Mobile and Hight Technology

Palm's webOS over-the-air firmware update process explained

2009-06-17T09:37:00.003-07:00

For most Pre owners, updates to the operating system happen silently and with little drama -- just the way Palm and the average user likes it. For the more inquisitive of us, though, Palm is offering a detailed breakdown of how the updates get pushed down to the phone and under what circumstances. For starters, you've got to be on EV-DO or WiFi, because 1xRTT (in addition to being ridiculously

Motorola's i856 iDEN slider takes a mind-bending journey through the FCC

2009-06-17T09:37:00.001-07:00

Remember that Motorola i856 we told you about way back in March? It's now lost its FCC innocence, garnering external photos and a user's manual for our excited perusal. As phones go, it's nothing much to look at -- but this is iDEN we're talking about, where sliders and multimedia features are still awfully hard to come by . Indeed, the i856 has a dedicated music button right on its face, a far

EU roaming drama continues, tentative pricing agreement reached

2009-03-29T09:20:00.003-07:00

In Europe? Want cheaper international roaming? Of course you do -- if you don't you're either a carrier or a sick puppy -- and it looks like you just might get your wish. Members of the European Parliament have agreed in principle to reducing the caps on international voice, text, and data roaming to €0.43 per outgoing minute, €0.19 per incoming minute, €0.11 each, and €1.00 per MB wholesale,

ITT sues Verizon, phone makers aplenty over GPS patent

2009-03-29T09:20:00.001-07:00

This one's pretty light on specifics at the moment, but it looks like manufacturing giant ITT Corp is none too happy with Verizon and a whole host of cellphone manufacturers including the likes of Motorola, Nokia, LG, and Kyocera, and it's now gone so far as to sue the whole lot over alleged patent infringement. Apparently, ITT thinks that the group of companies all violated one of its GPS

Emgeton pops out dual-SIM Enzo candybar

2009-03-29T09:07:00.001-07:00

Can't say we've ever heard of Emgeton, but we're liking what we're seeing here. Admittedly, the Enzo candybar takes a swipe (or two... or three) from Sony Ericsson, but this dual-SIM wonder still packs enough personality to keep things interesting. Said handset reportedly boasts 3G capabilities, a 2.2-inch 320 x 240 resolution display, Bluetooth, 0.3 megapixel camera, a rechargeable Li-ion and a

AT&T pays out $8.2 million settlement over school E-Rate program

2009-02-17T06:54:00.001-08:00

"Settlement" and "needy schools" aren't two things that most companies would like to see in a press release, but that's exactly what AT&T is dealing with at the moment after it has paid out $8.2 million to settle a dispute involving the E-Rate program, which uses funds collected from phone customers to pay for hardware and connectivity service fees for schools and libraries. According to the

Qualcomm makes a play for the sub-$150 smartphone market with new chipset

2009-02-14T20:54:00.001-08:00

In a press release recently issued by Qualcomm, the company states that it's taking direct aim at the sub-$150 smartphone market with a new chipset on offer. The platform -- known as the MSM7227 -- is apparently designed with higher-power, lower-cost handsets in mind, offering HSDPA / HSUPA radios, a 600MHz CPU, 320MHz application DSP, 400MHz modem processor, hardware-accelerated 3D graphics,

Mobile phone Wi-Fi usage on the rise

2009-02-12T10:39:00.003-08:00

Wi-Fi has come to the mobile phone, and people all over the world are taking advantage of the faster speeds to access the Net from their phones. According to AdMob, a mobile advertising marketplace, mobile Internet usage on Wi-Fi picked up steam in January in the U.S. and Europe. Worldwide Internet requests originating from Wi-Fi hotspots increased 8 percent month over month to 6.8 billion, led

Qualcomm brings Near Field Communication to more mobile chipsets

2009-02-12T10:39:00.001-08:00

As stellar as things like contactless payments are, short-range communications applications have generally struggled to gain adoption (Bluetooth notwithstanding). Qualcomm's hoping to change all that with its announcement that certain new products in its portfolio will arrive with NFC capabilities baked right in. The outfit's goal here is to "accelerate the commercial availability of mobile

Smartphones offer hope in declining cell phone biz

2009-02-04T18:13:00.003-08:00

Cell phone sales around the world took a nose dive in the fourth quarter, as the weakened economy hurt demand for new devices. But sales of smartphones continued to grow. According to IDC, overall sales of cell phones in the fourth quarter were down about 12.6 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2007. In the fourth quarter of 2008, manufacturers shipped a

Smartphones offer hope in declining cell phone biz

2009-02-04T18:13:00.001-08:00

AT&T eyes divested Alltel assets

2009-02-04T17:59:00.001-08:00

AT&T could end up with the lion's share of the wireless assets that Verizon Wireless must get rid of as part of its acquisition of Alltel, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The newspaper cites sources who said that AT&T is among several bidders hoping to get their hands on the Alltel subscribers and network. The private-equity firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts & Co.,

AT&T reportedly eyeing post-merger Verizon Wireless assets

2009-02-04T17:46:00.001-08:00

As you may recall, one of the requirements that Verizon had to agree with in order to complete its little acquisition of Alltel was that it must offload some $3 billion in wireless assets to avoid becoming too monolithic, and it looks like there's already a number of bidders angling for a piece of the action. The biggest of those, by far, is AT&T, which is apparently looking to pick up as big a

Vodafone reports 14 percent rise in revenue

2009-02-04T10:50:00.001-08:00

Things may not be entirely awesome for most operators these days, but at least Vodafone's making some cash in this cash-strapped market. according to its most recent quarterly results, the outfit has notched a 14 percent increase in revenue, which was helped by the weak pound and exceptional sales in India. More specifically, it realized sales of ?10.47 billion ($14.9 billion) compared to ?9.16

Verizon axing Test Drive, making New Every Two program less awesome

2009-02-02T18:40:00.001-08:00

Verizon Wireless certainly isn't planning a romantic weekend with its customers this Valentine's Day, as it's completely nixing its Test Drive program and slashing benefits on its New Every Two initiative. Or, it will if documents rounded up by Boy Genius Report prove accurate. Currently, prospective subscribers who'd like to test out Verizon's network for a month without worrying over usage fees

Firefox Mobile "Fennec" browser to debut on HTC's Touch Pro next week?

2009-01-29T08:17:00.001-08:00

You may remember the Alpha 2 release of Fennec, well, the folks involved with Firefox mobile have updated their Wiki with news of a milestone release in the first week of February. So, we have to ask, are you an HTC Touch Pro user? If not this release really isn't for you, as the platform of choice for this release is rather narrow: one set. Of course if you don't have a Touch Pro, you can always

AT&T earnings dip 23.6 percent

2009-01-28T07:45:00.001-08:00

AT&T, the largest phone company in the country, reported Wednesday that its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2008 fell 23.6 percent, amid a tough economic climate. The company said it earned $2.4 billion, or 41 cents per share, during the fourth quarter, compared to $3.14 billion, or 51 cents per share, during the same period a year ago. Revenue increased 2.4 percent to $31.1 billion, which was

Payment processor Heartland reports breach

2009-01-21T09:23:00.001-08:00

Heartland Payment Systems, which processes payroll and credit card payments for more than 250,000 businesses, reported Tuesday that consumer credit card data was exposed in what may be the largest security breach ever. In a statement that coincided with President Barack Obama's inauguration events, Heartland said the breach occurred last year but that it found evidence of the intrusion last week

Why Obama's cell phone calls will always go through

2009-01-17T11:16:00.001-08:00

After Barack Obama is sworn in next week, he'll be able to enjoy one of the lesser-known benefits of the presidency: phone calls that always go through. That means no more "all circuits are busy" messages. And no waiting for calls to be completed as millions of people crowd into Washington during the inauguration and jam overburdened cell phone towers, despite what have been practically heroic

AMD announces ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series graphics chips

2009-01-09T21:05:00.001-08:00

NVIDIA has already given its laptop graphics offerings a bit of a boost at CES, and now AMD has followed suit, with it taking the wraps off its new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series chips. As you may have guessed, these are based on the same core architecture as AMD's 4000 series of desktop graphics cards, and they promise to be as much as twice as fast as their 3000 series predecessors. Helping

Bureaucratic drama: India wants to double 3G license prices

2009-01-05T10:31:00.001-08:00

Just as carriers (and would-be carriers) were likely scraping up the necessary 20 billion rupees to plunk down for a national 3G license over in India, the government wants to switch things up double down. The country's Finance Ministry has apparently asked the Department of Telecom to ask for some 40 billion rupees as a minimum bid price now -- that's about $840 million for those who don't have

O2 sees a record 166 million text messages fly during New Year's celebration

2009-01-04T03:21:00.001-08:00

If Americans really send twice as many text messages as Europeans, we'd hate to see the figures from the Big 4 here in the States. According to O2 UK, a record 166 million text messages were sent over its network in a 24-hour period that ended at 7:30AM on January 1, 2009. For those not exactly near their abacus, that breaks down to around 1,900 messages per second. Furthermore, over 16 million

FCC Fridays

2009-01-03T03:30:00.001-08:00

We here at Engadget mobile tend to spend a lot of way too much time poring over the latest FCC filings, be it on the net or directly on the ol' Federal Communications Commission's site. Since we couldn't possibly (want to) cover all the stuff that goes down there, we've gathered up all the raw info you may want (but probably don't need). Enjoy! Meizu opens flagship store in Shenzhen

HTC May Make Second Android Phone By April, Says Unreliable Site [Android Phone]

2008-12-22T18:36:00.001-08:00

Digitimes, who was already kinda wrong this morning, says that HTC will release a second Android phone by April and a third is already in development. The third phone already being in development is a super-obvious rumor, since every company has tons of things going on simultaneously, but a second Android phone by April? Sure, that's possible. I mean, all HTC needs to do is pick one of the

Cellphone hacked to analyze blood, detect diseases on the spot

2008-12-21T10:00:00.001-08:00

Not that the whole using-cellphones-for-disease-detection is completely fresh, but the latest handset hack for medical purposes is still mighty impressive. UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan has essentially converted a standard cellphone into a portable blood tester of sorts, which is capable of detecting HIV, malaria and various other illnesses. Put as simply as possible, the device works by