Now that the inconvenient duplicate emails are a thing of the past, TUAW had a chance this morning to put Gmail’s new calling feature to the test. With Gmail phone calls, you can place free US-to-US calls directly from your browser or pay a low fee for international access. Calls use the Google Voice service backbone (and technology from the Gizmo5 acquisition), integrating voice features with desktop applications.
The installation is straightforward, and it begins with downloading the Google Talk video chat plugin if you don’t already have it. Grab the installer from your Gmail homepage, quit your browser, install, and then re-launch Safari. Navigate back to your Gmail account and you’ll be ready to place outgoing calls. To begin, click the Call phone button at the left of the Gmail web page.
TUAWHands on with Safari-based Gmail phone calls originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Now we don’t have much more to go on here than some analyst chatter and a lengthy article from TechCrunch, but if you believe what you read, a major player has just dropped Windows Phone 7 devices from its roadmap. And that player is Dell. According to Jonathan Goldberg, an telecom analyst at Deutsche Bank, the only remaining partners currently working on Windows Phone 7 handsets are HTC, Samsung, and LG. If this is true (and that’s a big if), that means that the seriously awesome looking Dell Lightning that we spied in leaks recently will never see the light of day — as a WP7 device, at least.
We already knew that HP was out of the game (instead focusing on webOS phones), but the casual suggestion that Dell has made for the door here is somewhat suspect. The company itself hasn’t made any statements (we’ve reached out but have yet to hear back), and while Dell has certainly concentrated a lot of effort on Android devices recently, its partnership with Microsoft is long-standing (despite dabbling in the world of open source). If the story turns out to be true, it could spell mixed (if not outright bad) tidings for the Windows Phone 7 launch, which Goldberg alleges may cost Microsoft upwards of half a billion dollars — no small fee. Losing two of the biggest computer-makers in the world can’t feel very good when you’re trying to fight your way back to relevancy, but at least on the bright side, neither HP nor Dell have a track record of making anything other than heroically mediocre handsets. Take this all with a grain of salt right now, however, as the author of the TechCrunch article provides no source for the statements from Goldberg, and… well, he’s an analyst, and they’re prone to making up all kinds of crazy things. We’re investigating, and will let you know as soon as we have more info.
Dell dropping Windows Phone 7 devices from its roadmap? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Windows Mobile, Microsoft, Browsers, Mobile
No, sadly it’s not my video (whose accent do you prefer, incidentally? The squeaky American, or mine?) but still, it’s a great early look at the browsing experience on Windows Phone 7.
Lee really likes the tabs (those close buttons look fiddly though). I like the Metro UI, and the ability to add favourite pages to the Start screen. Froyo looks like a crusty donkey in comparison — and iOS4 even manages to look a bit bland. I never thought I’d see a Microsoft product on the bleeding edge of user interface design…
Microsoft’s new mobile OS is all but finished now, incidentally. The final release of its developer tools comes on September 16th (one day after the IE9 beta!), and handsets should be out in the wild by October. Did you see the list of games that will be available at launch? Commence salivation.
Windows Phone 7 Web browser comparison versus iPhone and Android (video) originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone – Microsoft – Android – Windows Phone 7 – Download Squad
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If you wade through LG’s alphabet soup of upcoming WinPho 7 goodies, you might recall that several of them seem to be headed directly for AT&T later this year. Evidence for one of them in particular — the C900 landscape slider — just got a little stronger this evening on news that a phone by the very same model code has just been hooked up with FCC approval in the past few hours. Indeed, a quick look at the SAR report shows that we’ve got WCDMA bands II and V here, which means it’ll work like a champ on AT&T; unfortunately LG is (and always has been) particularly awesome at making its ID label documents useless for identifying phones, so there isn’t much other evidence to go on from this. Needless to say, though, we’re convinced it’s going to be a very interesting fourth quarter of the year for the Microsoft camp.
LG’s C900 Windows Phone 7 handset for AT&T gets FCC approval originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We had a feeling that Microsoft recognized the potential in phone-to-console gaming, but during our recent hands-on time with Windows Phone 7, reps kept mum on the subject. The same can’t be said for at least one rep during Microsoft’s recent X10 event in Toronto — that’s in Canadia, in case you were wondering — who confirmed the functionality to WMPoweruser during a video interview showcasing the new OS.
“So initially we’re turn by turn-based,” the rep said, referring to the phone-to-phone multiplayer capabilities on day one. “We are working on real-time phone-to-console, likely initially through Wi-Fi — again, operator networks are sensitive to that. That’s not on day one; day one will be turn-by-turn as well as companion-type gaming where you play a level on the phone and it may unlock a level or a weapon or some special achievement on the console game. But, uh yeah — absolutely working on phone-to-console real-time. That is something we’re working on and expect to have in the near future.”
The video interview — which you can watch just past the break — also mentions gameplay between the PC and phone “using the Xbox Live infrastructure,” where the rep references Shadow Run as an example. Skip to around 10:30 for the really juicy stuff.
Continue reading Microsoft ‘working on’ real-time Windows Phone 7-to-console gaming over Wi-Fi
Microsoft ‘working on’ real-time Windows Phone 7-to-console gaming over Wi-Fi originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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These shots actually surfaced a few days ago buried in the depths of HowardForums, but given what we know of Samsung’s R900 Craft thus far — particularly the fact that it’ll be a non-smartphone — we have no reason to doubt that we’re looking at a prototype of it here. What makes the Craft most notable is that it’s slated to be MetroPCS’ first LTE-capable handset (and one of the first LTE handsets anywhere in the world) for its shiny new 4G network, and it looks like we can expect full sliding QWERTY along with the typical TouchWiz UI elements. We’d like to hate on this thing for not running Android or Windows Phone 7, but hey — it’s almost certainly going to be the first LTE phone to hit these shores, so we’re willing to cut it just an ounce of slack this once. The carrier’s first LTE markets are lighting up later this year, so we expect to see this with a whole lot less Blurrycam before too long.
Samsung Craft LTE phone spied enroute to MetroPCS? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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