Hasta La Gadget!

You might remember that we’d said back in April that AT&T would be picking up the Sony Ericsson X10 in the 30th week of the year. Well, turns out we weren’t exactly right, but it seems we’re going to end up being pretty damn close. We’re hearing that AT&T is lining up for a launch some time between the middle of August and the middle of September; smartphone data is required, of course, and it’ll cost independent dealers $345 per unit (retail pricing is anyone’s guess). Also launching in the same timeframe will be the Samsung Eternity II, a device BGR had mentioned back in June. No details on this one, but we’d assume it’ll be a slicker, higher-spec follow-on to the original Eternity from way back in ’08. Sadly, there’s no indication these X10s will have anything other than the dusty Android 1.6-based platform they’ve been running everywhere since their global launch, so get ready to travel back in time if you end up cross-shopping this with the Captivate.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Samsung Eternity II hitting AT&T in the coming weeks? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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O, to see what Omio sees. The outlet has obtained what it claims to be “a huge UK mobile phone release schedule for the rest of the year… [from] all the manufacturers” (emphasis its own). So, from where would such an all-encompassing roadmap hail? We don’t know, nor can we corroborate any of this, but the details are numerous so let’s go through it — albeit with cautious optimism and a few grains of salt. The biggest phone we can see of this baker’s dozen of a lineup is the HTC Gold (sound familiar?), due in November and loaded with Microsoft’s mobile OS newcomer Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, that’s all the information provided, but it’s certainly enough to entice us. Also in November, we’ve got Samsung i8700 and Nokia E7 — the latter being possibly a N8-esque QWERTY slider with AMOLED display and Symbian^3, and the former being a mystery (although Omio takes a gander that its aquatic Greek mythology might suggest a Bada-powered existence).

Going up the list Memento style, October purportedly brings across the pond-ers HTC Vision, the virtually unknown HTC Ace, Nokia N8, and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X8 and Yendo. September’s a bit of a yawner — SE Hazel and a Nokia X2 candybar — as is August with the X6 8GB and BlackBerry Curve 9300. And July? Nokia E5-00, Sony Ericsson W20, and Samsung i5500. As is usually the case, the more you can wait, the better your options. Now, let’s see if this supposed roadmap stays on course.

HTC Gold with Windows Phone 7 in November, and more from a rumored UK roadmap leak originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We hesitate to call these legit press shots — as we’ve said before, Sony Ericsson fans are world-renowned for their capacity for high-quality fakery — but German site mobiFlip.de has posted a bunch of renders of the so-called Shakira that look very possibly real to us. They’re also saying that the phone will be dubbed the Xperia X8 at retail, a name that probably makes sense considering that the 3-inch Android phone is clearly designed to slot in below the high-end X10. Beyond that, we still don’t have much to go on — pricing, availability, target markets, and so on — so we’ll just hang out here on the edge of our seats for a while longer, or until we’re distracted once again by the X10 mini pro’s mind-numbing cuteness.

[Thanks, René]

Sony Ericsson ‘Shakira’ to be called the Xperia X8? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Japan’s wireless networks have a longstanding, legendary reputation for existing in some parallel plane that’s technologically light years ahead of the rest of the world, but that reputation’s unquestionably in greater danger today than in any point in the past fifteen years. Why? Though the featurephones offered by NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank, and KDDI are ultra high-spec beasts, they’re still featurephones at the end of the day — and this comes at a time when smartphones are finally becoming true cultural phenomena across the remainder of the developed world (and, in some cases, the developing world).

There’s no greater evidence of this than the word this week that Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 — a phone that’s been met with lukewarm reviews, including from Engadget Japanese’s own Ittousai — has allegedly become NTT DoCoMo’s best-selling smartphone in history, a fact that would seem completely inexplicable in any other market globally. What makes it possible in Japan, of course, is DoCoMo’s historically lame selection of true smartphones, a lineup that currently includes localized versions of the HTC Magic, and the original HTC Touch Diamond and BlackBerry Bold. What’s more, many of these devices integrate poorly with popular carrier services on account of their super-tight control of the operating systems running across the featurephone lineup, something they’ve got less control over with a device running Android or Windows Mobile.

In other words, when it’s reported that DoCoMo had sold 100,000 X10s in its first 20 days — and a third-party retailer claims that the Magic-esque HT-03A is the next best seller at 80,000 units in 10 months — it seems plausible, if not likely (and Ittousai agrees). Yeah, even though the localized device has been plagued with performance problems and bugs, incompatibilities with DoCoMo’s i-mode push email, and so on. It’s hard to say what it’s going to take for these guys to make an honest-to-goodness transition to the brave new world of open platforms and freewheeling third-party development, but they’re clearly not there yet.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is likely NTT DoCoMo’s best selling smartphone — ever originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 May 2010 20:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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