smartphones

It's funny. I was just IMing with my dear colleague Jasmine France this morning about how companies come up with product names (spurred on by the Droid Incredible announcement) when I stumbled upon this Engadget Mobile article.

HTC is turning to its fans for help with picking out a name for a new device the company is cooking up in the lab and posted a poll on its Facebook page. Unfortunately, there are no details about the new phone, but you can choose from one of possible names: Jovi, Zeal, Wildfire, or Festi. We're not particular fans of … Read more

After an early slip up, HTC and Verizon Wireless officially introduced HTC's latest Android smartphone on Thursday, the Droid Incredible.

The Droid Incredible will hit stores on April 29 for $199.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate. It runs Android 2.1 and the latest version of HTC Sense. The latter includes such features as a new Leap screen where you can view thumbnail versions of all seven home screens for easy switching, a FriendStream widget, and group contacts. All should run smoothly given the smartphone's 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

As far as … Read more

It's been a busy week, thanks to Apple and Microsoft. First, we raced down to Cupertino, Calif., to watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs preview iPhone OS 4, and then we zipped back up to San Francisco to catch Microsoft as it took the wraps off Project Pink and unveiled the Kin One and Kin Two. Of course, after all that, we had more questions than answers, so we try to tackle some of those issues in this week's episode of Dialed In. Plus, we take a look at the latest rumors and reviews and give Kent a warm … Read more

For weeks, we've seen signs of the imminent release of the HTC Incredible on Verizon and on Wednesday, we pretty much got all but an official confirmation.

For a brief moment, Verizon published a teaser site for the Incredible, officially dubbed the Droid Incredible, and learned that the availability date would be April 29. It appears the page is now requiring a username and password, but not before we and other tech blogs, including Engadget Mobile and Phone Scoop, grabbed a screenshot of it.

Pricing details and specs were not revealed at this time, though you can tell from … Read more

Messaging and social networking are the focus of Nokia's latest smartphones, and the company's hoping the affordable price tag attached to them will draw in the masses. Ranging from $120 to $300 unlocked, the Nokia C3, C6, and E5 are certainly some of the cheaper devices we've seen from the company, and they don't skimp too much on the features. Let's get acquainted with each model, shall we?

Nokia C3: The C3 represents a couple of firsts for Nokia's Series 40 devices. It's the first to feature a full QWERTY keyboard, and it'… Read more

Surround sound? That's old technology. How about surround vision?

The folks at the MIT Media Lab have developed a new system called surround vision that can let you follow objects outside of your regular TV screen by viewing them on smartphones and handheld Internet devices. Imagine you're watching a movie on your regular TV, and a car drives off the screen. You could follow and view that car as it drives away by looking at and pointing your smartphone or tablet in its direction.

The person leading this promising new project is Santiago Alfaro, a graduate student at the lab. To kick-start his testing, Alfaro attached a magnetometer to an existing handheld device. A type of digital compass, magnetometers are already used in smartphones like the iPhone to detect the direction the device is pointing. He then created the necessary software to sync the magnetometer with other sensors on the device.

After outfitting the handheld with motion sensors, Alfaro shot video on campus from three different angles--center, left, and right. Watching the TV screen straight on played video from the center. But by pointing the handheld to the left or right, Alfaro was able to view the footage shot from both side angles.

As a further test of the technology, Alfaro took advantage of the alternate takes found on many DVDs. He created a demo that let him switch between the final footage and the alternate takes and angles by changing the direction of the handheld device.… Read more

Apple's announcement of iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 in just the last three months shows that the smartphone wars aren't cooling yet. Just consider everything that has happened in the space of the last year. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is a top-to-bottom overhaul of the Windows Mobile OS, and Google continues to aggressively roll out updates to Android. Palm hasn't been quite as active in the news recently, but we're not discounting its WebOS quite yet.

The following chart compares popular features from the smartphone operating system that have been most active this year. … Read more

An internal e-mail sent around to Verizon employees made its way online earlier today and brought plenty of excitement with it.

Without giving away anything specific, the e-mail promises that new devices are launching soon. As plainly shown in the teaser image, the codename for this project is "6," leading many to speculate that six devices will be announced in the coming days.The two most obvious smartphones that come to mind are the Nexus One and the HTC Incredible.

The Nexus One has been listed with a spring 2010 release ever since the Android superphone was announced in early January. … Read more