Hasta La Gadget!

See the bullet for HP’s new D110a Photosmart e-All-in-One that says, “HP ePrint for printing anywhere.” Well, you can ignore that for now. While HP proudly lists ePrint — the ability to print PDF, JPEG, and MS Office documents received as attachments from any email-capable device — as a flagship feature on its newest line of web-connected printers, it’s not a working feature and it won’t be until a software update is pushed out at the end of the month, according to support forums. Unfortunately, there’s no notice of this on HP’s own retail site, Amazon, or in brick-and-mortar shops like Best Buy. And curiously, that trio of 5-star “customer reviews” on HP’s own site fail to mention the missing feature at all. Instead, owners will only discover this after calling the HP help desk or checking the growing list of disgruntled rants in HP or Amazon support threads. Not cool HP, not cool.

[Thanks, Cliff W.]

HP Photosmart D110a ePrint printer earns 5-star reviews despite lacking ePrint… what? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa, Apple just admitted that there’s an issue with the iPhone 4’s reception, but it might not be what you think:

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

Sure, the odd way Apple calculates bars has been noted before, but what’s troubling is that this is the second time Apple has blamed signal strength / reception issues on software and it doesn’t fully explain calls dropping and data degradation when the iPhone 4 is held in a very particular (but common) way. It’s also worth noting that Apple in no way admits to an antenna design flaw. Read the full press release after the break.

Continue reading Apple: iPhone 4 reception problem is a software issue, fix coming in ‘a few weeks’

Apple: iPhone 4 reception problem is a software issue, fix coming in ‘a few weeks’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft says Kin software update is scheduled for mid-summer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You still using (and paying $99 a year) MobileMe? So you haven’t been lured away by Google’s or Microsoft’s free offerings then? Ok, then you’ll probably notice that MobileMe looks a bit different today. Pictured above is the new MobileMe application switcher that now requires two clicks to do what previously took one (i.e., switch MobileMe applications). Looks pretty though. Mail is the biggest change with new widescreen (pictured above) and compact views, rules, single-click archiving, a formatting toolbar, and SSL all introduced in the beta last month. Huzzah?

P.S. Sadly, that’s a screengrab from our actual MobileMe account. Somebody please remind us why we still pay for this?

Apple’s MobileMe Mail gets a refresh for some reason originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In its day, the HTC Hero with its brand new Sense UI and browser with Flash Lite was a breakthrough, multitouch Android handset. As such, it quickly became a big seller for HTC and the carriers that sold it. Now one year later, owners of the GSM variant are still waiting for their chance at the latest Android 2.1 update. As a harbinger of things to come (we hope), the Hero 2.1 update just landed in HTC’s home country of Taiwan. Unfortunately, this will likely be the last update Hero owners receive… via official channels, anyway.

[Thanks, Lee]

HTC Hero (GSM) Android 2.1 update finally arrives… in Taiwan originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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