Want to see that new Saygus VPhone in action? Can’t get enough QWERTY in your Android? Enjoy videos shot amongst a crowd of screaming trade show attendees? Boy are you in luck. Check out our video hands-on of the handset after the break, and please excuse the noise.
Don’t have enough Verizon/Android love in your life? Check out this new handset due out “mostly likely early next year” on the carrier. It’s from a company called Saygus, which you’ve most likely never heard of. In fact, it wasn’t really in the hardware game until fairly recently. We were shown the device as a pre-CES show in Manhattan last night. The phone is still fairly prototypey, running Android 1.6–when it comes to market it’ll, be running 2.0, naturally.
The company is focused on the VPhone’s video-conferencing abilities, which, again, aren’t quite ready for prime time. The phone can also serve as a wireless access point for up to eight devices. There’s 512MB of RAM built in (expandable to 16GB with an SDHC card), a 5MP camera with flash, and a 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen.
Check out a video of the device in all its glory, after the jump.
It’s always a good sign when a device-specific product release becomes the focal point of the XDA development community: it means you’ve got a winner on your hands. Not that anyone ever doubted the intense demand for Google’s new turn-by-turn Navigation introduced exclusively on Motorola’s DROID. No more. Brave souls have now tweaked the original code to run on the original Android device, the HTC G1 running on T-Mobile. Anecdotal reports suggest that it’s working great — a good sign that we’ll see a cooked ROM unveiled just as soon as feverish fingers can package the new code.
If you know that your personal happiness lies somewhere in the Verizon / Android abyss but neither the Droid nor the Droid Eris are hitting the spot, you might consider trying something completely out of left field. How “left field” are we talking here? Well, for starters, odds are good that you’ve never heard of a company called Saygus, and its shiny new QWERTY slider, the VPhone, won’t be offered directly from Verizon — it’s a product of the carrier’s Open Development initiative. Sure enough, that handset we spied a few days back is real, and the specs are all panning out: 624MHz PXA310 XScale core, 512MB of Flash on board coupled with 256MB of RAM, 3.5-inch capacitive WVGA touchscreen, WiFi, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, front-facing VGA camera and — of course — EV-DO Rev. A support. The current incarnation is running Android 1.6, but it should be running 2.0 by the time of its launch next year, along with getting some Google-certification to let it run the Google apps. Saygus’ real thrust here is apparently two-way video calling (good thing they picked Verizon, huh?), though they aren’t showing it off just yet. Otherwise it’s pretty much stock Android, and when asked if they swiped something from HTC Sense UI, Saygus said those buttons and the extra home screens are actually a standard part of Android’s open source repository. The hardware itself is rather chubby, but it leaves room for an oversized QWERTY keyboard that could very well solve your Droid woes. No word on price or a firm release date.
I’ve reviewed the Droid Eris twice before, when it was called the Hero. The difference is that Verizon’s selling it for half the price, making it the cheapest Android phone you can buy—and the best, for the money.
Eris is Verizon’s other Droid phone. It really is a remodeled Hero, running Android 1.5 and HTC’s vaunted Sense candy coating—documented CSI style here—a $200 phone stuffed inside a thinner $100 body, like a Corvette engine shoved inside a Saturn. It’s admittedly less exciting than the titular Droid, an industrial beast running Android 2.0. But I have the feeling Verizon is gonna sell a lot more of these things, because, again, it’s $100.
Designing for the Middle of the Road
The Eris is rubbery blob, a narrow oval that’s as subdued as a phone could possibly be, but there is admittedly something comforting about the Eris’s utter lack of personality—it’s completely non-threatening, like a middle manager. It’s so generic it’s almost artful, actually, a design that is nearly perfect for a cheap phone.
The four main Android buttons are touch sensitive, bleeding into the black bezel, hovering over the dead-center trackball and hard chrome buttons for phone and end. I’d like a dedicated camera button, but a volume rocker is all we get. The camera lens stares out the back, disturbingly more reminiscent of an eye than most cameras sticking out the backs of phones, probably because of how stark the rest of the phone is.
Hardware and Camera
The actual guts and screen are the same as past Hero phones—which is to say, nearly the same as all of HTC’s other Android phones so far. The 480×320 screen’s still nice, even if it feels dated now that the Droid’s massive screen, beckoning the next generation, looms large over it. Oh yeah, HTC? Can you get rid of your stupid, pointlessly different version of the mini USB port? Let’s go to micro USB now, yeah?
The still camera’s better than the Droid though, and about the same as the Sprint version of the Hero, performing pretty decently in low-light situations. Video, not so much:
Software and the Endgame
I’ve already covered HTC’s Sense UI in depth, and it is the exact same on the Eris. It runs just as fast as the Sprint Hero, if not a teeny bit quicker. I will say that after using Android 2.0, it does feel like a step backward in some ways, mostly because of the single Google account limitation. But HTC’s confirmed Android 2.0 is coming, so it won’t be an issue for every long.
And really, the fact that Android 2.0—half the reason the Droid is excellent—is coming to the Droid Eris is why, in the end, it’s such a steal. It’s running on Verizon, it’s going to have Android 2.0, and it’s $100. It’s a great phone now, and will be better still soon, making it kind of a perfect storm for people on Verizon looking to ditch their dumbphones—but not Verizon—for something more capable, but who are put off by the Droid, whether it’s the steroids or the higher sticker price.
It’s last month’s darling. But it’ll run this month’s software. For cheap. And that’s pretty spiffy, actually.
You’re getting last month’s killer Android phone for half price
We’ll say it again: This is the best Android deal around
We’re still reserving our doubts about the viability of the enTourage eDGe — after all, at $490 you can buy yourself a respectable netbook and a halfway decent ereader for the appropriate occasion — but we won’t say that we’re not interested. Just under a month after it hit the scene, the dual-screen device has landed (in prototype form) over at Gearlog, and while some of the features weren’t functional, the physical build shouldn’t change much when it goes final. At first glance, the whole thing just looks a bit dated, but then again, we’ve still got the ultra-fresh Nook on the brain. Hit the read link to have a look yourself, won’t you?
When two of Japan’s largest mobile carriers conspire to release nearly 40 phones in the span of 24 hours, editors covering the story are sure to lose hair and a solid year of lifespan — but for consumers in the local market, it’s nothing but good news. Here are some of the highlights from NTT DoCoMo:
Fujtsu F-02B: Described as a “jewelry quality” phone with a snap-on perfume holder for “an air of elegance.”
LG L-03B: Has support for Korean, Japanese, and English for frequent travelers (in other words, English speakers, if you find yourself on this archipelago and you don’t speak a lick of the local tongue, seek out this phone).
Sharp SH-04B: Designed to look like a melting chocolate bar by food-themed wardrobe accessory maker Q-Pot — for some reason we don’t fully comprehend.
Fujitsu F-04B: Realizing the concept shown off at CEATEC last year, this one features a removable keyboard that operates via Bluetooth and a 12.1 megapixel camera.
Panasonic P-01B: This flip looks like pretty much every other in the lineup, but its got a secret — the keypad doubles as a touchpad. Clever.
Samsung SC-01B: Samsung’s Windows Mobile 6.5-powered entry here appears to be a remix of the B7330 sold globally, which makes it about 1,000 times weaker than every other phone in the lineup.
And from Softbank:
Sharp AQUOS Mobile FULLTOUCH 941SH: All we need to say about this one is “4-inch 1024 x 480 display,” which, as you might be able to imagine, is a world’s first.
Sharp AQUOS Mobile 943SH: Dual one-seg tuners let you watch one program and record another, and a mention of transferring Blu-ray content has us thinking that Managed Copy is along for the ride.
Toshiba dynapocket X02T: Remember how NTT DoCoMo had previously gotten the TG01 as the T01A? Yeah, well, now it’s Softbank’s turn — and this time, it’s called the X02A. Not much more to it than that.
Samsung X01SC: This looks to be a localized version of AT&T’s Samsung Jack, of all phones, meaning that it’s a Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard phone (no touchscreen) with a QVGA display and portrait QWERTY keyboard.
Sharp 942SH KT: No lineup would be complete without the obligatory Hello Kitty marketing tie-in, and the 942SH KT does the honors this time around with a black shell featuring stylized pink text and graphics.
Samsung OMNIA VISION 940SC: Samsung’s now-famous OMNIA brand comes to Softbank on the wings of a 3.5-inch AMOLED display, one-seg tuner, and kickstand for desktop viewing.
Sharp Jelly Beans 840SH: We don’t think you’d want to try eating it, but the 840SH comes in seven colors — hence the name, we think.
Android: The simply-named Android runs — you guessed it — Android with a 3.7 inch AMOLED display and 1GHz Snapdragon processor; unfortunately, it won’t be available until next Spring and the manufacturer isn’t being revealed right now.
Both companies are also adding wireless digital photo frames to the lineup, and in Softbank’s case, a pair of data modems with support for 7.2Mbps on the downlink. We’ll admit — we didn’t think we’d live to see the day when Canada had three live networks with data rates trouncing Japan’s.
Read – Softbank Winter ’09 / Spring ’10 collection Read – NTT DoCoMo’s new series
The lines may have been subdued, but one way or another, it sounds as if Motorola managed to sell quite a few DROIDs over the weekend. According to analyst Mark McKechnie at Broadpoint AmTech, the outfit managed to move around 100,000 of ’em during the opening weekend, with most stores moving at least half of their original shipments. He also estimated that Moto would sell one million Android-based phones in Q4 2009 alone (which includes the CLIQ, obviously), and that he viewed the first few days as “encouraging.” It’s been a long, long while since we’ve been able to say this, but hey — nice job, Motorola.
Whenever a Moto with triband HSPA hits the FCC, we’re naturally going to end up scouring the documentation — what can we say, it’s in our blood — and today we’ve found a model claiming to be the rumored Motus. As a refresher, this is a device we’d heard would rock the Android midrange with a 5 megapixel AF cam, 3.1-inch QVGA display, and HSPA for a Q1 ’10 release, so it’s not much more than a tweaked CLIQ as far as we’re concerned — but the big news here might actually be that the Motus filing adds legitimacy to the leaked roadmap where we’d originally heard of it. That document made mention of a “Sholes Tablet” that takes the already-high-end DROID / MILESTONE further upmarket with an 8 megapixel cam and xenon flash, and as you can imagine, we’ll be listening to our friends at the FCC pretty intently over the next few weeks to see if we can catch that one sliding through.
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You’re getting last month’s killer Android phone for half price
Android 1.5 feels a little dated
Video recording’s not exactly amazing
