Dell’s upcoming Android smartphone has been caught clearing the FCC, complete with support for AT&T’s 3G bands. The Dell Mini 3iX was spotted in Brazil earlier this week, when it was said to support triband UMTS; the FCC listing for the handset mentions 850 and 1900 band support, which are the 3G bands AT&T uses for its high-speed network, together with WiFi (missing from the Chinese-version Mini 3i).
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Is Apple planning a quiet iPhone update? That's what The BGR has heard, with two AT&T sources suggesting that the iPhone 3G 8GB will be replaced with an 8GB entry-level iPhone 3GS in time for Christmas. The move is apparently intended, one of those sources claims, to better battle the DROID army from Verizon.
Samsung’s latest AT&T cellphones, the Samsung Mythic and Samsung Flight announced last month, will both go on sale today. Each handset has a touchscreen and the Flight throws in a slide-out QWERTY keyboard; neither are going to cause as much excitement as a proper smartphone, though, and the Mythic’s support for Samsung’s TouchWiz UI will seem like little consolation when your friends are taunting you with Android.
AT&T’s occasionally janky 3G coverage has become a generally acknowledged thorn-in-the-side for iPhone users, but the carrier still isn’t pleased that arch-rival Verizon Wireless have called them on it. Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” adverts compare AT&T’s 3G network with their own, an act which the latter claims is “misleading” and – as you’d imagine was Verizon’s intention, really – has caused them to lose “incalculable market share”. While subscribers would be happy with AT&T deciding to fill in those gaps, the carrier has taken the easier option and filed a lawsuit against Verizon.
With the holidays fast approaching cell phone carriers are stocking up on inventory and amongst the new Motorola DROIDs, HTC Heroes, and Palm Pixies are a slightly larger, yet unfamiliar crop of devices – netbooks. AT&T is all giddy about its exclusive availability of the Nokia Booklet 3G and Sprint announced just yesterday that it will be selling the Dell Inspiron Mini 10V. Verizon already has three netbooks in its arsenal, including HP’s new powerful Mini 311. Clearly, lining up the selection isn’t a problem, but what the carriers haven’t figured out yet is that selling netbooks requires a totally different approach than selling phones. The deals and the subsidized model, in my mind, make as much sense for netbooks as building and then plowing a virtual Farmville farm!
Sprint have announced their first EVDO-enabled netbook, though they don’t quite seem to have figured out the magic tipping point that really pulls in the customers. The carrier is offering a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with integrated EVDO Rev.A, but rather than do the sensible thing and hack great chunks off the up-front price (while knowing you’ll make it back with the mandatory two-year agreement) their netbook is in fact $199.99, and that’s after the rebate.
Nokia’s trouble breaking into the US market has become a cliché over the years, so it’s good to hear that the Finnish firm may be turning their fortunes around. According to a VentureBeat report, Nokia and AT&T are working together to launch a Symbian handset that will be based on a Qualcomm chipset; definitive specifications are unknown, as is launch date, but Nokia are reportedly being more accommodating of US carriers’ desire to customize individual devices.
Having gone in sale in Europe this week, the initial reviews of the Nokia Booklet 3G netbook are beginning to show up. The Wall Street Journal have shared their impressions of the 3G and GPS toting ultraportable, praising its battery life but immediately dampening their enthusiasm over what they describe as a “tiny keyboard”. Meanwhile Engadget Spanish are yet to review the Booklet 3G, but they have taken the time to unbox it.
Unboxing and hands-on videos after the cut
Advance interest in Nokia’s Booklet 3G is, if you believe the rumors, so strong that the Finnish company is already preparing the sequel, but we’ll wait until the first shipping units get played with before getting too excited. The Nokia netbooks have just started to ship in Europe, with O2 Germany offering the Booklet 3G for €249 ($371) with a 24-month, €20 ($30) data plan.
By now we know that the Verizon Droid not only looks good, but has plenty of technical promise too, and BGR have followed up their preliminary hands-on with a more comprehensive preview of the Android smartphone. The Motorola Droid gets praised for its “sharp, vibrant, bright and really, really responsive” 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, while the keyboard may lack travel and feature closely-packed buttons but it’s good enough for “efficient” typing and is better than the T-Mobile G1. Meanwhile the charging dock/multimedia station (which you can see in a video demo after the cut) automatically turns the Droid into a weather station.
Droid feedback, plus news on AT&T’s Droid and a whole Droid army after the cut
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