Hasta La Gadget!

“Better late than never,” so they say. Perhaps — but with Sprint’s version of this in the rear view mirror for half a year now, just how relevant is a Touch Diamond on Verizon these days? Odds are we’ll find out next month — or, at least, that’s where the latest rumors have it lined up for launch — but in the meantime, we’ve got one floating around in the wilds looking pretty much like any other Touch Diamond you’ve seen in the past. Like its Touch Pro, it seems Verizon went ahead and nerfed the Diamond’s memory down to 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM (why is anybody’s guess), which only serves to reinforce our concerns that this thing is being launched months too late. We love you HTC, seriously — but with the Omnia at $99 on contract right now, we’re not exactly seeing the line starting to form at 8PM the night before release, if you know what we’re saying.

Continue reading Verizon’s Touch Diamond in the wild

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Verizon’s Touch Diamond in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Given Nokia Siemens’ commitment to getting the technology rolled out with carrier partners on the double and the fact that Nokia’s tie-up with Qualcomm for S60-optimized HSPA and LTE chipsets will bear fruit in 2010 — not to mention the fact that multiple carriers will be deploying LTE over the next two years — it only stands to reason that Espoo would have LTE devices in the pipe sooner rather than later. Indeed, the company has now gone on record saying that it’ll have “data intensive” LTE gadgets launched next year, though they’ve failed to go into the nitty gritty details of what kind of devices those might be. That could very well be where this new rumor comes into play, though: TheStreet.com is claiming that there’s chatter of a Verizon / Nokia partnership that would see a serious full touchscreen multimedia phone launched to help inaugurate Big Red’s LTE airwaves — and considering that Nokia has ramped up its Verizon-branded product portfolio over the past year and publicly cheered on the carrier for choosing LTE over WiMAX or UMB, it’s not all that difficult to believe. If the rumored device comes in a brown pleather wallet, count us in.

[Via Phone Scoop, thanks papari]

Read – Nokia bringing LTE in 2010
Read – Verizon partnership?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Wireless

Nokia says it’ll have LTE devices by 2010, Verizon partnership in the works? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re the type of individual who can never decide between the Cobb salad, the lobster bisque, and the sesame prawns and end up ordering all three, take note — your phone has arrived. The long-rumored LG Versa lets you have your cake and eat it too by starting life as a full touchscreen slate, and when the time comes for some serious emailing, texting, or notetaking, you just snap on the included cover that includes a full QWERTY keyboard. The cover also features its own OLED display — handy, since the Versa’s 480 x 240 main display is concealed while the cover’s closed — while the phone itself rocks EV-DO Rev. A with tethering capability, a 2 megapixel cam with face detection and video recording, microSD expansion, and GPS. It’ll be available starting March 1 for $249.99 on contract before a $50 mail-in rebate.

Filed under: Cellphones

LG Versa heading to Verizon on March 1 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon went a step beyond simply revealing its LTE infrastructure partners at MWC this week (they’re Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson if you’re curious), announcing that it’ll actually have live networks in action by the end of the year. Two lucky to-be-named cities will be recipients of the 4G action — which sounds suspiciously similar to Sprint and Clearwire’s current WiMAX situation — where the company will get a better sense of the data rates commercial users can expect. Speaking of commercial users, they’ll be added into the mix come next year in 25 to 30 to markets. With a clear path for continued HSPA evolution up to double-digit Mbps under its belt, AT&T is pretending like it’s not feeling the heat here — but there’ve got to be a few beads of sweat forming on executive foreheads at this point.

[Via Unwired View]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Verizon launching LTE trials this year, commercial network in 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That other massive international collaboration for a standardized Linux-based mobile platform, the LiMo Foundation, is still toiling away at building its global empire — but the good news is that Release 2 is now ready to rumble, albeit a few weeks behind schedule. The new version — a collaboration among a slew of Foundation members — adds enhancements for location-based services, improved security, high-end multimedia, and other miscellany that hope to make LiMo competitive with the best that Android and others have to offer in 2009. Speaking of 2009, LiMo now says that six “major” carriers have committed to launching handsets running the latest version of the platform this year — NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica, Orange, SK Telecom, Verizon, and Vodafone — which is a pretty powerful testament to the pull that LiMo has at the moment. Delivering on those commitments, of course, is another matter altogether.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Verizon, others plan LiMo handset launches in 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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