Speaking during the 4G World conference in Chicago on Tuesday, Sprint’s vice president of network development and engineering Iyad Tarazi confirmed that Sprint will begin to roll-out a 4G LTE-Advanced network in its 800MHz frequency spectrum by the middle of 2013. LTE-Advanced offers faster data throughput than the first generation of LTE, among other enhancements, and Tarazi explained that Sprint’s LTE-Advanced network should offer download speeds between 12-15Mbps. During its Strategy Update meeting in October, Sprint confirmed that it will begin to roll out its first 4G LTE network in mid-2012 with completion scheduled by the end of 2013. The initial LTE network will be deployed on Sprint’s 1900Mhz frequency spectrum and the first round of LTE devices will still route voice calls over its CDMA network. The first voice-over-LTE devices will arrive during the first quarter of 2013, Fierce Wireless said. Tarazi also noted that Sprint will offer at least a dozen LTE devices next year.

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BlackBerry fans on Bell won’t have to wait long for a new Torch, Bold, or Curve. TechFIBE picked up some leaked documentation that suggests the carrier will sell the new phones — which we leaked in April — in just a few months. Specifically, Bell will launch the BlackBerry Torch 9810, BlackBerry Bold 9900, and the full-touchscreen BlackBerry Torch 9860 in late August, followed by the BlackBerry Curve 9360 launch in September. BGR reported this past May that the Monaco 9850 and Monza 9860 could launch under a new “Volt” banner or the BlackBerry Torch brand, and according to this document it looks like RIM may have gone with the latter. Bell also confirms what we already knew: that the Torch 9810, Bold 9900, and Torch 9860 will all offer 1.2GHz processors, while the Curve 9360 will be powered by a slower 800MHz chip.

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When Palm first introduced webOS in January 2009 and subsequently launched the Palm Pre, I called the innovative operating system the best thing to happen to smartphones that year. To this day, webOS holds a special place in my heart for taking a novel approach to smartphone operating systems and making it beautiful. It was refreshing, it was capable, and it was not received at all well by consumers. But webOS’ problem was never the software. Perhaps the lack of available apps has been a bit of a hindrance, but I view Palm’s release strategy, its horrible marketing strategy and its sub par hardware as having played the biggest roles in preventing webOS from finding stardom. In terms of hardware, I had high hopes when HP announced it was buying Palm; webOS might finally have a vessel worthy of consumers’ attention. Discounting the Pre 2, which should never have been allowed to ship, the Veer is HP’s first webOS smartphone to reach store shelves. The phone is undoubtedly unique and it features the latest version of the Palm team’s software platform, but is it the vessel webOS needs so desperately? Hit the break for my review of the HP Veer 4G — or, as I have come to call it, the Palmagotchi.

The Inside

AT&T’s version of this cute little critter ships with version 2.1.2 of webOS, the latest version available to the public. Compared to older 1.x versions of webOS, the most important changes in my eyes all revolve around performance. Under Palm’s rule, the webOS operating system was gorgeous but it was anything but smooth. On the original Pre, the OS would choke regularly and stutter constantly. Then webOS 2.0 brought the cavalry and smoothed out webOS significantly.

As much as we love tossing specs around, particularly where processor speeds are concerned, savvy users know there are many factors that impact a device’s performance. Of course the processor will play a large role, but memory, component quality and software optimizations are just as important when painting a complete picture. The Veer 4G’s 800MHz single-core Qualcomm processor, for example, is dwarfed by the blazing fast dual-core offerings found in new Android phones, and yet the UI on the Veer is often much smoother and more fluid than many Android phones I have used. Even with a dozen apps open, flicks and taps are typically just as smooth as they are on a fresh boot. Booting the phone, by the way, takes forever.

There are times when the Veer gets bogged down, however, and the culprits are often familiar ones. The Google Maps app, for instance, has always been a tough pill for webOS to swallow. On the Veer, Google Maps takes a very long time to launch and render maps. This, in turn, slows other functions down and can cause hiccups. The contacts app is another constant culprit, and the phone seems to slow down a fair amount whenever contact or email data is syncing.

The webOS team at HP also added some other great new features to webOS 2.x, such as enhanced multitasking. My original Palm Pre would often bog with just two or three apps open, and that is not the case on the Veer 4G. Save for a few exceptions as noted elsewhere in this review, apps remain responsive while background processes tied to other apps are running. So streaming Pandora Radio while downloading Twitter updates and playing Angry Birds is no problem at all, for example.

Other new features include “Just type,” which is a global search much like Spotlight on the iPhone or universal search on BlackBerry phones; stack support, which allows users to group similar cards into stacks; and support for Adobe Flash. Synergy has also been refined, providing more control and more supported account types. For those unfamiliar with it, Synergy is a webOS feature that combines contact information from multiple account types — Gmail contacts, Facebook contacts, and so on — and merges everything into one entry. So, for example, the single contact entry I have for BGR President and Editor-in-chief Jonathan Geller contains data from his entry in my Exchange contact list, his entry in my Gmail contact list, his Facebook profile, his LinkedIn profile and his AIM account.

Phone calls placed using the Veer were loud and clear on AT&T’s network, and callers on the other end of the phone said the quality was terrific. The speakerphone function is also nice and loud on the Veer, though there is a fair amount of distortion as volume levels approach max. As far as battery life is concerned, this is another area where specs can be deceiving. At only 950 mAh, the Veer has the smallest battery of any smartphone I have tested in years. With solid software and such a tiny display to power, however, I was easily able to get a full day of moderate usage on a single charge.

The Outside

Unlike its grandfather, the Palm Pre, HP’s Veer features a very solid build. While I personally far prefer metal or soft-touch plastic to hard plastic, the Veer 4G feels very solid and comfortable in the hand. The phone is quite light but it still manages to feel substantial in the hand, and the slider mechanism is very well constructed.

The Veer is also very, very small.

Measuring just 3.31 x 2.15 x 0.59 inches, HP’s Veer 4G is easily the smallest smartphone available from a U.S. carrier. It’s not terribly thin, but it is very short and very narrow compared to other cell phones. The face of the device is home only to a 2.6-inch touchscreen display and an ear speaker. The display sports a 320 x 400 resolution, which would be quite low if they weren’t all crammed into such a tiny screen. The result is bright and vivid, however, and if it wasn’t so tiny it would be a pleasure to use.

The top of the phone holds a SIM slot and a mute toggle, the left side of the device is home to the volume rocker and the right holds the power/lock button as well as a proprietary connector port. The phone ships with a magnetic adapter that fits on this port and allows a headset to connect to the phone. The USB cable that doubles as a charger has this special fitting as well, since there is no microUSB port on the device. In other words, if you plan to buy a Veer, invest in a Bluetooth stereo headset and a touchstone charging dock. The port and adapter were necessities since the device is so tiny, but having to worry about losing the adapter would be a huge turn off for me. HP’s inductive Touchstone charger technology is awesome and Veer 4G owners should plan to make use of it.

An HP logo, an AT&T logo, a loudspeaker and a camera with no flash are located on the back of the Veer. Plainly put, images captured using the Veer’s 5-megapixel camera are very disappointing. They’re grainy, colors are washed out, and even images captured in bright daylight are eyesores. Also on the rear of the device when the keypad is slid open, is a mirror.

The last item of note on the Veer’s exterior is the QWERTY keypad, which to me, is easily the most surprising thing about this smartphone.

The Upside

I was as shocked to determine this as you undoubtedly will be to read it, but the Veer’s keyboard really isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s pretty ok. While that might not seem like much of a compliment on the surface, consider that this QWERTY keyboard is by far the smallest I have ever used on a cell phone. While I don’t have giant hands, I fully expected to find the keyboard laughable the first time I slid the phone’s display skyward. But after typing a sentence I found my smirk starting to fade. After making it through a second sentence, and then a third with no errors, I’m sure a puzzled expression stuck to my face for at least a few beats.

This keyboard isn’t half bad.

I wouldn’t call the typing experience enjoyable, really, but it’s not as bad as you might think. If you have giant hands, don’t even bother. Those with small to average-sized digits will almost certainly be able to manage on the Veer’s QWERTY, though, as the rounded shape of the buttons provides more separation than you might think. I would say that I made no more or less errors while typing on the Veer 4G than I do while typing on the iPhone 4 or a Windows Phone, which house my two favorite keyboards. I definitely type a bit slower on the Veer than on the two aforementioned devices, but not by much.

Beyond the keyboard, there isn’t much else to cover in this section I’m afraid. The device’s biggest strength is its operating system, of which I am a huge fan. The UI is gorgeous, the card interface is brilliantly intuitive and the feature set is all there. But…

The Downside

Where to begin?

As a phone, the HP Veer 4G is more than adequate. As a smartphone, the Veer is very capable and fairly smooth for the most part. And yet at the same time, I’m unable to take it seriously.

My real question, jaded though it may be, is simply: why is this phone so small? It serves no purpose. It is a gimmick and nothing more. And it’s not even a good gimmick, in my eyes. Tiny phones had their day in the sun, but that day has passed — and the tiny phone craze didn’t even occur in any of the Veer’s launch markets.

The Veer 4G would be a blast to use if it was the size of a normal phone. Professionals might enjoy it more if they were actually able to see the text within emails. Children might enjoy in more if they were actually able to see the birds as they are flung toward pigs. Commuters might enjoy it more if they were actually able to see videos as they play (or listen to music without needing an adapter to connect their ear buds). Instead, 20/20 vision doesn’t even cut it with this minuscule mobile phone, and the expense HP incurred to build and ship it might not even be wholly recouped.

This concept of “build it small and cute” is one more thing that spilled over from the pre-acquisition Palm team that most definitely should not have. People didn’t bite with the Pixi and they won’t bite with the Veer.

Beyond that — though I’m not sure there really is a “beyond that,” unfortunately — there are some things that really cause the phone to choke, as I mentioned previously. Google Maps, the Contacts app and email are a few examples, but the Web browser is another area where the Veer can definitely use a boost. Even while connected to my home Wi-Fi network with download speeds in excess of 30Mbps, web pages sometimes feel like they take forever to load. Even mobile versions of sites, built specifically so low-performance browsers can pull them up quickly, have trouble loading on the Veer 4G. This is a problem, of course, and it’s compounded by the fact that the webOS App Catalog is still quite light.

The Bottom Line

In the end, I’m having a hard time figuring out who HP built this phone for. It’s obviously not for power users, so to think of it from the perspective of a tech savvy smartphone lover is a waste of time. Is it for tweens and teens? Maybe. AT&T’s $15 smartphone data plan makes this phone a great affordable option for parents looking to save some money but still get a cute and capable smartphone for their child. Is it for high school or college students? Possibly. Affordability is still a huge factor with that demographic, and the Veer can can definitely keep up with a fast crowd, though the lack of apps could be more of an issue here. Is it for young professionals? That’s doubtful. WebOS is strong where productivity and PIM are concerned, but the tiny display on the Veer 4G is not good at all when it comes to email and other text-heavy functions.

As a fashion accessory, the Veer is great. It’s a cute phone phone that will definitely attract attention when it’s pulled out. The problem is that people looking for a smartphone and a fashion accessory typically opt for the iPhone, and I’m not sure there are many valid arguments for the Veer 4G over an iPhone in the eyes of a consumer looking for a fashion accessory.

Blog PocketNow has acquired an image of what is presumed to be AT&T’s variant of the LG Optimus One. The popular, mid-level device — which sports a 3.2-inch touchscreen display, 800MHz processor, and largely unmolested version of Android 2.2. — is available on a half-dozen regional and national U.S. carriers. We would expect the device to be released under the moniker Optimus A — as is customary: Optimus + first letter of carrier name — but with AT&T, you never really know. If you read our report from earlier this morning, you’ll know that Android handsets costing under $150 are projected to be big business in 2011.

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According to site xda.cn, HTC will launch the above handset — the HTC Ignite — in mid-2011, complete with Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. The blog has a mixed record when it comes to predicting future hardware, but has acquired accurate, HTC-based information in the past.  The listed specs include an 800MHz Qualcomm processor, 3.7-inch resistive touchscreen display, 512MB of RAM, and 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash. Something is — obviously — not right here, as 800MHz processors and resistive touchscreens have been strictly forbade by Microsoft’s Windows phone Chassis standards (also: we’re not sure HTC makes a phone, of any kind, with a resistive touchscreen). It’s extremely speculative, but an attractive looking handset nonetheless. Let’s hope that this one does indeed make its way to market with a different rap sheet.

[Via WP Central]

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That BlackBerry 8520 feeling a bit outdated? Well, we might have just what you’ve been waiting for — the next generation BlackBerry Curve. Codenamed “Apollo,” the new BlackBerry Curve finally brings up the lower-mid end of the BlackBerry lineup with very reasonable (and decent) specs for what will be an aggressively priced handset line. A 480 x 360 screen joins a 5-megapixel camera, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and a tri-band HSPA 7.2Mbps radio, and even NFC capability. Hit the break for the full run down, alright?

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Tri-band UMTS/HSPA 7.2Mbps
• Bluetooth 2.1
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• GPS
• NFC
• 512MB of eMMC, 512MB of RAM
• 5-megapixel camera with flash
• HVGA 480 x 360 display
• 1050 mAh battery
• Tavor MG-1 800MHz CPU
• BlackBerry OS 6.1
• 11mm thin

T-Mobile just hooked us up with a brand new T-Mobile G2, and we of course wanted to share some first impressions and photos with you. When you pick up the phone for the first time, it feels a bit heavy, but it’s a quality feeling of heavy and not something that you’re really going to care much about. The screen looks great, and being a Super LCD, it’s a little better than a normal LCD and a little worse in some ways than a Super AMOLED display. At 3.7″ we feel it’s the perfect size for maximum usability. Let’s flip to the keyboard… interesting. The hinge mechanism is pretty cool, basically it just springs into action and reveals a pretty spacious QWERTY keyboard. It’s clicky enough, and reminds us a little of the Touch Pro2, for better or worse. The device runs a 800MHz Snapdragon CPU, and while the clock speed is slower than the 1GHz and soon-to-launch 1.2GHz chips powering Android handsets, T-Mobile tells us that the chip is the first off of the new Snapdragon chip line up and it should be able to go head to head with the higher clocked devices. From our limited time using the device, we’d agree but we will follow up on that in our expansive review. For now, hit the gallery for all the sexy photos, and make sure you drop whatever questions you may have in the comments so we can try and answer them in our review!

Click on over to our T-Mobile G2 hands on gallery!

Samsung doesn’t have much in the way of sneak peeks at CES, but we did manage to catch a glimpse of two international handsets. First is the Omnia Pro or Samsung B7610. The Omnia Pro doesn’t look too much like its cousin, the Omnia II, and it features a slide out QWERTY keyboard. It’s also a Windows 6.5 device that has a front-facing camera for video chat. Unfortunately, the only carrier in the U.S. that supports video chat of any kind is AT&T and it’s only one-way video chatting. We’re also looking at a 5 megapixel camera, 800MHz processor, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, push email support and a 3.5″ AMOLED WVGA display. Click on through for the Jet and for the rest of the flicks in our gallery.

Click on over to our Samsung Omnia Pro and Jet gallery!

The other touch screen phone from Samsung is the Samsung Jet. It’s smaller than the Omnia Pro and it bears a striking resemblance to the Omnia 2, yet the OS is different. Featuring a blazing fast 800MHz processor, Wi-Fi, one-finger zoom, DivX and XviD support, it’s also packed with a 5 megapixel camera, face and blink detection, MS Exchange ActiveSync, 3.1″ AMOLED display and a 3D user interface. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a pretty swanky phone, but honestly, it doesn’t really get us excited. If you’re looking to swipe one of these international devices, our pick would be the the Omnia Pro.

Asus announced on Friday the P565, a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional extraordinaire that comes with a blazing 800 MHz processor and a 2.8″ VGA touchscreen display. The black, leather-backed handset is targeted for the business folk and features its own Glide UI that is optimized for the touchscreen device. It also packs the SIRF Star III GPS chipset that is found on most stand alone GPS devices. The rest of the specs for the new Asus P565 are pretty standard for a smartphone:

• HSDPA 3.6Mbps, UMTS 2100, EDGE/GPRS/GSM 900/1800/1900, Class 10
• Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• 2.8″ TFT, 65K-color Touchscreen, VGA (480 x 640 pixels) Display
• Marvell TavorP 800 MHz Processor
• 256 MB Flash + 128 MB DDR SDRAM
• MicroSD with SDHC support
• WLAN 802.11b+g
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• GPS : SiRF Star III with InstantFix
• WAP Browser / SMS / MMS / Email / MSN / Push E-mail
• Battery : 1300 mAh Li-Ion
• Standby Time : 250-300 hrs with 3G and 200-250 hrs with 2G
• Talk Time : 3 hrs with 3G and 4 hrs with 2G
• Dimensions : 102 mm x 60.5 mm x 16 mm

No pricing or release date but with the phone missing the US 850MHz band and the US 3G bands, we wouldn’t expect to see it come stateside in its current form. Nonetheless, we applaud Asus for upping the ante and releasing the world’s fastest handset with a high resolution screen and a stylish form factor.

[Via wmpoweruser]

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