Hasta La Gadget!

Update 2 p.m. PT: The Wall Street Journal claims it has confirmed that Verizon iPhones will be in stores end of January.

U.S. iPhone users frustrated with AT&T’s frequently dropped calls, limited geographic coverage, delayed delivery of iPhone tethering, elimination of unlimited data plans, poor customer service, and alleged cooperation with warrantless wiretapping by the NSA may soon have an alternative.*

Verizon yesterday sent out invitations to a Tuesday, Jan. 11 press event in New York.

Many believe that this event will be the debut of the iPhone on Verizon.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that “a person familiar with the matter” had confirmed the Tuesday event would be the announcement of a Verizon iPhone. Earlier, The New York Times cited “people with direct knowledge of Apple’s plans” who said that Verizon would soon be adding the iPhone to its lineup. Both phrases typically mean that a company has delivered a controlled leak to the newspaper.

Adding credence to the codewords, Gizmodo reports that it did not receive an invitation, despite having a good relationship with Verizon — while Apple-centric blogger Jim Dalrymple, who never covers Verizon, did. Gizmodo has been excluded from every Apple press event since it published photos of the then-unreleased iPhone 4. Gizmodo’s conclusion: Apple is behind Verizon for this event.

Many iPhone users have been frustrated with AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the iPhone since its launch in 2007. The company’s network frequently drops calls (especially for iPhone users) and many users crave faster data speeds and more extensive geographic coverage than the company’s 3G network currently offers. Despite adding additional infrastructure, AT&T appears to have had difficulties keeping up with the demand for the wildly popular phone. Many hope that Verizon would do a better job — or would at least offer an alternative to customers who like Apple’s phone, but don’t like AT&T.

We’ve been unable to confirm the Times and Journal reports independently, but the signs point strongly in one direction: Verizon is about to get the iPhone.

Maybe it will even be available in white.

* Note: An earlier version of this story stated that AT&T customers may be frustrated with its slow data speeds. In fact, independent test results published by PC World in February, 2010 showed that AT&T’s 3G network is on average 67% faster than 3G networks from Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. We regret the error.

Can’t say we’re surprised to hear this at all, but Bloomberg BusinessWeek says Google’s working on its own NFC-based mobile payments system. That makes perfect sense, given that Eric Schmidt has been enthusiastically extolling the virtues of NFC since just before Google launched the Nexus S — which, of course, features an NFC chip. BusinessWeek says the system might launch as early as this year, although we think Google’s got plenty of infrastructure work to do first — and it’s facing plenty of competition from the likes of Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, who are launching their own Isis payment system, as well as direct device competition from RIM and Apple. Should get interesting — we’ll see if we hear anything at CES this week.

Google building its own NFC-based payments system? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 02:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t believe the recent gossip that Nokia and Microsoft are hooking up to make a Windows phone. A former employee of Nokia claims it isn’t happening.

On his personal blog, Watts Martin explained that a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia isn’t even close to happening, because it’s unlikely Nokia would cede control of an OS to a third party. UPDATE: Martin left Nokia earlier this month, Wired has learned.

“There is no guarantee of that at all, because it is stark raving loony,” Martin wrote. “A lot of the reporting on Nokia I’ve seen seems to miss a fundamental fact: they are, in their fashion, just as insistent on control over their ecosystem as Apple is.”

Nokia has been a diehard supporter of Symbian, an open-source operating system that’s a decade old. For years, Symbian has been the worldwide leader in smartphone OS marketshare, but some analysts say it could soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, which has a more modern user interface and several manufacturing partners.

“Market share is an existential threat to Symbian, it imperils the very existence of the platform,” said Gartner analyst Nick Jones. “And the main reason Symbian is losing share is the user experience which isn’t competitive with Apple or Android.”

Eldar Murtazin, editor in chief of Mobile-Review editor, claimed last week that Microsoft had begun talks to make Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. The bleak outlook for Symbian got the tech press wondering if such a partnership would be likely.

Martin’s answer to that question would be a firm “No.”

“Nokia really does have their OS strategy figured out, and it’s a good one,” he said. “What they don’t have figured out is user experience design…. The good news for them is that over the last year they’ve started to take all those problem seriously. The bad news is that they needed to have been taking them seriously in 2007.”

See Also:

• Nokia Phones Hacked to Run Android
• Symbian OS Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?
• Wired 7.09: Just Say Nokia

Photo of a Samsung phone running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7: Mike Kane/Wired.com

Chances are that we’ll find out for sure next month at CES, but PC World has it on authority that BenQ will be throwing its hat into the overcrowded Android tablet ring early next year. The so-called R100 will be a 10.1-inch device, complete with a 1024 x 600 resolution touchscreen, an unspecified flavor of Android and a Samsung-built ARM CPU humming along at 833MHz. Moreover, we’re told that the battery will run for a solid 12 hours before begging for mercy (and calling it a night), and it can also be used with a stylus — you know, for handling both simplified and traditional Chinese handwriting. 8GB of internal storage, an SD slot, mini-USB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a mini-HDMI socket are also marked for inclusion, and of course, an 802.11b/g/n radio will be planted right alongside a Bluetooth module. There’s no mention of a price just yet, and a company representative noted that images wouldn’t be available until the device “was officially launched.” Bah! Humbug!

BenQ rumored to debut 10.1-inch R100 Android tablet in early 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s been no shortage whatsoever of PC control schemes using Kinect, but up until now, every bit of it has been without Microsoft’s official blessing. Of course, the company eventually caved to the massive amount of hacking going on and confessed that it didn’t have any hard feelings for those giving it a whirl, but is it really fixing to take things one step further with bona fide PC support? That’s the talk emanating from South Korea, where game developer GamePrix has reported that at least one of its titles (Divine Soul, if you must know) is “scheduled to support Kinect.” Continuing on about the game, the company’s Jason Lim was quoted as saying that “Kinect will soon be available as a new PC controller,” but naturally, we’ve our doubts. For starters, why wouldn’t Microsoft be working with a more major developer if honest-to-goodness PC-Kinect interactions were planned? Secondly, there’s a definite possibility that GamePrix could really be referring to unofficial support, which would make everything seem a lot more sensible. Either way, we’ll definitely be keeping an ear to the ground for more, and with GDC under three months away, we ought to know the truth sooner rather than later.

[Thanks, Rashad]

Kinect rumored to have PC support in waiting originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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