Hasta La Gadget!

The guys over at Pocketnow have been doing their intellectual property homework lately and they’ve uncovered an atypically broad trademarking effort being carried out by Motorola. The Droid maker has sought to be associated with the term “Xoom” in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and even Taiwan, signifying that whatever the company intends to do with the name will play a pretty significant role in its future plans. The category applied for is defined as “Mobile computers and related accessories,” which really narrows things down to the one device Moto has in its labs that everyone’s talking about: its Android Honeycomb tablet. All this legal team activity seems to point to its name being the Motorola Xoom, but there’s still time for minds to change and branding to be revised. Hey, at least we know what the logo will look like.

Motorola seeks ‘Xoom’ trademark around the world, could well be the name of its Android tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So we’ve got a crazy theory here: SlashGear just got a couple closeup shots of some heretofore-unknown HTC. So did we — one in common with SlashGear, one different. Could it be that Taiwan’s finest are “leaking” us these shots in an effort to drum up interest going into CES in a couple weeks? We wouldn’t doubt it in the least — with the LG B, Optimus 2X, and Samsung Nexus S all fresh off the presses, HTC probably wouldn’t mind getting a little boost in mindshare right now, and there’s no better way to do it than by teasing a phone that looks an awful lot like the previously-leaked Mecha. As a refresher, the Mecha is the beast that might end up on Verizon as the Incredible HD, offering LTE compatibility for the carrier’s new 4G network — and we know that Verizon plans on showing a whole bunch of LTE devices at CES, so this is all lining up pretty nicely. Follow the break for the other shot we received along with SlashGear‘s.

Update: Android Central got another picture, too, presumably from the same source. Shenanigans!

Update 2: Gizmodo, too. At the rate we’re going, we’ll have these pictures assembled into an actual working phone by the time the night is over.

Continue reading New HTC device starts leaking piecemeal — is it the Mecha / Incredible HD?

New HTC device starts leaking piecemeal — is it the Mecha / Incredible HD? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been hoodwinked by trademark filing and domain registrations before (cough, BlackPad and SurfBook) so we wouldn’t say this is anywhere near definite, but we just caught wind of a Sony Ericsson EU trademark registration for “Xperia Play,” and SE PR firm Jung Relations has registered a variety of Xperia Play domain names, including XperiaPlay.com, .net, and .org. Yes, that certainly sounds like a promising name for the PlayStation Phone (although not quite as promising as, you know, “PlayStation Phone,”) but honestly we wouldn’t bet on anything at this point. We’ve got a feeling we’ll either find out either at CES or at MWC in February — hold on tight.

Update: Turns out SE also registered Xperia Arc, Xperia Duo, and Xperia Neo, so now our interest is definitely piqued. And our hopes are totally shatter-able.

Sony Ericsson PlayStation Phone to be called ‘Xperia Play’? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re still hesitant to call Bada a “smartphone platform” in the same breath as Android and iOS — but despite our best attempts to write it off, Samsung’s homegrown handset platform keeps chugging and expanding to new hardware. A developer event in South Korea appears to have yielded the first details on what Bada 2.0 will bring when it launches next year, and needless to say, it adds a bunch of smartphone-worthy stuff to the mix: an honest-to-goodness ad framework of some sort, better support for apps that use web technologies, multitasking, NFC capabilities, and an brand new SDK that’ll support Mac and Linux. We’re still going to see a whole lot more hardware — and a more cohesive story — to justify why even low-end “smartphones” should be using Bada over Android, but it’s an interesting development nonetheless.

Samsung’s Bada 2.0 to move to ‘web-centric’ apps, getting ad framework and multitasking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Radio Shack’s $149 price for the 16GB iPhone 4 just got undercut by a whole two bucks. We’ve been tipped off to Sam’s Club planning to offer the AT&T-locked device for a $147 fee, subject to the usual two-year agreement. This offer will run all the way until Christmas day, so if you have to have the cheapest possible fourth-gen iPhone, this’ll probably be it. The 3GS is also up for grabs at a thrifty $47, emulating its younger sibling’s $52 price cut. Is there anyone left who isn’t discounting smartphones this month?

[Thanks, Anonymous]

iPhone 4 to hit new low of $147 on contract at Sam’s Club this week? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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