Hasta La Gadget!

What’s a distinguished person of taste and refinement to do when smartphones nowadays are all so bulky and, well, ubiquitous? He or she should go take a look at Vertu‘s store, of course, which has today been populated for the first time with a new, even more exclusive Signature collection, composed of four models — one for each season. There’s a load of talk about delicate hand-crafting and latest technology with these, but the truth of the matter is that you’ll be buying one solely for the purpose of puling it out of your carefully pressed, kerchiefed Armani suit in the hope of impressing any and all nearby members of the opposite sex. What this phone will then say, nay, scream, about you is that you have the money to buy things that are neither functional nor physically appealing — the surest way to signal wealth and prestige. How much money? Try a million Yen for each handset, which roughly translates to $10,830.

Update: Our sage readers have noted a failure in our machine-translated pricing. The handsets in fact cost 20 million Yen a piece, which equates to $216,600. So sorry to have misled you if you were heading off to the bank to get that 10 grand.

Vertu reminds us it’s still alive with million-Yen phones, still tasteless as ever originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Watch Impress  | Email this | Comments

Sure, we’ve been pushing Microsoft hard for Windows Phone 7 Series details like copy and paste (no) and multitasking (no), but we just realized that we’ve never actually seen a 7 Series device… make a phone call. A little running around later and we’ve got two demo handsets calling each other. We’re told that the little white arrow on the call panel will eventually bring up options like conference calling, speakerphone, and mute, but it’s not working yet — and one of the phones seems to think it’s running on Cingular, so either time travel is an unannounced feature of the OS or Microsoft still has some work to do. Video after the break.

P.S. They’re just demo SIMs, but we’re sure the poor PR folks babysitting the devices would appreciate it if you didn’t call the numbers, okay? Be nice.

Continue reading Yes, Windows Phone 7 Series can make a phone call

Yes, Windows Phone 7 Series can make a phone call originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

If you’ve ever seen a child with his or her own cell phone and wondered, “What age are kids getting their own phones nowadays?,” then here’s the answer. Retrevo.com had an independent panel survey 1,000 people online to ask what they thought was appropriate.

Of the respondents, 28 percent thought a child should have his or her first cell phone between ages 9 and 12, 5 percent though kids under 9 should, and a big 61 percent think parents should wait until the child is 13 or over.

As for computers, 31 percent of respondents thought kids should have their first computer by age 9, 35 percent thought between ages 9 and 12, 30 percent between 13 and 18, and 4 percent only after the child turns 18.

To get the whole story, check out this Retrevo blog post.

We know you’ve barely recovered from our Devour review, but Moto just threw another Blur-ified phone in our laps this afternoon – the CLIQ XT. We’ve been playing around with the Android 1.5-based, Flash Lite-supported, multitouch-capable handset for the last couple of hours — but before we grace you with our first impressions, just a fair warning: we don’t yet know the price of the new T-Mobile Android handset, though Motorola did promise us that it will hit shelves this month. With that said, hit the break for a quick rundown of our early thoughts.

Continue reading Motorola CLIQ XT hands-on

Motorola CLIQ XT hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Motorola CLIQ XT  | Email this | Comments

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Sony is involved in a pair of intriguing products: first, a phone that could download and play PlayStation games, as well as an iPad-like tablet device.

The entire story is written in the so-called “voice of God”: no sourcing, except for an unknown number of people “familiar with the matter”. But there is a respectable amount of detail, including a ship date for the phone (2010) as well as details of the Sony internal reorganization that resulted in the project’s inception.

PCMag.com phone analyst Sascha Segan tends to dismiss unsourced stories – which, unfortunately, are both the genesis of scoops as well as rumors that are later proven to be unfounded. In the WSJ‘s case, the paper’ is banking on its reputation.