Hasta La Gadget!

Now that the Sholes has seemingly been gifted with a less bizarre, less reminds-us-of-a-shoe-insert name, pictures and specs of the so-called Tao are starting to flow en masse — just in time for a possible introduction at next week’s CTIA show out in San Diego (we can only hope, anyway). The first round of in-the-wild shots really didn’t reveal much of anything, but the cameraman has elected to apply just enough wide-angle this time around to give us a full-on view of the high-end Android beast in its closed position — and if this is what we’re going to be getting on Verizon shelves, HTC (and heck, even Moto’s own CLIQ) should be on high alert. So, who’d switch to Verizon for this?

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Motorola Tao’s photographer zooms out a little, better shot ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon Wireless today said that they are terminating the Verizon Hub, an innovative VOIP home phone that doubled as a Web tablet and digital photo frame.

While we gave a mediocre review to the first shipping version of the Hub, we were excited about new versions shown at this year’s CTIA show which offered YouTube, MySpace and Twitter widgets. Those models will now, apparently, never be sold.

The Verizon Hub died from a terminal service plan and confused retail strategy involving an expensive $34.99 monthly fee and a perplexing requirement that owners also have a Verizon Wireless cell phone. It is survived, only barely, by its first cousin the AT&T Home Manager.

Following the introduction of the HP Mini 1151NR earlier this year, Verizon’s push into the brave new world of subsidized netbooks continues this coming Sunday with the Gateway LT2016u, essentially a warmed-over LT2000 with enough legalese attached to it to make sure you’re a loyal Big Red customer for the next 24 months of your life. Like the Mini, the new Gateway features Qualcomm’s Gobi tech to make sure you’ve got 3G data available essentially anywhere in the world, but otherwise, the specs aren’t terribly interesting: 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 display, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive spinning at an uncreative 5400rpm, VGA webcam, Windows XP Home, and a package that tips the scales at 2.95 pounds (up a noticeable tick from the Mini’s 2.45). If you sign up for a two-year deal, you’re looking at $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate; a year ago, we were hoping these things would end up going for free on subsidy, but it looks like that dream might yet be a few years off.

Filed under: Laptops, Wireless

Gateway’s LT2016u netbook coming to Verizon next weekend originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Historically, wireless rollouts have been miserably long, protracted affairs that take countless years to complete, but Verizon’s talking in some really aggressive terms as it moves to LTE. The company wants to be at or near 100 percent overlay with its legacy CDMA footprint by 2013, but a ton of major markets will be covered and commercially well before then — up to 30 in 2010. Speaking in an interview this week, Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone has reiterated that the company is still on track with its LTE deployment — music to our ears — and that they’re not looking to “tease” customers at length with trial deployments that would require moving cross-country to enjoy. They’re looking to establish a “significant footprint” out of the gate, which is allegedly made possibly in part by the LTE equipment’s ability to share some infrastructure (backhaul equipment, for instance) with the CDMA network it’ll be joining in cell sites around the country. Now, how about those USB LTE modems, Verizon?

Filed under: Wireless

Verizon: LTE rollout to be ‘as close to all-at-once as possible’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon and AT&T, the States’ number one and number two wireless carriers by subscriber count respectively, share a common bond in that they both have deep ties to the Bell System of old and have ended up running huge wireline broadband and legacy telephone businesses. That means they’re liable to end up sharing a lot of common interests like candlelit dinners, walks on the beach, and a general agreement with the FCC’s Julius Genachowski on new net neutrality legislation — for wired broadband, anyhow. Both companies’ wireless divisions are expressing concern that the proposed rules would apply to ISPs regardless of medium, and the argument is that while landlines (and the accompanying bandwidth) are a theoretically limitless resource, wireless bandwidth is ultimately limited by available spectrum no matter how advanced the underlying technology may be — and if the carriers don’t have authority to clamp down on certain types of heavy use, everyone loses. Though every bone in our body is telling us to vehemently disagree with the argument, they’re right on the point that wireless capacity doesn’t flow from an everlasting font of spectrum, and it’s got to be managed. Thing is, “managed” doesn’t necessarily mean “restrict.” Here are the options we see at a quick glance:

• Lobby the FCC to aggressively search for and free up additional spectrum that can be safely re-purposed. The CTIA’s already pursuing this angle, so it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of it.
• Before raising hell, AT&T and Verizon should both consider completing their moves to LTE and coming within a stone’s throw of tapping out their current spectrum allocations. Both carriers own swaths of 700MHz bandwidth that they haven’t yet capitalized on, and AT&T is actively freeing up 1900MHz by moving a number of markets to 850 for 3G.
• As with everything else in a free economy, the market should decide wireless data pricing. It’s a limited resource and it’s in demand — as long as the appropriate regulatory bodies are keeping a close eye on anti-competitive practices (which it seems they’re looking to do a better job of), simply charge a fair market rate for usage rather than discriminating by application. We’ve got a long way to go from the virtually identical pricing structures and limited options that national carriers offer today.

See, guys? Lots of options here without waging a fight that goes against the popular (and largely correct) side of a hot-button topic.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Wireless

AT&T, Verizon poised to fight FCC’s net neutrality stance on the wireless front originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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