My iPhone 3GS, in downtown Chicago, as I wrote this post.

Verizon certainly seems to be getting under AT&T’s skin with its ads focused on comparing 3G coverage — not only is Ma Bell suing over ’em, it’s now issuing PR to clarify what it sees as the inaccuracies of the entire campaign. If you’ll recall, AT&T thinks Verizon’s 1:1 comparison of 3G coverage maps makes it look like AT&T doesn’t have any coverage at all across most of the country — which means that our nation’s largest wireless carrier is now in the sad position of pimping its gigantic EDGE network in response. Let’s all gloss over the absolutely huge difference in 3G versus EDGE together, shall we?

With both 3G and EDGE coverage, customers can access the Internet, send e-mail, surf the Web, stream music, download videos, send photos, text, talk and more. The only difference – with some data applications, 3G is faster than EDGE.

Right, right — the only difference. That must be why Apple named it the iPhone EDGE Slightly Faster.

Now, AT&T has a valid point when it says that its 3G map covers 75 percent of the nation’s population, and that Verizon’s conflation of total 3G coverage with actual network quality is slightly misleading. But you know what? We watch our iPhones drop from 3G to EDGE and even to GPRS all day long in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and that has nothing to do with the damn map, and everything to do with AT&T’s actual network quality. Let’s put it this way: Verizon’s ad campaign would be totally ineffective if it didn’t ring so true, and the best way for AT&T to counter these ads is to build a rock-solid network, not filing lawsuits and issuing press releases bragging about freaking EDGE. We all clear on this? Good.

Filed under: Cellphones

AT&T responds to Verizon’s 3G ad campaign — by bragging about EDGE originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, you knew this was coming — AT&T’s amended its advertising lawsuit against Verizon to include Big Red’s new holiday ads, including that oh-so-cute Island of Misfit Toys spot, and demanded that they be taken off the air. At question is the same map of AT&T’s 3G coverage used in the other commercial, which Ma Bell says misleads customers into thinking it has no service at all in large swaths of the country. Best part? AT&T’s lawyers had to describe the ad in their new filing, leading to passages like this:

The spotted elephant, in a surprised manner, asks the iPhone “What are you doing here? You can download apps and browse the web!” and a Dolly for Sue asserts that “Yeah. People will love you [the iPhone].”

Happy holidays, folks.

Read – Digital Daily
Read – AT&T’s amended complaint [PDF]

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AT&T adds Verizon’s Island of Misfit Toys holiday ads to lawsuit, demands they be yanked off the air originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t have enough Verizon/Android love in your life? Check out this new handset due out “mostly likely early next year” on the carrier. It’s from a company called Saygus, which you’ve most likely never heard of. In fact, it wasn’t really in the hardware game until fairly recently. We were shown the device as a pre-CES show in Manhattan last night. The phone is still fairly prototypey, running Android 1.6–when it comes to market it’ll, be running 2.0, naturally.

The company is focused on the VPhone’s video-conferencing abilities, which, again, aren’t quite ready for prime time. The phone can also serve as a wireless access point for up to eight devices. There’s 512MB of RAM built in (expandable to 16GB with an SDHC card), a 5MP camera with flash, and a 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen.

Check out a video of the device in all its glory, after the jump.

I’ve reviewed the Droid Eris twice before, when it was called the Hero. The difference is that Verizon’s selling it for half the price, making it the cheapest Android phone you can buy—and the best, for the money.

Eris is Verizon’s other Droid phone. It really is a remodeled Hero, running Android 1.5 and HTC’s vaunted Sense candy coating—documented CSI style here—a $200 phone stuffed inside a thinner $100 body, like a Corvette engine shoved inside a Saturn. It’s admittedly less exciting than the titular Droid, an industrial beast running Android 2.0. But I have the feeling Verizon is gonna sell a lot more of these things, because, again, it’s $100.

Designing for the Middle of the Road

The Eris is rubbery blob, a narrow oval that’s as subdued as a phone could possibly be, but there is admittedly something comforting about the Eris’s utter lack of personality—it’s completely non-threatening, like a middle manager. It’s so generic it’s almost artful, actually, a design that is nearly perfect for a cheap phone.

The four main Android buttons are touch sensitive, bleeding into the black bezel, hovering over the dead-center trackball and hard chrome buttons for phone and end. I’d like a dedicated camera button, but a volume rocker is all we get. The camera lens stares out the back, disturbingly more reminiscent of an eye than most cameras sticking out the backs of phones, probably because of how stark the rest of the phone is.

Hardware and Camera

The actual guts and screen are the same as past Hero phones—which is to say, nearly the same as all of HTC’s other Android phones so far. The 480×320 screen’s still nice, even if it feels dated now that the Droid’s massive screen, beckoning the next generation, looms large over it. Oh yeah, HTC? Can you get rid of your stupid, pointlessly different version of the mini USB port? Let’s go to micro USB now, yeah?

The still camera’s better than the Droid though, and about the same as the Sprint version of the Hero, performing pretty decently in low-light situations. Video, not so much:

Software and the Endgame

I’ve already covered HTC’s Sense UI in depth, and it is the exact same on the Eris. It runs just as fast as the Sprint Hero, if not a teeny bit quicker. I will say that after using Android 2.0, it does feel like a step backward in some ways, mostly because of the single Google account limitation. But HTC’s confirmed Android 2.0 is coming, so it won’t be an issue for every long.

And really, the fact that Android 2.0—half the reason the Droid is excellent—is coming to the Droid Eris is why, in the end, it’s such a steal. It’s running on Verizon, it’s going to have Android 2.0, and it’s $100. It’s a great phone now, and will be better still soon, making it kind of a perfect storm for people on Verizon looking to ditch their dumbphones—but not Verizon—for something more capable, but who are put off by the Droid, whether it’s the steroids or the higher sticker price.

It’s last month’s darling. But it’ll run this month’s software. For cheap. And that’s pretty spiffy, actually.

You’re getting last month’s killer Android phone for half price


We’ll say it again: This is the best Android deal around


Android 1.5 feels a little dated


Video recording’s not exactly amazing

The last thing you want to hear about a few short days after a product’s launch is a litany of issues plaguing devices in the field, but that’s not quite what’s going on here — instead, this looks to be an extension of Verizon’s well-known policy of testing the crap out of devices until manufacturers are practically crying uncle. The carrier has already generated long internal lists of issues on both the DROID and DROID Eris, it seems, with the leaked documents revealing some five pages for the Motorola product and seven — yes, seven — for the HTC one; the good news is that they’re all slated to be fixed in one of two firmware updates slated for December and January windows. Again, knowing Verizon, these firmware updates could very well get stuck in the testing lab for another six years, but we’ll keep our hopes skyward.

Read – DROID
Read – DROID Eris

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Verizon already prepping DROID and DROID Eris firmware updates? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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