASUS are still friends but are now free to date anyone they want, you know, except for anyone in eachother’s families. How mature.

Garmin navigation to be an Android exclusive for ASUS, headed to Apple and RIM app stores originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Surprise of surprises! On the day that Europeans finally got to dig into the Windows Phone 7 cake in earnest, Twitter’s official app for the hot new platform has also gone live. We’ve downloaded it to our own WP7 device and are having a play around with it now. If you need a refresher as to what it looks like, check out the video after the break.

Update: Okay, we can neither log in nor get signed up at present, though others have clearly achieved the feat already. Twitter.com itself keeps alternating between its new and old versions, so we suspect there’s quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes at present. To answer your queries, loading time from the live tile menu to the top tweets page above is approximately three seconds, while scrolling is basically identical to the perfection available on WP7’s own apps. Swiping laterally gets you into Trends, Suggested, and Nearby categories which take a couple of moments to load up their tweets, but otherwise match the performance.

Exiting to the live tile menu throws you out of whatever you were doing and re-entering the app — as is par for the Windows Phone 7 course right now — means starting from scratch. The only way you can save you state is by locking the phone, which takes a second or two to resume when unlocked and returns you to the exact point you were at. Great, now let us in, Twitter!

Hold up, reader David Gordon points out that you can hit the live tile menu via the Windows/Start key and then return to Twitter through the Back button, yay, that works too.

Update 2: There are still errors being thrown up, but we finally got ourselves logged in. Well, it looks just like the vid promised it would and the app itself is working flawlessly, there are no processing delays that we can see. Oh, and there’s a landscape mode. Our only bugbear is that there’s no differentiation between your own tweets and those of your friends. Ah well, check out the gallery below.

Continue reading Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live (update: hands-on)

Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live (update: hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just spotted the FaceTime logo, or a version of it, lurking in the OS X dock during Apple’s iMovie 11 demo. New version of iChat with FaceTime compatibility? We’d put money on it.

Update: It’s real! It appears to be an all-new app, instead of a version of iChat AV. You use your Mac’s Address Book and make calls right from the app. If your chat counterpart is in portrait or landscape the display automatically adjusts, and you can also go to full screen. Better yet? It’s out today, in a beta form. Find out more in our hands-on.

FaceTime coming to OS X, beta available today originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Finally, at long last, after so much waiting, Skype has made its debut as a full-fledged Android app. There are no Verizon-related limitations anymore, but Android Police reports that calling through the app is only available via WiFi, you can’t use your mobile’s data connection — not yet, anyway. Another note they make is that Skype is using quite a few processing cycles to do its job, so much so that it introduced crackling on a call carried out with the EVO. You’ll need to have Android 2.1 installed to run this thing, but if you do, why aren’t you downloading it already? Let us know how your own ‘droid fares in the comments below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

P.S. — Skype’s press release and video after the break have confirmed that 3G Skype calls will be available to all outside the US. Wow. Also, Skype’s acknowledged there are some incompatibilities with Samsung Galaxy S phones and is working to iron those out.

Continue reading Skype app arrives in Android Market, WiFi-only in the US

Skype app arrives in Android Market, WiFi-only in the US originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 05:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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