Major infrastucture supplier calls it: LTE over WiMAX

If you’re Clearwire or Sprint right now, the last thing you want to hear is one of the world’s major suppliers of wireless infrastructure badmouthing the very technology that underpins your next-gen network — so we imagine there’s some groaning in the hallways and boardrooms of the world’s WiMAX carriers today. Why? Alcatel-Lucent’s COO of its wireless business, Patrick Plas, has pulled no punches in a statement this week that the firm is “not putting a lot of effort into [WiMAX] any longer” after noticing that there’s “a clear direction taken by the industry towards LTE.” Of course, it doesn’t take an analyst to notice that Europe, Asia, and virtually every carrier in the Americas have all taken on a decidedly pro-LTE slant in the past couple years, and these guys are just following the money — which in turn makes it harder (and more expensive) for the handful of WiMAX proponents with deployed networks to build out and stay technologically current. In the race to actual 4G commercialization, LTE’s still got a ton of catching-up to do — but once it does, it’s looking poised to blow past WiMAX pretty quickly here. In the meantime, we’ll be loving our Overdrives.

Major infrastucture supplier calls it: LTE over WiMAX originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Comcast smears the XFINITY brand across all its services

Apparently worried its On Demand Online project would suffer the shame of a silly name all by its lonely, Comcast has rebranded its cable TV, internet and phone services as Xfinity TV, Xfinity Internet and Xfinity Voice. Other than the name not much is changing (@ComcastCares will still be doing its thing on Twitter), although the rollout of the new branding (starting next week, the first 11 markets include Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco) should sync up with 50mbps or high speeds becoming available. Of course, if those slick flame colored letter started showing up on TV repair guy trucks at the same time as a truly revolutionary new DVR software package instead of the slightly spruced up version we’ll be getting over the next few months, then they could call it anything they want to.

Comcast smears the XFINITY brand across all its services originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple gets a patent on smart screen bezels

Apple might have finally released the iPad, but the rumor mill is already on to prognosticating about the next rev — and as usual, Apple’s patents and patent applications are everyone’s favorite place to start. (And for good reason, really — that very first design patent we inititally noticed way back in 2004 is exactly what the iPad looks like, down to the bezel and Dock connector.) The latest tidbit is a patent granted earlier this week on an intelligent touch-sensitive bezel, which would essentially extend the touchpanel beyoned the edges of the screen to create an entire border of context-specific soft buttons — the iPod app might have playback controls at the bottom, while Safari could put the navigation bar down there and Pages could do formatting stuff at the top. It’s sort of interesting — Palm similarly extends the touch area beyond the screen on the Pre and the Pixi, but not quite like this — but we can’t see how touching the bezel next to an on-screen label is much better than just pressing the screen. Of course, there’s no guaranteeing Apple’s actually going to use any of this in any future products whatsoever, but we’re sure that won’t stop some analyst from waving their magic analyst wand and saying their “supply checks” have indicated a major ODM is already producing these. It’s nice that the world is so predictable sometimes, isn’t it?

Apple gets a patent on smart screen bezels originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments

Acer pulled closer to HP than ever in the third quarter of 2009, when it shipped 8.86 million laptops compared to HP’s 9.91 million, but it looks like things swung well back in the other direction during the fourth quarter. According to DigiTimes, HP shipped a whopping 11.38 million laptops worldwide in Q4, while Acer moved 9.5 million units during the same time period — an sizable increase in itself, but likely not enough to cause too much celebration at Acer HQ. As you might suspect, the holiday shopping season was largely responsible for the jump in sales from both companies, with strong sales in North America in particular said to be the main reason behind HP’s widening lead.

HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Indian mobile carriers scramble as illegal towers are shut down

Apparently the dizzying expansion of mobile coverage in India has proceeded a little quicker than the regulatory process there — Indian carriers are in a bit of a tizzy after authorities shut down 300 allegedly illegal towers in a suburb of New Delhi called Noida. The gub’mint says the towers are on private land that’s not approved for commercial use, but the carriers say the move is “arbitrary and uncalled for,” and even “inhuman” because the loss of service means people can’t make emergency calls. That’s a strong card to play — let’s hope this gets sorted out soon.

Indian mobile carriers scramble as illegal towers are shut down originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pegatron on board to make next iPhone, might do 720p video recording?

The silly little sensor in the latest-gen iPod nano might have you thinking that high-quality video recording isn’t anywhere on Apple’s radar, but if you look in the smartphone space, HD video is shaping up to be the next gotta-have-it feature among the world’s most buzzworthy handsets — and sure enough, we’re getting some hints here that it’ll be on board the next iPhone. Remember that mysterious “N89″ device in the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK? We’ve been tipped off that a gander at the MediaValidator.plist file reveals a few telling stats: the maximum video width is up from 768 pixels to 1280, and the maximum number of pixels per frame is up to 921,600, which just happens to work out to 1280 x 720. The device’s AVC profile has been bumped from 3.0 to 3.1, too, which adds in support for 720p — so yeah, all the signs are there, and industry trends pretty much require that we expect it at this point.

On a related note, DigiTimes notes that ASUS spin-off Pegatron has allegedly been picked up as an OEM for the N89 (or whatever the new iPhone’s internal code happens to be) — but it won’t be alone. The indication seems to be that Foxconn will continue churning out phones for Cupertino, too, perhaps a sign that these guys are expecting the need for more capacity than the old OEM alone can deliver, or that there could be multiple generations in the retail channel (a la 3G / 3GS) at the same time. Given Apple’s typical iPhone cycle, it could be a few months before we know for certain — so go ahead and take your sweet time speculating on this round.

[Thanks, Dan L.]

Pegatron on board to make next iPhone, might do 720p video recording? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft Arc Keyboard hands-on

Continue reading Microsoft Arc Keyboard hands-on

Microsoft Arc Keyboard hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM CEO says netbooks could eventually grab 90 percent of PC market

Think netbooks are on their way out? Not according to ARM CEO Warren East, who said in a recent interview with PC Pro that while netbooks now only represent 10% or so of the PC market, he believes that “over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market.” Obviously, he also thinks that would be a huge boon to ARM, and notes that while the main CPU in most netbooks may not be an ARM processor, there are probably at least two or three ARM chips of some sort in each netbook sold. In fairness, we assume that East means netbooks will evolve significantly from their present state over those next several years — but, still, ninety percent?

Update: In the company’s earnings call preceding the interview, Warren East also dropped a few tidbits about ARM’s roadmap, noting that, “Cortex-A9 will comfortably run at those sorts of frequencies (1GHz) and, indeed, with physical IP optimization, we demonstrated can scale up to 2 gigahertz today.” East further added that the “other Cortex-A9 has a lot more headroom to go, it’s a multi-processor design, so you can have quad-core — or up to quad-core implementation.”

ARM CEO says netbooks could eventually grab 90 percent of PC market originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android display battle: In the end, there can be only One

It’s not everyday you get to see six (6!) Android devices pitted against each other in a display-quality grudge match. No, not that sensor sensitivity nonsense again, rather, just a plain ol’ video playback comparison for your subjective observations. Fortunately, the Android-loving kids over at HDBlog shot a video of the MyTouch 3G, HTC Hero, Motorola Milestone / Droid, Acer Liquid, Nexus One, and Samsung Galaxy (laid out clockwise in the image above). In our opinion, the Nexus One with its 3.7-inch AMOLED display packing a 800 x 480 pixel resolution comes out on top with the best overall image (though slightly on the red end of the color spectrum) — good thing the video wasn’t shot outdoors where that AMOLED is all but unreadable. But hey, that’s our opinion, form your own in the video after the break.

Continue reading Android display battle: In the end, there can be only One

Android display battle: In the end, there can be only One originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nexus One gets a software update, enables multitouch (updated with video!)

The iPhone isn’t the only handset getting bumped today — Google’s just outed a very, very significant update to the Nexus One that includes Google Goggles on board and a re-upped version of Google Maps that includes suggestions and a dedicated night mode. Much more significantly, though, they’ve capitulated and enabled multitouch in Browser, Gallery, and Maps — great news and a big win for the Android community at large. Finally, there are some 3G improvements in there, but you might have to wait a bit — Google expects to have it rolled out to pretty much everyone toward the end of the week. Seriously though, now that we’ve gotten that whole multitouch spat cleared up, it’s time for Engadget to rally around something else: ridding the world of tiny ninjas, perhaps? Follow the break for a video of the new firmware — in all its multi-fingered glory — in action!

Continue reading Nexus One gets a software update, enables multitouch (updated with video!)

Nexus One gets a software update, enables multitouch (updated with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re turning comments off for a bit

Hey guys, we know you like to have your fun, voice your opinions, and argue over your favorite gear, but over the past few days the tone in comments has really gotten out of hand. What is normally a charged — but fun — environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable. Some of you out there in the world of anonymous grandstanding have gotten the impression that you run the place, but that’s simply not the case.

Luckily, our commenting community makes up only a small percentage of our readership (and the bad eggs an even smaller part of that number), so while they may be loud, they don’t speak for most people who come to Engadget looking for tech news. Regardless, we’re going to crank things down for a little bit to let everyone just cool off, and we’ll switch them back on when we feel like we’ve shaken some of the trolls and spammers loose from the branches (AKA swing the banhammer in our downtime). See you on the other side!

We’re turning comments off for a bit originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EROS tablet video is a lesson in why Windows 7 isn’t strictly meant for finger navigation

Last time we saw the 10-inch EROS tablet it was powered down and pouting about its two hours of battery life, but the tablet’s pulled itself together and powered up to show off its skills. he performance is pretty much what you would expect of a Intel Atom-powered Windows 7 Home Premium netbook with its keyboard chopped off, and from what we’ve been able to glean from the 11 minute video below the touchscreen seems responsive to writing with a stylus and to flicks of photos and pages in a comic book. You’ll notice, however the reviewer only uses his fingers a few times, though he’s actually quite good at typing on the on-screen keyboard. The rest of the time he uses the stylus to move through those far-from-finger-friendly Windows 7 menus. If you’re wondering why Windows 7 still needs additional software tweaks to work on a purely finger-driven tablet device, spend 10 minutes watching the video below. Or just listen to The Weepies’ awesome “Gotta Have You” — which perhaps not coincidentally ends when the tablet’s done booting.

Continue reading EROS tablet video is a lesson in why Windows 7 isn’t strictly meant for finger navigation

EROS tablet video is a lesson in why Windows 7 isn’t strictly meant for finger navigation originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wacom Intuos4 succumbs to peer pressure, goes wireless

Okay, so maybe there’s not an overwhelming group of “peers” for Wacom’s Intuos4 graphics tablet, but we’re still kind of saddened to see a device that hardly seems to require wirelessness donning a Bluetooth connectivity option and following the wireless peripherals crowd. Ah well, guess we can’t grumble too much about choice, so if you have some freaky workplace scenarios that require your tablet to be untethered (to up to 10 meters), you should be circling the latter part of March and expecting to pay around $400 for the privilege, or about $50 more than the wired Medium tablet. No luck if you were after the other sizes, unfortunately — you’ll just have to learn to love that wire.

Wacom Intuos4 succumbs to peer pressure, goes wireless originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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8.9-inch ExoPC Slate has iPad looks, netbook internals, Windows 7 soul

Yes, we realize that it’s hard to provide too much visual differentiation between tablet PCs with large, ebony bezels, but we can’t help but think that this 8.9-inch multitouch tablet looks a lot like another, recently announced 9.7-inch multitouch tablet. Nevertheless this one’s quite different on the inside, delivering “the web without compromise,” meaning full browser support with flash courtesy of Windows 7 on an Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 32GB SSD with SD expansion. Yeah, those specs are familiar too, and while we’re not thinking this will deliver the sort of snappy performance seen on the iPad, it will certainly be a lot more functional. Battery life is only four hours, but at last it user-replaceable, and a price of $599 matches the 32GB iPad. Likewise it will be available in March — or you can get a non-multitouch prototype for $780 right this very moment. If, that is, you speak enough French to manage the order page.

[Thanks, Jean-Baptiste]

8.9-inch ExoPC Slate has iPad looks, netbook internals, Windows 7 soul originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple excises the false Flash in its iPad promo video

It’s not every day we get a nice, humble confession of fault from Apple, but it looks like the marketing department has seen the light on those overly optimistic web browsing mockups depicting Flash in “action” on the new Flash-free tablet device. Now the iPad promo video has been reworked to flaunt what we’re coming to know as the Blue Lego Block of Ambiguity[TM] in sections of sites that would traditionally be populated by highly stimulating Adobe Flash-based content. It’s not pretty, and it solves none of the other issues at hand with Apple’s continued avoidance of Flash on its iPhone OS, but at least it’s true.

Apple excises the false Flash in its iPad promo video originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPad UI gets ported to the iPhone and iPod touch

At this particular point, 50-something days away from the earliest iPad deliveries, we doubt too many people are up in arms about the iPad’s ability to act as a jumbo iPhone. On the other hand, if we told you you can take pretty much the entire iPad experience and distill it down to your iPhone OS device, well you’d probably care a lot more, wouldn’t you? To get that extra 3D flavor to your UI, including the fetching iBooks shelf and other iPad-specific touches, you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, access to the Cydia app store, and the manpower to click past the break for the full instructional video. Come on, you know you want to.

[Thanks, Taimur]

Continue reading iPad UI gets ported to the iPhone and iPod touch

iPad UI gets ported to the iPhone and iPod touch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change Nikon’s D300S?

Nikon’s D300S isn’t exactly tailor made for D300 owners, but for those waiting patiently to jump into the semi-pro DSLR game, it offers up a pretty delightful array of specs. Boasting SD and CF slots, a 720p movie mode and 12.3 megapixels of sharp shooting goodness, this here cam received overwhelmingly positive reviews late last year. Strategically positioned between the full-frame D700 and the lesser-specced D90, we’re sure the D300S found its way into quite a few hearts (and under quite a few trees) between then and now. If you’ve been firing off snaps with one of these for a few months now, we’re curious to know how you’d tweak things if the power were yours. Does the “S” really add enough to the D300 package to warrant the boost in price? How’s the image quality? Is the video mode a-okay for your purposes? Spill your heart out in comments below — we’re here to hold your hand if necessary.

How would you change Nikon’s D300S? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Confirmed: iPhone OS 3.2 has support for video calling, file downloads, and SMS

The iPad may not have a camera in its current incarnation, but Apple’s at least laying the foundation for one: we just confirmed with extremely trusted sources that iPhone OS 3.2 contains rudimentary support for video calling, which could explain that mysterious space at the top of the device in our leaked pics. We’re told that there are hooks to accept and decline a video conference, flip a video feed (which suggests a front-facing camera) and — most importantly — run the video call in either full screen mode or in just a portion of the screen. That means you’ll be able to chat and do other things at the same time, which could mean there’s at least some type of multitasking going on here.

We can also confirm that iPhone OS 3.2 supports file downloads and local storage in the browser, which means you’ll be able to pull files off the web and use them in other apps, and there’s at least the beginnings of SMS support buried within the code — a fact we were able to verify with noted iPhone jailbreakers chpwn and rpetrich, who sent in the above screenshot from a hacked-up copy of the iPad simulator. (The simulator always says “iPhone simulator” in the menu bar, but that’s the iPad.) chpwn and rpetrich also tell us they’ve found some inklings of actual phone support, there’s a spellchecker, and that both the new landscape orientation for the homescreen and keyboard support appear to be destined for the iPhone itself when 3.2 comes out.

We’re not sure what any of this means at this point, or if any of it will ever be implemented, but we’re definitely starting to get the impression that Apple didn’t tell us everything there is to know about the iPad on Wednesday — and we’re even more curious to find out what iPhone OS 4.0 will look like when it arrives.

P.S.- chpwn and repetrich were also able to port iPhone multitasking hacks ProSwitcher and Backgrounder to the iPad simulator, which is certainly going to be useful if an iPad jailbreak exploit is eventually discovered. Check out a shot of it going in the gallery below, along with some other settings panels the boys dug up.

Confirmed: iPhone OS 3.2 has support for video calling, file downloads, and SMS originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC’s HD2 carrying a secret stash of hidden RAM

Will this phone ever stop surprising us? Rumblings that all HD2 devices have 576MB of RAM inside them started developing in China a little while before T-Mobile unveiled its upgraded US-bound handset with, funnily enough, the same amount of memory. Now, those trusty souls over at XDA-developers have concocted custom ROMs for everyone else to free up the extra 128MB of operational headroom, and user feedback appears to corroborate the theory. We can hardly begin to fathom the reasons for HTC disabling part of its available hardware, other than to guess that a WinMo 7 upgrade was in the company’s plans for this phone all along and it just wanted to keep its ability to handle the new OS under wraps. Video and pictorial evidence of cracking past the 448MB barrier after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading HTC’s HD2 carrying a secret stash of hidden RAM

HTC’s HD2 carrying a secret stash of hidden RAM originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rest easy, iPad roamers: O2 and Orange have micro SIM orders, too

Steve mentioned in his iPad preso yesterday that he was pretty confident the company would have international data deals locked up by June or July of this year — but since the thing uses some wacky new micro SIM standard, carriers that intend to support it are going to need to get the new chips in stock after having used traditional SIMs for nearly twenty years. That makes moving your iPad around between carriers and your SIM between devices that much harder, but we’ve got a sliver of good news here: we’re hearing from a tipster with connections at supplier Gemalto that O2 and Orange both have micro SIM orders in the pipeline. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple is going to be trumpeting them as iPad partners with special data plans, of course — but even if they aren’t, at least they’ll have the necessary equipment ready for you if you want to use your unlocked tablet on their airwaves. Gemalto also has outstanding orders with T-Mobile and AT&T (of course), so yeah — it might be a long road, but we’re hopeful that these will start to become commonplace over the next few years.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Rest easy, iPad roamers: O2 and Orange have micro SIM orders, too originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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