Samsung’s SCH-i929 and SCH-W999 dual-screen clamshell get certified in China

Ready for a heavy dose of Android this morning? Then enjoy this Samsung double whammy freshly delivered from China. On the left we have the China Telecom-branded SCH-i929, a 9.7mm-thick handset featuring a Snapdragon MSM8660 chip (likely clocked at 1.5GHz), 4.5-inch 480 x 800 AMOLED display, eight-megapixel camera and GSM plus CDMA2000 connectivity. All of this makes the i929 a near-identical cousin of the Galaxy S II LTE — same processor, same chassis, but obviously with different network compatibility.

Of course, the real star of the show is the SCH-W999, a follow-up to the SCH-W899 of the same dual-screen clamshell form factor. As you can see on the right, on the outside this phone features a 3.5-inch 480 x 800 AMOLED display along with three touch buttons, while on the inside it packs a similar screen plus a physical keypad. Like the i929 above, this funky flip phone is also powered by a MSM8660 chip and supports both GSM and CDMA2000 on China Telecom, though its camera is limited to five megapixels instead. Anyhow, we’d certainly love to get hold of a world-friendly version of this 204 gram beast, so what do you say, Won-Pyo Hong?

Samsung’s SCH-i929 and SCH-W999 dual-screen clamshell get certified in China originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTENAA (SCH-i929), (SCH-W999)  | Email this | Comments

Sony to buy out Ericsson’s stake in joint venture, call it quits after ten years

We all saw it coming and, sure enough, it’s finally happened. After all the rumors and opaque comments, Sony has just bought out Ericsson’s share of Sony Ericsson, effectively assuming ownership of the entire venture. Ericsson confirmed the buyout this morning, adding that it will receive a cash consideration of €1.05 billion in exchange for its 50 percent stake. Sony, meanwhile, will now have the chance to integrate smartphones more tightly within its arsenal of tablets, laptops and gaming devices. The agreement also gives Sony an IP cross-licensing agreement and ownership of “five essential patent families” pertaining to wireless tech, though the breadth of this coverage remains unclear. The separation won’t be finalized, however, until January 2012, pending regulatory approval. Find more details in the full PR, after the break.

Update: Sony president and CEO Sir Howard Stringer has just addressed the media on the proposed buyout and confirmed that the company will indeed move away from feature phones, as previously stated. This effectively heralds the death of the Walkman line and the dawn of Sony’s exclusively Android era, though Stringer’s not ruling out the possibility of bringing another OS on board. When asked whether his firm would consider buying webOS, the exec said simply, “Never say never.”

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Sony to buy out Ericsson’s stake in joint venture, call it quits after ten years

Sony to buy out Ericsson’s stake in joint venture, call it quits after ten years originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 03:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skifta leaves beta, streams media to and from your Android device wherever you may be

Skifta

When we first saw Skifta back in February, it was a pretty neat app for beaming media on your phone to other DLNA capable devices in your home. Well, now it’s left beta and added a new trick to it repertoire — stream media from your other gear to your Android device, over 3G. To celebrate Skifta hitting the magical 1.0 mark, Qualcomm Atheros also unveiled a new media server plug in for Linux, OS X and Windows that lets you pull music and movies from your home PC to your phone or tablet, even while you’re out and about. Skifta (in addition to its terrible name) also sports a Channel Library which allows you quickly queue up content from Facebook, TED, ShoutCast, Revision3 and more. You’ll find full PR after the break but, more importantly, the download links at the source.

Continue reading Skifta leaves beta, streams media to and from your Android device wherever you may be

Skifta leaves beta, streams media to and from your Android device wherever you may be originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 02:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceSkifta, Skifta (Android Market)  | Email this | Comments

Samsung Galaxy Nexus confirmed to have ‘fortified glass,’ not Gorilla Glass

For all the talk of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in recent days, there’s still quite a few questions surrounding the flagship Ice Cream Sandwich phone. Last week we learned that the phone’s 4.65-inch screen was a standard Super AMOLED display and not a Super AMOLED Plus variation (as seen on the Galaxy S II), and now Corning has confirmed that the device doesn’t use its trademark Gorilla Glass as you may have assumed given its high-end status. According to Samsung, however, it does use a type of “fortified glass,” but the company isn’t getting any more specific than that. We guess we’ll have to wait for some stress tests (or clumsy hands) to see just how well it holds up.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus confirmed to have ‘fortified glass,’ not Gorilla Glass originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbook News  |  sourceAndroid and Me, @Corning (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

Lumia 710 makes an appearance on Nokia’s US site without its Windows Phone counterpart

When Nokia made it known that the Meego-running N9 wouldn’t be making any official tour to the US, the sound of crushed dreams could be faintly heard in households across the nation. Would the newly-announced Lumia series suffer the same fate somehow? Might Uncle Sam’s invitation to the family BBQ get lost in the mail a second straight time? Thanks to Nokia’s US website, we know that at least one of the two Windows Phones will leave Espoo and land somewhere between sea and shining sea, as the budget-conscious Lumia 710 appears front and center on the OEM’s home page while the 800 is nowhere to be found. We’re not giving up just yet — if absence makes the heart grow fonder, we don’t want to get enamored with the AWOL phone this fast.

Update: Dampen down those hopes and dreams, kids. Nokia has said that it will be making a splash in the USA at the start of next year, but it won’t be with the Lumia phones. The page went up just for your information.

Lumia 710 makes an appearance on Nokia’s US site without its Windows Phone counterpart originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechBlitz  |  sourceNokia  | Email this | Comments

Verizon throws Galaxy Nexus signup page live, claims exclusivity

In case you were still wondering, yes, the Galaxy Nexus is Verizon bound. We certainly didn’t need to see another signup page to tell us that, but if you find your way to Verizon’s mailing list form through the outfit’s own search bar, you might find an interesting banner: “Exclusively from Verizon,” it reads, “Galaxy Nexus.” Well, that certainly flies in the face of a certain FCC filing we’ve seen, not to mention Samsung’s own Galaxy Nexus signup page and all of our hopes and dreams. With any luck, the handset will still launch on multiple carriers, perhaps only landing on Verizon’s grid first. If old rumors hold true, however, Verizon customers won’t be the only folks seeing red on November 10th.

[Thanks, John]

Verizon throws Galaxy Nexus signup page live, claims exclusivity originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceVerizon  | Email this | Comments

RIM releases BBM SDK for WebWorks, injects some chatting flavor into your apps

This year’s BlackBerry DevCon might have come and gone with nary a mention of BBM’s flagrant promiscuity, but RIM did give us some other BBM news. The Canuck company’s BBM Social Platform SDK is now up for general availability after recently hitting version 1.0. The release extends its venerable messaging protocol to WebWorks developers, allowing their wares to initiate chats and incorporate BBM statuses, avatars and personal messages from the service. Also on the docket is “application-to-application background communication,” which we presume enables a smorgasbord of behind the scenes cross-application chattiness. Finally, Crackberry developers will be able to start file transfers over the protocol, including virally sharing apps between users. Sounds like the ‘Berry of the future is gonna be much more reliant upon Waterloo’s messaging platform, so let’s just hope there aren’t any more outages.

RIM releases BBM SDK for WebWorks, injects some chatting flavor into your apps originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Phone Scoop  |  sourceBlackBerry blog  | Email this | Comments

Mythical snow-white N9 spotted at Nokia World

Is it possible to improve on something as minutely refined as the Nokia N9 simply by adding another color variant? Well, that depends on what color weʼre talking about. Sure, we already have black, cyan, and magenta, but what weʼve been missing — until now — is white. Plain, simple, ethereal white. It happens to be one of the hardest hues for a manufacturer to pull off without making a handset look tacky, or making its surface susceptible to the general grubbiness of everyday life. But Nokia did a smart thing: it added a glossy coating that completely changes the look and feel of the device. Take a look for yourself in the gallery below. But bear in mind that the midnight blue disco lights at Nokia World didn’t quite do it justice.

Continue reading Mythical snow-white N9 spotted at Nokia World

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Mythical snow-white N9 spotted at Nokia World originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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British man’s prosthetic arm doubles as Nokia C7 dock

Smartphones have changed our lives, sure, but for those with only one arm, the touchscreen-centric devices can be a downright nuisance. Trevor Prideaux of Somerset, England has worked out of a solution, with help from Nokia and some folks in the medical community. A prosthetist built the 50-year-old catering manager a limb with a cradle for his Nokia C7, allowing Prideaux to operate the phone with a single hand. Prideaux told The Telegraph that he’d initially approached Apple for assistance with the project, eventually settling on Nokia after the Finnish handset maker agreed to help out.

[Image source: The Telegraph]

British man’s prosthetic arm doubles as Nokia C7 dock originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Next Web  |  sourceThe Telegraph  | Email this | Comments

The Engadget Interview: Nokia’s Peter Skillman talks design (video)

Peter Skillman knows a thing or two about making beautiful devices. He’s Palm’s former VP of design, and he’s the man behind Nokia’s glorious N9 — its look, feel and user experience. We bumped into him at Nokia World here today and asked him what went into the N9’s — and by association the Lumia 800’s — design. He shared quite a few interesting details with us, including tidbits about the “curvature continuous form” of MeeGo’s icons, Nokia’s Pure font and the nuances of the N9’s sinuous taper. We even discussed the Play 360 Bluetooth / NFC speaker, which follows the same aesthetic principles. Take a look at our exclusive video interview after the break.

Continue reading The Engadget Interview: Nokia’s Peter Skillman talks design (video)

The Engadget Interview: Nokia’s Peter Skillman talks design (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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