Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Cellphones

We know, you’re just dying to say this is a complete shock, but we’re here to inform you that it’s not. If you’ll recall, Cox dug deep to snatch up a decent block of spectrum in this year’s 700MHz auction, and it even went so far as to promise a differentiated product that would eventually integrate with its other content and services. Sure enough, it’s keeping its word. After spending $500 million on wireless capacity in its markets, president Pat Esser says it’s time to turn things on. By relying on Cox’s own 3G network (along with Sprint’s, initially), the carrier will offer up an undisclosed amount of handsets that will “include a network address book that automatically synchronizes with home PCs” and allow remote programming of one’s DVR. Furthermore, users will be able to access e-mail and voicemail that they receive at home right on their mobile, and ideally, subscribers could watch TV shows right on their handsets. Get ready for an awkward new rival in the wireless space beginning, um, anytime now.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Look, Dan Hesse is an intelligent individual, which means he knew good and well that he’d start a flame war when making one particular comment to the National Press Club in Washington. The CEO of Sprint casually proclaimed that he didn’t feel Android (in its current form) was “good enough to put the Sprint brand on.” In all fairness, Sprint has shown a friendly side to Google in the past, and he did promise to sell an Android-powered phone “at some time in the future,” but asserting that Sprint is in the position to shy away from what’s arguably the most exciting thing to happen to the mobile realm since the advent of the iPhone is, um, questionable at best.

[Via Android Authority]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Locked in a footrace with AT&T’s Fuze to become the first US national carrier to launch a variant of the HTC Touch Pro, Sprint has announced that folks can start ordering the QWERTY smartphone this week from “select national retailers,” making good on a promise made at CTIA last month. That’s not quite as cool as a full-scale launch, but at least we’ll start to get ‘em in the wild in the next few days — meanwhile, a more full-scale, fanfare-filled launch is planned for November 2 when the Touch Pro is made available online, via phone, and in all Sprint stores. Any Touch Diamond buyers feeling lingering regrets right about now?

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

A rapidly growing phenomenon in the telecommunications world is the growth of “cord cutters,” people who give up their hardwired landline phones and use only cell phones.

Now one of the leading proponents of that shift, Sprint Nextel, hopes to do for the Internet what it’s doing for telephones.

At a recent ceremony in Baltimore, officials from Sprint Nextel celebrated the official launch of the company’s XOHM WiMAX service by literally cutting a cord — they sliced through some Cat-5 wire with pruning shears to mark the end of the wired Internet.

4G has rapidly gone from a mobility vision to service reality with the launch of XOHM service in Baltimore, the company said.

Although XOHM, Sprint’s 4G business unit, has aggressive plans for nationwide WiMAX, the actual implementation may take some time. 

Approximately 70 percent of the city has coverage, with 180 base stations operating and the target at end of build out is 300.

Long-term, XOHM hopes to roll out enough of its national network to make WiMAX available to as many as 140 million people by the end of 2010. 

More at NewsFactor Network.

Tags: 4g, cord cutters, sprint nextel, wimax, xohm

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Last summer, Sprint was the laughing stock of the major US carriers in terms of customer service. Fast forward 15 months, and the very same carrier is now sitting atop the pile. A recent report compiled by Pali Research has found that Sprint’s wireless customer care response times were best in class, and just 2.5 years ago in its first survey, Sprint was dead last. The carrier answered a whopping 91% of calls that researchers placed to the care center in under 30 seconds, while 99% of calls were answered within 2 minutes. If you’re curious how the other guys did, try this: Verizon grabbed the silver with 85%, T-Mobile followed with 43% and AT&T took home the award of shame with just 33% of test calls answered within half a minute. So, the real question is: have you Sprint customers noticed an uptick in service levels? And are you AT&T subscribers growing increasingly impatient?

[Via phoneArena]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Maybe someone forgot to mention to Sprint that the traditional colors associated with Christmas are red and (darker) green, but it’s coming awfully close to getting in the holiday spirit with its pastel-splashed Centros. The two “new” Palms (which were leaked last month) will arrive in Olive Green and Vibrant Rose for $79.99 on a 2-year contract, but that’s not all — they’ll also boast a “soft-touch finish that feels smooth and comfortable in the hand,” 128MB of RAM (twice that of the original Sprint Centro) and a microSD card slot. Have a look at the new duo as early as October 19th at select retail locations and beginning on November 2nd in Sprint Stores, consumer and business sales channels, and online.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wireless

Hot on the heels of Lenovo comes Acer, which is somehow claiming “first!11one!” in the US market with WiMAX-enabled laptops. Introduced today in Baltimore in conjunction with the formal unveiling of Sprint’s XOHM network, the Aspire 4930-6862 and Aspire 6930-6771 both include the innate ability to hop on a WiMAX network and surf at 4G speeds. As for specs, the former packs a 14.1-inch WXGA panel, 2GHz Core 2 Duo 󎷶 CPU, 3GB of RAM, WiFi / WiMAX capability, integrated graphics, a dual-layer DVD writer, 320GB SATA HDD, 5-in-1 card reader, built-in webcam, Windows Vista Premium and an $899.99 sticker. The larger 6930 differs only in the 16-inch 1,366 x 768 resolution panel, as everything else (price included) remains the same. Charm City residents can snatch ‘em up right now at NewEgg and TigerDirect.

[Via DigitalTrends]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wireless

Not too keen on snatching your WiMAX via ExpressCard? Fret not, as ZTE’s TU25 (which was leaked early last month) is fast approaching. Hailed as the only USB modem available (and certified, no less) for the launch of the XOHM network, the TU25 presumably allows users to plug it into a spare USB port, wave a magic wand and begin surfing the mobile broadband superhighway in Baltimore (and a few other places, we hear). There’s a frighteningly small amount of details on this thing right now, but hopefully we’ll have some of the more crucial aspects (price, release date, etc.) sooner rather than later.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wireless

Flying out of BWI to Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. or Northern Virginia? Make sure you pack in that SWC-E100, because we’re hearing that Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX networks are already live in each of those locales. According to a XOHM representative at a booth in Baltimore, the networks in each of those cities are already up, though they aren′t officially supported as they’re still “being tested.” If any of you XOHM early adopters happen to head to any of the previously mentioned regions, bust out your ExpressCard and see if you get lucky (and then let us know how it goes).

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wireless

Now that Sprint’s XOHM service is officially live in downtown Baltimore (and working in cars, phew!), how’s about taking a look at the card that’s handling the magic? Samsung’s SWC-E100 ExpressCard, which was conveniently leaked by Sprint early last month, is a “simple, inexpensive” card that does a more-than-adequate job at placing you on the mobile broadband superhighway. Reviewers at PC Mag dubbed it a “solid first effort from Samsung for getting laptops onto Sprint’s fast XOHM WiMAX network,” and while the card “worked as advertised,” the inability to work with EV-DO or any non-WiMAX protocol was sort of a downer. Furthermore, the card won’t play nice with OS X and there’s no external antenna port, but they do bundle a potentially important extra: a PC Card slot adapter for users with aging laptops. Bottom line? Not too shabby for $59.99 sans contract.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wireless

XOHM is live in Baltimore, and Laptop Magazine has sent a few (slightly dazed-looking) staffers on an impromptu tour of the “Charm City” to get a feel for Sprint’s new WiMAX service. Overall, they found performance to be quite good, clocking in at 3.05 Mbps down and 2.4 Mbps up. That compares very favorably to Verizon’s EV-DO network, which delivered 1.43 Mbps down and 0.54 Mbps up in the same locations. Sprint’s network also beats Clearwire’s WiMAX down in Reno both in speed and in connectivity testers in the Biggest Little City in the World couldn’t get a signal while in a car, but those in Baltimore could, albeit at half the speed as when stationary. So, it certainly sounds like a good solution for those who need a high-speed connection on the go — so long as they′re only going to places within Baltimore, of course.

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Original post by Tim Stevens

Filed under: Cellphones

Screen grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

For those who haven’t already overloaded their DVR with the plethora of fall dramas, Heroes is looking to be a pretty solid bet. For one Nathan Petrelli, this season’s about more than just discovering who he really is. It’s about more than just being there for his baby bro. It’s about strategically placing the phone that supposedly needs no product placement smack dab into one of NBC’s hottest shows. Oh, and is it just us, or is he pretty perturbed about the lack of updates available for this thing too?

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wireless

Sprint may have just launched the XOHM WiMAX network in Baltimore, but would-be merger partner Clearwire has been running its version of the mobile broadband service in Reno for a while, and InfoWorld went down to test it out and give us a taste of what to expect. Performance was good while not in motion, with downloads speeds around 1.5 to 2.0 Mbps and uploads hitting 275 to 325Kbps, but actually getting mobile broadband seems to be out of the question — the system simply couldn’t connect to a laptop moving in a car or on a train. That seems like a dealbreaker to us, but we’ll give it a pass for now since it’s so early in the game — we’ll see if Sprint can do better.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Wireless

The FCC doesn’t exactly have a track record of swiftness when it comes to reviewing mergers, but it looks like that little election thing might have lit a couple grey suits on fire — FCC chairman Kevin Martin says that the agency is aiming to finish looking over the Sprint / Clearwire and Verizon / Alltel deals by the end of the year. That’s right before a new administration takes over and potentially gums up the process, so we’re guessing it’ll be approvals all around, since rejecting the bids would result in some fun lawsuits for everyone, but we’ll see how things shake out.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Wireless

The FCC doesn’t exactly have a track record of swiftness when it comes to reviewing mergers, but it looks like that little election thing might have lit a couple grey suits on fire — FCC chairman Kevin Martin says that the agency is aiming to finish looking over the Sprint / Clearwire and Verizon / Alltel deals by the end of the year. That’s right before a new administration takes over and potentially gums up the process, so we’re guessing it’ll be approvals all around, since rejecting the bids would result in some fun lawsuits for everyone, but we’ll see how things shake out.

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Original post by Nilay Patel