Hasta La Gadget!

Well, well, well… would you look at what we found lounging around Best Buy’s NYC holiday event! Yes, indeed, it’s the T-Mobile G2 (the US version of the HTC Desire Z if you happen to think it looks familiar). After months of leaks and blurry shots we finally got to check out T-Mobile and HTC’s G1 replacement, and it’s got everything we’ve been waiting for — a 3.7-inch display, Android 2.2, 4GB of internal memory, an 800MHz Snapdragon processor and a 5 megapixel cam with a flash. Oh, what’s it like to use? That answer, dear friends, is after the break along with a hands-on video.

Continue reading T-Mobile G2 preview

T-Mobile G2 preview originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We first spotted Lenovo’s Le Phone at CES. The Chinese company behind the ThinkPad threw an evening event with prototypes of the handset scattered throughout. We got a little hands-on time with the phone and were suitable impressed. It was slick, slim, and featured a stunning AMOLED screen.

Perhaps the most compelling thing about the Android handset was actually its dock, which features a full keyboard, stereo speakers, and a built-in battery, which doubles the thing’s life. It’s an clever solution that caters to both elegance and features.

And then the bad news: the thing was only set for release in China. There was a collective groan when Lenovo let out that little bit of information.

Eight months later, and still no US carriers have announced any plans to pick up the device. There is, however, a piece of good news to be had. Importer Chinavasion announced this week that it will be offering an unlocked version of the phone to global consumers.

Chinavasion isn’t offering a ton of information, aside from a broken English press release, which appears to state that the site will be getting the phone “this week.” And as for price? My guess is that the thing won’t come cheap–unlocked phones rarely do.

Image by Charlie Sorrel and Tim Carmody

Amazon continues to expand its reading and media software to whole new classes of devices, from new tablets to PC web browsers. It’s just not immediately clear just how far the retail giant is going to go.

We’ll take these news items one at a time, in increasing order of uncertainty:

1. Amazon launches Beta version of Kindle for the Web. Think YouTube for books. You can preview short selections of books in your browser, embed them on web sites with a little bit of JavaScript, and customize the size (it won’t automatically keep the aspect ratio) or even add your Amazon Associate tag to the embed. Click through and it takes you to the book’s entry on the Amazon Kindle store. Level of certainty: This you can actually use right now.

2. Amazon announces Kindle app for forthcoming RIM Playbook tablet. Makes perfect sense given yesterday’s Playbook announcement, natural extension of the Kindle app for Blackberry, iPad, and other platforms. Level of certainty: Actual press release from Amazon after high-profile announcement from RIM. I suppose a bolt of lightning could strike one or both companies tomorrow. But you can’t see it today.
3. Amazon to Launch Android App Store, which my pal Charlie Sorrel already let you know about. Level of certainty: Well-reported rumor. But it makes sense — Amazon sells a lot of stuff, and there are a lot of Android app stores — and it’s confirmed by multiple developer sources. Don’t be surprised if you hear details soon.
4. Amazon to Build Own Branded Android Tablet. Okay, so, a source comes to you with what seem like two wild, fan-fiction stories about Amazon and Android. You ask around, and one of them — an Amazon App Store — turns out to probably be in the works. Is the other story true?

   On the one hand, again — Amazon sells a lot of digital products online, not just e-books: movies, games, music. And it’s not hard to make an Android tablet. In fact, at this point, Amazon has more hardware-production experience with the Kindle than some of the companies that are coming forward with pretty solid products. Add an App Store and it starts to look pretty appealing.

   On the other hand, Amazon’s built up good brand identification with the Kindle, e-books, and E Ink. Will they turn around and say, “oh yeah, multimedia tablets are really awesome, but not, um, more awesome than a Kindle, I mean, um, why not buy both?” Just seems a little surprising. Level of certainty: Pretty cloudy. The source was right about an app store, but as they say, a stopped clock can be right twice a day. If Amazon releases some kind of other media hardware, whether using Android or anything else, it’s equally likely to be a TV box or a smartphone or something else that equally plays to their strength while being a little more differentiated from a dedicated reading machine than a tablet.

See Also:

• Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle
• Amazon Shows Off Kindle for iPad
• Scrabble Is First Paid Game App for Kindle
• How to Do (Almost) Everything With a Kindle 3
• Independent App Stores Take On Google's Android Market
• Social Networking Meets Apps in New Android App Store
• Your Froyo Tablet Probably Won't Support Android Market

Amazon is set to open the doors on an Android App Store, adding to the list of places where you may or may not be able to buy software for your device. According to Tech Crunch’s excellent MG Siegler, the store’s structure will be very similar to that of Apple’s App Store.

Developers will have to pay $99 to sign up, just like with Apple, and will get the same 70:30 revenue split. Amazon will decide what gets into the store, pull any apps it doesn’t like, and wrap everything up in its DRM. Further, you can’t sell your apps cheaper elsewhere. If it costs a dollar in the Android Market, it has to cost a dollar over at Amazon.

And it will be dollars. The Amazon app store will be U.S-only at launch, although as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, “Amazon takes payments in more countries than Google Checkout does.” Apps can also be free.

One problem that won’t be solved is customer confusion. Unless Amazon makes its own tablet which has exclusive use of the store, then it will have to pick a range of Android devices to support. Unlike its music store, whose goods (MP3 files) can be played anywhere, an app store could only support a subset of devices.

Amazon will join Verizon and Google as outlets for Android apps, adding to the confusion. Remember the arguments about Android being “open” and iOS being “closed”? They’re starting to look a little silly now.

Yep, Amazon Launching Their Own App Store For Android Too [MG Siegler via ★]

Illustration: Charlie Sorrel

See Also:

• A Call for Transparency in Apple's App Store
• Verizon Promises Simpler, More Lucrative App Store for Developers …
• Independent App Stores Take On Google's Android Market

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

This sounds like madness to us, but take it for what you will: TechCrunch is reporting via some tipsters that Amazon is preparing to launch its own Android app store, of all things. Revenue split is rumored to be “the greater of 70 percent of the purchase price or 20 percent of the List Price as of the purchase date,” which is pretty strange wording — this “List Price” concept is apparently designed to prevent you from undercutting pricing with other services — and there’ll be a $99 fee to gain entry, which is pretty standard. Apps will be required to use Amazon DRM and could be featured on Amazon’s site, which is potentially a pretty big upside considering the kind of traffic that bad boy gets. As TechCrunch notes, a particularly interesting blurb in the alleged terms states that “[Amazon has] sole discretion to determine all features and operations of [programs] and to set the retail price and other terms on which [they] sell Apps,” implying that pricing is their call — not yours — and they’ve got some say in how your app’s going to work and what it’s going to do.

Clearly we’re missing something here, since they’re starting with zero market share, the Android Market is the obvious choice for consumers, and there are some really odd terms — and Bezos isn’t a dummy — so we’ll hold out and see where this goes. After all, with Google apparently actively reigning in devices by lording Market access over manufacturers’ heads, there might actually be some room for third parties to get some traction here over the long term.

Update: TechCrunch is now throwing in a rumored Amazon tablet at no extra charge. Could launch beside the app store if its source is correct. If.

Amazon launching its own Android app store? (update: tablet too?) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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