Hasta La Gadget!

Get ready Little Rock, Kansas City, Cedar Rapids and the greater Providence area, because Verizon is getting ready to unleash some serious LTE on all of you. The carrier is expending its coverage by 13 more cities on November 17th, bringing the total to more than 175. That date will also see coverage expansions in five areas, including Minneapolis / St. Paul, Louisville, Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, and Nashville. Check out a full list of new cities and the accompanying press release after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Verizon set to drop some LTE on 13 more cities November 17th

Verizon set to drop some LTE on 13 more cities November 17th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:21:00 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

Continue reading Samsung Stratosphere lands on Verizon October 13th: LTE and QWERTY for $150

Samsung Stratosphere lands on Verizon October 13th: LTE and QWERTY for $150 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pantech holds no punches in its home nation, where the company’s latest handset, the Vega LTE, has just become very official. In addition to 4G support, the phone features a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 4.5-inch display with a whopping 1280 x 800 resolution. Take a moment to savor that last part. Gingerbread is at the core of this large-and-in-charge beauty, which also includes an 8 megapixel auto-focus camera that captures video at 1080p, an LED flash, a 1.3MP front-facing shooter and 16GB of built-in storage. An 1830mAh battery powers the slab, which measures just 9.35mm thin and weighs 135.5g (4.8oz). Rounding out the internals, users will benefit from A-GPS, 802.11n, NFC and terrestrial DMB — that last one is specifically for the home crowd. With specs like these, we can only hope a domestic version makes its journey across the Pacific. If you’re looking for some mental exercise, a translated PR follows the break.

Continue reading Pantech Vega LTE gets official for South Korea, dual-core 1.5GHz CPU and 4.5-inch HD display

Pantech Vega LTE gets official for South Korea, dual-core 1.5GHz CPU and 4.5-inch HD display originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Qualcomm has laid out its details of the upcoming S4 SoC, and yes, there’s definitely reason for excitement with this next generation Snapdragon. First, it’ll usher in a new 28nm manufacturing process alongside the company’s Krait CPU and Adreno 225 GPU. The move from 45nm to 28nm promises smaller components, lower power consumption and improved thermal performance, while Krait will introduce a new pipeline architecture that promises a full 60% boost over the current Scorpion lineup with clock speeds ranging between 1.5 and 2.5GHz — along with support for asynchronous multiprocessing and dual-channel memory. As for the GPU, the latest chip flaunts 50% greater performance over the current Adreno 220, where it also provides support for DirectX 9.3 for Windows 8, in addition to OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0. Should be quite the gaming experience, eh?

It doesn’t end there, as the S4 MSM8960 promises multi-mode world capabilities with support for all the commonly used frequencies from 700 to 2600MHz — quite a feat, indeed. It handles Cat. 3 LTE (up to 100Mbps) and Cat. 24 HSPA+ (up to 42Mbps), along with EV-DO Rev. B, 1x Advanced and TD-SCDMA, as well as GSM, GPRS and EDGE. Oh, and there’s also simultaneous support for GPS and GLONASS, along with Bluetooth, WiFi, FM radio and NFC. With samples already being sent to manufacturers, we’re quite excited for what 2012 may bring.

Qualcomm outs Snapdragon S4 SoC details, promises improved battery life and true world capability originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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