Hasta La Gadget!

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!

Filed under: Mobile

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Spring may have sprung two weeks ago, but believe us, it’s still winter somewhere. (Ed note: I’m typing this from underneath an NVIDIA Snuggie — Dana.) In fact, Darren’s had a reason to test out some touchscreen-friendly gloves, even in his southerly state of North Carolina. Up north, our own Jon Fingas has been playing with the Lumia 620 on Canada’s Telus networks. No complaints from him about the 40-degree temps, though.

Filed under: Misc, Nokia

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If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a new smartphone to Cricket, insights from Verizon about its forthcoming AWS deployment and even a rugged accessory from Nokia. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that’s happening in the mobile world for this week of March 11th, 2013.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 7 days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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It’s easy to dismiss the Lumia 620 as yet another cheaply-priced smartphone, but that isn’t the case. In fact, Nokia’s latest release made me completely rethink Windows Phone. Sure, the mobile OS lacks the app selection of its rivals, but maybe I didn’t need them to begin with. Maybe I didn’t need the same processor found in rival Android devices to run an OS that’s generally much lighter and more direct. Perhaps Nokia thought the same thing, because in reading over the Lumia 620’s spec sheet, there’s a lot of decidedly low-to-middleweight hardware. But it’s hundreds of dollars less than the Lumia 920 and once I got my hands on it, I realized this was the Windows Phone I had been waiting for.

Nokia needs a success. So does Microsoft — it’s been three years to the day since Windows Phone 7 was first announced

Nokia needs a success. So does Microsoft — it’s been three years to the day since Windows Phone 7 was first announced. Since then, we’ve seen Nokia transplant its ill-fated N9 into the stylish Lumia 800; then the bigger (and not as slick) Lumia 900 tried to crack America. On the sidelines, second-string Lumias like the 710 or the 610 arrived to antipathy. They lacked the design punch, build quality (and colors!) of the high-end iterations. Then late in 2012, Windows Phone 8 arrived and the pocket-straining Lumia 920 was unfortunately pitted against the Galaxy S III and the iPhone 5. An operating system that still had to prove itself was now going up against Android’s and iOS’ strongest players and on a two-year contract, to boot! That’s a deep bet to make on a fledgling, niche OS. The Lumia 920 attempted to play on its strengths (like admittedly superb low-light photos and an enhanced touchscreen) to warrant the premium, but it doesn’t quite hit home for me. Dropping any price-tag pretension, it’s the Lumia 620 that is Nokia’s most compelling Windows Phone to date.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

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