Hasta La Gadget!

AT&T was quick to steal a smidge of T-Mobile’s thunder today with the announcement at an investor’s conference that has sped up its 7.2Mbps HSPA software upgrade to all 3G cell sites, moving up the original deadline of 2011. Here’s the thing, though: they didn’t really move up the 2011 date because 7.2Mbps-capable cells don’t do much good without a wide-enough pipe to feed them on the back end. That’s the other part of AT&T’s one-two punch for boosting network speeds, and that part won’t be wrapped up for a while yet. The company says that it expects “the majority” of the mobile data it handles to operate over its upgraded back end by the tail end of this year — and it’s already started the upgrades in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami — but the reality here is that we probably won’t be blazing anywhere near the theoretical max throughput for a little while yet.

AT&T kicks it into overdrive, rolls out 7.2Mbps everywhere — but there’s a catch originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It would seem somebody over at Archos HQ was sipping a little too much of the Chardonnay over the holidays, as the company’s latest firmware update for the 5-inch Internet Tablet has suffered something of a false start. Intended to bring the onboard Android up to the civilized ways of version 1.6 and to fix a few outstanding bugs, the update has been yanked due to the above “last-minute major issue.” Mind you, when the non-toxic version does hit, you should still be wary — it appears the latest firmware disables the hack that allowed users to re-install some Google apps missing from the default software on the device. Ah well, a shambling but active updating regimen is better than none at all.

Archos 5 says hello, goodbye to Android 1.6 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The cult of the BlackBerry phone is based on the device’s ability to bring e-mails to users faster than they can click through them.

But that could become history. BlackBerry users faced a service outage Tuesday evening — the second time in less than a week — that made e-mail, text messages and web services such as Twitter and Facebook inaccessible.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion restored the service Wednesday morning and blamed it on a glitch in its instant messaging program called the BlackBerry messenger.

“Based on preliminary analysis, it appears a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure,” said RIM in a statement.

The company has provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57) and is encouraging all users to upgrade to this latest version.

The service interruptions could hit BlackBerry’s reputation and cause some customers to consider alternatives.

RIM has sold about 75 million BlackBerrys worldwide. But it faces stiff competition from rivals such as as Apple with the iPhone, HTC and Motorola — which recently released the Droid. BlackBerry users have to still contend with a browser that’s decidedly 1990s in its look, poor maps, an anemic app store — 2,000 apps to the iPhone’s 100,000.

Meanwhile, outages on the RIM network seem to be getting more frequent. BlackBerry users faced similar problems accessing their e-mail last Thursday. Which raises the question, exactly what kind of backup systems does RIM have? So far, RIM has chosen not to answer that.

Still concerns over the BlackBerry’s recent failures may be “overblown,” writes Shaw Wu, an analyst with brokerage firm Kaufman Bros in a research note to his clients.

“RIM’s fundamental advantages, including its push network technology and ownership of core hardware and software, [are] underestimated,” says Wu. “Our long-standing view is that Apple remains RIM’s only true competitor, but we believe there is plenty of room for both to succeed.”

Still RIM’s stumbles can only help Apple pull ahead.

See Also:

• Research In Motion Woos BlackBerry Developers
• Obama: My BlackBerry Is Coming With Me
• Review: RIM BlackBerry Storm
• First Look: Redfly Dumb Terminal for BlackBerry
• BlackBerry Gets the Exclusive Official Craigslist App

Photo: (Lymstylez/Flickr)

Right on schedule, the Barnes and Noble Nook is kicking out a software update (we rebooted to get the download to start). We’ve heard this will fix some of the issues we had with the unit in our review — but we’ll update you once we’ve had a little time to play around with it.

Some things we’ve noticed so far:

• Page updating on the E Ink display does seem to be a tiny bit faster. Nothing mindblowing, but a little bit better.
• B&N has fixed the page numbering issues. There is now a clear number and progress bar along the bottom of the screen.
• Overall the navigation and color screen loading times seem improved. The experience is definitely faster — even scrolling through book covers seems a bit improved.
• There is still pausing and lag in the UI. This isn’t a sea change, but it’s clear they’ve cleaned some elements up.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Update: You can take a look at all the changes right here.

Nook 1.1 update hitting now originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft promised us it would remove the silly content censorship from the Zune HD Twitter app ASAP, and here we are a day later with version 1.1, which lets you see all the schoolyard swears you could ever want. High five, assholes. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing a huge performance improvement: it’s a tiny bit snappier, but we’re still seeing unresponsive buttons, laggy scrolling, and random WiFi disconnects. On to version 1.2!

P.S.- Screenshot of the new non-censoring app in action after the break. Be careful, it could damage more delicate constitutions.

Continue reading Zune HD Twitter app updated, dirty words no longer censored

Zune HD Twitter app updated, dirty words no longer censored originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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