Hasta La Gadget!

Shopping for a smartphone can be an exciting and arduous experience. Along with the promise of something new and fantastic, it brings the fear of commitment, and even worse, the prospect of saddling yourself to a lousy device for two years. Fortunately for you, Engadget spends tons of time playing with the latest gear and we’re constantly on the lookout for what’s coming next. If you’re wanting to take the pain out of shopping for a smartphone, you’ve come to the right place. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Engadget’s smartphone buyer’s guide: your one-stop resource to finding the best and most exciting handsets on the market today.

Before you dive in, however, we’ve introduced a few changes to the buyer’s guide, so take a minute to prepare yourself for what’s in store. First and foremost, you’ll now find alternate selections to supplement our top picks. This should already be familiar to many of you, which is the same format we use for our seasonal gift guides. The next one is a biggie: we’ve dropped the QWERTY selection. By and large, manufacturers and carriers alike have shifted their focus away from keyboard-equipped smartphones, and you’ll rarely find more than one option on any given carrier. That said, if you still insist on the tactile experience, you’ll always find everything you need to know in our reviews. Finally, whenever possible, you’ll now find prices from Amazon Wireless, which allows us to provide you with more compelling budget selections and highlight the substantial savings that you can score by circumventing the carriers. It’s not like they need your charity, anyway.

If you’re curious to see how it all unfolded — and we know you are — join us after the break, where we round up the very best smartphones of the season.

Continue reading Engadget’s smartphone buyer’s guide: fall 2012 edition

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, Google, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, LG, T-Mobile

Engadget’s smartphone buyer’s guide: fall 2012 edition originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in January of 2012 a message was released by HTC’s UK chief Phil Robertson that made it clear how the manufacturer would be limiting the amount of devices they’d release in 2012 – what happened to that promise? The words relayed back then made it seem as though HTC would be going Apple’s way with a strategy that focused on a single phone – or perhaps a small collection of phones – that would be supported in ways that simply are not allowed by a strategy that includes phone after phone released in tight succession. This was an amazing opportunity for HTC – what happened?

Today HTC announced three more new phones, two of them part of the HTC One series – the HTC One X+, VX, and Windows Phone 8X – revealed earlier internationally, here coming to AT&T for the first time. The HTC One X+ is essentially a boosted version of the HTC One X, the One VX is essentially the equivalent of the One V, and the Windows Phone is a whole new device. Each of these devices look and feel nice, but they’re heartbreakers, each one of them – not in their quality, but in that they represent additional frays from the single device strategy.

“We had a fantastic year, with 65% growth year on year in the UK. But in Q4 we delivered a lot more products than in the past. Now we want to create more of a ‘hero’ approach. We make great phones, but it is hard to do that when the portfolio is spread too much. … So 2012 is about giving our customers something special. We need to make sure we do not go so far down the line that we segment our products by launching lots of different SKUs.” – Robertson

The closest we’ve gotten to a hero strategy as it was described earlier this year was the HTC One series as it stood in its first set of three, the HTC One X, V, and S. Then came the HTC EVO 4G LTE and the DROID Incredible 4G LTE and the whole show went down the drain. It should be clear why this happened – Sprint has the “EVO” brand that HTC relies on for sales on that carrier, the same being true of Verizon with both the “DROID” and “Incredible” brand names.

HTC has a hero strategy in place that’s different for each carrier. If they’d release one device – or even three devices like they did at the start of the One series, they’d have the power that not just Apple has with their iPhone, Samsung and their Galaxy S III and their Galaxy Note series as well. Make one phone and the money will flow.

What happened to the HTC Hero Device strategy? is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It appears that the industry supply chain behind the HTC smartphone lineup has been vocal about the disappointment felt by the company at slow sales of the HTC One series. According to trusted sources speaking with MyDrivers, its not long now before the entire HTC line of smartphones will be discounted right from the source. This price cut will come not only for their Android set of HTC One devices, but for their new Windows Phone 8 smartphones as well, coming out later this year.

The HTC One series will continue to work with Beats technology, but Beats will no longer be integrated in future models, and Beats earbuds will no longer be included with any future models of any kind. The HTC One series has appeared on AT&T and T-Mobile with the HTC One X and the HTC One S this year, and the HTC One V has just popped up on one of its several carriers in the United States just this week with Cricket Wireless. HTC has recently reported that they’ve had a slightly less than impressive set of quarters in the earnings universe, and their competition has certainly ramped up in the last few years as far as Android goes.

The HTC One V is now appearing on several budget-minded carriers across the United States, the HTC One X is only on one carrier, and the HTC One V is only on one carrier. There’s an EVO 4G LTE device out there living inside this One generation without the brand name, and Verizon has a new HTC device in the Droid Incredible space. It’s a disconnected space, that’s for certain.

Have a peek at our timeline of HTC’s recent earnings reports to track how they’ve done over the past year. With the HTC One series appearing to be a master-stroke of genius earlier this year, it’s hard to see the manufacturer struggle here in late summer. As it stands, HTC’s only choice might be to keep up the vertical integration game that they started with HTC One – it’s the trend, and it certainly seems to work – ask Samsung!

[via Unwired View]

HTC plans price slash at One series disappointment is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to Engadget’s back to school guide! The end of summer vacation isn’t nearly as much fun as the weeks that come before, but a chance to update your tech tools likely helps to ease the pain. Today, we’re tapping away on our brand-new smartphones — and you can head to the back to school hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of August we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — you can hit up the hub page right here!

It’s a good time to be a student. Last year, there were some solid picks, but it was still very clear that those willing to scrimp and save a little longer had a much better experience. This year, it’s a people’s revolution. Thanks to cutthroat competition, there are some exceptional phones out there, even for those of you hoping to avoid eating ramen noodles for a month. Software has taken a leap forward too, with many phones now offering a vital way to remember when that term paper is due… or to procrastinate at the pub. We have nine choices of phones in our shortlist, spread out across three categories to serve everyone from the I-just-need-a-phone freshman to the overloaded doctoral candidate. While you’re eying the selection, don’t forget to enter our giveaway and potentially ease the burden — who knows, you may get a phone you want rather than the one dictated by your student loan.

Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: smartphones

Filed under: Cellphones

Engadget’s back to school guide 2012: smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of July 16th, 2012

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Software

Refresh Roundup: week of July 16th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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