T-Mobile adds Boston, San Diego, Miami, others to HSPA+ live list

T-Mobile USA isn’t backing down with its somewhat controversial “4G speeds” rhetoric for its rapidly-growing HSPA+ network — and when you consider that real-world performance on it can meet or exceed what Clear and Sprint will get you in some markets on WiMAX , we can’t say we blame them. Next to enjoy the 4G-esque experience from the nation’s number four carrier are a few major markets — Boston, San Diego, and Miami — along with Erie, Pennsylvania, Fresno, Palm Springs, Richmond, Spokane, and Topeka. Though the G2 is lining up to be the carrier’s first true HSPA+ smartphone, T-Mobile’s quick to remind everyone that the upgrades also mean that over 15 current devices in its lineup will see some benefits as well; not “4G speeds,” of course, but better than the HSPA they’d had before. See T-Mobile’s full statement after the break.

Palm Pre fake tires of waiting for webOS 2.0, takes up iOS and BlackBerry OS lookalikes instead

We feel your pain: you love your BlackBerry at work and your iPhone for personal use, but as hardware goes, nothing gets your motor running quite like the Pre’s pebble-esque shell. Trust us, we’ve all been there! Well, a new clone out of China seeks solve all your technological woes by combining an iOS-inspired user interface and the Pre’s body — with an iPhone home button thrown in for good measure, of course — and when the time comes to throw on the suit and tie and head to work, you can switch the UI over to BlackBerry mode. As far as we can tell, it still functions like an iOS clone here, but at least the skin will remind you of the good ol’ Bold days. Looks like you can’t buy this thing online, but considering how well the software works in most of these things, it’s probably for the best

Right on time: Verizon phasing out Pre Plus, Storm2, Curve 8530, others?

Judging from some documents we’ve received, Big Red is looking to clear out a lot of inventory right about now — presumably to make room for some upcoming models, some of which we’ve already heard about through the grapevine. Specifically, the Pre Plus along with the BlackBerry Storm2 and Curve 8530 are apparently marked “Phase Out”; in the case of the Pre Plus, we know Verizon’s site has had it marked out of stock for a little while now , while rumors of a Storm3 and Curve 9330 have been floating around for some time. Also on the chopping block are a couple netbooks, a USB modem, and the MiFi , a device we’ve heard would be replaced with the ZTE-sourced, dual-mode Fivespot in the near future. All makes sense, doesn’t it?

Verizon’s remaining 2010 roadmap to be an Android-fest of phones and tablets?

Practically everything we’ve heard — both officially and through tipsters — lines up with information coming out of Phone Arena this week detailing a truly Google-heavy upcoming Fall and Winter release schedule for our friends at Big Red. Starting next month, it seems that we’ll see a global version of the just-launched Droid 2 , possibly with a white option (though it seems this could also be the R2-D2 model), and the Motorola WX455 we’d leaked has been named “Citrus” and will (as you probably could’ve guessed) target the low end of the market and the young’uns who are looking for an affordable way to get into Android; as WWAN-enabled laptops go, they’ll be picking up the Dell Vostro V13 and the HP Pavilion DM1 . Follow the break for the rest of the action! [Thanks, Steven C.

Engadget’s back to school guide: Mobile phones

Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we have mobile phones in our sights — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Back in our day, the only “mobile phone” at school was the one that broke off the dorm wall after our roommates got a little too rowdy, but nowadays, a capable, high-power handset is quickly becoming a must-have for students of all ages.

BlackBerry Torch just $99.99 on contract, by way of Amazon’s generous dealings

Amazon’s been known to have some killer deals , and well, here’s another. The new BlackBerry Torch , arguably RIM’s best smartphone to date (for what that’s worth), is just $99.99 on contract. That’s just about half off its usual entry fee with a two-year contract, so if you’re in the market to upgrade your current Bold for something with a little more slide, now’s your chance! [Thanks, Kramer] BlackBerry Torch just $99.99 on contract, by way of Amazon’s generous dealings originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments

Some webOS PDK apps still having trouble in Sprint’s 1.4.5 release

Palm changed some system permissions in PDK -powered apps with the release of webOS 1.4.5 to prevent third-party apps from writing to the /media/internal partition of the phone’s storage, which is all well and good — except for the fact that a number of existing apps use it, which means they’re unable to save data post-upgrade. Amazingly, Palm went ahead with the first US rollout on Sprint a month later anyhow, even though not all apps are kosher with the change yet. Good thing the dev community is all over it, then, right? The so-called “Emergency Fstab Fixer” is being recommended for installation via Preware as soon as the 1.4.5 update finishes, which should get you back in the game (quite literally) until Palm gets around to rolling out a patch. It’s alright, though, Palm — if you’re hard at work on webOS 2.0 , we don’t want to take you out of the zone

Sprint Pre Plus hack detailed in step-by-step guide

WebOS device hacking has reach some considerable heights recently with a mod to bring WiFi to a Sprint Palm Pixi , but it looks like even that’s now been topped by this hack that finally brings the Pre Plus to Sprint. As you can probably guess, that involves a Sprint Palm Pre , a Pre Plus (from either AT&T or Verizon), a slew of software tweaking, and plenty of tricky hardware modding to get the Sprint Pre coms board into the Pre Plus. Will it actually work? We can’t say we’ve gone so far as to try the mod ourselves, but PreCentral forum member livinofframen says his modded phone behaves perfectly, right down to the stock Sprint applications.

Palm enabling webOS apps to interact with Universal Search, dock mode?

When our own esteemed Paul Miller cracked the mystery that allows the Motorola Droid to behave differently when docked than when in the hand, it took a little of the magic out the switch. However, that doesn’t diminish from its utility, and it’s a feature that could be coming to webOS . PreCentral.net received a screenshot from a developer highlighting two new options for webOS apps: Universal Search-enabled and Dock-enabled. The first surely means that apps can provide content based on Universal Search queries, and we’re going to go ahead and guess that the second enables an app to look and behave differently when docked. The question is: what’s the dock?

webOS 2.0, ‘Roadrunner’ device showing up in app logs?

We know that Palm plans on having webOS 2.0 out of the door this year — and that it’s “aggressively” cranking on its hardware roadmap — so they’ve got to be in the later stages of testing at this point if they hope for any retail launches in time for the holidays, right? On that note, the developer responsible for the webOS flavor of Foursquare has noticed both webOS 2.0 entries and references to a new, previously unheard-of device codename “Roadrunner” in his app’s logs on webOSroundup’s Metrix analytics service; it can all be faked with enough effort, of course, but it would make a lot of sense for Palm’s peeps to be testing new hardware and software with some of the more popular apps in the Catalog. For now, we’re categorizing this one in the “totally plausible” category until we hear differently — question is, what form is this Roadrunner gonna take?

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