Hasta La Gadget!

Today’s going to be a big day for Microsoft, and Steve Ballmer’s kicking it off early. Showing up on the Today show, Samsung Cetus in-hand, he let loose a humble smile and spent a little time showing off a trio of phones. Along with the Cetus, nestled in the middle in the picture below, is an LG C900 on the right and an HTC Mondrian on the left, none of which got as much face time as the man himself, who took a (tersely) polite ribbing from host Matt Lauer about the status of Microsoft’s mobile efforts compared to the competition over the past year, even making mention of Ballmer’s recently cut bonus thanks in part to the Kin debacle. Steve was having none of that, not interested in looking back, showing off an “always consistent” interface that is simply “delightful” according to the man. How delightful is it? Look to learn a lot more as the day progresses.

Update: Thanks to muslimsteel for pointing out in comments you can watch the segment yourself right here.

Continue reading Steve Ballmer teases three WP7 handsets on Today, gets no respect from Matt Lauer

Steve Ballmer teases three WP7 handsets on Today, gets no respect from Matt Lauer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s been really keen to keep all the Windows Phone 7 fanfare to itself, but LG’s equally zealous official UK blog has just thwarted that effort by posting both details and a gallery of images of the company’s Optimus 7 (aka E900) handset online. To be fair to them, it’s nothing a ton of leaks haven’t already revealed: the Optimus 7 will be a 3.8-inch touchscreen device, sporting WVGA (800 x 480) resolution, 16GB of onboard storage, a 5 megapixel camera with a 720p video mode, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi, a digital compass, and your usual proximity and ambient light sensors. Also present will be that DLNA streaming functionality we saw at IFA, officially titled Play-To, which will be exclusive to LG’s phones along with Voice-to-Text and Scansearch, the former being a message transcriber and the latter acting as an augmented reality real-time search service. Intriguing.

LG Optimus 7 made official ahead of Windows Phone 7 launch, quickly yanked originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 05:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft has taken care of a little bit of T-crossing and I-dotting this morning by updating its Zune desktop software to v4.7. The code should now be fully equipped to welcome incoming Windows Phones, and our tipster’s screenshot above seems to indicate the app marketplace will be up and running on time as well. There’s an additional note to say that app purchases will be accessible from up to five separate phones sharing the same Windows Live ID — clever Microsoft, encouraging people to buy in bulk. As to the Zune HD, we’re hearing there’s no firmware update at this time, it’s still on v4.5.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Thanks to our treasure trove tipster Sheeds, we now know there are currently 86 available apps in the WP7 marketplace. That’s a far cry from the “over 2,000 at launch” we heard on Saturday, but it’s still very early on. 22 of those apps are free, the rest cost between $0.99 and $6.99.

Zune software version 4.7 is now ready to receive your Windows Phone 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 04:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen O2 Germany’s HTC Schubert and a Chinese HD3, but here’s a giant Windows Phone 7 device with “T-Mobile” clearly painted on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. TmoNews got these alleged images of the HTC HD7 from their usual anonymous source along with a partial spec sheet, which actually claims slightly different dimensions for the phone and double the amount of flash memory (16GB in all) than we heard before. Different strokes for different folks, or is one of these two rumors totally off? You’ll probably want to keep both possibilities in mind before considering this last tidbit from the very same source: the phone will reportedly cost $199 on a two-year contract. Or you could just wait for us to blow out all the Windows Phone 7 details tomorrow, of course.

Update: Enjoying the look of this phone from your vantage point in Great Britain, are you? You might be able to pick one up as well — 911sniper apparently found a O2 UK version of the HTC Schubert’s ROM, as reported by Pocketnow below.

HTC HD7 (aka Schubert) pictured in glorious monochrome, headed to T-Mobile for $200? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d heard November 8th was AT&T’s Windows Phone 7 launch date, but this makes it real — Microsoft advertisements on Microsoft’s page, pointing to a brand-new Windows Phone website. And unless we’re completely mistaken, the Samsung Cetus finally has a name — it’ll be called the Focus when it comes to AT&T on the specified date. We’re not seeing any other spilled beans at Microsoft’s new launch page, but we’re digging the upbeat tune — let us know if you find anything intriguing buried in the Silverlight source code on that “new phones” page, will you?

[Thanks, Collin W.]

Windows Phone 7 ads reveal Samsung Focus for AT&T, November 8th date and shiny new website originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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