Remember the Dell Mini 3i, Dell’s China-only Android phone? Well it’s not China-only anymore.
Rumor has it that Dell will bring the Mini 3i to the U.S. in the next few months to compete with other Android phones coming down the pike from HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.
The phone, presumably still in its Chinese trade dress, felt “cheap and plasticky, like the Pre,” according our tipster. He believes it will be upgraded for the American market.
While we don’t particularly care for the update to WinMo, there’s sure to be some people out there who do like it. For those folks, we have a list of the phones from Microsoft that will be upgrading to the new OS. Poor suckers.
Yesterday, we saw a Vonage app hit the App Store, which seemed to go against Apple and AT&T’s previous stance that VoIP apps that work over the 3G (and 2G) network would not be allowed in the App Store. Turns out there’s been a policy change. AT&T has just announced that it will no longer restrict VoIP apps that use its network on the iPhone, a move which is long overdue considering that it was already allowing these on other phones.
But don’t be fooled. A rumor earlier today about the move suggested that AT&T was thinking about letting Google Voice on the iPhone alongside Skype, Vonage, and other VoIP apps. There’s two problems here. First, Google Voice isn’t actually a VoIP app. Second, AT&T did not have anything to do with the Google Voice rejection (or non-approval, whatever), that was all Apple.
What do you get when you mix HTC, Android, and Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon mobile processor together? No, it’s not the amazing (recycled from an old Snapdragon post) image above…but it’s close. According to the rumor mill, this mythical combination will yield…the HTC Dragon.
Looks like there’s a serious outage going on for Sidekick users. Starting in the last few days, data services have been broken off and even address books have been inaccessible. Apparently the problem is with Danger and Microsoft, not with T-Mobile. My G1 is on T-Mo and I’ve had no data troubles — and it’s Microsoft that’s scrambling to fix the issue. Around the clock, even!
Apparently they’ve gotten many “critical applications” back online, which seems to include everything you’d want to use: “address book and calendar, social media applications, IM, web browsing, media player and camera.” What else can a phone do?!
At any rate, they say they’ll have everything back to 100% by Thursday. anybody out there still having issues?
Ouch. I knew I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t too fond of Windows Mobile 6.5, but I’m just a lowly blogger; when your hardware partners start bailing, its gotta sting a little.
At their Android ecosystem event this morning, Motorola’s VP of Software and Ecosystem Christy Wyatt disclosed that Moto’s relationship with Windows Mobile was temporarily going on hold. While the company will be focusing on “two strategic platforms” when it comes to smartphones (Android is one, obviously – beyond that, your guess is as good as ours), they’ll be waiting for Microsoft’s next platform release before sparking things up again.
While that means we definitely shouldn’t expect any WinMo 6.5 phones from Motorola, it’s also sounding like any Moto handsets currently running WinMo 6.1 aren’t going to see any upgrades.
[Via Phonescoop]
![Screen shot 2009-10-06 at [ October 6 ] 11.53.59 AM](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20091007055236im_/http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-06-at-October-6-11.53.59-AM-173x300.png "Screen shot 2009-10-06 at [ October 6 ] 11.53.59 AM")
And Windows Mobile 6.5 Day keeps on rollin’! Further proving that the mobile phone industry is complete out of names to use, Sprint and Samsung have just announced a device they’ve decided to dub the “Intrepid”.
While we wouldn’t have guessed it at first glance, that 2.5″ screen is actually a touchscreen. They’ve got a full QWERTY keyboard down below that, with a 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and microSD slot tucked inside.
![Screen shot 2009-10-06 at [ October 6 ] 11.03.43 AM](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20091007055236im_/http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-06-at-October-6-11.03.43-AM.png "Screen shot 2009-10-06 at [ October 6 ] 11.03.43 AM")
Bam! There we were complaining that it would likely be a long time before the mind-blowingly gorgeous HTC HD2 showed its face stateside, and SlashGear managed to get a date out of them. According to HTC CEO Peter Chou, we should see this hit the shores sometime in Q1 of 2010.
Sure, it’ll still be a few months before that vague 3-month window even begins — and the damn thing is running WinMo 6.5 — but you know what? We’ll forgive it. Just let us touch it.
Duhwaaaah? Verizon was workin’ all hard this morning to ensure that no one slipped up and mentioned any names when it came to the devices that would emerge from the VZW/Google partnership. Then, not even an hour later, they put a picture of Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam holding two separate devices in their own press release. Bloops!
Rumor has it that Palm’s second webOS-powered device, the Pixi, is dropping October 20 on Sprint. However, just cause we hear speculation about the CDMA version doesn’t mean its GSM cousin wants to be left out in the cold.
Earlier this morning Comverse announced a new partnership with Sony Ericsson to bring visual voicemail to future SE handsets. Ever since a certain mobile device (hint: starts with “i” and ends with “phone”) hit the mobilesphere, consumers have been clamoring for visual voicemail on other cell phones / carriers. Slowly, but surely, the incredibly convenient feature has begun to spring up.
Windows Mobile 6.5, we wanted to love you. We wanted you to come along and wash away the past, whisking away all signs of the antiquated 6.1 we’ve grown so tired of ragging on.
We went into this review with the full hopes of emerging with a generally positive outlook. Sorry, Windows Mobile 6.5 – it’s just not going to happen.
Fuel cells, those electrochemical conversion devices, which are supposed to make the lives of gadget freaks easier, are still a hot topic in the alternative energy sector even though the technology hasn’t penetrated the mass market yet. Toshiba, for example, has been experimenting with fuel cells for quite some time now. And the company has now announced the development of a fuel-cell based cell phone that’s just 22mm thick.
The main achievement here is that this prototype is about 50% thinner than Toshiba’s previous one (which you see in the picture), marking another step towards commercialization in the future. The phone runs on methanol and doesn’t need to be charged.
We’ve covered a couple of Distimo reports in the past because they provide us with some valuable insights on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market based on the startup’s in-depth analysis of publicly available data. Now the company has added RIM’s Blackberry App World store to the fray, which gives us even more data points to compare the rivals’ app pricing and whatnot.
In the latest report (September 2009), Distimo notes software programs for Blackberry devices are considerably more expensive than comparable apps for competing devices/platforms.
In fact, the average price for apps is more than three times higher than the one for similar apps in the App Store and Android Market, which is sort of unbelievable. There’s not a single category where the average price of an app is lower than its equivalent on the latter two application storefronts, and the more serious, business-related tools are definitely much more expensive. (chart after the jump)
