Hasta La Gadget!

As you may be aware, ASUS was one of the first companies to officially hop on board with Windows Phone 7, and it even produced some prototype devices (like the one pictured in the middle above) that were used by engineers and developers in the lead-up to the big launch (some 5,000 of them, apparently). As you may have also noticed, ASUS still hasn’t actually released a Windows Phone 7 device for consumers — although that may finally be set to change. Speaking with Forbes at Mobile World Congress, ASUS exec Benson Lin revealed that the company did actually have a first-generation product that it was ready to go market with, but it held back because it realized it “didn’t have the bandwidth” and lacked the carrier support it would need to support another new cellphone initiative. Lin went on to say that while ASUS is still assessing Windows Phone 7, the company feels ready for it, and he will personally be meeting with carriers at MWC over the rest of the week to gauge their interest, which he notes will be a “key factor” in determining ASUS’ strategy going forward.

ASUS still considering Windows Phone 7 device, carriers ‘key factor’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading CUPP crams ARM inside of a MacBook Pro, makes it run Android with a button press (video)

CUPP crams ARM inside of a MacBook Pro, makes it run Android with a button press (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading INQ Cloud Q busts from cover at MWC 2011 and we get glass-on

INQ Cloud Q busts from cover at MWC 2011 and we get glass-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve just swooped our way through the Fulton Innovation stand here at MWC and found, sat next to the familiar light-up cereal box, a peculiar version of the Verizon LTE network-riding LG Revolution. Thicker than its CES-announced counterpart (by only 1.5mm, if the Fulton reps are to be believed), this Revolution features a Qi wireless charging-compatible back, which happens to go very nicely with a Verizon-branded inductive charging station. You can scope those out in the gallery below. We’re told the back cover that makes this possible will be available as an accessory in the next 30 to 60 days, but the excitement for us was in hearing that Samsung also has an unannounced handset that will feature a similar add-on, which will be landing in the same timespan. While at the stand, we were also shown the back cover of an HTC Thunderbolt — we weren’t told the Thunderbolt will be making like the Revolution and getting its own chunky wireless charging adapter, but don’t be surprised if it does.

Continue reading LG Revolution gets Fulton inductive charging back, HTC and Samsung handsets joining the party soon

LG Revolution gets Fulton inductive charging back, HTC and Samsung handsets joining the party soon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BARCELONA — Microsoft is prepping a major update for Windows Phone 7, bringing multitasking and a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9 to the mobile operating system.

The update, vaguely scheduled for “later this year,” was demoed today by Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows Phone.

The biggest new feature is multitasking. Like iOS and webOS, it manifests itself as fast-app-switching. Press the “back” button flip to the last-used app, or press and hold to enter a switching screen. This is a lot like the webOS “card” metaphor crossed with Apple’s cover flow: you flip through shrunken screenshots to get to the app you want. It’s neat and, in the beta build I tried out, fast.

When you re-enter an app, it resumes instantly. The demo showed Belfiore flipping between a couple of games, and entering right where he left off. This feature is open to third-party developers.

Another feature will be familiar to iOS 4 users: Background audio. Just like with iOS, you will now be able to run any audio app as you juggle different activities between apps.

Office for the phone is pretty self-explanatory, but more interesting is the inclusion of Microsoft’s cloud-storage service, SkyDrive (above). Users will get 25GB of online storage that is deeply tied into both Windows on the PC and the phone. It is shameful that Apple doesn’t offer the same already.

And then there’s IE9. Current Windows Phone 7 handsets ship with a mobile version of the four-year-old IE7, and IE9 is the latest version of Microsoft’s browser. IE9 for Windows Phone 7 uses the same rendering engine as desktop IE9, so sites will look as good (or bad) in both places.

Better news is hardware acceleration for graphics and video. This hands-off processor-intensive work to the GPU, or graphics processor. This speeds up the performance to a quite remarkable degree.

The skeptical might say that the demo animation, which shows many, many fish swimming on screen, shows typical Microsoft thinking: throw better hardware at poor software to make it run fast enough. But in this case, the Windows Phone team has it right: squeezing extra work from the GPU helps performance and battery life.

Microsoft has already set a fairly high GPU specification in its minimum hardware specs to take care of its Xbox Live integration. This means even current phones can benefit from the update.

This update is a solid one, and shows that the Windows Phone team is doing what Apple and Google are already doing: quick, small iterations in the OS to bring rapid improvements, instead of the monolithic juggernaut approach of desktop Windows.  It looks pretty good. Hopefully — with the help of Nokia — maybe people will actually start to buy the phones.

Photos: Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com