Hasta La Gadget!

At CES, Verizon had mentioned that “some… but not all” of its first LTE handsets would support the simultaneous use of voice and data. That’s not news for 3G customers on T-Mobile and AT&T, nor WiMAX customers on Sprint — but for Verizon subscribers, this is a very novel concept, indeed. Well, we can chalk up the mighty ThunderBolt from HTC as one of the models that’ll support it, if leaked training materials for the phone over on Android Central are to be believed. On a related note, the very existence of these materials gives us hope that we’ll be seeing it on store shelves before too long; don’t get us wrong, the two USB modems Big Red’s launched for LTE service so far are all well and good, but we could really use some handsets on these airwaves.

HTC ThunderBolt will support simultaneous voice and data in LTE areas originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Android Central  | Email this | Comments

Look, if you buy a carrier-branded Android handset, you should know good and well that you may never see the first Android update. It ain’t easy to hear, but as mama always said, the truth ain’t always painless. That said, there’s still some research you should do before picking a phone and carrier, and ComputerWorld has seemingly done just that for you. The methodology is all explained down in the source link, but the long and short of it is this: in the last half of 2010, Verizon upgraded 33 percent of its sub-2.2 phones to Froyo, while Sprint updated just 28.6 percent of its stable and T-Mobile blessed only 12.5 percent of its phones with the new digs. AT&T bashers should take note, as Ma Bell didn’t update a single one of its nine Android phones during the June-December 2010 time period. Yeah, ouch. Over on the handset side, we’ve got HTC gifting half of its devices with Froyo, while Motorola comes in second with 15.4 percent and Samsung third with 11.1 percent. No matter how you slice it, it’s a depressing study to look at, and it probably makes your decision to skip over a Nexus One seem all the more idiotic in retrospect. But hey, at least there’s the Nexus S to console you… if you’re willing to sign up with T-Mob, that is.

Study: Verizon Wireless and HTC most eager to provide Android 2.2 updates originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Into Mobile  |  ComputerWorld  | Email this | Comments

It’s time to start penning the epilogue to the story of how Verizon and the iPhone came to be happily betrothed yesterday. We’ve already heard a good deal about how the last suitor failed to live up to expectations, but this report keeps the focus predominantly on the newlyweds and their courtship. The agreement came last year and was brokered by Verizon President Lowell McAdam and Apple COO Tim Cook, with input from CEOs Ivan Seidenberg and Steve Jobs (naturally), and though the commercial aspect only took about a day, the preceding technical hurdle was a six-to-nine months ordeal. That entailed putting Verizon cell towers at Apple HQ to check signal and avoid reliability troubles, as well as having Verizon’s Executive Director of Technology David McCarley work in Cupertino for more than a year. As for the rest of the deal, both parties agreed to share inside knowledge (Verizon’s network plans for Apple’s device plans — wouldn’t you like to know) and Verizon had to agree to a logo-free device. Which, given the sure-to-be mindblowing sales, probably isn’t a hard pill to swallow.

A brief and anecdotal history of the Verizon iPhone 4 deal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Mac Rumors  |  Bloomberg  | Email this | Comments

Remember Bug Labs, the guys building open-source hardware modules that make it easy (and relatively inexpensive) to prototype new gadgets of your own creation? The last time we visited with these guys at the spring CTIA show last year, the company’s upgraded BUGbase 2.0 was still in mockup form — and carrier deals were little more than a gleam in CEO Peter Semmelhack’s eye. Nearly a year has passed since then, and Bug’s ecosystem has grown considerably to encompass a bunch of third-party modules, prototyped products, and carrier-specific packs for Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon that let your meticulously hacked-together hardware communicate over the network of your choice.

Of course, this all necessitated a follow-up meeting, which we were delighted to have at CES a couple days ago. Read on!

Continue reading Bug Labs’ BUGswarm and Verizon BUGbundle hands-on

Bug Labs’ BUGswarm and Verizon BUGbundle hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

There’s no company in the industry that’s better at consistently having confidentiality come off its products in the FCC’s database right on time better than Apple — and indeed, the CDMA version of the iPhone just hit the filing system. Model A1349 (as opposed to the GSM version’s A1332) has the expected test results for CDMA / EV-DO Rev. A on the 850 and 1900MHz bands along with Bluetooth and WiFi without a whiff of GSM support for global roaming — not to say Verizon gave any hint that you might be able to roam outside of CDMA countries anyway.

iPhone 4 with CDMA for Verizon gets FCC approval, right on time originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  FCC  | Email this | Comments