Hasta La Gadget!

When it launched the Incredible S at MWC a couple of weeks ago, HTC promised the new 4-inch device would be quick to get a Gingerbread update and now it’s giving us a definitive schedule for it by saying that Android 2.3 will be distributed to its new flagship phone by the end of Q2 2011. We’re not sure four months of sitting by the window waiting for the OTA update to float in necessarily matches up to our definition of “quick,” but there are much better news for owners of HTC’s older devices. The Desire HD and Desire Z — both released in September 2010 — will also be leaping away from Froyo and up to Gingerbread and will be joined by the original Desire, which was announced way back at last year’s MWC. That handset was essentially HTC’s own-brand Nexus One, so we already knew it was capable of running Gingerbread, but it’s still rare to see a device go through two significant Android updates (the Desire began life with Android 2.1). All these old Desires are placed on the same update schedule as the Incredible S, whereas the newly announced Desire S and Wildfire S will ship with Gingerbread preloaded.

[Thanks, Johannes]

HTC Incredible S, Desire HD, Desire Z and original Desire will all be eating Gingerbread by the end of June originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google details some of the Honeycomb features coming to Ice Cream: action bar, ‘hologram’ visual style originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stephen Elop, in his financial and strategy briefing continuing Nokia’s marathon Capital Markets Day, just posed an interesting rhetorical question: will Nokia be able to “customize everything” on Windows Phone 7 in order to differentiate itself? “Yes!” was Elop’s ebullient proclamation, though he quickly pulled it back to say that Nokia likely won’t make extensive use of this freedom to tailor Microsoft’s OS. Instead, the company will be cautious and seek to maintain compatibility rather than pushing the boat out too far in tweaking the underlying software. That’s a major shift for Microsoft, who forbade HTC from skinning Windows Phone 7 with Sense, something the Taiwanese company would surely have loved to do, and limited it to the introduction of a self-contained Hub. Now Nokia’s saying it — perhaps exclusively — has been given the liberty to play around inside WP7 to its heart’s content. We’ll see how important that turns out to be whenever Nokia delivers its first device bearing its new smartphone OS. An insider tip tells us the current plan is to introduce such a handset by the end of 2011, potentially based on current hardware. Who’s ready for Xbox Live on a future version of the N8?

Nokia will be able to customize ‘everything’ in Windows Phone 7, but likely won’t originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 07:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to Gartner’s latest mobile sales numbers, the rise of Android hasn’t been quite as meteoric as you might think — even with 888.8 percent growth in 2010. Last month, Canalys quoted Android as the top earner for smartphone platforms in Q4 of last year, beating out Symbian for the top spot, but Gartner says it ain’t so. In fact, IDC already quietly chimed in on the topic a few days ago saying that Symbian was still the smartphone OS “market leader.” Gartner’s numbers do show Android overtaking Nokia’s Symbian devices in unit sales, but it points out that the OS’ use across a variety of brands in Q4 actually “kept Symbian slightly ahead of Android.” Symbian ultimately outsold Android by more than 44 million units last year, but considering the little green robot’s astronomical growth in 2010, we’d say even super star is an understatement. Check out the PR after the jump to see how the rest of the competition stacks up.

Continue reading Gartner and IDC dispute Android’s dominance over Symbian in Q4 2010

Gartner and IDC dispute Android’s dominance over Symbian in Q4 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft announced months ago that the artist formerly known as Vail — now officially known as Windows Home Server 2011 — was dropping Drive Extender functionality. Though we were given hope that the feature might be reinstated, the release candidate of WHS2011 went out to testers today… sans Drive Extender’s ‘drive pooling for dummies’ capability. In its place, Microsoft has included a Move Folder Wizard that alerts you when a new hard drive has been added (for those who were visited by the HDD fairy without their knowledge, no doubt) and walks you through formatting and partitioning your new drive. However, partition size is limited to 2TB for it to work with the server backup feature, so your massive collection of ripped Blu-rays will require a veritable alphabet of drive letters. Not all the news is bad though, as the dev team has enabled Shadow Copy in the OS to allow data time traveling in case you accidentally delete something. If that sounds good to you, hit the source link below and get your download on.

Vail is now Windows Home Server 2011, Drive Extender’s officially dead originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Feb 2011 07:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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