Hasta La Gadget!

Sprint’s decision to take its LTE live in Kansas City marked a short prelude to a full orchestral performance — the carrier’s upgraded 4G network is now official. Kansas City and St. Joseph in Kansas and Missouri, as well as 13 urban areas in Georgia and Texas, are taking the leap past WiMAX speeds as of today. Senior network VP Bob Azzi has warned the Kansas City Star that the current LTE access is still mostly for use outside until it expands to the 3G network’s range, although he adds that there will be a coverage map available from July 16th onwards to let EVO 4G LTE, Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S III owners know when their phones reach full potential. Just remember that the real party starts in 2013, when Sprint hopes to both flick on voice over LTE and ramp up to extra-speedy LTE-Advanced.

[Thanks, Alex]

Update: As locals in the comments have helpfully reminded us, St. Joseph is in Missouri and just sits along the border with Kansas — you know what they say about horseshoes, hand grenades and being close enough.

Continue reading PSA: Sprint LTE goes live today, honest and for true (update: includes Missouri)

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

PSA: Sprint LTE goes live today, honest and for true (update: includes Missouri) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Kansas City Star, Sprint  | Email this | Comments

Samsung and SugarSync are already cozy with each other, having struck a deal to put SugarSync’s cloud file sharing on Samsung’s AllShare Play-equipped TVs. That relationship just got a lot closer: SugarSync will now be a mainstay for Samsung’s rather successful mobile devices. Starting with the Galaxy S III, any Samsung phone or tablet that supports AllShare Play will have SugarSync built-in, whether it’s for looking at files and media from back home or just to upload the phone’s own photos and videos for sharing later on. The service still offers a free 5GB of storage as a baseline and will scale up to 500GB if you’re willing to fork over up to $40 a month. Between this and a Dropbox deal for most carriers, Samsung has the cloud largely sewn up on its handhelds — if you can’t access it, it probably doesn’t exist.

Continue reading SugarSync to ship with many Samsung mobile devices, make Galaxy S III a home away from home

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Internet

SugarSync to ship with many Samsung mobile devices, make Galaxy S III a home away from home originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Based on Samsung’s hacker-friendly track record, you’d generally expect one of it smartphones to come with an unlocked bootloader, making it easy to update or tweak with unofficial ROMs. That’s not the case with Verizon’s imminent version of the Galaxy S III, however. As the folk at XDA know only too well, this particular iteration of Sammy’s flagship comes with a sealed bootloader, which makes it resistant (though not impervious) to hackery.

Of course, Sammy has nothing to gain from snubbing the modding community in this way, so it stands to reason that VZW pushed the Korean manufacturer to supply them with a locked bootloader — despite the fact that all other variants have been left open. We’ve reached out to Big Red for comment, but in the meantime a clever soul over at Rootzwiki claims they’ve already found a workaround for root access. (At this point, though, we’d better provide our usual disclaimer: be very careful before you poke around in there, because going up against a locked bootloader can be risky. The apparent safety of modern life is just a shallow skin atop an ocean of blood, guts and bricked devices.)

Verizon Galaxy S III has locked bootloader (but it’s been rooted anyway) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Jul 2012 08:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  XDA Developers Forum, Rootzwiki  | Email this | Comments

Samsung’s current US trinity is now complete: the AT&T Galaxy S III is sitting on store shelves. After the somewhat bumpy launch, it’s possible to traipse by any of Big Blue’s stores and pick up the Android 4.0 flagship in marble white or pebble blue for $200 on a contract. It’s the definitive GSM version for the US, with LTE giving it an edge over the HSPA+ T-Mobile model; we just wish there was an AT&T variant with 32GB of storage built-in, although that’s nothing a microSD card won’t fix. We just need to wait for US Cellular and Verizon to complete the launch and put Nature UX in seemingly every pocket.

PSA: Samsung Galaxy S III for AT&T now in stores originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AT&T  | Email this | Comments

Korea’s golden goose is on track to drop its 10 millionth Galaxy S III by July, according to Samsung mobile head Shin Jong-kyun. The expectation comes despite limited supply, fueled by a component shortage at the smartphone giant. Regardless of this notable shortcoming, Samsung has wasted no time getting its latest handset to market, and expects to deliver the 4.8-inch Galaxy to some 300 carriers in 147 countries by the end of next month, including all of the major UK carriers, along with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon in the US. The sky-high figure is merely an estimate, however, so investors may want to stay tuned for the official announcement before uncorking the Dom. Full details are at the source link below.

[Thanks, Joseph]

Samsung: Galaxy S III sales expected to total 10 million by July originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AP  | Email this | Comments