Hasta La Gadget!

Having trouble separating your bird slingshotting from your mergers and acquisitions? Have no fear, AT&T has announced its new Toggle service, which promises users the ability to keep their work and home lives apart on a single Android smartphone or tablet. The feature keeps business information secure and lets IT admins manage access to company resources, add or delete business apps and even wipe corporate info off of a device, in the event the employee leaves the company. The app is coming later this year and will be compatible with devices running Android 2.2 or higher. There’s no word on pricing yet, but more info can be found in the press release after the break.

Continue reading AT&T Toggle separates your mobile work and play, allows for IT meddling

AT&T Toggle separates your mobile work and play, allows for IT meddling originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 06:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Initially, T-Mobile’s Bobsled brand simply offered a way to VoIP call your Facebook friends for free but with that angle sufficiently covered, it has moved on to wider access. Starting today it supports dialing out to mobile and landline numbers in the US, Canada or Puerto Rico right from your desktop browser. Also new are free apps for Android and iOS devices, however those are still limited to calling your Facebook friends (and enemies.) Still not quite sure what all this newfangled internet telephone business is? Check out the video demo above and press release embedded after the break.

Continue reading Bobsled by T-Mobile’s free VoIP magic now available via browser, Android or iOS

Bobsled by T-Mobile’s free VoIP magic now available via browser, Android or iOS originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 01:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Being on Verizon’s 4G LTE network and having a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard have been mutually exclusive features until now. Today, the carrier revealed the Samsung Stratosphere, a 4G smartphone with a slide-out keyboard.

The Stratosphere targets the business professional crowd, the folks who used to use (or still use) BlackBerries, but are looking to make the transition to Android or iOS.

The Stratosphere features a 4-inch Super AMOLED display with a 5-row QWERTY keyboard underneath. It runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) on a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor. For the biz folk, the smartphone supports some B2B services like Microsoft Exchange Active Sync as well as VPN, mobile device management and encryption.

Until now, if you wanted a phone with 4G and a hardware keyboard, you’d have to turn to another carrier like T-Mobile, which offers options like the Sidekick 4G or the MyTouch 4G Slide — not quite right if you’ve got enterprise on the mind. RIM will also be releasing five new smartphones this year, though, including the BlackBerry Torch 9810 series.

As far as Android goes, the operating system has had a stellar year so far. The OS dominates the smartphone market, and devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II are hitting record sales numbers.

The Stratosphere includes a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera, 5-megapixel rear facing camera and hot spotting for up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices.

The Samsung Stratosphere will be available October 13th for $150 with a two-year contract.

Image: Verizon

Disney Mobile’s first Android-powered smartphone hit Softbank Mobile stores in Japan earlier this month, with 0 JPY (about $0) due up front. You won’t be getting off that easy though — expect to pay just shy of 74,000 JPY (about $965) off contract, or 24 monthly installments of 880 JPY (about $11) if you opt for the two-year agreement. The Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) DM010SH packs a 4-inch 960 x 540 qHD display with 3D support, a 1GHz processor, and the typical spattering of smartphone features, including 3G data, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and microSDHC expandability, along with an 8 megapixel camera.

Rest assured that Disney branding abounds, from the company logo just below the earpiece, to those signature mouse ears that replace a generic home button. There’s also a default Snow White 3D wallpaper and a home screen link to the D-Market, where you can load up your device with Disney-branded mail, calendar, photo, calculator and pedometer apps — so you can meet those fitness goals with hopes of getting one more Halloween out of that child-size Minnie Mouse costume.

We dropped by a Softbank store in Tokyo to play around with a Classic White version of the device (Classic Pink is also an option, though sadly we had to settle for boring old vanilla). Once you get past the not-so-subtle Disney branding, it looks and functions like any other Android smartphone. It felt quite snappy as well — launching apps and loading web pages with just as much pep as many other Android phones we’ve used. Make no mistake, the appeal here is definitely the Disney Mobile branding — but you should be pleased, assuming you don’t mind paying a rather lofty sum for a ho-hum device to fit within your Heigh-Ho lifestyle. Jump past the break for a video walkthrough.

Continue reading Disney Mobile DM010SH Android phone hits Softbank stores in Japan, we go hands-on (video)

Disney Mobile DM010SH Android phone hits Softbank stores in Japan, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Metawatch is by no stretch of the imagination new. In fact, the creators claim to have been working on the idea since 2006. The concept — taking a small form-factor device and placing it on your wrist to act as a miniature portal to your smartphone — isn’t new either. Several attempts have been […]