Sprint renames the HTC 7 Pro the Arrive, launching it tomorrow

Punch sprint.com/arrive into your address bar and the above is what you shall find. Not a generic error marker but a URL-specific “coming soon” message that would seem to confirm the existence and indeed near-future arrival of the HTC Arrive. Beyond that bit of web sleuthing, we also have ourselves a proven tipster informing us that this will be a carrier-branded version of HTC’s 7 Pro and confirming that it will be launched tomorrow. A tweet from Sprint earlier this week, intimated heavily that it’s about to introduce a Windows Phone 7 handset on the 24th, which we surmised to mean exactly the long-awaited 7 Pro QWERTY slider. Already available in Europe, this device will serve as the first CDMA representative from the WP7 stable, meaning that you’ll soon be able to Glance and Go on the Now Network of alliterative advertising slogans.

Sprint renames the HTC 7 Pro the Arrive, launching it tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 04:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink BearTech  |  sourcesprint.com/arrive  | Email this | Comments

First Windows Phone 7 update not going smoothly for some Samsung handsets (update: Microsoft suggests temporary fix)

So this is why they do phased rollouts, eh? If Twitter is the font of truth and reality that we suspect it to be, it sounds like users of some Windows Phone 7 models by Samsung are struggling with that minor first update that Microsoft started pushing this week. Basically, it sounds like the update isn’t consistently completing; it some cases, users get an error message, and there doesn’t appear to be any way to roll back or restore the prior firmware and get the phone back to a working state. Mass bricking is probably the greatest fear of software engineers before deploying handset updates to the field, so it’s a good thing they’re taking it slow; of course, that’s not much consolation to the folks who are stuck making a call (on someone else’s phone) to Samsung support.

[Thanks, jdog25]

Update: the::unwired is reporting information straight from Microsoft on how to fix a “bricked” device that doesn’t complete the update, and it’s deceptively simple: just pull the battery, put it back in, and turn the phone on. Failing that, perform a hard reset. Either way, the company is recommending you don’t attempt the update again until the phone reminds you, which it says will happen in about three days.

First Windows Phone 7 update not going smoothly for some Samsung handsets (update: Microsoft suggests temporary fix) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  sourceZDNet UK  | Email this | Comments

Engadget Podcast 233 – 02.21.2011

Our program today is XXXXXL heavy in a lot of different ways, and most of those ways lie under a big robotic green umbrella. Get it? It was a weather-related Android allusion; please forgive us. It’s the Engadget Podcast, wedged firmly between the past and the future, unsure of what to feel about either one, but trying to exist really completely in the now.

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
Producer:
Trent Wolbe
Music: Love Will Tear Us Apart

00:05:30 – Samsung Galaxy S II official: dual-core 1GHz CPU, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus, coming this month (hands-on with video)
00:05:50 – HTC Incredible S, Desire S, and Wildfire S video hands-on
00:06:00 – Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 preview (video)
00:16:22 – Qualcomm promises Netflix streaming support on ‘future Android devices’ with Snapdragon
00:16:43 – Android-powered LG Revolution caught streaming Netflix at MWC (video)
00:23:02 – Next version of Android will combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb, arrive on a six-month cycle
00:23:58 – The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (update: video and full spec sheet!)
00:24:25 – Sony Ericsson touts Xperia Play multiplayer gaming, promises 50 titles at launch
00:24:40 – Sony Ericsson Xperia Play available in March, on Verizon in ‘early spring’
00:35:26 – LG Optimus 3D hands-on
00:44:48 – HTC’s Facebook-worshipping phones headed to AT&T later this year
00:46:20 – HTC Salsa and Chacha bring the dedicated Facebook button to Android (update: eyes-on)
00:51:30 – Motorola Xoom vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs. LG G-Slate — battle of the Tegra 2 Honeycomb tablets
00:52:08 – Motorola Xoom price official: $799 unsubsidized on Verizon, $600 for WiFi-only
00:53:00 – Motorola’s Sanjay Jha on Xoom: ‘Our ability to deliver 4G justifies the $799 price point’
00:59:10 – HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!)
00:59:48 – HTC Flyer tablet hits Amazon.de for 669 euros
00:59:55 – The stylus isn’t dead: more pen-based tablets and apps coming this year
01:05:01 – Exclusive: Sony ‘S1’ PlayStation tablet (updated)
01:06:02 – Nokia: ‘Our first priority is beating Android’
01:06:20 – Eric Schmidt: ‘We certainly tried’ to get Nokia to use Android
01:06:40 – HTC CEO Peter Chou on Microsoft / Nokia partnership: ‘it’ll make the ecosystem stronger’
01:07:00 – The Engadget Interview: Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman talks Windows Phone 7 and Nokia
01:07:30 – Windows Phone 7’s multitasking uses zoomed-out cards to check on your apps
01:08:50 – Microsoft Rally Ball demo shows Windows Phone 7, Kinect, Xbox Live living in perfect harmony (video)
01:09:10 – Microsoft shows off WP7’s future with multitasking, Twitter integration, and IE9, all coming this year
01:12:40 – Nokia’s marginalization of MeeGo came as a surprise to Intel
01:13:58 – Intel’s Otellini insists company is committed to MeeGo, says he ‘understood’ why Nokia moved to Microsoft
01:14:25 – Editorial: Intel keeps pushing MeeGo, but why?
01:14:50 – Intel shows off more of its MeeGo Tablet UI, still needs lots of work
01:27:50 – Motorola Atrix 4G review

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Engadget Podcast 233 – 02.21.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint tweet makes February 24th launch sound like Windows Phone 7 — is the HTC 7 Pro ready?

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

Microsoft pushing small update to Windows Phones to prepare for copy and paste update later on

Don’t get too excited when you see this update notification pop up — as far as we can tell, it’s got nothing users will notice — but we’ve just been told by Microsoft that the company is getting ready to send out the first software upgrade to Windows Phone 7 devices in the field early this week. It’s being billed as a “minor update to help prepare” for the copy and paste stuff (which we’re assuming is still targeted for early- to mid-March, per Ballmer’s MWC keynote), though the exact timing of this first one will vary a bit depending on carrier. Oh, and a note before you hook up to try to grab it: it also required a recently-pushed update to the Zune software (or the Connector for Mac OS), so you’ll need to get that first before restarting the app and looking for the phone firmware.

Microsoft pushing small update to Windows Phones to prepare for copy and paste update later on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceWindows Phone Blog  | Email this | Comments

Kinect hackers give us iOS-friendly dodgeball and Human Tetris

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   |  sourceKinect-hacks (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

Acer jumping on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon this fall?

Acer jumping on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon this fall?

One manufacturer who has not boarded on the Windows Phone train to commerceville is Acer, who is certainly all over when it comes to Android. Why no WP7 love? No word on that front, but we’re told that may be changing this fall. The company is reportedly looking at releasing one or more handsets for the platform to coincide with the first major Windows Phone update, currently given the saucy nom de guerre “Mango.” That’s right about when we’re expecting our first Nokia WP7 handsets, which means things could be getting interesting in Microsoftia this September.

Acer jumping on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon this fall? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink phoneArena.com  |  sourcePocket-lint  | Email this | Comments

Nokia says it can customize the heck out of Windows Phone, won’t do anything that would delay updates

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.

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

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   |  sourceAndroid Central (1), (2), WPCentral  | Email this | Comments

Windows Phone 7 camera settings keep going to default, Microsoft says it was ‘a decision by the team’

“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” is one of the time-honored mantras of computer engineering, and Microsoft is using it to full effect with a behavior occasionally cursed by users of Windows Phone 7 devices: the camera settings return to their defaults every time you load the camera app. Responding to a comment in the official Windows Phone Blog, a Microsoft rep says that the settings reset was actually “a decision by the team,” noting that if you need to pull out your phone for a quick shot, you’d rather not have to fiddle with whatever wacky settings you had set up on the prior use. Continuing, he writes that “feedback from folks like [the commenter] has the team seriously looking at that option to see if there is a more optimal option,” so it could change — so your dream of shooting absolutely everything in sepia tone might be realized with a little less strife down the road.

Windows Phone 7 camera settings keep going to default, Microsoft says it was ‘a decision by the team’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink WMPoweruser.com  |  sourceWindows Phone Blog  | Email this | Comments