Hasta La Gadget!

Since Huawei’s president formerly served as a senior engineer in the People’s Liberation Army of China, it’s unsurprising that it’s raised the hackles of the US and other countries. It’s been blocked from a variety of prime, security-sensitive contracts on suspicion of espionage, but the Chinese company seems bent on proving its honorable intentions, and has opened a “Cyber Security Evaluation Center” in Banbury, UK to do exactly that. According to the Economist, the company will work closely with GCHQ, the British signals-intelligence agency located in nearby Cheltenham, to persuade the UK and other governments that its equipment is trustworthy. It even has security-cleared staff, including some from the British agency, to shake down the gear and ensure it can’t be exploited by spooks or crooks. Huawei already has hefty backbone contracts in Canada and New Zealand and is becoming one of the world’s largest suppliers of telecom infrastructure, on top of its high ranking as a handset maker. It might hope this new approach will let it break its US and UK market logjam — but it has a lot of pent-up distrust to overcome.

Filed under: Cellphones, Networking

Huawei working with British spy service to prove its ‘kit’ is clean originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back when we met the Galaxy S III for the very first time, Samsung promised a wireless charging solution would be coming soon to its sleek and potent slab. Unfortunately, Sammy’s power-boosting companion’s been hit by hapless delays that have prevented it from seeing the light of day. Now, thanks to a few recent shots from Phone Arena, it looks like at least some S3 owners could see a bundle in the near future, albeit not the official one from the Korean outfit. According to the site’s kind tipster, Verizon’s allegedly pricing the charging station at $50, while the rear case is expected to be around $40 — making it about $90 for the entire kit. Naturally, this could change at any given moment, but hey, at least we know it’s out there.

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Wireless

Verizon-branded Galaxy S III wireless charging kit starts showing up at retail stores originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T has only just begun the transition away from 2G services with its spectrum refarming in New York City, but it now has a target end date to mark on the calendar: January 1st, 2017. Courtesy of an SEC filing, we know that the carrier hopes that both its GSM voice and EDGE data networks will have gone to the great cell tower in the sky before we’re popping the champagne corks about four and a half years from now. The Big Blue Ball expects the transition to be a smooth one, as only 12 percent of its regular subscribers are using 2G-only phones today; if it ever gets bumpy, the company promises to “proactively” steer the holdouts towards 3G and 4G. Don’t get too misty-eyed. While the transition will mark the end to what’s arguably one of the most definitive chapters in US cellular history, that far-flung date will likely come well after most of us have moved on — much like the AMPS shutdown, it could be less of a bang and more of a whimper.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

AT&T plans to shut down entire 2G network by 2017 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony‘s next-gen interchangeable lens cameras, the NEX-5R and NEX-6, will include WiFi connectivity a listing at an Indonesian test agency has revealed. The detail spill came courtesy of POSTEL and was swiftly yanked, but not before Sony Alpha Rumors could snatch a screenshot. Although there was no further detail in either filing, the WiFi tech is expected to be used for wirelessly transferring shots from the camera to nearby computers and cloud galleries, among other things.

That could mean no longer having to plug in a USB cable or pull out the memory card to offload photos and video from your camera, as well as automatically uploading one or more shots to Flick, Facebook or other gallery services. However, it’s possible that Sony could also enable remote control of the new NEX cameras.

For instance, Samsung offers a free Android app for its NX1000 camera, itself WiFi-enabled, that allows the phone to be used as a wireless preview display. Sony could opt to do the same; meanwhile, the WiFi link could also be used to geotag photos using the handset’s own location services.

Other specifications are similarly the source of rumor. The NEX-5R is tipped to have a 180-degree flip screen along with a 16-megapixel sensor, while the NEX-6 has been said to have an integrated electronic viewfinder (though lower resolution than on the more expensive NEX-7).

Both cameras are believed to be headed to Photokina in September, along with a trio of new lenses including a prime, an 11-18mm pancake, and a 16-50mm pancake.

[via Engadget]

Sony NEX-5R and NEX-7 WiFi cameras leak is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Ting has drawn a lot of attention among MVNOs for its unique mix-and-match approach to contract-free plans, but it’s had to contend with some rather middling phones inherited from its network partner Sprint. That gap in high-end phones will narrow before the summer’s up: Ting plans to carry the Galaxy S III within three to six weeks, becoming the first virtual carrier in the US to tout Samsung’s flagship. Its version is identical to the Sprint model and will even cost $20 less when you skip Sprint’s two-year term, at $529 for a 16GB edition and $579 for its 32GB cousin. If that doesn’t satisfy the appetite, Ting is also giving a peek at its menu for the months ahead. Along with adopting LTE this year to make that Galaxy S III hum, the carrier expects to bring in a more moderately-priced LTE phone, a hotspot, an accessible phone and a budget slider. We wouldn’t base any carrier switches around an iPhone or Windows Phone option, though. There’s only “some progress” coaxing a deal out of Apple, and a Windows Phone is most likely to wait until the first quarter of 2013.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Ting becomes first US MVNO to hop the Galaxy S III bandwagon, outlines its device roadmap originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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