If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought confirmation of Pantech's next phone for Verizon, legal battles over the airwaves in India and a new smartphone to Virgin Mobile. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of February 18th, 2013.
Can't make it to Barcelona for this year's Mobile World Congress? Don't worry -- we've got you covered. We'll be typing and snapping away quite a bit over the next few days, beginning with Huawei's event tomorrow morning. Then, we'll be heading to Mozilla to learn more about Firefox OS, and on Monday, we'll hear from Nokia, ASUS, and ZTE, just to name a few. We'll be checking out plenty of other events, too, along with countless booths at MWC's brand new venue, Fira Gran Via, located just outside the Barcelona city limits. We don't want you to miss any of the action -- jump past the break for a liveblog breakdown, along with links to each event.
We've arrived in Catalonia's capital city, where snow, apparently, has marked the start of this year's Mobile World Congress. That's right, the hills surrounding this typically warm Mediterranean metropolis have been blanketed in a thin layer of flurries, but we're nonetheless optimistic about this week's smartphone show in Barcelona. As MWC 2013's massive new venue begins to take shape, we're preparing to deliver the hottest hands-ons, directly from Fira Gran Via. Some manufacturers, such as HTC and LG, have already demoed their latest handsets, and other devices have made an early debut, but there's plenty of excitement still to come, as you'll discover in our show preview. We'll be sharing our liveblog lineup in a few hours -- for now, it's time to bookmark our event page, and check back often throughout the next week.
Remember that ZTE teased the MWC debut of its upcoming Firefox OS phone? Well, according to this spec sheet spotted by a tipster at ZTE's MWC booth, said device will be appropriately named ZTE Open, and it'll come with a moderate set of components: a Cortex-A5-based Qualcomm MSM7225A (which is known to clock at either 600MHz or 800MHz), a 3.5-inch HVGA TFT display with capacitive touchscreen, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 512MB NAND storage and the usual set of radios like WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 (with EDR3), GPS and FM radio. Interestingly, there will be a 3.2-megapixel front-facing camera, but it appears that there'll be none on the back. The Open will be available in three SKUs with different UMTS bands: 850/1900, 850/2100 and 900/2100. As always, we'll be sharing the full announcement and hands-on once we see the phone at MWC, though we have a feeling that we've already played with it before.
Update: As some of you have pointed out, yes, the "FF" may actually mean "fixed focus" instead of "front-facing," and the former seems more likely.
[Thanks, anonymous]
At last, here's what we've been promised: an 8-inch flavor of Samsung's Galaxy Note lineup. Spotted by an anonymous tipster on the MWC show floor earlier today, the booth shows off said tablet designed with portrait usage in mind, meaning it'll pretty much cover up most of whichever hand you'll be holding it with. And obviously, the Note 8.0 comes with a stylus as well. There's not much more to share at this point, but we'll be seeing this new device in its full glory very soon, so stay tuned. One more shot after the break.
Update: The folks over at Beste Product caught a few models posing with the Galaxy Note 8.0 for Samsung's photographer. The Dutch website even has a video -- embedded after the break -- of the whole action, and there you can see some design similarities of the tablet's backside, especially how the camera protrudes a little.
[Thanks, anonymous]
Wikipedia has long been pushing for access to its communal knowledge among those who can't afford the latest technology, going so far as to strike deals with carriers to deliver free mobile web viewing. It's set to expand that reach to those for whom any advanced cellphone is out of the question. In part through the help of a Knight News Challenge grant and South Africa's Praekelt Foundation, the non-profit's Wikipedia Zero effort will offer its content through SMS and USSD messages in the next few months. Curious users will just have to send a text message to get an article in response, with no web required at all. It's a big step forward for democratizing online information for those who may not even have access to a smartphone, although we're curious as to how it will handle large articles; we can only imagine the volume of messages when trying to look up the known universe.
A cursory look at the ZTE Grand S might leave you worrying that it will fetch quite the premium for that 5-inch screen, LTE and quad-core performance. Not so, according to mobile division lead He Shiyou. He estimates that the smartphone's price in mainland China will hover between ¥3,000 to ¥3,500 ($481 to $561), depending on market conditions -- a reasonable bargain for a high-end model expected to ship before the first quarter of the year is out. We're just left wondering whether the value-minded pricing will hold if and when the Grand S goes on a world tour.
When HTC dissolved Dashwire's original service just months after acquisition, many wrote off the smaller company; it all but disappeared from the limelight, even with its early cloud sync service still in action. Rather than relegate Dashwire to the oblivion traditionally associated with takeovers, though, HTC is staging a comeback. It's relaunching Dashwire to help carriers get customers up and running on a new smartphone, including contacts and a customized look. Details are short, but the revived service won't be HTC-exclusive: Dashwire will support "leading" Android device makers. While the company's return to form will depend on successful sales pitches at Mobile World Congress, it at least stands a chance of being more than just a footnote.
The HTC One just made its first official appearance (unless you count its brief showing by Peter Chou at the year-end party as "official") on Tuesday, and while we haven't been given any specific availability in the US, its models are at least starting to receive approval from the FCC. This particular model sports Sprint-specific LTE (band 25) and also includes 802.11ac support, a telltale sign that this is indeed the Now Network's One. The fact that the docs detail the test unit as a production model is a solid indication that HTC's flagship is well on its way to Overland Park, and soon. And it doesn't appear to be alone, either; two other variants snuck through the process of federal approval, one with quad-band LTE (bands 2, 4, 5 and 17) and another with dual-band (bands 4 and 17). It seems that HTC isn't wasting any time on bringing its attack to US shores.
Can you smell it? Smartphone season is in the air. Along with recent leaks for the Lumia 720 and Lumia 520, another handset from Nokia was just tipped -- this time at the FCC. The phone in question is known only as the RM-860, but with support for LTE bands 4 and 13, it carries the telltale marks as a Verizon smartphone. As you may recall, Nokia revealed earlier this year that it aims to bring high-end, mid-range and low-end Lumia smartphones to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Given the relatively blah Lumia 822 that's already at Big Red, could this be a sign that Verizon is set to gain its own iteration of the Lumia 920? Or, might it be that the carrier is aiming for lower hanging fruit?
The latest MWC teaser video from ASUS is light on the details and heavy on the talking statue. The 33-second video titled "A New Discovery at Hand," features Barcelona's Columbus Monument taking a phone call on his stone tablet and the tag line "Join ASUS to Discover a New World." No mentions of PadFones (or, for that matter, FonePads) in the video itself, though the accompanying text promises that those who attend the company's February 25th press conference will witness "Pad and Phone come together."
See that group of phones just sitting around, pretending not to have a care in the world? Turns out, this is the new Lumia 720, which is now greeting the world for the first time in a leaked press photo. If you'll recall, this device, along with the Lumia 520 (shown after the break), was recently leaked for arrival within Indonesia. While we've yet to learn of other markets or concrete specs for the pair of smartphones, it just became a bit more likely that we'll see the Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 formally greet the world in just a matter of days. Game on, Nokia.
Much of the firestorm surrounding remote phone diagnostics in late 2011 ultimately enveloped Carrier IQ and the providers that used it, but HTC was also scorched by accusations that its phones' software flaws (including in HTC Loggers) made privacy breaches possible. The FTC went so far as to level charges against the company for allegedly not doing enough to secure software. That saga may be winding to a close now that HTC's American division has agreed to settle the whole affair. The smartphone designer has to do more than just deliver patches, which it already has -- it's now required to run a "comprehensive" security program to weed out flaws in advance, and it will be the subject of outside assessments every other year for the next 20 years. As tough as those conditions may seem, they're easier than dealing with fines or stiffer penalties. They'll hopefully prevent repeats of any privacy scares as well, even if the real-world risk has been slight.
We here at Engadget are awfully fond of those hunks of metal, motherboards and magic we call smartphones and tablets, and Mobile World Congress is determined to gather as many as possible on an annual basis. Indeed, this year's show, held in beautiful Barcelona at the Fira Gran Via, is not just a weeklong event -- in fact, it's already started. A handful of companies have announced their key products in an attempt to gather some crucial pre-show buzz, but does that mean there's nothing left for us to hunt for? Absolutely not. Gather with us beyond the break and we'll tell you about everything that's already been announced, as well as what we can expect from the rest of the mobile extravaganza.
We first heard about -- and went to town on -- Kyocera's latest smartphone toward the end of last month. Thankfully, the Torque happens to be an "ultra-rugged" device, meaning its creators didn't mind at all when we tossed it against a wall or two. The LTE-packing Ice Cream Sandwich handset was made to the Military Standard 810G standard, so you can drop it, get it dirty or even submerge it in up to a meter of water for half an hour or so and go back for a little more Fruit Ninja -- it's also been placed in the hands of Mr. Man vs. Wild himself, Bear Grylls. The handset will be tumbling onto Sprint March 8th, with a $100 price (post two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate).