While speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech event in Pasadena on Friday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse apparently got all kinds of verbal when it came to Android and his carrier. The honcho (and TV commercial star) remarked at the industry conference that he was "Glad we waited on Android," adding "The reviews say now it's ready for prime time. It wasn't when it first came out." While we knew Sprint had interest in Android phones (and potentially some forthcoming models), we hadn't heard a peep about timeframes, and the last thing Dan had to say was that he thought Googlephones weren't quite ready for prime-time. That's all changed now with the appearance of Android 1.5, it seems, as Hesse stated that the carrier will ship at least one model with the OS onboard this year. We don't want to be zany conspiracy theorists, but the timing of this seems to dovetail nicely with the very public launch of HTC's heavily modified Hero and Sense UI... a device which has been rumored to be making its way to Sprint sometime this year. The carrier obviously has a storied history of partnering with HTC on phones, so it wouldn't come as a surprise to see it land on Sprint (we certainly haven't seen any other carriers pipe up). Regardless, it looks like Sprint won't be putting all of its eggs in the Palm basket for long. It's going to be a very interesting holiday season.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Dan Hesse says Android coming to Sprint this year
News : Palm complains about Apple to USB governing body
You should be refilling that popcorn bucket right about now. While we thought the next round of the Pre / iTunes syncing fiasco would probably be something simple like Apple releasing another quick patch, Palm has stepped it up a notch by complaining to the USB Implementers Forum over what it sees is "improper use of the Vendor ID number" by the gang at Cupertino. What the company means is that when an ID is applied for, a form is signed that states:
"Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited."
The implication here is that Palm believes Apple is violating this stature by disallowing certain Vendor IDs -- namely, Palm's -- from using iTunes. So how'd Palm manage to "fix" that syncing hole Apple managed to fill? From the looks of it, by misrepresenting its own Vendor ID, so that the Pre now shows up as a iPod / mass storage device made by Apple (ID 0x05ac) as opposed to one by Palm (ID 0x083) -- hence the complaint. Of course, lying about your own ID would seem to break with the aforementioned rule, too, so what we're left here is some muddled grey area and Palm apparently being okay with fudging some data to correct what it sees is an injustice. If anyone's curious, DVD Jon points out that the root USB Node is still identified as "Pre," so we very likely could see another round of these shenanigans in the not-too-distant future.
Finally, now's as good of a time as any to take a look at some of the peripheral casualties from this war of attrition. In an essay on his personal site that's been circulating the interwebs, Marc Deslauriers outlines the pangs he and the Linux community have felt over the years trying to use iPods on the open source platform, surmising that Apple is intentionally and repeatedly seeking ways to block non-iTunes programs from syncing in any way with its devices. This story is far from over, and as ugly as it looks now, it's probably only gonna get worse.
Preview : Samsung's Omnia Pro B7610
Samsung's recently-announced Omnia Pro B7610 seems like a sweet hunk of Windows Mobile love -- especially if you're cross-shopping it with the Touch Pro2 -- but is there more than meets the eye? GSMArena recently put a prerelease unit through its paces, and it's not a perfect situation by any stretch; first off, apparently not very pretty in the flesh, owing in part to its girth and in part to the weird red battery cover. The resistive touchscreen isn't great and the OLED display washes out in sunlight (as they typically do), but on the plus side, the QWERTY keyboard is said to be stellar and it seems that Sammy's done a great job of completely concealing WinMo 6.1's sad, sagging skin with TouchWiz. In the final analysis, the site concludes that the phone easily matches the high bar set by the Touch Pro2 -- strong words considering HTC's market dominance and the fact that we're still looking at a prototype Omnia Pro here, so this should get even more interesting.
Friday, July 24, 2009
New Samsung Omnia II gets banded for US 3G
Remember how Verizon is getting the Omnia II? Yeah, well, don't get too excited, because this isn't it. A version of Samsung's latest full-touch WinMo superphone just garnered FCC approval, and more excitingly, it packs WCDMA bands II and V -- exactly the bands we use in North America -- but you might notice that there's a surprising dearth of English on the product's certification label. Well, see, it turns out that South America uses those bands, too -- and the "L" in this version's model number of i8000L probably stands for Latin America, if we had to guess. That's not to say savvy North Americans couldn't import this and get some juicy 3G on AT&T or Rogers, but at least in AT&T's case, we still don't have any particular reason to believe that this'll land over there. Certainly wouldn't hurt their case, though, would it?
Android-powered HTC Click
One more note about that Android-powered HTC Click that we saw in a gloriously-framed shot yesterday morning: it's going to be cheap. It had been said all along that the Click would mark HTC's first Android entry into the low-end fray (joining the Touch Viva on WinMo), meaning the sticker price would be kept to a minimum -- but the Vietnamese forum that first brought you this picture is saying that we're looking at somewhere between 5 and 6 million dong, which works out to $280 to $336 unlocked. That's cheap enough to ensure that it's free on contract virtually anywhere in the world where it's sold, bringing Android to a whole new demographic. Now, just call us when the Hero's down to $280, eh?
Garmin-Asus confirms nuvifone G60 for sale this month, M20 soon after
Is this really happening? Are we all collectively in some sort of lucid, dreamlike state where Garmin-branded cellphones flow like water, or is this the real deal? Correct us if we're wrong, readers -- but if we're reading this press release correctly, Taiwanese folks will have a crack at Garmin-Asus' nuvifone G60 come the 27th of this month, just a few days from now; Singapore and Malaysia will have theirs meanwhile by the end of August, and Europe and the US are "on schedule" for the second half of the year (we hesitate to associate the phrase "on schedule" with this product, but we'll let it slide this time). If WinMo is more your cup of tea, the M20 will be coming to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia in August as expected -- the US isn't on the roadmap for this one, but Europe should have it later this half. These phones have taken so long to arrive that they'll be fighting an uphill battle against irrelevance -- but with the reality that handsets will be all but replacing dedicated portable nav units in the coming years, it's a play that Garmin's gotta still be eager to make nonetheless.
