Feb 24

Microsoft gets big support for Mobile Broadband enhancements in Windows 7

Posted in: Microsoft, mobile broadband, mobile internet, MobileBroadband, MobileInternet, mwc, mwc 2009, mwc09, mwc2009, Today's Chili, Windows, windows 7, Windows7, wwan

Just in case Microsoft hadn’t locked down enough support for Windows Mobile at MWC last week, the company also managed to shake hands with a slew of PC makers in order to extend support for Mobile Broadband enhancements within Windows 7. It’s still quite unclear what all this means, but we’re guessing that the likes of Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Fujitsu will happily support WWAN modules from Huawei, Option, Qualcomm, Sierra Wireless and ZTE. The writeup also gives us reason to believe that WWAN connections will be more tightly integrated than before, possibly even showing up alongside potential WiFi hotspots when looking for a wireless connection. At any rate, we’re all about getting a signal regardless of location, so we’ll take this as a definite positive despite the glaring dearth of details.

[Thanks, Jacob]

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Microsoft gets big support for Mobile Broadband enhancements in Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 23

The Engadget Interview: Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility

Posted in: att, Features, interview, mwc, mwc 2009, mwc09, mwc2009, Today's Chili

We had an opportunity to sit down with AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega last week — one of the most influential individuals in the wireless world today — at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for a nice little chat covering all the topics that have been burning in our minds the last few months: Android, the Pre, LTE, and more. Read on!

Continue reading The Engadget Interview: Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility

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The Engadget Interview: Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 21

LG shows off solar phone, battery cover at MWC

Posted in: LG, mwc, mwc 2009, mwc09, mwc2009, solar, Today's Chili

Proving (as usual) that it’s not too big for a little tit-for-tat with its crosstown rival, LG showed its own concept solar phone at MWC this week to match up with Samsung’s Blue Earth. The prototype LG handset doesn’t have a name — takes a whole team of high-priced consultants to christen a product like that, we’d wager — but we do know that the slider can eke 3 minutes’ worth of life out of a 10-minute charge in natural light. The thing looks like it was thrown together in a week, but hey, as long as it works, we know LG can take care of the design side of things by the time production rolls around.

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LG shows off solar phone, battery cover at MWC originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Feb 2009 11:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 20

ARM’s stash of netbook oddities and a Windows Mobile 6.5 MID

Posted in: arm, Linux, MID, mwc, mwc09, netbook, snapdragon, Today's Chili, ubuntu

We’re not sure what sort of shenanigans ARM gets up to, but it managed to amass itself quite the interesting collection of netbooks for its MWC booth. Information was scant, but they were showing that Freescale i.MX-based Pegatron netbook and nettop we saw at CES, an ultrawide 11.1-inch Snapdragon-based netbook from Wistron, a Snapdragon-based convertible tablet netbook from Inventec Alaska, and a totally odd “tech demo” of a Qualcomm-based Wistron MID semi-running a sketch version of Windows Mobile 6.5. Most all of the systems were in some level of prototype form, and seemed unbearably slow at running whatever prototype flavor of Linux they happened to have, while the MID didn’t really seem to operate at all, at least to our touch. Still, it’s clear that Snapdragon and Freescale i.MX are allowing for some pretty wild and thin form factors while still rocking decent battery life.

Gallery: ARM’s stash of netbook oddities and a Windows Mobile 6.5 MID

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ARM’s stash of netbook oddities and a Windows Mobile 6.5 MID originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 20

LG affirms that 12 megapixel cameraphone is in the works

Posted in: LG, mwc, mwc 2009, mwc09, mwc2009, Today's Chili

Here at MWC, the only cellphone maker to actually come forward with proof of a 12 megapixel phone was Sony Ericsson. Still, you know that everyone else is apt to follow suit as quickly as possible, and it seems that LG will be one of the first. In fact, said company “absolutely” has a 12 megapixeler in the works. That’s according to Jeremy Newing, LG Mobile’s head of marketing in the UK, who also proclaimed that the KS360 would be LG’s first Android phone. In his words: “We’ll very much be releasing a 12MP cameraphone. However, it’s important that people realize when taking 12MP images, they’ll be using huge amounts of data, and it will be more difficult to do things like send such files.” Honestly, we’re a bit tired of the megapixel race — get an optical zoom onto a slim cellphone, and then we’ll talk.

[Thanks, Jimb]

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LG affirms that 12 megapixel cameraphone is in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 19

Haier shows off mysterious “NetBooks,” Android phones

Posted in: Android, Features, hands-on, MID, mwc, mwc09, netbook, Today's Chili

Haier’s offerings are always an adventure, and this year at MWC they didn’t disappoint. They were showing off an interesting assortment of MIDs, confusingly dubbed “NetBooks,” including a mini-laptop of sorts (left) that falls somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, we’re totally short on specs, release dates or other sorts of relevant informations, so what you see is pretty much what you get. On a similar note, Haier had two Android-based devices at the show, dubbed the G1 and the G2, along with a BlackBerry 8900 look-alike we didn’t see, and another phone that even the PR person wasn’t sure what it was. These two “Googlephones” (their word) were sadly out of battery when we went for a demo, but one of them bore more than a passing resemblance to the BlackBerry Storm, though it happens to be lighter, smaller and runs a new OS… maybe RIM can call up Haier for some pointers.

Gallery: Haier shows off mysterious “NetBooks,” Android phones

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Haier shows off mysterious “NetBooks,” Android phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 19

Sonar hopes to power social featurephones, we get a demo

Posted in: Android, mwc, mwc 2009, mwc09, mwc2009, social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili

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

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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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Feb 19

Stantum’s mind-blowing multitouch interface on video!

Posted in: Features, hands-on, multitouch, mwc, mwc09, Today's Chili

We just got a look at some amazing touchscreen interaction, running on a humble resistive touchscreen with some OMAP hardware backing it up. Stantum’s technology is a software-based refinement to resistive touchscreens that allows for accuracy beyond the pixel density of the display, a complete lack of touchscreen “jitters” and some fairly incredible input methods. Termed “TouchPark,” the multitouch framework provides gesture recognition, cursor management and physics processing for phone builders to stick on top of the phone OS (Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android are currently supported), and works with hardware such as Texas Instruments Zoom, Freescale i.MX and ST Nomadic. The PMatrix multitouch firmware allows for unlimited inputs, detection of any contacting object (a finger, a stylus or even a paintbrush) and pressure sensitivity. We played with the demo unit for a bit and were frankly blown away, it’s far and away the best touch experience we’ve ever seen or felt, and the multitouch functionality is just gravy on top. Stantum is targeting resistive touchscreens because they’re still considerably cheaper to build than capacitive ones, and from our perspective there seems to be zero tradeoff — for sensitivity and accuracy this destroys everything else we’ve seen on the market, capacitive or not. Sadly, there’s no word on when this will make it into real, shipping handsets, but we’ll certainly be tracking its progress obsessively. Video is after the break.

Gallery: Stantum’s mind-blowing multitouch interface on video!

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Stantum’s mind-blowing multitouch interface on video! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 19

Access Linux Platform 3.0 live, in person, and oh-so-full of widgets

Posted in: Features, hands-on, mwc, mwc09, Today's Chili

We got a quick look at the latest version of the Access Linux Platform (ALP) today, running on an early build of TI’s OMAP 3-based Zoom hardware. Access seems excessively enthused with widgets, and really isn’t doing a bad job at them, featuring transparency galore and even a second home screen for housing a separate set of them (perhaps “work” or “home” or “really great world clocks”). The machine also run’s Access’ own NetFront browser, which isn’t quite as butter as we’ve seen WebKit get lately, but might be about on par with Microsoft’s new builds of Internet Explorer Mobile. Unfortunately, aside from a jerky, barebones “flickable” photo browser, that’s all Access is showing off of LiMo-compliant 3.0 at the moment, and we didn’t get a look at that Garnet OS compatibility layer we all know and love. Still, if you suffer from some irrational fear that we’d be short on mobile operating systems here at MWC you can at last rest at ease. Video is after the break.

Gallery: Access Linux Platform 3.0 live, in person, and oh-so-full of widgets

Continue reading Access Linux Platform 3.0 live, in person, and oh-so-full of widgets

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Access Linux Platform 3.0 live, in person, and oh-so-full of widgets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 19

Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits

Posted in: flash, mwc, mwc09, palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, Today's Chili, webos
Pandora's CTO talks about Pre, webOS development, gaming, and small children

We sat down with Palm today and in addition to spotting that soft-touch cover we chatted them up on where things stand, how things are progressing, and various other clarifications about webOS and the Pre that have yet to be made. Palm’s staying pretty tight-lipped and under-the-radar at the show, despite bringing a Europe-friendly HSDPA handset to show off — they’re not making any big announcements along those lines until there’s a carrier firmed up, and not even clarifying what bands are supported. The build of webOS is exactly the same as what was at CES, and Palm still isn’t letting the device slip out of its firm grip for a bit of rogue hands-on time.

Palm did confirm that games are in development for webOS, and seems a little defensive at accusations that the OS can’t handle that stuff — Palm hasn’t changed its stance on app development, of course, there are no “native” apps allowed currently, but they seem more reticent to admit that web-style app development will limit gaming options. Perhaps they’re hoping Adobe’s Open Screen Project will save them some grief on this front, since Flash will be ready for webOS by the end of the year. Palm’s currently working with a small amount of developers in private beta, refining the SDK to their feedback and needs, and will slowly expand that as the phone approaches launch, but we don’t expect a full SDK to reach Joe the Coder until very close to before or after the launch. We asked about the potential for a soft keyboard, and they said that there’s no reason that developers couldn’t build their own — though we’re not sure how that would work. Out of the gate developers won’t have super deep access to the OS from what we understand — they wouldn’t be able to do something like Facebook’s level of OS-wide contacts integration, for instance — but Palm hopes to open those APIs up further down the line.

We get the impression that Palm feels version 1.0 of webOS is very feature complete, and that the most surprises we’ll get from here to launch will be mostly along the lines of 3rd party development and release details.

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Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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