Filed under: Cellphones
Griffin’s antenna-stub sporting ClearBoost case for the iPhone just hit the streets, and opinions are already pouring in. The case involves the antenna, a bumper and a screen protector, and while the resulting combination is not much for loooks, iLounge found it to improve performance in certain situations. Apparently in very low coverage areas the ClearBoost isn’t much help, but in wonky two or three bar situations ClearBoost added one or two bars. Sounds like a win to us, but you’re going to have to have some serious need of signal to sacrifice iPhone aesthetics this totally.
[Via iLounge]
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Filed under: Cellphones
Griffin’s antenna-stub sporting ClearBoost case for the iPhone just hit the streets, and opinions are already pouring in. The case involves the antenna, a bumper and a screen protector, and while the resulting combination is not much for loooks, iLounge found it to improve performance in certain situations. Apparently in very low coverage areas the ClearBoost isn’t much help, but in wonky two or three bar situations ClearBoost added one or two bars. Sounds like a win to us, but you’re going to have to have some serious need of signal to sacrifice iPhone aesthetics this totally.
[Via iLounge]
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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.
Poor Matt, this guy has it so hard. If he isn’t having relational trouble with Julie Taylor, he’s disappointing his dad, his coach (Julie’s dad, conveniently enough), his team, or the entire town of Dillon, Texas. Last thing the guy needs is an iPhone telling him he’s wrong, so we’re going to pin this Friday Night Lights upside-down incident on Zach Gilford, the man behind the cute-shy quarterback legend that is Matt Saracen. You disappoint us, Zach.
[Thanks, EJ]
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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.
Poor Matt, this guy has it so hard. If he isn’t having relational trouble with Julie Taylor, he’s disappointing his dad, his coach (Julie’s dad, conveniently enough), his team, or the entire town of Dillon, Texas. Last thing the guy needs is an iPhone telling him he’s wrong, so we’re going to pin this Friday Night Lights upside-down incident on Zach Gilford, the man behind the cute-shy quarterback legend that is Matt Saracen. You disappoint us, Zach.
[Thanks, EJ]
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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Looks like Dell’s plan to trim $3B in costs from its budget is going to involve even more job cuts than the 8,800 already announced — speaking to analysts today, Michael Dell said that his company’s management had “identified a very significant opportunity” to cut costs, and that it was “aggressively going after it.” That means even more jobs will be slashed, apparently — a further 1,000 this quarter at least, but Dell wouldn’t say what the total would be in the end, just that it would be more then 8,800. Dell went on to say that no part of the company would be considered sacred as cuts are considered, and that Dell’s brass thinks that it’s “begun the journey to transform the company.” Cutting jobs is one way to do it, sure — but might we suggest focusing on delivering great products would also help?
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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
The tough times just don’t seem to end at Motorola — the company announced today that it’s laying off another 2,600 workers, for a total of 10,000 positions eliminated since the start of 2007. That’s on top of the various high-level executive departures that have been taken place lately, not to mention the company’s plan to split off its mobile phone business, which will undoubtedly lead to more cuts down the line. The goal is to reduce costs by some $500M by the end of the year, and some of the jobs being lost come as Moto closes a factory in Singapore and a WiMAX development lab in Florida. There’s no word on when the cuts are going to come, but here’s hoping all these aggressive steps lead to a little vacation for Sad Moto here.
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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
The tough times just don’t seem to end at Motorola — the company announced today that it’s laying off another 2,600 workers, for a total of 10,000 positions eliminated since the start of 2007. That’s on top of the various high-level executive departures that have been taken place lately, not to mention the company’s plan to split off its mobile phone business, which will undoubtedly lead to more cuts down the line. The goal is to reduce costs by some $500M by the end of the year, and some of the jobs being lost come as Moto closes a factory in Singapore and a WiMAX development lab in Florida. There’s no word on when the cuts are going to come, but here’s hoping all these aggressive steps lead to a little vacation for Sad Moto here.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
The FCC has just lifted its gag order on the gory details of the 700MHz Auction 73, and AT&T wasted absolutely no time setting up a press conference to discuss how it was planning to utilize its win in the so-called B Block. Bottom line: AT&T’s moving to LTE for its 4G infrastructure — no surprise there, since it’s the natural evolution for GSM carriers — and the purchase is designed to support that build-out. As they’ve said before, they’re tooting their horn over the fact that the B Block action combined with the Aloha spectrum purchase gives the carrier 100 percent coverage in the 700MHz arena in the top 200 US markets, while also noting that the frequency range is stellar at breaking through walls for hot in-building coverage.
As for Verizon’s C Block win — the block touted for its open access clause — AT&T’s convinced that the B Block made more sense for the very reason that it lacked those regulatory restrictions. The lack of FCC oversight is cause for some concern, yes, but AT&T continues to stress that it was “open” long before the whole C Block hullaballoo came along by virtue of the fact that any GSM device with the right bands can hop on its network.
In terms of timing, the company’s not really in any hurry; it wants to continue to milk HSPA for everything it’s worth, promising a 7.2Mbps downlink rollout through 2009, and realistically, we’ll be well into the next decade before we see wide-scale use of 700MHz LTE around these parts. A little scary for the impatient among us, we’ve gotta say.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
The FCC has just lifted its gag order on the gory details of the 700MHz Auction 73, and AT&T wasted absolutely no time setting up a press conference to discuss how it was planning to utilize its win in the so-called B Block. Bottom line: AT&T’s moving to LTE for its 4G infrastructure — no surprise there, since it’s the natural evolution for GSM carriers — and the purchase is designed to support that build-out. As they’ve said before, they’re tooting their horn over the fact that the B Block action combined with the Aloha spectrum purchase gives the carrier 100 percent coverage in the 700MHz arena in the top 200 US markets, while also noting that the frequency range is stellar at breaking through walls for hot in-building coverage.
As for Verizon’s C Block win — the block touted for its open access clause — AT&T’s convinced that the B Block made more sense for the very reason that it lacked those regulatory restrictions. The lack of FCC oversight is cause for some concern, yes, but AT&T continues to stress that it was “open” long before the whole C Block hullaballoo came along by virtue of the fact that any GSM device with the right bands can hop on its network.
In terms of timing, the company’s not really in any hurry; it wants to continue to milk HSPA for everything it’s worth, promising a 7.2Mbps downlink rollout through 2009, and realistically, we’ll be well into the next decade before we see wide-scale use of 700MHz LTE around these parts. A little scary for the impatient among us, we’ve gotta say.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
The same week that Nokia Siemens Networks unveiled its LTE solution for North America comes a little nugget from Ericsson: the M700. Hailed as the “world’s first commercially available LTE-capable platform,” it promises peak data transmissions of 100Mbps down and 50Mbps up, which will undoubtedly be the next best thing since sliced bread. Reportedly, initial devices based on the unit will be ExpressCards, USB modems, etc., and of course, it supports bandwidths between 1.4 and 20MHz and the oh-so-exciting 700MHz bands. Unfortunately, a commercial release isn’t set to happen until 2009 — with products “based on the platform” not scheduled until 2010 — but to its credit, samples of ASICs will be ready to roll sometime this year.
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