Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we have mobile phones in our sights — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month.

Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide: Mobile phones

Engadget’s back to school guide: Mobile phones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We can all agree that some fresh product is desperately overdue out of Sunnyvale, so the eternal optimists in us want to believe that the departure of the Pre Plus from Verizon’s and AT&T’s warehouses right now means that we can expect new goodies soon. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the two carriers just happened to run out of phones at the same time and that fresh batches are on their way, so it’s too early to say these phones are out for the count; then again, when you consider that Sprint somehow still sells the Centro, anything’s possible. For what it’s worth, both carriers’ stores are still stocking the phones, so if you absolutely must have a Pre Plus right now, you’re in luck — you’re just going to have to put on something besides your underwear and leave the house to get it. Sorry!

Pre Plus out of stock online at Verizon and AT&T — so what does it mean? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What with all the “battery optimization” excitement, we nearly forgot that Sprint’s new webOS 1.4.5 update doesn’t just empower the Pre; it also finally brings PDK’d OpenGL and SDL support to the Palm Pixi. On the off chance you don’t speak developer lingo, that’s short for 3D apps and games, and as it turns out the pint-sized Pixi doesn’t play the latter half-badly. PreCentral fired up a copy of Need For Speed: Undercover on the freshly-upgraded handset immediately above, and found the game perfectly playable with “decent” framerates and only slightly sub-par load times. Watch their spiffy Nissan turn tricks right after the break, and pray companies get cracking on some Unreal Engine 3 apps soon.

Continue reading Palm Pixi shows off 3D gaming chops with webOS 1.4.5 release (video)

Palm Pixi shows off 3D gaming chops with webOS 1.4.5 release (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hold on to your Foleos, folks, because it looks like Palm still hasn’t given up on the idea of a little laptop that pairs with a phone for wireless communications. However, where that former (failed) experiment called for entirely disparate hardware, here the relationship between the two would be rather more formal. In a patent filed in April and just dug up by Unwired View, Palm describes a “compact removable voice handset” and an “integrated palmtop computer.” The two can communicate wirelessly, but more interestingly they can be coupled such that “there is minimal increase to the overall size and weight” of the palmtop — in other words, the “phone” bit isn’t particularly large, making it more comfortable to hold up to your face in a conversation than your Streaks and the like. Is there actually any hardware behind this application or is this just Palm daydreaming about a Foleo 2? We’ll all just have to wait and find out.

Palm creating palmtop computer with detachable, dockable cellphone? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, the Mark Hurd departure has given HP quite an interesting (if not tumultuous) place in the news cycle, but here’s one that’s gotta sting pretty bad on its own. TechCrunch reports — and independent sources confirm with us — that Peter Skillman, the man with 11 years tenure and the reported designer of the Pre, has left HP / Palm. He joins… sorry, we need to catch our breath here… Michael Abbot, Mike Bell, Lynn Fox, Matias Duarte, Rich Dellinger, and Caitlin Spaan. That’s all the Senior VPs (and almost all the VPs) now gone. We hope CEO Jon Rubinstein isn’t feeling too lonely with most of his one-time dream team having defected en masse. [Photo Credit]

Pre designer Peter Skillman latest to leave Palm, entire senior staff now in exodus originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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