Hasta La Gadget!

Updated: 2010 really is shaping up as the year of the e-Book reader. The latest entry: iRex’s $400 DR800SG. It has an 8.1-inch stylus touchscreen, 3G Gobi chip with unlimited Verizon data, and books from Barnes & Noble’s ebook store.

B&N has about 750,000 titles, including new releases at $10. The DR800SG will also be able to download over 1,100 newspapers from Newspapers Direct, and supports the open ePub book format (along with PDF, TXT, eReader, and Fictionwise). The device has 2GB of memory, enough to store about 1500 books, but no additional memory card readers.

And while the Kindle‘s CDMA connectivity ties it to Sprint, the DR800SG’s Qualcomm Gobi chip means it will work on overseas HSDPA networks: Not only will the same product ship in Europe, but the press release promises international roaming sometime next year. Yes, the included 3G data is unlimited (no contract required), but there’s no browser—so it’d take a lot of books to freak Verizon out.

In use, your thumb turns pages using a button on the left, but since the DR800SG uses a Wacom tablet layer under the E-Ink display, you can’t use your finger to touch, just the stylus. Pages do turn quickly, though, and you can rotate text into landscape mode.

A leather cover and stylus (pictured) will be included when the DR800SG hits Best Buy in October, and Europe by mid-next year. [iRex Technologies]

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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If you’ve been loving the pictures and videos we’ve been bringing you of the lusciously slim BL40 Chocolate Touch, but holding your breath since a certain blurry photo a few weeks ago showed a rather different Chocolate Touch, we have some bad news. According to Phone Arena News, a Verizon “focus group” (with a questionable sense of aesthetics) decided that the BL40 was crap, and so the somewhat unfortunate looking and decidedly asymmetrical VX8575 has been blessed for domestic release as “Chocolate Touch.” It looks to be standard fare featurephone stuff, with a 3.2MP camera, WVGA TFT display, and a browser that will support some subset of HTML. No word on if or when the BL40 will also be making an appearance at Verizon stores, but if we’d been pushed to the curb for something this busted we certainly wouldn’t come back — at least not without a very big bouquet accompanied by a sincere apology.

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon VX8575 Chocolate Touch confirmed to be uglier than that other Chocolate Touch originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Speaking at a conference earlier this week, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg signaled that he has seemingly accepted the inevitable demise of landlines in favor of cellphones. Asked when the company might stop shedding customers in the more traditional technology, Seidenberg compared the prediction process to “the dog chasing the bus.”

Verizon, instead, is apparently looking toward video as the next step in the evolution of landlines. “Video is going to be the core product in the fixed-line business,” he told the crowd. It’s a evolution that will apparently take a massive conversion to Fios. Adds The New York Times,

By converting most of its landline operation to FiOS, Mr. Seidenberg said Verizon had a new opportunity to cut costs sharply. FiOS uses the decentralized structure of the Internet rather than the traditional design of phone systems, which route all traffic through a tree of regional, then local offices.

Though Verizon Wireless and corporate half-parent Vodafone are finally getting close to achieving technological synergy now that both are moving to LTE for their next-gen networks — and contrary to recent statements — rhetoric is heating up that suggests the marriage may not last forever. Speaking at an investor’s get-together this week, Voda CEO Vittorio Colao said that “the board continues to look at” the company’s investment in the joint venture with Verizon — which we take as executive-speak for “everything’s for sale for the right price.” The popular rumor is that Vodafone’s bummed about Verizon’s failure to pay dividends for the past four years, which effectively means that Big Red isn’t actively contributing to the wireless giant’s bottom line. Verizon’s made no secret of the fact that it’d love to own the joint venture outright, so come on, guys… Verizon’s got money, Voda’s got the goods, let’s sit down at that oaken conference table on the 45th floor and work this out.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Vodafone thinking long and hard about its Verizon stake originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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