Hasta La Gadget!

Horror, shock, surprise! Microsoft CEO and prime fanboy of all things Windows and developer-related, Steve Ballmer, will be the keynote speaker at Microsoft’s New York launch event for Windows Phone 7. He’ll be joined on stage by AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega and when the pep rally is over, we’re promised opportunities to finally handle the official incarnations of retail Windows Phones for ourselves. We know all this because Microsoft has just dropped a kind little invite into our inbox urging us to attend its October 11 get-together. We will, of course, be there live, but don’t forget Microsoft’s also holding a London event on that day, ostensibly for the same reason, so make sure to be up nice and early next Monday if you don’t wanna miss a thing.

As we reported last night, the company is also holding a gathering centered around T-Mobile WP7 handsets, though details are more scarce on that event. We saw an official invite from the folks in Redmond, but it looks like that showing may be smaller in scale. We have to imagine that AT&T and their GSM competition don’t want to share the stage, but as this is a Microsoft launch, anything is possible. Regardless, if there are multiple carriers showing hardware come October 11th, we’ll have all the goods.

Steve Ballmer and AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega to headline Windows Phone 7 launch event in NYC on October 11 — we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Phone 7 is really building up a head of steam, as AT&T and Microsoft are said to be planning a debut event for new handsets on October 11 in the US, to be followed by a retail launch in the week commencing November 8. A trifecta of launch devices is on tap, says the Wall Street Journal, with one each from LG, Samsung and HTC, and AT&T is unsurprisingly fingered as the exclusive early carrier for WP7 goodness. In exchange for that little favor, Microsoft will receive AT&T’s “marketing support” in pushing the message out about Windows Phone 7’s release. So long as nobody decides that home party packs are a good idea, we’ll be cool with whatever.

AT&T launching Windows Phone 7 handsets on November 8, unveiling them October 11? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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German site BestBoyZ has delivered a string of HTC leaks in recent weeks, and the latest is a fairly legit-looking handful of alleged press shots of the Mondrian. As a refresher, the Mondrian seems to be one of the many code and commercial names floating around for Windows Phone 7-based devices HTC is looking to ship at or very near to the platform’s retail launch, a higher-end unit (possibly equipped with a 1.3GHz Snapdragon) that would probably hang in the same space as the rumored HD7 and Trophy. Interestingly, the shots — which show a unit with a German ROM — have HTC Hub listed on the home screen, despite some recent talk by CEO Peter Chou that his company’s first-gen WinPho 7 products would lack serious software customization. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on how much you appreciate HTC’s design team, we suppose.

HTC Mondrian poses for press shots? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know how we abhor machine translation, but this rumor was too juicy to pass up — the Korea Economic Daily reportedly got hands-on with LG’s Optimus 7 (aka E900) way ahead of release, and if we’re reading this right, the Windows Phone 7 device will be capable of writing your text messages, emails and status updates just by hearing you speak. The publication also reports it’s got a 3.8-inch, 800 x 480 screen (rather than the 3.5 or 3.7 inches we’ve heard before), a 1500 mAh battery, 16GB of built-in storage and a 1GHz processor. There’s also apparently “automatic panorama” feature where you simply pan the camera to take stills and stitch them together, which sounds a lot like the Sweep Panorama dealie Sony recently added to its Cyber-Shot lineup. Can we expect a US version to have these features? Hard to say. Even should this preview be wholly legit, speech-to-text would probably need quite the overhaul to tell English from Korean — and let’s not even get started on Engrish.

LG’s Optimus 7 gets previewed by Korean newspaper, has voice to text feature? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 07:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you had any doubts about the most important date in your Windows Phone 7 calendar, you can now dismiss them. Microsoft has just gotten in touch to ask us very kindly to “save the date” October 11 for a 2PM London press conference (9AM ET for Americans) that will last all the way until 5.30PM. Unless Steve Ballmer’s planning on reading the Iliad all that time, that sounds like there’ll be hands-on opportunities with WP7 devices to us. Of course, there’s nary a mention of any phones in the brief invite, but given the multiple sources nailing that exact date as Microsoft’s European launch, we’d be shocked to see anything else. Either way, we’re bringing our trusty liveblogging equipment and will keep you informed whatever happens.

Microsoft hosting a press conference on October 11, we’ll be there live! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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