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May

Best Buy Starts Preorders For HTC EVO 4G, Effective Immediately

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Sprint

Best Buy announced minutes ago that the HTC EVO 4G, which was officially introduced by Sprint earlier today, is available for preorder from Best Buy stores effective immediately.

It looks like the preorder is available strictly at Best Buy retail locations and not online on BestBuy.com, at least for now.

The email makes no mention of the mandatory $10 monthly EVO usage fee that we reported on earlier, which is a sure recipe for some surprised and possibly not very happy customers about to head to Best Buy tomorrow.

There is also no mention of how exactly the deal is going to be handled, though from our past experience, Best Buy will likely substitute any mail-in rebates with instant credits, and take a $50 preorder deposit in the form of a Best Buy gift card.

May

Mark Your Calendars: Sprint Officially Announces HTC EVO 4G For $199, Coming June 4th! Mobile Hotspot To Cost $29.99

[Updated] Mark Your Calendars: Sprint Officially Announces HTC EVO 4G For $199, Coming June 4th! Mandatory "Premium" Charge Of $10/mo (booo!), Mobile Hotspot - $29.99/mo

Posted by Neal Tucker in EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Sprint

Tonight in New York City, Sprint unveils a whopper, and it has nothing (or very little, anyway) to do with Disney's new film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

It has everything, however, to do with the newest Android bit of gold: the release date of the HTC EVO 4G, the first 4G phone on Sprint's 4G wireless network.

Until now, all we've seen is a teaser on the phone's home page indicating that it will be available summer 2010 and some unconfirmed rumors about June 6th release date and $199. But now we know for sure when this beauty will hit the streets and how much it will cost.

May

HTC Files Patent Suit Against Apple – The Circle Of Life Continues

Posted by Andrew Huff in HTC, News

It looks like the patent war between Apple and HTC is beginning to heat up. Apple fired the opening shot two months ago when they filed suit against HTC, claiming they infringed on a number of their patents, and until today, things kept fairly quiet. However, as expected, HTC won’t give up with out a fight, and has retaliated by filing their own patent suit with the ITC asking that all imports and sales of iPhones, iPads and iPods be halted.

The scope of the suit HTC has filed is not as encompassing as Apple’s original filing, covering only 5 patents, where Apple’s suit covered 20.

May

Reminder: Sprint Offers A $100 Credit For Customers Porting Their Numbers From Other Carriers

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in EVO 4G (Supersonic), News, Sprint

Have you been dreaming of picking up an HTC EVO 4G the day it comes out sometime in June (I have) but are currently using another carrier, and maybe even stuck in a contract with them?

Or may you've wanted to switch to Sprint because of their amazing Anymobile Anytime plans that offer unlimited minutes to any carrier's mobile numbers - not just Sprint (yeah, my last bill was 6 anytime minutes)?

Sprint Port Credit

It has come to our attention that the website mentioned here is not clearly owned by Sprint or referenced from Sprint.com. It uses a Sprint skin but is not registered by Sprint, nor does it contain any information besides the credit request page.

May

Evo 4G Available For Pre-Order At The Shack Later This Month?

Posted by Chris Dehghanpoor in Carriers, Devices By Manufacturer, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Sprint

I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how I could open this post with a joke about Radio Shack’s abysmal name change to ‘The Shack’, but figured it’s well trodden ground at this point, so let’s just skip to the juicy bits: it appears that the gents over at Phandroid have been tipped off by an employee at the aforementioned Shack that Sprint’s Evo 4G should be available for pre-order by the end of this month.

It’s not exactly an outrageous claim, considering that the phone’s had a summer release date set since the beginning, and this lines up nicely with the previously speculated June 6th-13th launch time frame.

May

Oprah Gets Her Hands On An Extremely Sexy Looking HTC EVO 4G, We Nearly Die Of Envy

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Videos

Probably the most awaited phone of 2010 - the super sexy HTC EVO 4G (formerly HTC Supersonic) made an appearance today on a none other than an Oprah Winfrey show.

Sprint let her play with the device and we got to catch a quick glimpse of it, thanks to fanboydestroyer from Hawtwired.com (this is the proper credit which was apparently mishandled by some other site owners) who recorded this video from his TV:

The curves, the looks - June can't come fast enough. Not much else to say here other than power, money, and celebrity status definitely have their perks.

May

Latest Android Fragmentation Numbers Are In - Android 1.5 Still Leading The Pack

Posted by Ian Douglas in News

Google has updated the two-week survey of Android devices connecting to the Android Market again, ending yesterday, May 3, 2010.

According to their graph, 99% of users are using platform versions 1.5, 1.6 or 2.1 with the final percentage being split among some very minor releases. More than one third of Android devices are still using a build of the Android OS which is several versions old - 1.5.

With the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment 2.1 updates rumored (for the 7th time) to go out this week, this will hopefully be the last time we see 1.5 ahead of the pack.

May

Editorial: Google’s Open Handset Alliance A Myth… Are We Really Surprised?

Posted by Andrew Huff in News

Some interesting leaked news are hitting the airwaves today: according to a former high-level Open Handset Alliance executive from Google, the said Alliance was "nothing more than a myth".

The one-time company head called the group “oligarchical” and revolving solely around Android:

"The power is concentrated with the Google employees who manage the open source project"

The Open Handset Alliance

The Open Handset Alliance, founded and led by by Google in 2007, contained 34 large and small companies related to the mobile business, and this number only grew over the years, currently standing at 65.

The primary purpose of this *open* alliance was to share and mold ideas in the open, creating and maintaining standards together:

Innovating in the open
Each member of the Open Handset Alliance is strongly committed to greater openness in the mobile ecosystem.

Apr

Another HTC Phone Hits The FCC – Slider With Keyboard and Optical Trackpad

Posted by Andrew Huff in HTC, News

Well it is about time for another Android phone leak, it has been almost a week or so since the last one.

This time we have a new HTC phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the standard navigation buttons and also an optical trackpad. Everything looks pretty standard about this phone aesthetically speaking. As for the hardware hidden inside, not a lot is known about it yet.

Model name PC70110, HTC’s new phone has a 4 row QWERTY keyboard which, if you are coming from something like the G1 which has a sexy 5 row keyboard, is a bit of a bummer.

Apr

HTC Desire, Legend, And Possibly Incredible Rooted By MoDaCo.com Founder PaulOBrien

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Desire (Bravo/BravoC), Development, HTC, Incredible, Legend, News

HTC Desire

HTC Desire didn't last long - it was rooted (see here for an explanation and benefits of having your Android phone rooted) today by @PaulOBrien, the founder of MoDaCo.com - a forum dedicated to rooting and customizing mobile devices, similar to xda-developers.com.

Paul, who had claimed he was confident he could root the Desire earlier this month, was away for about 2 weeks. His return today was accompanied by the following photo, clearly showing a program called Superuser Permissions present on his Desire: