AT&T has a pair of opposites available as the carrier launches today the Samsung Infuse 4G with a huge 4.5 inch display, and the HP Veer 4G which has a petite 2.6 inch screen. The price of each device is as different as the screen is on both models. The Veer 4G is [...]

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The battle of the heavyweights has officially been staged – the Apple iPad 2 is the successor to the original iPad, which dominated the tablet segment in the last year, but the new contenders appear with an equally mighty dual-core muscle and tailor-made Android Honeycomb not breaking a sweat under its power.
The iPad 2 comes [...]

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Currently, consumers in America can waltz into their nearest Sprint store and pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab for use on the CDMA network. But it only works on EVDO, not Sprint’s speedier WiMAX network. According to Sprint President of Business Markets Paget Alves in Forbes, they’ll be rectifying that in 2011, with the launch of an unspecified 4G-capable tablet.

The big unknown is what exactly this tablet (or tablets?) will run as an operating system, a specific Alves was mum on. He did at least admit that Sprint will soon have tablets running different operating systems than the Android-powered Tab. There are a number of options, including BlackBerry’s upcoming playbook, any number of Windows-powered tablets, but oh, could it be, an HP webOS-powered PalmPad? Don’t get your hopes up, because we have no way of reading any further into Alves’ words: there are several options, of which webOS is only one. Then again, we’d like to think that HP is going to go all Samsung here and make their webOS tablet available on all carriers. Wouldn’t that be something?

Source: Forbes; Via: Engadget; Thanks to everyone for the tips!

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A leaked Quick Reference Guide shows off some of what Verizon has up its sleeve for the fourth quarter of this year. Besides the Motorola DROID 2 Global, Motorola DROID Pro and the Palm Pre 2, the carrier plans on dropping some models made precisely for the Young Adult Teen market including a comeback for [...]

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One of our friends sent us Verizon’s newest rebate form showing a bunch of new phones that should be out between November 1-24, just in time for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. On the list is the LG Cosmos Touch ($50 rebate) that will be similar to the current Cosmos with a full QWERTY keyboard, but [...]

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iPhone OS (now iOS) launched on just the iPhone. Android launched on just the G1. webOS launched on just the Pre. While these operating systems all have spread onto multiple devices and show no signs of slowing down. Microsoft, on the other hand, tends to take a different and more aggressive approach to product launches. That was fully evident today with the official unveiling of Windows Phone 7 and its associated hardware. The typography-heavy operating system was present on no fewer than ten new handsets from LG, Samsung, and Dell. Oh, and HTC was there with five (5!) models on hand.

And wow, does all that look nice. We’re particularly jealous of the Dell Venue Pro. And the HTC HD7. And the HTC 7 Pro. The buzz is strong, as Windows Phone 7 is clearly a very strong entrant. Sure, it won’t have copy-paste until next year, and won’t be available in Europe until the end of October, or the USA in early November, but navigation on the demo units was smooth, hardware was solid, and a lot of the apps shown off were pretty darned impressive (especially that gaming magic).

Our pals Phil, Daniel, and George knocked today’s coverage out of New York out of the metaphorical park over at our newly relaunched sister site WPCentral. There you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know (and plenty you didn’t even know you wanted to know) about Windows Phone 7 and all of these fancy-pants handsets. Here’s hoping that after the Palm Pre 2, our friends in Sunnyvale can knock it out of the park with the next handset. Clearly, Microsoft has stepped up to the plate and brought all of their best ammunition.

Oh, and WPCentral already kicked their first post-7 podcast (though their 112th overall). As you’ve likely already surmised, it’s a doozy.

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Since Sprint is currently the largest portion (if not the majority) of the webOS user base, we tend to pay attention when fancy new phones launch on Sprint. We lost a lot of Pre owners to the HTC Evo 4G, but there are many out there who simply must have a keyboard. Enter the Samsung Epic 4G, part of their cross-carrier Galaxy S platform (unlike the others in the series this one carries along WiMax and a keyboard).

Is another large-screened Android phone something that webOS users should be worried about? That’s hard to say, as the Evo with its HTC Sense overlay and the Epic’s Samsung TouchWiz UI are completely different beasts. We have to admit, though, at this point much of those that have remained with Palm to this point are the contract frugal and the webOS loyal. Whether that’s going to be enough to tide them/us over until Palm releases its first device under the auspices of HP remains to be seen.

Regardless, Phil over at Android Central has had his hands on the Epic 4G long enough to develop some 3,276 words worth of impressions, and in short the device really might qualify as Epic. Head on over to Android Central to check out the Samsung Epic 4G review (and then come back here to where you know you really belong).

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While pretty much every pair of bluetooth headphones offers at least basic functionality to go along with playing music, the Samsung WEP870 Convertible Bluetooth Headset is one of only a few headsets that manage to bring basic stereo music functionality to the traditional headset form factor. It doesn’t hurt that the modular design means you can get music in multiple ways. And it’s also good that this whole combo both looks and sounds pretty decent.

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There are two things that Palm owns that are of true value: webOS and a giant bucket full of patents. Either would be good reason for a larger competitor to purchase Palm, and according to some analysts, either is good reason to declare Palm to be undervalued (Palm stock plus Elevation Partner’s 1/3 share equals approximately one billion dollars).

That Montana-sized basket full of patents is good for several things. Especially when that basket of patents contain things like "Integrated Handheld Computing and Telephony System and Services," i.e. smartphone. For one, Palm can claim royalties when other companies use that patent. It also, at least to this point, has served as a barrier against most serious patent infringement cases (Hello, Cupertino). Having a lot of patents is also good for something else: when those patents are licensed by many companies, it gives the holder significant value. Palm’s veritable trove of patents has lead PatentVest CEO Anthony Mazzarella to declare to Investors Business Daily that, “Based on our metrics, the value of Palm’s intellectual property is along the same order of magnitude as Apple. The market is overlooking the IP value in Palm, which has great value.”

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As they say with patent lawsuits, you throw everything you’ve got at all the defendants you can find and see what sticks. Today we’ve got defunct chip maker MicroUnity (stopped making chips more than a decade ago) leveling a patent lawsuit against twenty-two companies [pdf] involved in the mobile tech industry. MicroUnity is targeting Acer, Apple, AT&T, Cellco, Exedea, Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sprint, and Texas Instruments in the suit. The allegation is that all of these companies (and some of their subsidiaries) are involved in the production, sale, and/or marketing of MicroUnity patent-infringing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon or Texas Instruments’ OMAP-3 and OMAP-4 processors.

In our case, the Palm Pre and Pre Plus use the TI OMAP 3430 processor and is sold and marketed by Sprint (as well as Verizon, Bell, O2, and Telcel, but they apparently don’t matter). We would say that there’s likely little to worry about as far as Palm and Sprint are concerned – Texas Instruments is the one infringing on patents here, Palm only bought the chips.

Even though MicroUnity stopped making chips more than ten years ago, they still have a hefty patent portfolio that they’ve leveraged in the past. In 2005 Intel settled a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by MicroUnity to the tune of $300 million. At the time, MicroUnity had a grand total of eight employees. We won’t call them patent trolls, but we will at least point out that MicroUnity also has pending lawsuits against a number of other tech companies, including Intel (again), AMD, Sony, and Dell.

[via: EETimes]

Thanks to Lemstil for the tip!

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