Hasta La Gadget!

Frightened by the mere thought of picking up a partially-baked BlackBerry PlayBook? So is Verizon Wireless, it seems. Despite a March 22nd press release (embedded after the break for convenience) from Research in Motion suggesting that VZW would indeed be a “retail channel” for the QNX-based slate, the carrier’s Brenda Raney is singing a different tune. According to her:

“We’re still evaluating the BlackBerry Playbook and have not made a determination as to whether we’re going to distribute it.”

‘Course, we wouldn’t cry too hard if Big Red ends up passing — Sprint’s 4G version ought to satisfy anyone pining to pick one up with an integrated cell radio. Too bad Mike Lazaridis isn’t around to opine on just how “unfair” such a statement is.

Continue reading Verizon Wireless: we might sell the BlackBerry PlayBook, if we feel like it

Verizon Wireless: we might sell the BlackBerry PlayBook, if we feel like it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung gave us the basic specs on day one, but Verizon’s sparing no detail this week, as it trains employees how to effectively sell the LTE-packed Droid Charge to those of us who live and die by how many devices we can connect to our hotspot (10) and size of our bundled microSD card (32GB). Droid-Life brings us those revelations, while Phone Arena has a rumor somewhat upsetting if true — that site’s anonymous tipsters claim that the Droid Bionic is no more. They say that the Atrix-alike’s Tegra 2 processor wasn’t playing nice with Verizon’s LTE baseband chips and had overheating issues too, and rather than expend more effort to fix the incompatibilities, Motorola simply gave it the boot. However, Phone Arena‘s quick to mention that the “Droid Bionic” name may live on, as Moto will allegedly be grooming the top-shelf Targa to replace it. We’re reaching out to Verizon right now, and expect we’ll have an official “we do not comment on rumors and speculation” before long.

Droid Charge shows its colors in Verizon training docs, Droid Bionic gets killed off? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You won’t be able to hear him for much longer, folks. Paul Marcarelli, aka “Verizon Guy,” is being let go. As it turns out that wasn’t even his character’s name, VZW settling on “Test Man” when scripting the early shots. Now that company is “taking its ads in a different direction,” a direction that apparently does not include Mr. Marcarelli. But, based on the tales he recounted to The Atlantic, that may be a good thing. Paul once heard someone say “Can you hear me now?” at his grandmother’s funeral — as her body was being lowered into the grave. Yup, it’s time for a role change.

Verizon Guy gets let go, turns out that wasn’t his name anyway originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon may have left it out from the get-go, but it looks as if eager HTC Thunderbolt owners needn’t wait another day to test out a video-enabled version of Skype. For those outside of The Loop, there was quite the back-and-forth going during the early days, with Verizon announcing at the 11th hour that its flagship LTE phone would be shipped sans Skype. It’s still unavailable in the bona firde Android Market, but a build has appeared from the ether and seems to be humming along just fine here at Engadget HQ. Hit the source link if you’re feeling froggy, and let us know in comments how things work out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: So we just happened to have a Thunderbolt on hand, and gave Skype’s mobile video chat a try. We came away quite impressed — video is as good as can be expected from the handset’s 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, and the experience on WiFi and LTE is virtually indistinguishable. The app even worked on 3G, though that reduced the picture quality to the point of being almost unusable.

Michael Gorman contributed to this report.

Skype with video calling leaks for HTC Thunderbolt, celebrations unsurprisingly erupt (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like it or not, it’s a Big Red kind of day. The latest VZW news to splash down in our inbox is the shot you see above — the first hint of promotional material surrounding Samsung’s Droid Charge. If you’ll recall, this phone began its (public) life at CES 2011 sans a name, but as a source correctly predicted, the name shown above will be the one that sticks. Proving that the Atrix 4G setup was more than just a fluke, Sammy’s also showcasing a must-have peripheral: the multimedia desktop dock. Said accessory ships with a built-in battery charger and spare cell, but with no apparent signs of a video output, we’re having a hard time getting too hot and bothered.

Samsung’s Droid Charge spotted in leaked promo material, multimedia dock in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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