We can’t say we were overly concerned about busting through the Vita’s 2GB monthly data threshold when the handheld’s 3G variant hits AT&T next month, but the network, it seems, isn’t taking any chances. According to the Vita’s AT&T page, Ma Bell’s making sure you’ll never be blocked from nabbing those download-capped PlayStation Minis by upping the previously announced 2GB for plan to 3GB for . Surprised? Don’t be — this change just brings Sony’s next generation handheld in-line with the network’s updated data plans. The Vita’s budget-friendly for 250MB option is still ripe for the picking, but that won’t get you far if you plan to watch Netflix on the go, will it?

PlayStation Vita gets updated 3G data plan, offers an extra gigabyte for a Lincoln originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you and all of your friends flocking to buy that thing shown above at full retail price? Exactly. Evigroup’s SmartPaddle Pro tablet is now available from €699 (under 0) for the base 10-inch configuration with no GPS, no 3G and a 32GB solid-state hard drive. Additional configurations are available with 1 or 2GB of RAM, and the high-end configuration, which includes 3G and GPS goes for under ,500. The SmartPaddle Pro, with all the trimmings (including head-tracking), retails for around ,530. Other specs include a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, five hour run time, mini-HDMI port and capacitive touchscreen, none of which seem to justify the (still bloated) new price tag. Click past the break for the full video, which is apparently set to an Enya album.

Continue reading Evigroup drops SmartPaddle Pro price to €699, optional head-tracking feature watches you intently

Evigroup drops SmartPaddle Pro price to €699, optional head-tracking feature watches you intently originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of December 5, 2011:

• C Spire announced this week that it’s launching the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. The device is currently available for purchase for with a two-year commitment and after a mail-in rebate. [AndroidCentral]
• Images and specs of Philips’ first Android device, the W920, surfaced this week, and its spec sheet doesn’t look very good: Froyo, a 1GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 4.3-inch WVGA display, a 5MP camera, 10.5mm thin frame and it has a 1,280mAh battery. The fun part is the rumored price tag: £400 (7). [LandofDroid]
• Ting is a new Sprint MVNO that’ll launch mid-2012. It’ll be prepaid and use a bump-up and bump-down model for pricing — in other words, going over your minutes will just bump you into the next higher plan, while using fewer minutes can bump you to a lower plan. [Cnet]
• Another prepaid provider in the news this week is PrepaYd Wireless, which launched this week. It offers a “Y Pay More” plan that will give you unlimited talk, text and 3G data for per month. If you don’t need data, you can get all-you-can-eat talk and text for . Much like Ting, PrepaYd Wireless utilizes the Sprint network. [MobileTechNews]
• If you use a BlackBerry OS 7 device on AT&T, the carrier is offering you two free months of BBM Music. Normally you need to pay a month to store 50 songs. [Crackberry]
• While we’re on the subject of BlackBerry phones, Twitter for BlackBerry just got updated to version 2.1 and now offers multi-account support. In addition to being able to view up to five accounts in the same feed, it also includes the ability to tweet one thing to more than one account simultaneously. [BlackBerry]
• Pandora and Windows Phone may never mix well, but at least the radio service can be enjoyed now through an unofficial Pandora app called MetroRadio. It’s free, and is finally available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. [WPCentral]

Mobile Miscellany: week of December 5, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I bought the original Galaxy Tab on T-Mobile’s network last December and enjoy both the form factor and the mobility provided by the integrated 3G radio. The look of this new model is very similar to the 7-inch tablet I use, but here are some of the improvements and carry-over features:

• 1.2 GHz dual-core processor instead of a 1 GHz single core
• 21 Mbps HSPA+ / 4G support; my Tab only has a 7.2 Mbps radio for 3G speeds
• Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) instead of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
• 16 GB of internal storage with a microSD expansion slot
• 1024 x 600 resolution, capacitive touch 7-inch display
• 3 megapixel rear camera (with 720p video capture added) and 2 megapixel front camera
• An infrared sensor for use as a universal consumer electronics remote control

Aside from the faster mobile broadband radio and dual-core chip, much of the new Galaxy Tab mimics the old one. They’re welcome improvements, of course, and although there’s no guarantee of a software upgrade to Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, the hardware appears capable of supporting one.

One other available “feature” that wasn’t available when I bought my Galaxy Tab is the payment plan. I paid 0 — a sale price — with contract for my Tab. T-Mobile is trying to lure potential buyers by reducing the up-front cost of the hardware; something it’s done before with smartphones and is now trying with higher priced tablets. For 9.99 at the point of sale — and a mail-in rebate — consumers can leave the store with a new Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. The remaining cost is made up over the life of the contract with added to each monthly bill for 20 months. This is in addition to the monthly data service, which starts at .99.

A payment plan may generate some sales, but it convinces me more than ever that tablets shouldn’t be sold on contract. While I opted to buy a Wi-Fi version of the iPad, Apple got this aspect right with its 3G models. The problem for competing tablets is that without contracts, the devices are simply priced too high from a consumer’s perspective. Apple doesn’t seem to have that problem given that a 3G iPad starts at 9, mainly because the perceived experience brought from the iPad.

That has little to do with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus since this isn’t what I’d call a direct competitor to the iPad for most people. But it illustrates the challenge that carriers face in the tablet market: consumers often choose a device first and a network second. Unless consumers plan to use their tablet as much as their primary computing device, a monthly data commitment and cost isn’t appealing.

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Republic Wireless’ love affair with Wi-Fi.

Republic Wireless has made Wi-Fi the linchpin of its mobile service with a cellular network provided by Sprint as its backup. Customers will join the service by paying 9 to get a phone and then a month after that with no contracts. There’s a 30-day window for someone to return the phone and get their money back. So how does this work?

By default all calls, data and texts are sent via Wi-Fi networks when possible, and switch only to cellular if no Wi-Fi access is available. That’s one reason for the low price on the service, as most people can access an existing Wi-Fi network in their home or office for free. Brian Dally, the general manager of Republic says he expects at least 60 percent of the traffic to go over Wi-Fi networks. But he assures me that when he says unlimited data that it does extend to the 3G portion of the service as well.

Om said this sounds a lot like UMA, the technology that T-Mobile used for its Home Zone products and that many people loved. But Dally said Republic is not using the Kineto technology that UMA is based on, and that the user experience won’t be quite seamless when it comes to switching from one network to the other. At the moment users will hear a tone in the middle of a call signaling the change in networks, but the call will continue. That’s better than it cutting off entirely, but Dally says he’s still looking for feedback on the user experience and invited me to check back in a few weeks on the forums to see what users think.

Cheap matters but hardware does too.

To ensure the primacy of Wi-Fi, Republic had to build software that puts Wi-Fi first. It chose to do this using the Android OS not only because the platform is hot but it also allows developers to access the hardware. The first phone for the system will be the LG Optimus. If that’s not optimal, Dally promises that more phones are coming but he was mum about the timeline and particular devices.

The  LG Optimus Android smartphone runs the Gingerbread version of Android and will come preloaded with the Republic software. A first-time user will be asked to put in his Wi-Fi network and then for information on other Wi-Fi access points. The phone will remember that information. Users will also be able to download apps to help manage authentication and payment for Wi-fi networks if they want, but Republic won’t preload any of that onto the handset.

The use of Sprint as the network partner means the phone uses Sprint’s CDMA network, so it won’t roam internationally. And, if Sprint coverage doesn’t work well in your area, think carefully about taking it up. We expect Kevin Tofel to take the handset through its paces later this week.

Is it too good to be true?

The idea of disrupting the cellular world is not a new one, and while VoIP calling over Wi-Fi has come a long way, the quality of experience can be sub par. Dally agrees that delivering better quality of service on Wi-Fi is something he hopes will happen, but he’s also confident that today’s Wi-Fi networks and the ubiquity of access is enough to make this service viable.

And beyond providing cheap mobile service, Dally espouses some of the same ethos that his parent company Bandwidth.com shares– The idea is to take telecommunications from the realm of a few large carriers and make it more egalitarian and IP-based. “The phone prefers WiFi because its ubiquitous and cheap and it’s not controlled by a few large companies,” Dally said. Bandwidth.com owns an IP network (which Republic will use to connect calls) that currently provides VoIP services to Skype, Google Voice and other IP voice providers.

Between Bandwidth.com’s network, Sprint and your home Wi-Fi points, Dally believes he has a service. And given the emphasis on public in all of the company’s branding, I’m wondering if there’s a Fon element to be found here, where members can sign up to share their hot spots. And while today Republic isn’t signing partnerships with existing hot spot and access providers such as the AT&T-owned Wayport, Boingo or even iPass, Dally doesn’t rule them out in the future. Such partnerships which would give it even more flexibility to default to Wi-Fi coverage.

So it’s possible that Republic could flip the mobile phone model so cellular connections and pricing goes the way of satellite phone pricing — expensive and suitable only for a select few who roam the uninhabited wilds. I’ll be eager to see how this experiment plays out. The beta starts Tuesday with Republic offering to ship a cluster of handsets every Friday based on a first come first served basis.

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Continue reading Portable LTE network in a box demoed, ready to deliver 4G to war zone near you

Portable LTE network in a box demoed, ready to deliver 4G to war zone near you originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re among the teeming masses holding a brand new iPhone 4S in your hands, you may be surprised (as we were) to find there’s something conspicuously absent from the Network Settings menu on your new device: specifically the ability to manually shut off 3G data. After receiving word, and a screenshot, from a helpful tipster, rocking a 4S on Vodafone’s network, we found the same option missing from our own AT&T iteration. Of course this isn’t the sort of thing that’s likely to have an impact on most users, but if you’re the type that likes to squeeze every last bit of juice out of that Apple, the omission could cause some frustration. We gave Apple support a call to see what they had to say, and were told AppleCare has no official response on the matter. If you’re lamenting the loss of the 3G flip-switch sound off in the comments below.

[Thanks, Chris and Charlie]

iPhone 4S lacks “Enable 3G” switch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The most surprising thing about the iPhone 4S is that people were surprised by the iPhone 4S, for there is ample precedent to the company both confining upgrades largely to a speed bump and to saying no to a host of potential new features. As to the former, the iPhone 4S is straight out of the playbook of Apple’s successful upgrade of the Apple 3G to the 3GS, although the competition wasn’t as strong as it is today.

Similarly, when Apple first lowered the price of the iPod touch below 0 in 2009 amidst widespread speculation that it would add a front-facing camera for FaceTime (which it did in the next generation), the company noted that it didn’t think the product needed any more “stuff.” So, what, then, defines the iPhone 4S? The differentiators can be thought of as four “Ses.”

Continue reading Switched On: The four Ses of the iPhone 4S

Switched On: The four Ses of the iPhone 4S originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Under the stewardship of Jeff Bezos, Amazon is very much like Apple. It is not afraid to experiment (Amazon Web Services), disrupt (Kindle) and be ruthless (Amazon Prime). And like Apple, Amazon is a company with infinite patience. As Bezos once said, what makes his company different is its comfort with being wrong.

But before I get too far ahead, let me recap the news for you. Today Amazon announced that sometime later this year you can buy one or more of these devices:

• A 9 Kindle Fire tablet
• A Kindle eReader
• A Kindle Touch eReader
• A 9 Kindle Touch 3G eReader

The key device to be announced today is the Kindle Fire tablet. Writing for the Guardian, my friend Dan Gillmor sums it up best:

…this device, at just under 0, is to the iPad (about 0 in its least expensive version) as a cheap sedan is to a Lexus SUV: functional and useful, but nowhere near as elegant or powerful.

And just because it looks like a tablet doesn’t mean it is an iPad-killer, as some would have you believe. Just on the basis of features, it looks more like a competitive reaction to Barnes & Noble’s Nook and less like competition to the iPad. However, one has to take a step back and think of the strategic importance of the device.

As we learned from folks like Erick Tseng of Facebook and Michael Abbott of Twitter at our recently concluded Mobilize 2011 conference, the Internet is increasingly becoming a mobile-first experience. Our online behaviors are changing from browsing on the web to browsing on the go, whether on tablets or smartphones. If Amazon has to stay relevant, it needs to embrace this new world. It has chosen to do so by building an Amazon experience.

Fire sale

“What we are doing is offering premium products at non-premium prices,” Bezos told BusinessWeek magazine. “We don’t think of the Kindle Fire as a tablet. We think of it as a service . . . Certainly this is a for-profit business . . . Let’s put it this way. We are and always have been very comfortable at operating at extremely low margins.”

A few months ago, while appearing on Leo Laporte’s TwiT Internet TV show, I argued that sometime in the future, Amazon will create a physical retail space, mostly as a means for the company to extend its virtual franchise into the real world. Unfortunately, I was limited in imagining what could be a physical retail presence in our always-on, always-connected future.

With the new Kindles, Amazon has been able to define the hybrid retail environment. In fact, this reinvention of the retail experience will help the company not only keep fighting with newer competitors such as Apple but also take on today’s leviathans like Wal-Mart.

If you look at the price points of these devices, Amazon is willing to take deep losses in order to build market share and get people using its devices — fast. It needs to do so in order to ensure one thing and only one thing: that people keep buying from it what they need. Amazon has traditionally made money by selling physical goods: books, music and movies.

Given that we are increasingly shifting away from buying physical media and are instead opting for digital goods, Amazon is smart in its introducing the new Kindle tablet. The presence of these outlets allows us to buy more things more often and more easily. And that includes everyday stuff like toilet paper, soap, shoes and toys. Given that we have a new generation of children growing up using tablets, the very idea of “toys” for them might be quite different from what you and I experienced as tiny tots.

When I think of the new Kindle Fire (and whatever comes next), I see a strategic move the mirrors the introduction of Amazon Prime, the unlimited shipping plan that made it easy for us to buy more from the Seattle-based e-commerce giant. Morgan Stanley estimates that Amazon Prime customers annually spend about to four to five times the amount of non-Prime customers. There are about 12 million global Prime customers, versus a total of 144 million active users. My colleague Erica Ogg in a post earlier this month wrote:

should Amazon do a decent job selling tablets, it’s not necessarily going to be at the expense of Apple selling a lot of iPads. And that’s because the two are coming at the business from two different angles, and their customers have different expectations.

My colleague Ryan Kim, who was at the Kindle launch event in New York, had this to say about the device:

The Kindle Fire seems geared to not only help people play their content but shop for new things. The top option is a search field that can pull up stuff from Amazon store. Also, on the various media options below, users are able to get at their own magazines, books, videos and apps but a “store” button is usually present so people can quickly add to their library. There’s also going to be a shopping application, one of four main apps included in the Kindle Fire along with contacts, gallery and email.

By bundling a free one-month trial of the Amazon Prime service (that costs a year and gives you access to over 11,000 videos and thousands of music tracks via streaming) and automatically subscribing Kindle Fire owners (unless they opt out), it’s clear that Amazon is thinking correctly about the money-making potential of the tablets.

The asymmetrical war

Amazon’s primary business is selling us things  — lots of them — and getting them to us as cheaply as possible. And that includes physical and digital goods and services. That is its corporate DNA, and that DNA is going to influence all of its decisions — whether it is redesigning its website or defining new tablets.

Amazon’s revenues and profits come from selling goods and services. For Amazon, the tablet is the lure and e-commerce is the catch. Apple, on the other hand, makes money by selling hardware, lots of it. Apps and digital goods and services are a way to attract people to its hardware platform.

Apple makes a lot of money — as in real dollars — from its hardware. Amazon is going to lose a lot of money on this hardware-based reinvention of its core commerce business for a long time. This move should worry those who are already worried about Amazon’s minuscule profit margins. “At 9, we view the device as loss-making or neutral at best based purely on hardware,” JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth writes in a note to his clients.

The bottom line is that Amazon will be successful — at least more successful than Motorola or HTC — but it won’t come at the expense of Apple’s iPad or Samsung’s Android-based tablets. Or as John Gruber puts it:

Motorola, Samsung, RIM — they seem to be chasing the iPad on specs, building the best tablet they can manage at the same starting price of around 0. But they have no clear message telling people what you can do with them.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Catchpenny

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Continue reading Archos 80 G9 and 101 G9 hands-on (video)

Archos 80 G9 and 101 G9 hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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