LG’s $100 Ally crashing Verizon stores on May 20th, pre-orders start tomorrow (update: now with specs)

We had a hunch that LG’s Android 2.1-based Ally would see its first customers on May 20th, and Verizon Wireless has finally opened up and confirmed as much this morning. The Iron Man 2-infused smartphone — which we spent some time with yesterday — will be available in all VZW stores beginning May 20th, with pre-orders going live for phone and web customers tomorrow. We’ve already given you the rundown when it comes to specs (they’re after the break for those with memories shorter than their shoelaces), but now we’re able to confirm that it’ll sell for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a new two-year contract. A well-specced Android smartphone for under a Benjamin? Not bad, LG.

Update: Nothing in particular to write home about, but LG has just unveiled the Ally’s nearly complete spec sheet. [Thanks, Rey E.]

Continue reading LG’s $100 Ally crashing Verizon stores on May 20th, pre-orders start tomorrow (update: now with specs)

LG’s $100 Ally crashing Verizon stores on May 20th, pre-orders start tomorrow (update: now with specs) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 May 2010 09:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Ally up for preorder on Thursday, launching on May 20?

We should know a whole lot more about this situation at an Iron Man 2-themed LG event taking place later today, but BGR appears to have scored full details on LG’s upcoming Android-equipped Ally for Verizon along with a couple key dates. Most importantly, it sounds like the landscape QWERTY slider will be available in “all channels” (read: telesales and brick-and-mortar stores) on May 20, preceded by an online pre-order this Thursday, May 13. It’s got Eclair, a 3.2 megapixel cam, 4GB microSD card in-box, and a Qualcomm MSM7627 core — the same midrange silicon that powers the Moto Devour. Against the Droid, this bad boy appears to slot just underneath in the range, but a little choice never hurt anyone, did it?

LG Ally up for preorder on Thursday, launching on May 20? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 18:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon’s HTC Droid Eris getting Android 2.1 any time now

We’d been hearing rumors lately that HTC’s Droid Eris — a phone that has never quite made it out from under the Droid’s shadow — is in the midst of being discontinued by Verizon, but the imminent launch of an Android 2.1 update might just buy it a new lease on life. In fact, the update makes this phone just about the first Hero variant anywhere in the world to be graced with an upgrade to Google’s latest and greatest stuff, beating Sprint’s version thanks to a string of delays that have pushed it out to some unidentified period in the second quarter. We’ve yet to see any reports of folks actually receiving the update notification on their devices, but Verizon’s official support Twitter account is tweeting about the upgrade — which should fix numerous bugs on top of the hotly-anticipated Eclair boost — so we’d expect it to start hitting the wild shortly. Keep us on top of your experiences in comments, won’t you?

[Thanks, Richard]

Update: Verizon has now posted the PDF changelog for your perusal while you wait. Thanks, Michael V.!

Verizon’s HTC Droid Eris getting Android 2.1 any time now originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 15:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon iPhone chatter is getting harder (than usual) to ignore

Alright, stop us if you’ve heard this one before — but seriously, we’ve noticed an uptick on the tip lines here at Engadget in the last couple weeks that’s becoming difficult to ignore. It’s one thing to say “hey, the iPhone is launching on Verizon,” but we’re noticing a particular confluence of facts that has us intrigued: it’ll drop sometime in Summer, possibly in concert with the announcement that Verizon’s first commercial LTE networks have gone live, and — tread carefully here, because this is pretty difficult to believe and we don’t want to get your hopes up only to have them smashed into a million pieces — it’ll supposedly even be a 4G launch device. We’ve gotten surprisingly specific details both from Verizon employees and tipsters whose companies are supposedly under NDA with Verizon to test enterprise deployments of the handset later this year, and they’re all sending basically this same message. Read on!

Continue reading Verizon iPhone chatter is getting harder (than usual) to ignore

Verizon iPhone chatter is getting harder (than usual) to ignore originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 May 2010 15:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kin available online starting tomorrow, in Verizon stores on May 13


Dearest members of the Upload Generation: the wait to buy the Kin of your dreams is a short one — provided Mommy and Daddy are willing to pony up the $30 a month in data charges, of course. Verizon will be selling both the Kin One and Kin Two online starting tomorrow, May 6, for $49.99 and $99.99 respectively, after you agree to a two-year contract and come to terms with the fact that you’ll be paying $100 more upfront while you wait for your rebate to be mailed to you on a debit card (par for the course these days). If you’d rather play with the devices first, your wait isn’t much longer — you’ll be able to score both of them in Verizon retail locations starting a week later on the 13th.

Continue reading Kin available online starting tomorrow, in Verizon stores on May 13

Kin available online starting tomorrow, in Verizon stores on May 13 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 May 2010 11:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Droid Incredible versus Nexus One: cameraphone showdown

With all this talk of the Droid Incredible ousting the Nexus One from Verizon Wireless, having a better multitouch implementation, and just being newer and shinier, you might think this comparison of cameras is just mercilessly piling on the pain for the original Googlephone. After all, the Nexus One and its 5 megapixel sensor came out a good few months ahead of the 8 megapixel Droid Incredible, so surely this battle would be over before it’s even begun? Not so fast, says Android and Me, whose diligent testers have put the two HTC handsets through a side-by-side shootout. As it turns out, the Nexus One rather swept the contest in both naturally and flash-lit shots, while the Incredible habitually exhibited a blue hue in less than perfectly lit photos. Both cameras were adept at taking excellent daylight photos, as is to be expected, but the devil is as usual in the details — and you can find all of them at the source link below.

[Thanks, Matt]

Droid Incredible versus Nexus One: cameraphone showdown originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 May 2010 08:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Droid Incredible’s mysterious OTA update actually fixes Exchange bug

Saturday afternoon, reports came in that Verizon’s new Droid Incredible had already received its first OTA update. Nobody knew quite what it did and few even received it, but some figured it probably fixed the smattering of random reboots and radio bugs experienced by some early adopters. We reached out to Verizon on the matter, and we’re afraid to say that’s not the case — the new 1.22.605.2 CL161494 software build merely fixes a bug in Microsoft Exchange support. As such, you’ll only see the update if you’ve got a corporate handset, and those who do can expect their carbon-copy email fields (which would apparently fill with unintended addresses beforehand) to be fixed sometime around May 6th. On the off-chance that fix magically transforms your mobile world, feel free to let us know in comments. Full statement after the break.

Continue reading Droid Incredible’s mysterious OTA update actually fixes Exchange bug

Droid Incredible’s mysterious OTA update actually fixes Exchange bug originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 16:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Incredible suffering random reboots for Tar Heel fans and Duke devotees?

HTC Incredible suffering random reboots for Tar Heel fans?

Well now this is a bit of an odd story, but we’ve seen enough reports to think that it is fully legit. HTC Incredible owners in and around the great state of North Carolina, particularly those in north-central portion (the Triad) are reporting that their phones are rebooting all on their own with alarming regularity. Many have tried new phones, combinations of wireless settings, and other remediations only to find the problem still occurring just as frequently as before. Verizon Wireless is said to be aware of the issue and there has been talk that tower-switching in areas of low signal is to blame, but at this point it certainly sounds like anyone’s guess. Have you been affected? Drop us a note in comments — but try to keep the intra-college banter clean, yeah?

Update: We’re being told there are far more Duke and Tar Heel fans per capita in the Triangle area of NC than in the Triad, which is where this issue seems to be centered, meaning it’s really the Demon Deacons who should be concerned.

[Thanks, Ben]

HTC Incredible suffering random reboots for Tar Heel fans and Duke devotees? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 May 2010 18:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WebOS 1.4.1.1 now available for Verizon subscribers

Hardly the most exciting Palm news you’re gonna hear this week, but the company that still owns itself for the time being has just updated its WebOS software on Verizon to the extremely granular version 1.4.1.1. The helpful changelog informs us there are no new apps, but pinch-zoom now works correctly in Doc and PDF views, a lag in the camera shutter sound has been rectified, and forwarding videos uploaded to YouTube on to your friends via email has also been made to work as it should. The most important fix of all, though, is to a keyboard input issue whereby a single key press would generate a letter twice — both Pre Central and one of our readers report that this problem appears to have been consigned to the past. Good stuff, now let’s see it go global, shall we?

[Thanks, subzero and Sam F.]

WebOS 1.4.1.1 now available for Verizon subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 02:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry Bold 9650 announced, targets Tour owners’ big complaints

RIM has a longstanding track record of refining its hardware with near-surgical precision — from one generation of BlackBerry to the next, you almost always see a very careful, deliberate evolution, from the Storm2’s revamped SurePress tech to the Bold 9700’s optical pad and countless examples in between. “Evolution” is exactly how we’d describe the CDMA- and GSM-equipped Bold 9650, the Tour’s spiritual successor that ditches the old name to join forces with the remainder of the Bold line. Dimensionally, the Bold 9650 is a dead ringer for the Tour — it’s still 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.56 inches — but it packs on two-tenths of an ounce worth of weight in exchange for oft-requested WiFi support and an extra 256MB of internal storage (it’s now up to 512MB total). The other big difference, of course, is the replacement of the dodgy trackball with an optical pad, continuing a trend that has now permeated throughout virtually all of RIM’s lineup. Look for the Bold 9650 to hit American carriers — presumably both Verizon and Sprint — in May. Follow the break for a second shot and RIM’s full press release!

Continue reading BlackBerry Bold 9650 announced, targets Tour owners’ big complaints

BlackBerry Bold 9650 announced, targets Tour owners’ big complaints originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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