Hasta La Gadget!

As with any trade show, flashy, high-end products have a tendency to steal the lion’s share of the spotlight at MWC — but the fact is, featurephones still outsell traditional smartphones by an order of magnitude. Companies like INQ are betting the farm on the belief that today’s ultra-connected generation of Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook users are ultimately going to pick fashionable, cheap, easy-to-use handsets over the complexity of an iPhone, G1, or Omnia. There’s something to be said for that — most people don’t know the model of their own phone, after all, and have no interest in learning how to download and install an app, let alone learn an entire mobile operating system. Plus, for the youngest members of this profitable group, there’s a lot of price sensitivity — smartphones are typically out of reach.

If startup Sonar has its way, that’s where its new platform comes in. The idea was to fundamentally rethink the way average consumers — you know, the ones who are plugged into three, four, or fourteen social networks and don’t know a G1 from a P1i — use a phone to communicate, and they’re ready to show off their efforts for the first time here at MWC. We had an opportunity to sit down with Sonar’s founders this week for a tour of the system, and we’re pretty stoked about what we saw. Read on.

Continue reading Sonar hopes to power social featurephones, we get a demo

Filed under: Cellphones

Sonar hopes to power social featurephones, we get a demo originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you were thinking offline Gmail on your desktop was the greatest thing since sliced bread, prepare yourselves people. If an MWC keynote from Google’s VP of engineering, Vic Gundotra, is any indication, the same functionality might be coming soon to an iPhone / Android phone near you. Amongst other things, the souped up web app boasts an overhauled interface, supports labels, and of course, offline access. Despite our own hunch that Google’s just using black magic and voodoo to make this happen, Gundotra claims that it’s all made possible through HTML5 standards — AppCache being the biggie. This development certainly opens the doors to more offline-enabled web apps in the future — Docs, anyone?. Of course, we know Apple has a thing about people messing with its own apps, so it’s probably going to take some time / knee-breaking to get them to come around, but for some reason, we don’t think it’ll take as long with Android. There’s a demo video available after the break, and please, try to contain yourselves.

Continue reading Google demos offline Gmail for iPhone, Android at MWC

Filed under: Cellphones

Google demos offline Gmail for iPhone, Android at MWC originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Never mind the Magic — we’ve run across another Android device lurking in the midst at MWC, and if you squint, you might just see some HTC influence in this one, too. We’d heard General Mobile’s dual-SIM DSTL1 would launch here, granted, but given its reasonably high-end look and the fact that we’d only seen renders ahead of the show, you have to appreciate our skepticism. Of course, we’re delighted to be proven wrong in these sorts of situations, and we had a chance to play around with a DSTL1 today; WQVGA feels weak and there might be just a little too much Touch Diamond influence, but you have to respect the 5 megapixel AF cam, 4GB of internal storage plus microSD expansion, dual SIM slots, and on-board FM radio. Ultimately, the fact that this thing’ll only be available in two tri-band EDGE flavors kills the dream, but goodness, these guys are getting close, aren’t they? Follow the break for video!

Continue reading General Mobile’s DSTL1 Android phone eyes-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

General Mobile’s DSTL1 Android phone eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just got a great look at the potential of Android on Texas Instruments’ new Zoom OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform, a sort of sexy cousin to Compulab’s exeda. The OMAP3430-powered unit is being built by Logic and is meant for software developers to work on the OMAP3 chipset, but it’s actually a pretty neat “device” in its own right, with a 4.1-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen LCD, HDMI out, all sorts of connectivity, 16GB of storage, an SD card slot, large QWERTY keypad and an 8 megapixel camera. There’s also a debug board with Ethernet, USB plugs and some other technical stuff. For $1150 developers can pick up a WiFi-only unit, and $1399 buys you a 3G unit — consumers can buy ’em too, and we can imagine certain enthusiasts wouldn’t mind the cost for what basically amounts to the ultimate Android device. The unit runs other flavors of Linux, but we’re really in it for the Android, especially thanks to that screen. Wind River has been doing development on Android for a while, contributing to the original source code as part of the OHA, and one of its developers even ported Android to OpenMoko. They’ve got a refined Android interface running on the Zoom, which includes a tabbed application browser, fancier widgets and a spruced up unlock screen. They wouldn’t consider what they’re doing a skin or a port, but it’s exactly the type of stuff that device manufacturers will be looking for to differentiate their Android-powered handset. Video of all the magic is after the break.

Continue reading Texas Instruments and Wind River do up Android right

Filed under: Handhelds

Texas Instruments and Wind River do up Android right originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If day one of MWC was dominated by Windows Mobile, day two went to Android — although most of the announcements were vague and Toshiba’s Snapdragon-based TG01 did much to impress. Obviously the big announcement was the HTC Magic (née the G2), which’ll be coming to Vodafone UK in April, but several other manufacturers committed to building Googlephones as well. What else did we learn?

Continue reading MWC day two: a new hope

Filed under: Cellphones

MWC day two: a new hope originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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