Smartphones

Verizon Wireless customers waiting for the Nexus One should probably make other plans, as it looks like Big Red's version of the Google "superphone" will never see the light of day.

When the Nexus One was first announced in January, Google revealed that a Verizon model would be made available later this year. However, on Monday, Google posted an entry on its official Nexus One blog site recommending that users head over to Verizon's site and preorder the HTC Droid Incredible instead. The official checkout page for the N1 shows a similar message.

While Google has … Read more

This post was updated at 6:39 a.m. PT with information from Sprint regarding the availability of the RIM BlackBerry Bold 9650.

Research in Motion's Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) doesn't officially start till Tuesday, but the company kick-started things by introducing two new devices on Monday: the BlackBerry Bold 9650 and the BlackBerry Pearl 3G. Carrier and pricing information is sparse at this time, but the news finally gives us a look at two devices that have been a long time coming.

The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is a handset that's been promised since last summer and … Read more

When the news first hit that Verizon Wireless would offer the HTC Droid Incredible, the reaction was fast and furious and I received an inordinate amount of e-mails about the smartphone. Clearly, the Android device struck a chord with many of you.

Since then, we've had a chance to review the Droid Incredible and it truly is incredible, but, if we're being completely honest, we definitely underestimated the smartphone at first. Sure it had a better camera and more internal memory than some of its competitors, but it's not like the Incredible was offering any new, groundbreaking … Read more

The latest release from Opera Software is admittedly a mobile browser-related app that few smartphone owners will ever touch, let alone know of its existence. It's a new tool that developers of Opera Mobile widgets, however, will want to get their code-tinkering paws on.

The Opera Mobile 10 desktop emulator will let widget-creators visually mark the progress of their tiny addendum apps from the convenience of the Windows, Mac, or Linux (direct download) screen.

Emulators aren't new to the mobile development biz any more than tools for software authoring are new to Opera, whose Dragonfly debugging tool has … Read more

For those of you who thought Dell was content with putting out low-end Android handsets like the Aero, I submit the Thunder, Smoke, and Flash.

Wednesday saw Engadget leaking three new phones from the handsetmaker's road map. Looking through the various details and specs, one gets the sense that Dell has lofty ambitions for the platform, going so far as to create its own user interface called Stage. Based on the few pictures available, the experience looks stylish, sleek, and classy. Although we shouldn't expect to see these phones for nearly a year, Dell has already committed to … Read more

Thanks to a computer glitch, a handful of lucky Verizon Wireless customers found themselves getting the HTC Droid Incredible more than a week before its official launch date.

According to a few users in AndroidForums, their new Verizon handset arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday, days ahead of the scheduled April 29 date. After a little nay-saying and provocation, a user by the name of SoSmarmy decided to film himself powering up the phone. As I gather it, the number of users who have received their Droid Incredible was minimal and the glitch has since been fixed.

While many of us … Read more

On Wednesday night, Engadget Mobile got its hands on some images and specs of what looks to be like Dell's first Windows Phone 7 smartphone, the Dell Lightning. And my oh my, we like what we see.

According to the leaked documents, the Lightning is a portrait slider phone rocking a 4.1-inch WVGA Samsung OLED multitouch screen with the three required Back, Start, and Search buttons. In addition, the smartphone will supposedly have a 1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250 processor and 1GB Flash ROM, 512MB RAM, and an 8GB microSD card.

Multimedia and entertainment features will be well represented by … Read more

Those of you who have become tired of typing addresses and search terms into Google Maps for Mobile now have a reprieve.

Version 4.1 of the standalone smartphone maps app brings voice search to Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile phones, a huge convenience feature that's already eased the typing pain in many an Android- and BlackBerry-carrying fingertip.

In addition to submitting to the usual voice queries, this version of Google Maps for Mobile subtly adds language choices to the settings page. The linguistically-sensitive developers have also slipped into the options Google's characteristic variety of accents that acknowledge … Read more

This is a true story: Two weeks ago I'm zipping along in southern England in the back seat of a silver VW Golf, listening for the better part of an hour and a half while my sister reads aloud directions to the car's driver from the screen of an HTC Touch.

The instructions are specific ("Turn left in 100 feet") but fruitless; we flip a U on the muddy one-track road and head back toward the village to blindly pick our way to our obscure destination, a farmhouse that brews traditional cider, using just wits and … Read more