"Engadget Mobile" - 13 new articles

1. Nokia hard at work commercializing indoor positioning systems
2. Motorola flashes its OHA member card, confirms it's working on Android products
3. Sony Ericsson Rika turns red, still not announced
4. T-Mobile gets rough with Motorola's MOTOACTV W450
5. Concept phone can see through walls -- in theory
6. Keepin' it real fake, part CXLII: Sony Ericsson's T700 gets a twin (sans Ericsson)
7. HP's Silver smartphone in the wild
8. Apple drops iPhone NDA
9. HTC's Rose (alias S740) gets FCC approval
10. Toshiba powers cell phone with methanol fuel cell -- no, you can't have one
11. DoCoMo's separated phone hands-on and video from CEATEC
12. Another look at KDDI's CEATEC concepts
13. Samsung Sway, Motorola Rapture get dates and prices on Verizon
14. More Recent Articles
15. Search Engadget Mobile

Nokia hard at work commercializing indoor positioning systems

Filed under: Software, Nokia

How'd you like to be able to make a bee line straight for the ketchup in the Mega Mart without having to walk down thirteen aisles first in a frustrating process of trial and error? Yeah, Nokia feels you, which is why it's working on developing an indoor positioning system that's robust enough to use -- and easy enough to set up -- to be commercialized. The company apparently already has some 40 buildings worldwide set up with trial systems, and it's working on a commercial trial with a Helsinki mall that'll go live later this year with the goal of figuring out how such a system could generate cold, hard cash. We wouldn't expect this to go big any time soon, but for what it's worth, there's talk of dropping a build of the client on Nokia's own Beta Labs at some point in the future.

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Motorola flashes its OHA member card, confirms it's working on Android products

Filed under: Motorola, Android

It goes without saying that any company hooked up with Android's patron saint -- the Open Handset Alliance -- has at least a passing interest in actually doing something with Android, and in Motorola's case, we're going to go out on a limb here and say that, you know, in all likelihood, they were fixin' to drop an Android build onto a phone or two at some point down the road. Indeed, BetaNews has received a brief, largely unhelpful statement from Moto saying that it "look[s] forward to delivering great products in partnership with Google and the Open Handset Alliance community," which -- in light of the recent Android hiring frenzy alleged on Moto's campus -- is about the minimum amount of disclosure a company could make shy of saying nothing at all. While it probably stings from their perspective to see HTC get all the glory for the first Google-ified phone out of the gate, let's hope (for their sake, if nothing else) that this stealth-mode, take-our-time philosophy leads to some killer material out of Schaumburg down the road.

[Via Talk Android]

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Sony Ericsson Rika turns red, still not announced

Filed under: Handsets, Sony Ericsson, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

It looked pretty good in silver, but it's looking even better blushed, isn't it? The alleged music-focused remix of the G705 has now made its second unofficial appearance, and while exceptionally little is known about the darned thing, we can pretty much gather that it'll do HSDPA, a 3.2-megapixel cam, and GPS. Of course, Sony Ericsson has a nasty habit of canceling leaked phones that look ready to be released, so we'll be holding our collective breath right up until the moment we see a press release.

[Via Unwired View]

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T-Mobile gets rough with Motorola's MOTOACTV W450

Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, T-Mobile, GSM, EDGE

Ruggedized handsets are all the rage at the moment, and T-Mobile's the latest carrier to bow to the trend with the MOTOACTV W450 from (who else?) Motorola. Moto's advertising the colorful flip by saying that it's ready for "the great outdoors or the corporate jungle" thanks to a rubberized coating, chin bar for clipping the thing to your carabiner as you're rappelling some sheer cliff in Tasmania, and Mayo Clinic's In Touch software built-in for learning how to treat your life-threatening injuries when you fall off. It's got a 1.3-megapixel camera, quadband EDGE, stereo Bluetooth, and microSD expansion up to 2GB -- not massive, but probably enough for a jog, unless you're some insane endurance runner. Look for the W450 today in your choice of alpine white / canary yellow or black slate / mandarin.

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Concept phone can see through walls -- in theory

Filed under: Handsets, KDDI

Remember that scene in 'The Dark Knight' where (spoiler alert!) Batman uses the city's cell-phones to look through walls and find the bad guys? Totally awesome, right!? A group of scientists at KDDI apparently thought so too, creating a prototype they say could do something similar. Using geomagnetic sensors, accelerometers, and GPS, the device is able to determine its position and render its surroundings on the screen in OpenGL, including areas that are currently out of sight. We're guessing you must have already scanned those areas with the phone and that it can't actually see through walls, but we'd be happy to be proven wrong -- whenever they actually have something to show us. Like the group's funky concept phones we brought to you earlier, this one doesn't actually work. Yet.

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Keepin' it real fake, part CXLII: Sony Ericsson's T700 gets a twin (sans Ericsson)

Filed under: Handsets, Sony Ericsson

We've always wondered when we'd see a KIRF that was actually more desirable than the original, and while this ripped T700 isn't quite as succulent at SE's own T700, it's closer than most... on the outside. This touchscreen-based cellphone (which is obviously masquerading as a camera) supposedly sports a Carl Zeiss lens, a 5x optical zoom (seriously?), 8-megapixel sensor, a microSD slot and easily one of the nastiest user interfaces we've ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on. Hit the read link if you're into that type of sick stuff , and jump on past the break for a front side shot.

[Via MobileMentalism]

Continue reading Keepin' it real fake, part CXLII: Sony Ericsson's T700 gets a twin (sans Ericsson)

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HP's Silver smartphone in the wild

Filed under: Handsets, Windows Mobile, HP, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS

After missing its July release target by a country mile, we'd thought the Silver may have been canned -- but nope, she's alive and well, strutting her stuff for a few privileged hands around the world. The HSDPA 7.2Mbps handset with GPS and WiFi takes the original candybar Pearl's wildly successful format and applies a hearty dose of Windows Mobile Standard -- not a concept that's going to appeal to everyone, but for the S740 shoppers of the world, a totally viable alternative. So we know Vodafone has a keen eye on releasing this; anyone else?

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Apple drops iPhone NDA

Filed under: Apple

Apple's insistence on locking down iPhone developers with a restrictive NDA has been controversial from the start, and it looks like the company's seen the light -- it's just posted up a tersely-worded letter saying that the NDA is being dropped. It's a strange little note, actually -- the first paragraph comes off as a little defensive and whiny, if you ask us -- but we're not going to complain about anything that makes developing apps easier and faster for devs. Now let's work on not capriciously rejecting and deleting apps from the App Store, and maybe we can go back to focusing on the iPhone platform's actual merits instead of all these paperwork shenanigans -- we've got some suggestions if you're having a hard time figuring this out on your own.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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HTC's Rose (alias S740) gets FCC approval

Filed under: Handsets, HTC, GSM, EDGE

Like most new HTC codenames, the Rose had been a bit of a mystery to us when it first came out of the woodwork in some Bluetooth SIG documentation; it later turned out to be the very well-concealed S740. Unlike the ROSE100 model that we saw with the SIG, though, the FCC latched onto a ROSE110, giving us fleeting hope that there might be some North American 3G buried in this one. Alas, it's nothing more than EDGE 850 / 1900, Bluetooth, and WiFi -- a crying shame, considering what a unique little beast the S740 turned out to be. Maybe we can hold out hope for a ROSE120 down the road?

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Toshiba powers cell phone with methanol fuel cell -- no, you can't have one

Filed under: Toshiba

Toshiba continues to tease us with its prototype liquid fuel cell-powered gadgets: last year it was a Gigabeat media player, and at this year's CEATEC you can check out a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) that's been crammed inside a cell phone, lending it a robust six hours of talk time (compared to the paltry three or four hours of a traditional battery). Toshiba won't reveal the capacity of the DMFC, but they have said that a 50ml cartridge is good for about 15 refills. No release date yet, but the phone "might" be available "as early as next year." In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a woman holding a flip phone with "DMFC" clearly visible on the display.

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DoCoMo's separated phone hands-on and video from CEATEC

We got all down and dirty with DoCoMo and Fujitsu's prototype "Separated phone" today at CEATEC, and we can confirm that the device does, in fact do what they say it does. As reported earlier, the device uses Bluetooth to communicate between the phone's two magnetized halves, enabling configurations in everything from standard clamshell to gaming landscape formats. Perhaps the most compelling configuration is one that allows the phone to be held to the ear while one accesses data on the another half, complete with neck cramps. The touchscreen, Symbian S60-based UI was easy enough to use (albeit in Japanese) and features a hearty media playback element, but we were unable to squeeze any commitment to a launch date, price, or probability of seeing the unit on the market. That all said, the demo units were very much operational as you can see for yourself in the video after the break.

Continue reading DoCoMo's separated phone hands-on and video from CEATEC

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Another look at KDDI's CEATEC concepts

Filed under: Features, KDDI

When the coup de grace of your CEATEC showing is a concept phone designed to look like a frickin' satellite, you know you've got some winners on your hands. KDDI's known for trotting out some really cool concepts in the past, and its latest batch is no exception -- check 'em out over on Engadget.

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Samsung Sway, Motorola Rapture get dates and prices on Verizon

Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Samsung, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA

A reasonably attractive pair of phones that have been in the wings for a while now on Verizon are finally hitting next week -- October 6, to be exact. The Motorola VU30 Rapture is the first of the pair, a glossy flip set to do battle with Sprint's VE20 featuring a 2-megapixel camera, touch-sensitive external display (Verizon calls it "vanishing"), GPS, and EV-DO for $179.99 on a two-year contract or $299.99 with no Hancock required. Next, we have the Samsung u650 Sway, a silvery slider coming in at 0.47 inches thick and a feature list eerily reminiscent of the VU30's, right down to the 2-megapixel cam -- though EV-DO is strangely missing, as far as we can tell. Where they got the name "Sway" for a slider, though, is beyond us. Look for this one to run $119.99 on a two-year, $239.99 contract-free.

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