Hasta La Gadget!

Tired of waiting for Google Music? How tired? If you’ve been pushed to your wit’s end, and you’re willing to give RealNetworks one last chance to actually impress you, Sprint’s got a new service for you to dip your toes into. Sprint Music Plus is a newfangled app that can be accessed via the carrier’s website and on Android / BlackBerry handsets, serving as a “single, convenient destination for customers to discover, purchase and play individual and bundled offers of full track music, albums, ringtones and ringback tones.” Naturally, everything in here is DRM-free, and aside from being a hub for transactions, it doubles as a media management tool where playlists can be created and new content can be recommended based on prior purchases. We’re told that customers can receive a discount if angling for a bundle — which includes a full track, ringtone and ringback tone — with $0.69 to $1.29 (per tune, mind you) being thrown straight to your Sprint bill. Care to give it a spin? Android users can head just past the break for a QR code, while everyone else can give those source links a hit.

Continue reading Sprint Music Plus app gives users yet another mobile jam portal… if you’re cool with RealNetworks

Sprint Music Plus app gives users yet another mobile jam portal… if you’re cool with RealNetworks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We received a tip earlier today that Sprint stores were finding boxes of Motorola Xoom accessories this morning, ahead of what would presumably be a launch of the tablet on that carrier. Now BGR has some pics of what is certainly a Xoom case along with an entry in the store’s inventory system, strong indicators that the tablet will indeed be soon available there. Of course, we’re all still waiting on the LTE wizardry Moto is said to be enabling on the Verizon flavor, but we would naturally expect Sprint’s version to be packing some WiMAX whenever it ships. Word is the tablets themselves will be arriving in stores sometime before the end of the month, but let’s just wait and see what Sprint has to say before we get too excited this Tuesday morning.

Motorola XOOM available soon at Sprint, shipping with WiMAX on-board? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon may have left it out from the get-go, but it looks as if eager HTC Thunderbolt owners needn’t wait another day to test out a video-enabled version of Skype. For those outside of The Loop, there was quite the back-and-forth going during the early days, with Verizon announcing at the 11th hour that its flagship LTE phone would be shipped sans Skype. It’s still unavailable in the bona firde Android Market, but a build has appeared from the ether and seems to be humming along just fine here at Engadget HQ. Hit the source link if you’re feeling froggy, and let us know in comments how things work out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: So we just happened to have a Thunderbolt on hand, and gave Skype’s mobile video chat a try. We came away quite impressed — video is as good as can be expected from the handset’s 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, and the experience on WiFi and LTE is virtually indistinguishable. The app even worked on 3G, though that reduced the picture quality to the point of being almost unusable.

Michael Gorman contributed to this report.

Skype with video calling leaks for HTC Thunderbolt, celebrations unsurprisingly erupt (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC’s Droid Incredible 2 for Verizon hasn’t exactly been the best kept secret over the past few months, and it looks like some of the remaining few details about the phone have now also been cleared up by yet more leaked documents obtained by Android Central. Assuming they are indeed legit, it’s looking like the Incredible 2 will be a world phone with both CDMA and GSM connectivity, and that it will boast a new 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera to go along with the standard 8 megapixel shooter ’round back. You can also apparently count on getting a 16GB microSD card with the phone, and that use of the 3G mobile hotspot will cost you an extra $20 for 20GB, at least according to the document — although Android Central rightly notes that may well be a typo. Here’s hoping Verizon finally clears up some of those details itself sooner rather than later.

Leaked docs suggest Verizon Droid Incredible 2 will be a world phone originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The inundation of tablets upon these very pages from day to day should give you an idea that manufacturers see this as a golden opportunity to grab a big chunk of a fledgling market. According to Gartner, though, the prospects are a little less rosy — for the next five years, anyway. Analyst estimates indicate that the tablet market will boom over the next five years, from 17,610,000 units last year to 294,093,000 in 2015. No, not 294,092,000. 294,093,000. Apple will be the dominant force, its market share not dropping below 50 percent until the terminal year of this study. Android will take up the lion share of the other half, with the remaining dredges shared by MeeGo, WebOS, and QNX. The latter, which powers RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook, is scheduled to have a 10 percent share. That’ll be the closest thing to a threat that Google and Apple will face — if you believe any of this.

Update: The figures above are in thousands of units.

Gartner: Apple will dominate tablet space for years, Android won’t drink its milkshake until after 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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