Hasta La Gadget!

Announced late last year, Sprint’s version of the HTC 7 Pro has been stuck in a holding pattern (along with Verizon’s Trophy) while waiting for Microsoft to wrap up its first big software update for Windows Phone 7, which includes copy and paste functionality along with — you guessed it — CDMA support. Steve Ballmer’s keynote address at MWC last week nailed down said update for launch in the first part of March, which means that there shouldn’t be much else holding up Sprint and Verizon from getting their first WP7 devices out of the door. A follow-up tweet to an earlier teaser posted on Sprint’s official Twitter account says that a device being announced on February 24th “will have a hub for gaming, music, pictures, and video,” which sounds an awful lot like Windows Phone 7’s hubs to us — and we’re not aware of anything but the 7 Pro in Sprint’s Microsoft-flavored pipeline, so it’s starting to feel like a lock. Who’s buying?

Sprint tweet makes February 24th launch sound like Windows Phone 7 — is the HTC 7 Pro ready? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  @Sprint (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

Remember that Microsoft Rally Ball demo from a few days ago that showed Windows Phone 7’s integration with Xbox? Well, the gang at Supertouch has stolen a bit of Ballmer’s thunder with a new Kinect hack that lets you hurl digital orbs at your Kinect-controlling friend using an iOS device instead of a WP7 handset. The graphics for the game and the iDevice controls aren’t nearly as pretty as Microsoft’s cross-platform gaming solution, but the end result is pretty much the same — flingin’ balls with a phone while your friend dodges them courtesy of Kinect.

Meanwhile, Frog Design has added a Human Tetris game to the Kinect’s repertoire where players perfect their Vogue-ing skills by striking a pose to match an approaching cut-out on screen. Finally, all the shape-shifting fun with none of the goofy silver jumpsuits. Vids are after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

Continue reading Kinect hackers give us iOS-friendly dodgeball and Human Tetris

Kinect hackers give us iOS-friendly dodgeball and Human Tetris originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Kinect-hacks (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

In an interview with Nokia VP Niklas Savander at Mobile World Congress, Phone Scoop probed a bit more on the company’s plans to rework the Windows Phone user experience — a user experience that’s been essentially closed to OEMs thus far apart from the occasional tile here or added menu item there. As we already heard from Stephen Elop, Nokia’s essentially being granted carte blanche for deep customization of the platform, though Savander says that it’s likely only to do that by pushing changes back to Microsoft for inclusion in future releases that would be available to every manufacturer, not just Nokia. What’s the logic in that? Well, he says that they don’t want to do anything to the software that would put the company at risk of getting delayed updates — not unlike what’s been happening with skinned UIs in the Android world for the past year and a half. Good call, Niklas. Meanwhile, more rapidly-deployed customizations would be relatively superficial, probably along the lines of HTC Hub if we had to guess. All told, it seems like the strategy is going to put even more pressure on Nokia to deliver differentiation and innovation on the hardware side — and to be fair, they’ve risen to that challenge plenty of times in the last decade, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Nokia says it can customize the heck out of Windows Phone, won’t do anything that would delay updates originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Phone Scoop  | Email this | Comments

Wrigley, Hancock, Millennium, Gallo, Sterling, Rosemount, Silver Oak, Peju and Opus One. What are we rattling off? Oh, just the list of codenames from one of the largest leaks we’ve ever seen out of Dell. WPCentral and Android Central got their hands on alleged smartphone and tablet roadmaps for the entire year, detailing the company’s plans for devices running operating systems that have yet to be formally announced, including Android Ice Cream (yes, Ice Cream!) and Windows 8 as well as the tablet-friendly Honeycomb. Here’s the full rundown.

Smartphones:

• Things look pretty boring (and by boring, we mean beautifully curvy) until approximately mid-April of this year, when the Venue Pro gets some “additional features and enhancements” which we’re pretty sure we can name.

• Then, Q3 brings the Wrigley, what looks like a vertical QWERTY slider identifying itself as “Windows Phone 7 Next Gen,” and sporting a 1GHz CPU, 4-inch 800 x 480 screen, and a 8 megapixel camera with 720p video recording. Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as we know.

• By September, things should get very interesting as Android Ice Cream will apparently be out, and Dell’s Hancock will scoop it onto a 4-inch qHD screen with dual cameras, dual-core processing and 1080p recording.

• Starting Q4, would-be Hancock buyers will have a dual-core multimedia slate alternative, as the Millennium drops the keyboard for a larger 4.3-inch screen and DLNA support (though the front-facing camera is limited to VGA resolution.)

Tablets:

• Dell’s Streak 10 won’t keep us waiting for long: come April, the Gallo will reportedly be chomping away at some tasty Honeycomb. But that’s not all — Dell lists a handwriting update for the Gallo in October or thereabouts. There’s also a Streak 7 update scheduled for July — we imagine that’s the point when Dell believes it can shoehorn Android 3.0 onto its older brother.

• Meanwhile, Dell’s 10-inch Windows 7 slate, internally known as Rosemount, is slated for June, with a 1366 x 768 resolution that should allow for native playback of 720p video.

• We can’t tell you what the Sterling is, but it’s likely a mid-sized one, as it’s slated to take over the Streak 7’s duties in or about October with Android Honeycomb on board.

• Finally, come CES 2012 in January, we now expect Dell to drop three new tablets at once: the Opus One and Silver Oak running Android Honeycomb, and the Peju with Windows 8. (The Streak 10 / Gallo will apparently soldier on.) Numbers on the left of the charge suggest that the Opus will be small, the Silver Oak mid-sized, and the Peju large.

As noted at the head of the slide, all details here are subject to change, but we’re sure as heck a lot more confident that Dell plans to do something with all those tacky mockups. One more chart after the break!

Continue reading Dell’s 2011 smartphone and tablet lineup leaked: Android Ice Cream, WP7 sliders, and a slate running Windows 8

Dell’s 2011 smartphone and tablet lineup leaked: Android Ice Cream, WP7 sliders, and a slate running Windows 8 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Android Central (1), (2), WPCentral  | Email this | Comments

We sat down for a few minutes with Aaron Woodman — director of Microsoft’s mobile communication business — here at Mobile World Congress this week to talk about the past, present, and future of the Windows Phone platform. Of course, it was at this very event a year ago when Redmond first unveiled its next-gen smartphone play, so this marks a great opportunity to circle back and see where the company has been — and naturally, the Nokia news casts a bright new light on the platform. Read on for the full interview!

Continue reading The Engadget Interview: Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman talks Windows Phone 7 and Nokia

The Engadget Interview: Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman talks Windows Phone 7 and Nokia originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments