Counting down the moments with your besties until T-Mobile USA opens up the pre-order page for Motorola’s first-ever Android device? Might as well do something more productive in the meanwhile, particularly since the aforesaid carrier has just announced plans to charge $199.99 for the CLIQ on a two-year agreement. Without a doubt, that’s quite a bit more than the $0.00 we gently expected (okay, not really) it to run, but it’s pretty much par for the course these days. Existing T-Mobile customers that are interested in getting ahold of this thing (in Titanium or Winter White) early can pre-order one from October 19th through November 1st, while newcomers and procrastinators can get theirs in-store starting on November 2nd. So — you in, or what?
source: engadgetmobile.com
It’s one thing to read a product preview here and there, but if you really want the Maemo 5 experience before you’re even able to set foot in a store and buy an N900, look no further than mobile-review’s characteristically exhaustive look at the platform. From the endless array of screenshots, you quickly get the impression that this is an attractive shell — evolutionary and familiar for owners of the 770, N800, or N810, yes, but significantly freshened nonetheless. Here are a few big takeaways from the War & Peace-esque compendium:
- There’s apparently an N920 in the works that lacks a QWERTY keyboard. We’ve heard rumors in the past that the N900 will remain Nokia’s sole Maemo 5 phone for at least a few months, so we might look to see this in 2010.
- Process management invokes a curiously webOS-like card view which looks great. Helps when you have a beefy OMAP3 in there, doesn’t it?
- The call log effortlessly aggregates GSM and VoIP calls — a neat trick, and a tip of the hat to Maemo’s roots as a VoIP-friendly platform.
- MMS isn’t supported, strangely, though the platform’s SMS support handles both threaded and traditional views.
- While chatting up Maemo’s calendar services, Eldar specifically says that he “Palm’s WebOS-powered organizer much more enticing and promising.” Lack of Google Calendar synchronization sucks, but we’re not sure what that’s all about — Maemo does support Exchange ActiveSync, after all.
- Eldar his the nail on the head regarding Maemo’s Mozilla-based browser: it’s always been good, just way too slow. The N900 cures those ails on better hardware, though “it hasn’t caught up with the rest of the pack yet.” Flash support seems wonky and performance isn’t always great — it depends on how many apps are running.
- The music player is pretty bare-bones (typical Nokia), though anyone happy with the N97’s sound quality will feel right at home here — it’s the same hardware.
- The integrated Maps app apparently lags way behind the bar that Ovi Maps has set over on S60 — super slow and “resource-hungry.”
Of course, the beauty of Maemo is its wide-open philosophy, so many of the niggles here that aren’t corrected by Nokia proper will hopefully be handled by the community at large — and the good news is that by the time you get done reading this review, the N900 should be on store shelves for you to try yourself.
source: engadgetmobile.com
mSpot has been streaming full-length movies to cellphones for a few years now, but not until this week has the company had a potential customer base of 40 million. As of right now, mobile phone users on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile can surf over to m.mspot.com in order to stream major motion pictures, and being that the service is on-demand, you can also pause and restart ‘em whenever you darn well please. Deals have been inked with Paramount Studios, Universal Pictures and the Weinstein Company, and we’re told that more agreements are in the works. Movie rentals will cost $4.99 per title, and can be viewed from 24 hours to 5 days after they’re rented. Naturally, mSpot recommends paying for an “unlimited” data plan, and if you’re smart, you won’t utilize the service whilst traveling abroad.
source: engadgetmobile.com
