Filed under: Wireless

Hot on the heels of Lenovo comes Acer, which is somehow claiming “first!11one!” in the US market with WiMAX-enabled laptops. Introduced today in Baltimore in conjunction with the formal unveiling of Sprint’s XOHM network, the Aspire 4930-6862 and Aspire 6930-6771 both include the innate ability to hop on a WiMAX network and surf at 4G speeds. As for specs, the former packs a 14.1-inch WXGA panel, 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7350 CPU, 3GB of RAM, WiFi / WiMAX capability, integrated graphics, a dual-layer DVD writer, 320GB SATA HDD, 5-in-1 card reader, built-in webcam, Windows Vista Premium and an $899.99 sticker. The larger 6930 differs only in the 16-inch 1,366 x 768 resolution panel, as everything else (price included) remains the same. Charm City residents can snatch ‘em up right now at NewEgg and TigerDirect.

[Via DigitalTrends]

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Filed under: Wireless

Not too keen on snatching your WiMAX via ExpressCard? Fret not, as ZTE’s TU25 (which was leaked early last month) is fast approaching. Hailed as the only USB modem available (and certified, no less) for the launch of the XOHM network, the TU25 presumably allows users to plug it into a spare USB port, wave a magic wand and begin surfing the mobile broadband superhighway in Baltimore (and a few other places, we hear). There’s a frighteningly small amount of details on this thing right now, but hopefully we’ll have some of the more crucial aspects (price, release date, etc.) sooner rather than later.

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Filed under: Wireless

Flying out of BWI to Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. or Northern Virginia? Make sure you pack in that SWC-E100, because we’re hearing that Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX networks are already live in each of those locales. According to a XOHM representative at a booth in Baltimore, the networks in each of those cities are already up, though they aren’t officially supported as they’re still “being tested.” If any of you XOHM early adopters happen to head to any of the previously mentioned regions, bust out your ExpressCard and see if you get lucky (and then let us know how it goes).

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XOHM is live in Baltimore, and Laptop Magazine has sent a few (slightly dazed-looking) staffers on an impromptu tour of the “Charm City” to get a feel for Sprint’s new WiMAX service. Overall, they found performance to be quite good, clocking in at 3.05 Mbps down and 2.4 Mbps up. That compares very favorably to Verizon’s EV-DO network, which delivered 1.43 Mbps down and 0.54 Mbps up in the same locations. Sprint’s network also beats Clearwire’s WiMAX down in Reno both in speed and in connectivity; testers in the Biggest Little City in the World couldn’t get a signal while in a car, but those in Baltimore could, albeit at half the speed as when stationary. So, it certainly sounds like a good solution for those who need a high-speed connection on the go — so long as they’re only going to places within Baltimore, of course.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Screen grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

For those who haven’t already overloaded their DVR with the plethora of fall dramas, Heroes is looking to be a pretty solid bet. For one Nathan Petrelli, this season’s about more than just discovering who he really is. It’s about more than just being there for his baby bro. It’s about strategically placing the phone that supposedly needs no product placement smack dab into one of NBC’s hottest shows. Oh, and is it just us, or is he pretty perturbed about the lack of updates available for this thing too?

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Filed under: Wireless

Sprint may have just launched the XOHM WiMAX network in Baltimore, but would-be merger partner Clearwire has been running its version of the mobile broadband service in Reno for a while, and InfoWorld went down to test it out and give us a taste of what to expect. Performance was good while not in motion, with downloads speeds around 1.5 to 2.0 Mbps and uploads hitting 275 to 325Kbps, but actually getting mobile broadband seems to be out of the question — the system simply couldn’t connect to a laptop moving in a car or on a train. That seems like a dealbreaker to us, but we’ll give it a pass for now since it’s so early in the game — we’ll see if Sprint can do better.

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Filed under: Wireless

The FCC doesn’t exactly have a track record of swiftness when it comes to reviewing mergers, but it looks like that little election thing might have lit a couple grey suits on fire — FCC chairman Kevin Martin says that the agency is aiming to finish looking over the Sprint / Clearwire and Verizon / Alltel deals by the end of the year. That’s right before a new administration takes over and potentially gums up the process, so we’re guessing it’ll be approvals all around, since rejecting the bids would result in some fun lawsuits for everyone, but we’ll see how things shake out.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

In an apparent effort to make good on its claim of having WiMAX rolling in Baltimore this month, Sprint is reportedly going live with the service in the downtown area today. There’s no indication of when it’ll spread XOHM throughout Charm City, but we’re hearing that prices will start at $10 for a 24-hour unlimited pass and $35 for monthly service. Best of all, there won’t be any contracts necessarily attached, and WiMAX-friendly laptop cards will supposedly start at around $45. For any locals able to actually find one of these so-called aircards and hop on this elusive XOHM network today, be sure and let us know how it goes.

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Back in June, we heard that Sprint would be going live with its XOHM WiMAX service in Baltimore, um, this month. As of today, it’s pretty clear that the service won’t be rolled out fully before October dawns, but at least some progress is being made. Based on a survey sent out to select (read: lucky) Baltimore-area residents, it seems that Intel and Sprint are willing to give away free laptops in order to trial the XOHM service in the city. Unfortunately, the lappies won’t even be given out until late October, and the trial itself is set to last 30 days, so frankly, we’ll be lucky to see XOHM hit the general populace before Santa takes to the friendly skies. Though, why are we not surprised?

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’ve already been hearing that the HTC G1 (otherwise known as the Dream) would be landing on T-Mobile in late October, but VentureBeat now claims that it has further pegged the actual release date down to October 17th (it’ll apparently start shipping on the 13th), which would be a tad earlier than most had expected. What’s more, the site is also citing “multiple sources” claiming that Sprint’s own Android phone will “definitely” be out by 2009, and that it will have “other functionality” than the Dream / G1. Ah, the endless cycle of speculation. Place your bets, folks.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’ve already been hearing that the HTC G1 (otherwise known as the Dream) would be landing on T-Mobile in late October, but VentureBeat now claims that it has further pegged the actual release date down to October 17th (it’ll apparently start shipping on the 13th), which would be a tad earlier than most had expected. What’s more, the site is also citing “multiple sources” claiming that Sprint’s own Android phone will “definitely” be out by 2009, and that it will have “other functionality” than the Dream / G1. Ah, the endless cycle of speculation. Place your bets, folks.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Like they said they would, Sprint just spun the HTC Touch Diamond out for retail. $250 (after $200 instant savings, $100 mail-in rebate, and 2-year contract) takes home this WinMo 6.1 candybar with HTC’s TouchFLO 3D salve layered atop a 2.8-inch touch-screen display, 4GB of memory, WiFi, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, and EV-DO Rev. A. The tough decision is buy now, wait for Sprint’s Touch Pro launching on Friday, or hold-out for Best Buy to get its act together and put the $700 unlocked 3G Touch Diamond out onto store shelves.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Now that Sprint’s AIRAVE has been on sale (nationwide, that is) for nearly a month, we’re curious to know if it has lived up to your expectations. We’ll admit — it definitely lived up to ours, but we can still think of a few things we’d like to see different. Would you too enjoy being able to use this thing abroad? Is the 3-call (simultaneous) limit too tight for you? Do you wish your EV-DO data was piped through this thing as well? Oh, and does the pricing scheme set well with you? Let us know just how you’re enjoying (or not) that fresh new femtocell in comments below.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Oh, come on, you know there’s a part of you that wants it. A big part, even. The Touch Diamond is the first new HTC piece to get teed up for Sprint, but the Touch Pro is hot on its heels a few weeks later — and with a QWERTY keyboard, it’s hard to ignore. Question is, is it worth the extra wait? Well, ease your troubled mind for just a second and take a gander at our gallery on Engadget Mobile — we’re not saying it’s going to make your decision any easier, we’re just saying everyone likes pretty pictures.

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Filed under: Cellphones

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Filed under: Cellphones

Sure enough, there wasn’t anything squished about the image we saw of the LG LX600 a while back — it was just loosening the belt a couple notches to make room for a full QWERTY keyboard running across its naughty bits. Oh, and it’s no longer the LX600; turns out Sprint is releasing it as the Lotus, one of four all-new dumbphones for the autumn months to complement today’s announcement of the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. It’ll be available next month for $149.99 on contract. Others in the mix include the Samsung Highnote — a music-focused dual slider that dedicates one slide direction to a hefty little loudspeaker — and the curiously-named Rant, which apes the LG Rumor’s form factor to give text addicts another affordable option. Like the Lotus, the Highnote and Rant will both hit in October for $99.99 and $49.99, respectively. Meanwhile, iDEN freaks (and we use that term in the most loving way possible) will be happy to see that they’re getting their grubby, calloused hands on another rugged option, the Motorola i576 flip. It’ll start getting beaten senseless at retail come October 19 for $69.99.

Sprint’s also using those three new consumer sets (sorry, i576) to premiere “One Click,” a new UI paradigm for its non-smartphone devices that allows folks to drop all sorts of commonly-used features with information-rich icons right on the home screen for… well, one-click access, hence the name. New Katana Eclipse colors coming later this fall will feature the new software, too. Check out Engadget Mobile for a full gallery of all the wares!

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Filed under: Cellphones

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Filed under: Cellphones

BREW Ninja, who readily (and oddly for a ninja) enough admits that he’s a mobile QA engineer over at Yahoo! Mobile, just scooped 3x phones in this quickie 4 and half minute video. The HTC Coke — a variant of the HTC Touch Pro — and tiny LG Lotus with full QWERTY for Sprint are both interesting, but it’s the hands-on video of RIM’s touchscreen Thunder that blows our doors. At about 2:50 in, he reveals the BlackBerry Thunder for Verizon (AKA, Storm 8350) saying, “I don’t like it, it’s, it’s an ok phone.” His biggest concern seems to be the touchscreen (something we’ve heard before) which acts like a button — you have to actual push the screen, hard, unlike most capacitive touchpanel devices. See for yourself after the break.

[Via Crackberry]

Continue reading BlackBerry Thunder caught on video, with a ninja

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Now that Uncle Walt has gone and opened the floodgates, details are starting to pour in on Sprint’s imminent release of the Touch Diamond, a device that should actually manage to get the carrier damn close to the top of the Windows Mobile pile (for a short while, anyway). PC Magazine is now reporting that it’ll be available on September 14 for $249.99 on a two-year contract after $100 rebate, a sum that would put it squarely in the “average” category for on-contract smartphone pricing in these parts. Of course, with the Touch Pro allegedly just around the corner, it remains to be seen just how much love this thing is going to get; nothing like a good, old-fashioned QWERTY-versus-touchscreen fight, is there?

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Filed under: Cellphones

It was only a matter of time before ole Walty got his hands around Sprint’s still-not-official Touch Diamond, and we can’t say that the conclusion he drew is at all shocking. As Mossberg has done so often, he mentions Apple’s darling just as much as the topic of the review itself, and while he seemed impressed with the hardware, it was the software that suffered the brunt of his attacks. He proclaimed that “despite its handsome TouchFLO 3D software and animated icons, the device failed to disguise the frustrating interface of Windows Mobile often enough for [his] taste.” Beyond that, he also found room to gripe about the “cramped” keyboard, which he felt was “next to impossible” to use with just his fingertips. On the plus side, he did give the browser a decent amount of praise, but if you were looking for support from this critic before picking up the forthcoming handset, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

[Via phonescoop]

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