Hasta La Gadget!

The Motorola Xoom is not faring as well as its iOS counterpart. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Motorola announced dismal device sales in its earnings report on Thursday, with tablets faring near the worst among the company’s products.

The company shipped 11 million mobile devices over the past three months, according to the quarterly statement. Yet only 440,000 of those were tablet devices. In other words, the Motorola Xoom Android tablet flopped big time.

Out of the remaining 10.56 million devices shipped, 4.4 million of those were smartphones. That number of course pales in comparison to Apple’s 20-plus million iPhones sold last quarter, and even to the 5 million Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphones sold in the first three months of the phone’s release. Especially considering that’s 4.4 million across all of Motorola’s device models.

It’s a quarter of rough numbers for the company, which of course is facing competition on all sides. For perspective’s sake, compare the 440,000 Xoom tablets with Apple’s numbers this quarter: The Cupertino giant sold 9.25 million iPads over the last quarter, almost 20 times the number of Motorola’s Xooms. And it’s important to note that when Motorola says 440,000 units “shipped,” that signifies the number of devices sold to retail stores, not to customers. It’s difficult to determine how many actual sales to customers occurred without further detail.

And even if the iPad weren’t doing so well, the Xoom is still competing with the myriad Android tablets available from other hardware manufacturers.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for the U.S.-based mobile device manufacturer. Smartphone sales are up from 2.7 million during the same time period last year, which is nothing to scoff at.

But with the majority of phone sales being “dumbphones” — or relatively low-end cellular devices — the company’s strategy of relying heavily on smartphone sales as a strength has yet to pan out.

With any luck, the company will be able to turn things around as more smartphone devices debut in the fall. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha announced that the Droid Bionic — a highly anticipated dual-core smartphone which was pushed back to the drawing board for further improvements — will debut some time in September.

We’re not precisely sure which model this mystery phone is with the neon-green back, but we know it’s from RIM, and it looks an awful lot like some of the early leaked shots we’ve seen of the 9860, aka the Torch. It’s made a visit to the FCC under the moniker RDH71CW / RDP71UW / RDQ71UW, different designations for various frequency flavors we presume, but at this point is only being tested for Bluetooth and WiFi compliance, leaving us guessing as to future carriers. Place your bets in comments below, and feel free to speculate about when this thing might actually ship — and what color it might be when it does.

Update: Digging deeper into the filings, we discovered that RDH71CW supports GSM / EDGE 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and CDMA 800 / 1900 / 2000, likely pegging this as a Verizon and / or Sprint global phone; RDP71UW is the WCDMA version that supports quadband GSM / EDGE and WCDMA 850 / 1900 / 2100 that would pin it on AT&T, Rogers, Bell, and / or Telus; and RDQ71UW offers the same GSM / EDGE but substitutes in WCDMA 1700 AWS, as well as 900 / 2100 for global use, which could indicate the BlackBerry 9860 has a future with T-Mobile as well.

BlackBerry Torch 9860 lighting up the FCC? (Update: frequencies added) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  FCC  | Email this | Comments

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mystery Cellphone Theater. This week’s enigma comes to us courtesy of T Store, a Korean app market, where the Developer Center lists an unannounced Samsung device with the model number SHV-E120S. Now, we can’t tell you much about the E120S, only that it reports to sport a WXGA screen (that’s 1280 x 768), Gingerbread, and a single-core MSM8250 Snapdragon. Sammy has a Korea-only handset with the SHV-E110S tag and a more standard 800 x 480 screen, and the company has made no secret about its desire to push pixel density well beyond the 300ppi mark — still, there’s no guarantee this is in fact a phone. It very well may be a tablet, or just a strange report from an emulator. Regardless, we’re intrigued, and keeping our fingers crossed for 4.3-inch HD display.

Mysterious Samsung shows up in dev center sporting Gingerbread and 1280 x 768 screen originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CareAce  |  T Store Developer Center  | Email this | Comments

We get the impression that Kyocera’s design team had been hacking away at the Echo for years — largely due to the blocky corners that remained, despite the current market’s affinity for curvation — and in a way, we’re actually relieved that Sprint took a chance with it. We’ve seen what’s to come when looking at dual-screen handsets, and if executed properly, the future seems bright. The Echo itself surprised us with its flexibility, and while it’s obviously a niche device, we’re certain a few of you have ponied up for one. So, here’s your chance to tell us all what you’d do differently the next time around. Would you change the form factor in any way? How’s about that slider / locking mechanism? Was Android 2.2 the right choice? Do you wish it were available on a different carrier? Go on and get creative in comments below!

How would you change the Kyocera Echo? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

For many smartphone users, a quality keyboard is the only feature that truly matters. These passionate devotees will proudly live and die with their thumbs blazing, and for of all RIM’s recent troubles, it’s currently floating on a life preserver: a compelling handset with a portrait QWERTY keyboard doesn’t exist for Android. The HTC Status ($50 on contract) attempts to succeed where others have failed, and — if it’s any good — could entice many BlackBerry-toting teens that want a new handheld fixation. They rarely bother with email, as text messages and Facebook reign supreme for communication. To that end, the Status promotes itself as the perfect phone for Facebook users, but is the integration truly useful, or simply a chintzy add-on? More so, can HTC successfully marry Gingerbread with an upright keyboard? Join us after the break to learn whether we “Like” the HTC Status.

Continue reading HTC Status review

HTC Status review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments