Hasta La Gadget!

Sony’s mash-up Xperia, the SP, is taking its transparent element light show to the UK today, giving budget-minded Brits one stylish and feature-packed mobile alternative. The 4.6-inch 720p handset, which is basically a Best of… edition of the Xperia S and P with an aluminum unibody, is shipping now at T-Mobile UK for £250 outright (about $387 USD), whereas Orange and EE are offering up the device for free with qualifying plans. If you want LTE, however, you only have one carrier option and that’s EE — a choice that’ll have you shackled for a two-year period. As for O2 and Three, those carriers still have the SP listed as “coming soon,” but it’s safe to say you won’t find a better bargain than *free.

*Nothing in life is free.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Sony

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Via: Xperia Blog

Source: T-Mobile Uk, Orange, EE

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, a familiar smartphone leaked that’s said to join the prepaid ranks at Verizon Wireless, AT&T swung back against the DOJ, and Rogers issued its quarterly earnings. 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 April 22nd, 2013.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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While there have been white space test runs in the UK, these were private trials that weren’t going to get the ball rolling without government help. Thankfully, local regulator Ofcom is of a like mind. It now plans a trial for data on the in-between frequencies this fall, with full-fledged service going live as soon as 2014. The agency expects to settle on the final locations for the pilot after it chooses partners. No, Ofcom can’t guarantee that all the stars will align for rural broadband or other long-range wireless projects — but its involvement at least means those stars are within reach.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking

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Via: GigaOM

Source: Ofcom

Nowadays we’re spoiled with options in the Bluetooth speaker market, and many of the high-end ones — especially those from Soundfreaq and Nokia — even feature dual-system streaming (DSS) that lets one speaker pair with another to enable true stereo playback. But if you already have a pair of old but nice-sounding speakers with 3.5mm input on both, then here’s a quick and easy way to add Bluetooth to them. Dubbed Vertus, this Kickstarter project features the above pair of receivers based on CSR’s TrueWireless Stereo, a nifty technology that’s been made available since early 2009.

Similar to any DSS system, one of the Vertus dongles (the right channel, in this case) acts as the master to receive the stereo stream from a Bluetooth source, and then it’d throw the left-channel stream to the other dongle. So provided that your speakers have their own power source to amplify, it’s just a matter of charging these aluminum dongles up (a single charge lasts up to 10 hours), plugging them in and then pairing the right receiver with your audio source. Simple! That said, at $120 this kit may struggle to gain traction in retail, so hopefully the audio quality will somewhat justify the price. Introductory video after the break.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Wireless

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Source: Kickstarter

This week the folks at Apple have had a patent application turned up that may very well have the next iPhone controlling your Bluetooth-toting vehicle. In this set of patent applications, Apple seems to have either picked up on the smartphone vehicle interation trend early or thought of it before the wave began. In one application, Apple seeks to start a vehicle remotely with the iPhone – in the other, the iPhone can locate a vehicle in a parking lot.

The car location patent reveals a bit on how Apple intended this system to work in ways we’ve never before seen implemented in the real world. With the remote starter situation, the technology has, indeed, been implemented in ever-so-slightly different ways – controlling the car via the internet, for example. Here with the car location patent, Apple intends to install sensors throughout whichever parking complex your vehicle is parked in.

Unlike Apple’s tendency to work with the mobile part of the situation, here with the car location patent you’ll find the parking complex full of wireless trackers that communicate with one another and your iPhone locally. This system will, instead of making your car howl with honks for your location purposes, send you an indicator based on the map of the complex.

Vehicle control in this Apple patent set works with not only remote start, but power windows, door locks, and more. Though controlling the remote starter on your vehicle will require a bit more range than Bluetooth currently offers, up close and personal you’ll be able to work with basically anything in your vehicle from your iPhone sooner than later. If this technology comes to fruition, that is.

[via Apple Insider]

Patents reveal Apple’s car-friendly iPhone intentions is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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