Hasta La Gadget!

You know your mobile OS is going places when people start resurrecting their smartphone divisions just to throw out their own spin on it. Kyocera‘s approach with the new Zio M6000 has been to marry an 800 x 480 display to some rather middle of the road components and to sell that package at a significantly lower price point (between $169 and $216 unsubsidized) than most Android-infused communicators on the market. You know, for the people that like to have a handsome high-res phone, but don’t need it to have the firepower to run Quake. It’s still not a terrible slouch, coming with a 600MHz MSM7227 CPU from Qualcomm, 512MB of onboard app memory, and 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Look out for its US arrival in the second quarter of this year.

Kyocera Zio M6000 joins burgeoning Android ranks with high-res affordability originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may be seeing a rumor doing the rounds today about Palm throwing in the towel and moving to the Android platform as a means of survival — but just hang on. Most reports are citing an email that made its way to the inbox of what looks like every major tech outlet, stating that CEO Jon Rubinstein issued an internal memo to software developers at the company about the switch. The supposed memo quotes Jon as saying, “While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system, consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and our customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform.” The plan — according to this email — would be to create a kind of Sense UI-ish webOS interface on Palm devices, while leveraging Android’s market footprint. The anonymous emailer went on to say that the full memo would be made available on Wikileaks at midnight last night.

But guess what? Not only did the memo not appear at the stroke of 12, but when we picked up the phone and actually spoke to Palm, they had a pretty quick response. Their answer? Our sources at the company essentially laughed when they heard this news, and they emphatically stated that there was no memo, and no move internally towards Android. Furthermore, many of the reports are citing a bunk piece of news from Monday which erroneously stated that Palm had halted production — that news has also been refuted by the company. Admittedly, our minds reel at the concept of Android with a webOS UI, but until we get some real, verifiable evidence of that (and not just a random email), we’re going to assume it’s not happening. You should do the same.

Palm moving to Android to stay alive? Not according to Palm originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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UPDATE: A source within Palm (who is known to us but wants to remain off the record) has contacted us to say that “there is no memo and no plans to adopt Android. We are very happy with and committed to webOS.”

An anonymously sourced, unconfirmed memo partially quoted on Slashdot purports to show that Palm is ready to ditch the failing WebOS — which powers its Pre smartphone — and instead become yet another Android handset maker. The full memo was promised to be posted on Wikileaks at midnight ET last night. It is still not there. Here is the purported “quote” from Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein:

While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system, consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and our customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform.

Despite the rather suspicious origins of this information, it does seem like one of the only ways out for Palm, which really did bet the farm on the WebOS. Back at CES 2009, the Pre was the star of the show, with almost unanimous praise from the tech press. It multi-tasks, it has the UI polish you’d expect from a bunch of ex-Apple engineers and it has some genuinely clever features: the windows-as-card-stacks metaphor, and the notification bar, for example. Everybody thought the Pre would save Palm.

But it failed to sell, to the extent that Palm has actually ceased production temporarily and is trying to help telcos shift inventory.

Could a move to Android keep Palm from closing down? Android is hot right now, and while the Motorola Droid and the Google Nexus are no iPhones is terms of sales, they’re getting a lot of press. Just like the Pre did, in fact.

It’d be a risky move. In swapping to Android, Palm would be throwing out the one unique thing that it has to sell. The WebOS is way more important than the Pre (or its little sister, the Pixi): those are just boxes. And if the iPhone has taught us anything, it’s that the box doesn’t matter: It’s all in the OS. Palm’s failure wasn’t in making a bad OS. It was poor marketing. That weird, giant woman on the TV ads? Confusing, if not scary. The iPhone ads, on the other hand, tell us exactly what the phone does, and no more.

Our advice? Stick with WebOS and just fix your ad campaign, showing people that you can use the phone as a five-device MiFi-style hot-spot or that you can use it to tether your iPad. Show the phone in action and people will buy it.

Or license that OS and go up against Android itself. Handset makers will be getting the jitters right now after Apple’s lawsuit against HTC. Offer them something free of patent infringements, something that is here today (unlike Windows Phone 7), and you might just turn Palm into the Microsoft of the cellphone world.

Rumor: Palm ditching webOS for Android? [Slashdot]

See Also:

• Palm Can Still Win: Here Are Five Things They Need To Do …
• Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
• Palm Acknowledges the Pre Isn't an 'Anything' Killer. But Is It …
• 6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Sprint Premier customers are being treated to a rather tantalizing account alert tonight: “Visit us tomorrow for an exciting announcement about a groundbreaking new device.” No other details provided, but if we had to make an educated guess, we’d say all signs are pointing towards HTC’s Supersonic, the long-rumored WiMAX smartphone with a 4.3-inch screen and Android 2.1 with Sense UI. A 4G device would certainly fit the billing as “groundbreaking,” and we’ve already heard of plans to unveil the phone at CTIA, which officially kicks off tomorrow. A web chat transcript found on the Sprint Community seems to corroborate, but we can’t at this point verify the validity of the screen capture. You can view the entirety of the purported web chat after the break. If we do wake up tomorrow to a shiny, large-screened WiMAX phone, care to take bets on what Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is gonna talk up in his Wednesday keynote?

[Thanks, Jackson R and Aggrey J]

Continue reading Sprint to announce ‘groundbreaking new device’ (HTC Supersonic?) tomorrow

Sprint to announce ‘groundbreaking new device’ (HTC Supersonic?) tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Of the world’s largest phone manufacturers, perhaps none has taken a more twisted road to smartphone ubiquity than Sony Ericsson. It began its journey back in the pre-joint venture Ericsson days by throwing its weight behind Symbian, a smartphone platform that would ultimately become the world’s most popular — but it made a fatal error in supporting the doomed UIQ flavor that never saw even a fraction of the support its S60 cousin did. UIQ’s untimely (but predicted) collapse last year left the company nearly rudderless and ill-equipped to deal with competitors like Nokia, HTC, and Apple, all of whom had long since embraced other platforms — all with fighting chances of market dominance.

Left without a platform to champion, Sony Ericsson would ultimately continue supporting Symbian through its involvement with the Symbian Foundation and phones like the Satio and Vivaz… and it would ramp up support for Windows Mobile with the Xperia X1 and X2… and it would bring Android into the fold with the X10, all within a few months of each other. All told, Sony Ericsson enters 2010 actively supporting three unrelated smartphone platforms, and comments by CEO Bert Norberg at MWC in February lead us to believe that they’d be happy to take on a fourth (or more) if the opportunity presented itself. It’s an odd strategy to be sure, particularly for a company that’s struggling mightily and shrinking its workforce more than any other top-five manufacturer. How it intends to effectively compete on three different fronts without spreading itself hopelessly thin, well… that remains a huge question mark.

That said, the Xperia X10 is perhaps the most promising of Sony Ericsson’s confusing crop of modern smartphones, combining attractive hardware with killer specs, Android, and an intriguing custom skin. Does it hold its own against modern competitors like HTC’s Nexus One and Desire? And more importantly, can it keep Sony Ericsson from going over the brink? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 review

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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