Apple and Sprint are preparing to launch a new version of the iPad 2 at the same time or shortly after a Sprint-compatible iPhone 5 is unveiled this fall, a new report claims. 9to5 Mac states that Apple and Sprint have completed development of an iPad 2 that includes an embedded cellular radio compatible with Sprint’s data network. It is unclear which Sprint data network the tablet will support: the carrier’s older 3G network, its 4G WiMAX network or perhaps even both. No previous reports indicate that Apple has conducted any late-stage development with WiMAX — which Sprint is shifting focus away from moving forward — so a 4G-enabled iPad 2 may not be likely at this point in time. The report also notes that Sprint may offer its unlimited data plan with the iPad 2, as it is expected to do with its iPhone 5.

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MKM Partners analyst Terry Kuittinen on Friday issued a note to investors reiterating a Buy rating on Motorola Mobility stock, setting the firm’s price target at $35. Kuittinen states that Motorola will likely see success with British carrier Orange, which launched Motorola’s new ATRIX smartphone ahead of upcoming competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S II and the LG Optimus 2X. The analyst also noted that the ATRIX is getting strong promotional backing elsewhere from carriers like TIM. In the U.S., Kuittinen thinks the delayed launch of Motorola’s upcoming DROID BIONIC won’t have much of an impact on the company’s sales, considering the higher pricing of 4G LTE phones like the LG Revolution, HTC ThunderBolt and Samsung DROID Charge. Motorola’s upcoming $200 DROID X2 will be a winner at Verizon Wireless, the analyst believes, and it could help Motorola sell 500,000 phones through Verizon this quarter.

Verizon Wireless’ speedy 4G LTE network hit another milestone on Tuesday night: its first major outage. BGR has confirmed what dozens of tipsters have been telling us all night via email — Verizon’s LTE services are currently unavailable across the country, and they have been unavailable for several hours now. We’ve confirmed the outage here in New York City with our Samsung DROID Charge and have noticed that Verizon’s 3G network also appears to be unavailable. There’s no official word from Verizon Wireless on the outage, so it’s unclear how long it will last.

UPDATE: Verizon posted the following to its official Twitter account: “We’re aware of an issue with the 4G LTE connections and our network engineers are working to resolve quickly. Investigating 4G LTE network issue; ThunderBolts making voice calls, may get slower 1xRTT data.”

Sprint’s Kyocera Echo is a brand new concept in the mobile space. It’s innovative, and it’s bold. Using two displays that connect together to form one large touch surface, you’re able to interact with your handset in a way that’s never been possible before. You can use Twitter on the top screen while scrolling through your photos on the lower display until you pick just the right one you want to upload to TwitPic — or you can use the email app with both screens, one letting you view your inbox and the other showing you an individual message. Does having two displays make sense in the real world? More importantly, is the Kyocera Echo the right device to deliver this unique new experience? You’ll find out after the jump!

Hardware / Display

The Echo features a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, dual 3.5-inch touchscreen displays with extremely small bezels (which is important when they are placed side by side) and a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video capture. It also runs Android 2.2, and sports the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and mobile hotspot must-haves.

Kyocera is a company that has been spitting out solid products for a long while, and the company’s experience shows. As far as the hardware is concerned, this thing is a tank. Now, that’s a good and a bad thing as you’ll soon see. I love the construction of the Kyocera Echo because it feels indestructible. There’s a beautiful mix of high-quality materials like aluminum and soft-touch plastic, though the design identity of the Echo doesn’t really seem to mesh with my personal tastes. The phone’s styling is very bland to the point of being boring, and the metal-look plastic accents above and below the front display make matters a bit worse.

The device, which rocks two displays that are effectively sandwiched on top of each other when closed, is incredibly thick. It’s not overly wide or long, but it’s thick. It’s not unreasonably thick thanks to how narrow the Echo is proportioned, but it’s close. It was pretty tough to carry the Echo in the pockets of my jeans, for example. The first time I opened and closed the Echo I thought I was going to break it. Not because it was fragile, but because the hinge mechanism clicks into place very firmly. In addition to having both screens positioned right next to each other, you can also tilt the top display towards you to face you much like how a Nintendo DS is situated.

Speaking of the displays, the dual screens look great. They are crisp, bright, and clear. Colors look great, and touch sensitivity is spot on.

Software

The Kyocera Echo’s dual-screen set up works out of the box with every Android app and game, though it’s the company’s custom software on top of Froyo that really takes advantage of the configuration. There are seven default apps that are optimized to work in “Simul-task” mode, and this allows you to run one app on one display with a completely different one running on the other. There are also app-specific tweaks, like in the camera app or email app that really demonstrate the difference two displays can make.

To run two apps simultaneously, you just simply tap with two fingers on the displays, and up will pop a menu letting you choose which app you’d like to run. You can also flip the apps from one screen to another with one tap. Another advantage of having two displays? When you tap into a text field, the entire bottom screen turns into a QWERTY keyboard — it’s one of the largest, if not largest, touch QWERTY keyboards I’ve ever used, and it works reasonably well.

There are also apps from third parties that have been optimized for the Echo, and one of them in particular is The Sims 3 by EA. The game is literally something right out of a Nintendo DS, making use of the top display for visuals and the bottom display for control and actions. It really highlights the possibilities of what can be done with this kind of set up. Kyocera has an API for its dual-display Echo and it will allow third-party developers to get cranking on getting things optimized for two screens. For the time being, however, there aren’t very many third-party apps that make use of Kyocera’s API so the end result is frustration. The mind has no choice but to wander to all the cool apps that could make use of this technology, but unless dual-display Kyocera devices really make waves with consumers, I can’t see many developers getting behind the product.

Something to note, however, is the fact that in dual-screen mode, performance doesn’t really seem to take a hit. Whether it’s pulling up the web browser and loading a content-heavy page with Flash content, or flicking through photos in the gallery app, having two screens doesn’t slow the system down all that much.

Phone / Speaker

The phone portion of the Kyocera Echo is sort of a mixed bag. On one hand, the phone app hasn’t changed too much from the stock Android version, however on the hardware side, things aren’t that great. The ear speaker is extremely quiet even on the highest volume setting, and hearing the caller on the other end can be difficult in some scenarios. As far as the external speaker in concerned, it performs much better than the ear speaker — it’s reasonably loud and clear. Reception on the Kyocera Echo has been great and I get five bars in locations where I have traditionally only received around three bars with other Sprint devices.

Battery

You’d think a phone that features not one, but two displays used simultaneously would drain a battery faster than Hugh Hefner’s new wife, and you’d pretty much be right. Battery life is relative as each person expects something a bit different, but after spending days with the Echo, I can confidently say that battery life isn’t that good. It’s not terrible, but again, that’s relative. It lasts a little bit longer than the original HTC EVO did for me, and that’s a 4G handset. Kyocera and Sprint have not only included an extra battery in the box, but also an external battery charger that can be used to power your device without having to plug it in to the wall. Just charge the external charger with the extra battery and you can then plug your phone directly into that to charge it — it’s definitely a nice option for powering your device without interrupting that conference call, while on the go, or to avoid having to cut your Angry Birds session short.

Conclusion

I’ve really liked using the Kyocera Echo on and off for around a week. The concept really is innovative and it definitely pushes the boundaries of what’s possible on your mobile phone. Just as many people like to have two displays on their computer set ups, having two screens on a mobile device really can change your workflow and allow you to interact with apps and information in a brand new way. With that said, while the Kyocera Echo is the first device in what Kyocera says will be a lineup of devices featuring dual-display configurations, and I’m not sure this first try quite hits the mark. It’s thick and heavy, and without a more extensive suite of custom apps and developer support, I just can’t see enough of an advantage over going with a device like the Google Nexus S 4G or the upcoming HTC EVO 3D. The concept seems bigger than the execution, for now, but I really hope the Echo gains enough traction to warrant more refined models and significant support from the developer community. If Kyocera can pull that off, the results really could be awesome.

HTC often likes to highlight “firsts” in its marketing messages. While the days leading up to the launch of HTC’s Arrive are noticeably devoid of any relevant advertising, Sprint and HTC could have easily kept the “first” theme alive had they chosen to raise awareness. The Arrive is Sprint’s first device to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. In fact, it’s the first modern Windows Phone in the world compatible with a CDMA network. Finally, HTC’s Arrive is also the first phone to launch with Microsoft’s “NoDo” update for Windows Phone 7 — a prerequisite for CDMA compatibility. But do all these firsts add up to a first-class smartphone experience, or are Sprint customers better off waiting to see what’s announced next week at CTIA before making any buying decisions? Hit the break for our full review and find out.

The Inside

Beginning with software, I’ve said before that I’m a fan of the Windows Phone 7 operating system and that hasn’t changed. It still has a lot of growing to do and I maintain that Microsoft was forced to release a rushed product, but buried beneath the surface is an amazing OS struggling to emerge. Like Android, iOS, webOS and other great mobile platforms, we need to give Windows Phone time to mature.

Thanks to Microsoft’s coding wizardry and HTC’s hardware, Windows Phone 7 flies on the Arrive. I find that despite nearly identical guts resulting from Microsoft’s strict hardware requirements, some phones handle the OS better than others — and the Arrive is one of those phones. I have yet to experience any jitters or slowness when it comes to native OEM apps. Third-party apps, however, are a different story…

Since Windows Phone 7 affords roughly the same experience on all devices by design, I won’t bother getting into the basic functions of the OS. Instead, I’ll focus on a few big features introduced by Microsoft’s NoDo update.

My Arrive unit provided by Sprint came with version 7.0.7389.0 of the Windows Phone OS installed, which I presume will ship on the release hardware considering how close we are to launch. This build includes Microsoft’s highly anticipated NoDo update, though in my opinion the update is seriously lacking. I’ll cross that bridge in a different section below, however. For now, let’s look at some new functionality.

The most widely publicized feature introduced by NoDo is the ability to copy and paste text. Microsoft’s implementation is curious at best, though it is functional and should silence some of the chatter surrounding this missing feature.

A single tap within a text field will highlight the poked word, and the text selection can then be extended in either direction by tapping and holding on one end of the selection, then dragging. When a selection is made, a copy icon appears above the text. Once text is copied, a paste button appears above the virtual keyboard, or on the bottom of the screen when the device is slid open and the physical QWERTY is in use.

Because of the way Microsoft implemented the solution, however, not all text can be selected and copied. The areas of interest are covered for the most part, including emails, SMS, URLs in Internet Explorer, text on Web pages and so on. The issue we’ve seen brought up by numerous developers is that in order for read only text within third-party apps to be selectable, it must be contained within a textbox. As it turns out, many developers neglected to build their apps this way, and they will have to rework things in order to enable copy/paste. For example, users cannot copy text from a tweet in the official Twitter app, and they won’t be able to until Twitter reworks the app.

The other big addition to NoDo is “tombstoning” support for third-party apps. Tombstoning is Microsoft’s name for state saving, or the ability of Windows Phone 7 to “pause” an app sent to the background and then resume function at the exact same point when it is called to the foreground. Microsoft’s current implementation is less than ideal, however, and I’ll discuss it further below.

Beyond software, the HTC Arrive packs guts that fall in line with the rest of the Windows Phone 7 devices announced late last year. Highlights include the now-obligatory 1GHz processor, a WVGA display, 16GB of internal storage, a 5-megapixel camera with support for 720p HD video recording. It also packs a 1500 mAh battery said to deliver 6 hours of talk time per charge.

Finally, and in typical HTC fashion, the audio quality on voice calls is remarkable. The ear speaker is incredibly clear and it gets louder than most people will ever need it to get. Likewise, the “SRS WOW HD surround sound” speaker broadcasts callers on the other end with great clarity when speakerphone is enabled, and it does a surprisingly solid job with music and audio form movies and TV shows as well. Couple HTC’s solid speakers and circuitry with Sprint’s stellar network, and now you’re cooking with gas.

The Outside

Sprint’s HTC Arrive is a remarkably solid device. Other Windows Phones with landscape QWERTY keyboards currently on the market are — how can I put this nicely? — not nearly as solid. The display is covered with scratch-resistant glass, the plastics that surround it are nice and solid, the battery cover is sleek brushed aluminum and the rest of the back cover is rubberized to assist grip.

The 184-gram Arrive might be a bit on the hefty side for some users, but I love it. I can’t stand phones that feel cheap and plasticky, and the Arrive most certainly does not feel cheap or plasticky. It’s definitely on the thicker side, although it is thinner than older HTC devices with the same form factor. The slide-out QWERTY keypad adds the majority of the girth, of course, but it’s more than worth it; more on that later.

In terms of appearance, the Arrive looks like an HTC HD7 from the front, with stylish silver mesh above and below the WVGA touchscreen to cover the ear speaker and the microphone. It also has a similar darkened chrome bezel surrounding the front of the case. Thankfully, however, the Arrive feels nothing like the HD7. T-Mobile’s supersized phone is a great handset that we thoroughly enjoyed when we reviewed it, but it is far from HTC’s most solid device — thanks to a light plasticky feel and a flimsy, paper-thin battery cover.

Beyond that, you have the power/lock button on the top of the phone next to a 3.5-millimeter audio jack, a volume rocker and a microUSB port on the left side, and a dedicated camera button on the right side of the phone.

The slider mechanism on the Arrive is very solid, though it’s a bit odd until you get used to it. When the display is slid all the way open, the mechanics of the slider pivot and result in the viewing angle you see in the images, which is not adjustable. The simple fact of the matter is that some will like it and some won’t — and I don’t. I would far prefer to keep the display parallel with the keypad because it suits my typing style better. It’s a smartphone, not a laptop, and you type with your thumbs, not with all 10 fingers. With the screen pitched forward like it is, the display points down toward my chest when I type instead of pointing straight at my face. It’s odd, but it’s hardly a deal-breaker for me.

The Upside

First things first… the display. While it might not bear a sexy name like “Super AMOLED” or “Super LCD,” the display on the Arrive is fantastic. The screen is obviously one of the most important components of a cell phone, and it pains me that some otherwise terrific devices are ruined by less-than-stellar screens.

The display is not one of HTC’s larger offerings, and it’s a good thing. With the added bulk of a full QWERTY keypad, a case big enough to accommodate a screen over 4-inches would make the Arrive the untamable beast. With a 3.6-inch WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) display, the sizing is just right.

The Arrive display is vibrant and it renders colors quite nicely, though some deeper colors do appear a bit washed out at times. I leave the brightness cranked up to 11, though, and it looks fantastic. HTC also made use of a little trick Apple popularized with the iPhone 4, and it will soon become the standard display design among manufacturers — at least, it should. On most cell phones, the display panel sits beneath the outer-most glass surface and there is a bit of space between the two. On the Arrive, however, the LCD is glued to the back of the glass touchscreen with no space between the two. The result of this seemingly minute detail is a much, much better user experience; it feels as though you’re actually touching the images rendered on the screen rather than touching glass above the images.

My only real complaint regarding the display is the glass; if I had my way, touchscreen smartphones with displays that lack oleophobic (oil resistant) coatings would be banned.

The other thing I absolutely love about this phone is the keyboard. When it comes to Windows Phones, I typically toy with a Dell Venue Pro courtesy of T-Mobile. The Venue Pro is an outstanding device and its keyboard is terrific, but the Arrive has left it cowering in the corner. Sprint’s new Windows Phone probably packs the best physical keyboard I’ve used in recent history outside of a BlackBerry. Seriously… it’s that awesome.

Some might say equipping a Windows Phone with a physical keyboard is overkill since the software keyboard is fantastic. While I agree that Microsoft’s on-screen keys are great — in fact, I think Windows Phone’s virtual keypad is the best in the business — I love the keyboard on the Arrive far too much to entertain the notion that it might be redundant. The buttons are very flat but they have a slight convexity to them that can’t be seen with the eye. Your fingers will feel it, however, and they’ll like it. Tactile response is ideal as well, and the keys emit a nice “click” as they’re depressed to complete the physical QWERTY trifecta.

The keyboard layout on the Arrive is perfect, featuring five rows of staggered keys arranged as they should be, not in columns. The backlighting is wonderful as well, resulting in nice subtle illumination that is visible in any lighting. Finally, I love the added touch of two small LEDs on the left side of the board that illuminate when the Function and Shift keys are pressed, reminding you that the next key stroke will result in either a capital letter or a symbol, as desired.

The Downside

Put plainly, NoDo is a stopgap solution meant to tide users over until Microsoft finally makes its big update, “Mango,” available later this year or next year. That wait may be a bit painful for some.

The current implementation of tombstoning is not great. While it does serve its purpose and provide quicker resume times for compatible apps sent to the background, it is still slow. At times, it is painfully slow. Also, Microsoft’s solution works differently depending on how developers implement it and how users access apps.

If I am in an app with tombstoning support and I want to check my email, I have to press the Windows button, open my email and read whatever I want and then press the back button repeatedly until I am back in the tombstoned app. So, for example, if I’m in a Twitter app called Rowi and I want to read one email the sequence will look like this:

From Rowi press the Windows button > find email tile and open email > scroll to the message I want and open it > press back to get to main email screen > press back to get to home screen > press back to get to Rowi.

The process is a bit convoluted as it stands now, but the result is a restored app and a fairly respectable load time, as was intended. Logic and habits formed while using any other smartphone OS dictates a different workflow, however. If I “accidentally” just tap the app’s tile to open it instead of pressing back until I get to Rowi, I have to wait through a splash screen and the wait some more while the app refreshes. This may be partially the developer’s fault, though every tombstone-compatible app I’ve found behaves the same way. In either event, this shouldn’t be the case; regardless of how I open an app, it should enter the foreground in its saved state.

Users will eventually get used to this workflow and it will become less of a big deal, but here’s the problem: Mango. All the time spent reforming habits will be for naught because Microsoft’s next major software update will introduce a proper solution complete with an app switcher and background processes support for third-party apps. Once that happens, it’ll be time to reform all those habits yet again.

Beyond tombstoning, performance of third-party apps leaves much to be desired, as I alluded to above. Maybe developers are still learning the ropes, maybe Silverlight isn’t working out very well, or maybe something else entirely is at fault. Whatever the case, third-party apps are too slow. They’re slow to open and they’re slow to refresh. Data calls seem to take forever at times, and scrolling gets a bit wonky on occasion as well. Moving around within an app and flipping from screen to screen are fast as lightning, but something needs to be done to round out the experience with consistently smooth scrolling and better handling of data calls. Mango should take care of the rest thanks to more robust multitasking support.

Finally, and as was the case with the HD7, the 5 megapixel camera on the Arrive captures subpar images, which is unfortunately in line with my expectations. HTC does so many things well but imaging simply isn’t one of them. I won’t bother comparing the Arrive’s imaging capabilities to camera phone leaders like Nokia or even Apple; suffice it to say the Arrive will do a decent job of capturing memories in great lighting, and a not-so-decent job of snapping images in poor lighting. The camera is also capable of capturing lackluster 720p HD video that I found to be a bit jittery and jumpy.

The Bottom Line

With the arrival of the HTC Arrive, I have now handled each and every Windows Phone 7 device that has been announced to date. As a result, I can safely say that the Arrive is my favorite so far — by a fairly wide margin. It’s not the thinnest and it doesn’t pack the biggest display or the sexiest build, but for my money it offers a complete package that is unmatched by other Windows Phones at this point in time.

Is it perfect? Far from it. Microsoft’s mobile OS still has a lot of growing to do and the UX on Windows Phones will suffer until the bulk of the wrinkles are ironed out. I also would have liked to see 4G WiMAX support on the Arrive. Sprint’s 4G coverage is extensive enough now, and I’d like to see every $200 smartphone Sprint launches from here on out include support for its 4G network.

But the question is whether or not you should purchase the Arrive, which launches this Sunday, March 20th. With CTIA kicking off later in the week, I would obviously recommend sitting tight for two more days to see what new handsets are unveiled at the show. While new Microsoft-powered handsets will be announced, I believe the Arrive will still be one of the best available Windows Phones on the market for quite some time, even after the smoke from CTIA clears.

Look, I have been dreaming about a Verizon iPhone since the original announcement was made in 2007. I’ve always admired Verizon’s insanely solid and reliable wireless network, even before it was Verizon (someone tell James Earl Jones I said what’s up). I had the first digital phone Verizon Wireless offered (following countless analog phones prior to that), and I’ve had many more since then. But I switched away from Verizon Wireless as soon as I saw that the handsets available in Europe were becoming more advanced, because these new phones typically didn’t become available from Verizon for months or even years later, if at all. As soon as I saw that I could switch my SIM card from phone to phone myself, I was on a tear — first on T-Mobile, then AT&T when I realized how much better AT&T’s coverage was in my area, even five years ago.

During all of this, however, I always knew that Verizon’s network was better than any other wireless network in the United States. Why? Not because it was the fastest or because Verizon had the best phones (that’s arguable in today’s day and age), but because Verizon worked wherever you wanted it to work, whenever you needed it to work. In Vermont in the middle of nowhere? Verizon Wireless has a signal. Driving across the country? Verizon’s got your back.

Fast forward to 2011: I was sitting at the Verizon iPhone event liveblogging, and I was ridiculously excited for what was about to be announced (plenty more people were excited as well — BGR crashed for 40 minutes due to the sheer number of people checking the site for the latest updates). My favorite smartphone, the only phone I choose to use day in and day out, was going to be available on the best damn network in the country — finally! I pre-ordered it at 3:00 a.m. on February 3rd, and then sat and waited for FedEx to deliver it days later. Side note: the friendly FedEx delivery person had me write my name on a piece of paper saying that I received the phone since FedEx had so many Verizon iPhone shipments that day that their system crashed.

I opened the phone, and connected it to iTunes, and saw the waiting for activation message. It failed. Three times. No worries — after turning it on and off, my phone was up and working, and it was time to go drive around to all the places my AT&T iPhone failed miserably and test things out.

The Verizon iPhone 4 performed decently at first, though I was quite surprised that Verizon had dead areas in most places AT&T did up in Connecticut. How could this be possible, I thought to myself? I have the best phone on the best network. I needed to head into Manhattan for a couple meetings that day, so, let’s just see how it holds up on the drive down, I told myself. First phone call on I-95? Dropped. What made things worse was that I was stuck on 2G a lot of the time, even in the heart of New York City once I was out and about.

How is this happening?

Well, after a couple calls to Verizon Wireless — and everyone I spoke with was extremely helpful — it turned out my phone didn’t fully activate. I believe the PRL and roaming configurations weren’t updated properly, and after I reprogrammed the phone (something most people won’t ever have to do, as iTunes discreetly does this on first plug-in), I was doing much better. Or was I?

After the “fix” was performed, I still saw 2G on the Verizon iPhone as much or more than I had seen EDGE on the AT&T iPhone that I have used for years (I realize it’s not the same exact phone — I’m referring to the signal quality and coverage). Back in Connecticut, I was still experiencing dropped calls, and it was almost comical. “Dude, I thought you got a Verizon iPhone finally?” I did… it’s just… not that different.

In the end, my personal experience with Verizon’s iPhone in and around New York City ended up being about the same as it was when I was on AT&T. This, combined with other advantages AT&T’s network has, has made me finally decide to switch back. Literally moments before I wrote this article, I synced up my Verizon iPhone and restored it to my AT&T iPhone (I can do this because the OS on the Verizon iPhone is lower than the AT&T iPhone — if I ever wanted to switch back, I couldn’t restore my data until the Verizon iPhone OS is updated to version 4.3). I missed the ability to talk on the phone while data is still flowing (even though I hate talking on the phone). I missed AT&T’s extremely fast data speeds. I missed knowing that if I ever travel outside of the country, I don’t have to get a new phone (even though I hate flying — no, seriously, try me). I missed feeling like I’m in the digital age instead of the stone age.

It’s just true. One of the reasons Verizon’s network is so expansive and solid is because it’s old. Verizon has been building this same network out for ages and so it seemingly stretches beyond any other — but it’s built on an aging and extremely outdated cellular technology. Verizon is in the midst of rolling out its incredible new LTE network in an effort to get with the times, but until then, I’m tired of CDMA. I’m tired of the limitations. What network powers my MiFi? Verizon. What network has the most reliable and robust data offering? Verizon. What network do I want on my iPhone? For now, and I believe for the foreseeable future, it’s AT&T.

Once the iPhone 5 comes out this summer, I’ll reevaluate things. Apple has stepped up its game in the radio and antenna department with each new iPhone release, and the company is practically confirmed to continue using Qualcomm chips (one of the reasons AT&T has had so much trouble with the iPhone is due to Apple’s use of Infineon-baseband chips). But for now, if I’m going to drop just as many calls on Verizon’s network as I do with AT&T, there’s just no reason to give up all of the other perks AT&T’s iPhone 4 affords. I want to talk and surf the Web at the same time on a super-fast data network, and roam internationally, and enjoy the latest iPhone OS, and have my voice calls come through instantly, and hold conference calls with more than two other participants at a time… so I’m back with AT&T.

If the countless emails that have hit our inbox over the course of the past few hours are to be believed, Verizon Wireless is having some issues in Virginia. And by “some issues,” we mean the carrier’s voice and data services are out of commission across the entire state. Verizon Wireless’ tech support team has confirmed the problem to BGR, and it states that the cause of the massive outage is currently unknown. Verizon says it is investigating the matter just as fast as it can, of course, though the company has no idea when service will be restored.

UPDATE: We’re told that service has been restored for most subscribers as of shortly before 5:00 PM.

Verizon Wireless and HTC announced the HTC ThunderBolt amid a flurry of 4G LTE devices rattled off at Verizon’s press event. With all those devices jammed into one press release, there were bound to be some tasty morsels Big Red couldn’t fit on the page. Luckily for us, enthusiast blog Android Central has gotten its mitts on what is said to be an internal Verizon Wireless training document, and it includes an interesting note — the ThunderBolt will indeed support simultaneous voice and data where LTE service is available. That might seem like a foregone conclusion but unfortunately it’s not, as Verizon indicated during CES that not all LTE smartphones would support simultaneous voice and data. But let’s not dwell on the negative… the bottom line is that if the HTC ThunderBolt was on your short list of possible future phone purchases, odds are pretty good that your list just got even shorter. Hit the break for the purported leaked document highlighting a few firsts for the ThunderBolt.

Read

Allow us to bring you up to speed in case you missed it — Verizon Wireless just announced that it will finally begin carrying the iPhone 4 starting on February 10th. It’s kind of a big deal. There are definitely plenty of positives tied to the Verizon iPhone, of course. For starters, choice is always a good thing and the fact that AT&T finally lost iPhone exclusivity will benefit consumers in a big way. And there are plenty more benefits as well — for example, there’s a redesigned antenna that might reduce the effects of the death grip, and a mobile hotspot option that AT&T iPhone users have been wishing for since Android first popularized the feature. But it’s not all double rainbows and jazz hands, we’re afraid. There are definitely some areas where Verizon’s upcoming iPhone 4 is sorely lacking, and we’ve listed a few of the main missteps after the break.

Slooooooooow
This was covered in our feature yesterday entitled Why I’m not switching to the Verizon iPhone: Need for speed. Verizon’s 3G network, while sturdier than the Great Wall of China, is slower than your great grandmother driving a Cadillac on the highway. Ok, it’s really not that slow and it’s more than quick enough to handle basic functions like Web browsing, email and use of basic apps. But this is 2011 and data speeds should be increasing, not decreasing. If heavier usage is your cup of tea — streaming media, data-gulping apps and so on — Verizon’s 3G service crawls.

Those who jump ship from AT&T could be in for a rude awakening in this department. Then again, they also might finally be able to make phone calls.

No simultaneous voice and data
There was an off chance that Verizon Wireless would finally announce a solution for simultaneous voice and data over its CDMA network, but it didn’t happen. We’ll just have to wait for the LTE-enabled version of the iPhone to drop in 2012. In the meantime, if you want to talk and receive emails on your iPhone 4 at the same time, you’ll need AT&T. After all, where would we be without young professionals traipsing through our city streets with their faces buried in smartphones while they bark at their Bluetooth headsets?

Roam or get off the pot
Roamers may have a tough time finding ways to travel internationally with their Verizon iPhones. Well, they can travel anywhere they want with their iPhones as long as they don’t need to talk or use cellular data. Verizon’s iPhone 4 will only operate on CDMA networks and the rest of the world, for the most part, uses GSM. There are some countries where Verizon iPhone users will be able to roam on CDMA, but service won’t be great in many cases — and prepare to sell some organs a month later when your bill arrives.

To be fair, however, AT&T iPhone users may have to cough up the deeds to their houses as well if they roam internationally. It’s not cheap. Less expensive options used to be just a jailbreak, an unlock and a prepaid local SIM away, but the iPhone 4 complicates matters thanks to its Micro-SIM. Average users definitely won’t be hacking up foreign a SIM card to perform a Micro-SIM-ectomy, so international roamers are basically screwed in either camp.

No 4G
Verizon’s entire presence at CES last week was focused on one thing and one thing alone: 4G. Its LTE network is now live in 38 markets and a flurry of 4G phones will launch in the coming months. But the iPhone… the smartphone millions of Verizon Wireless subscribers have been dying for… is a 3G device.

We knew Verizon’s iPhone 4 would be a CDMA phone for a number of reasons, but 3G is so 2010. Sprint launched its first 4G phone with minimal WiMAX coverage and it ended up being the fastest-selling phone in the carrier’s history. Now, we won’t see a 4G iPhone from Verizon until 2012. That means while millions of Android phones are surfing Verizon’s 4G airwaves later this year, iPhones will still be puttering along at EVDO speeds.

UPDATE: Post updated to remove a reference to FaceTime over 3G, which will not be available on Verizon’s iPhone 4.

Yesterday, my cohorts weighed in on the question on countless iPhone owners’ minds right now — should I ditch AT&T and buy an iPhone from Verizon? The answer is going to be different for everyone, of course. Some people have a compulsive need to switch phones constantly, so they can’t use a CDMA carrier. Some people have a need for speed and Verizon’s 3G network doesn’t cut it. Well guess what? I have a need for a phone that actually works wherever and whenever I want it to. That need is way more important than any need I have to swap phones every day or download iTunes tracks at lightning-fast speeds. I want to make phone calls. I want to receive emails instantly. I want to load Web pages and refresh apps any time, anywhere. AT&T, fast as it might be, just can’t hang.

Before AT&T scored Apple’s iPhone exclusively in the U.S., its network was solid. Once tons of iPhones began hammering its airwaves constantly, however, things changed — especially in big cities. Calls dropped more frequently than they connected, data pipes were clogged, and the iPhone experience on AT&T pretty much became a disaster in many regions. Now, it wasn’t all AT&T’s fault. Reports emerged that Apple, which was new to the cell phone game, didn’t quite know how to make the most efficient use of cellular networks. Internationally, iPhone users on several other networks found themselves experiencing problems as well, but none were as bad as AT&T. To AT&T’s credit, things have improved a lot over the past six months or so, but I still drop calls constantly in Connecticut and in New York City, where I spend most of my time.

I don’t think we’ll see the same thing happen with Verizon Wireless. The nation’s top carrier has had over three years to prepare for the iPhone and I think it’s ready. Beyond that, a video showing what appears to be parts from the upcoming Verizon iPhone surfaced recently, and it looks like we may be in store for a redesigned antenna. Antennagate might not have affected iPhone sales much, much it definitely impacts the user experience. I don’t use a case and I’m sick of dropping calls every time I accidentally touch the black strip in the lower left corner of the phone. I think Apple spent a ton of time on this issue following the Antennagate affair, and I think the new model will definitely be improved.

There are obvious downsides to switching and I’m well aware of them. Verizon’s 3G is typically slower than AT&T’s network, battery life will probably be a tiny bit worse, and I’ll lose the ability to use voice and data at the same time unless Verizon shocks us with a workaround today. But you know what? I dropped five calls before 9:00AM this morning and I just can’t take it anymore. I’m someone who needs to be connected at all times, in all places, and I need to be able to rely on that connection because by business often depends on it. AT&T simply doesn’t seem to be up to the task — I really hope Verizon will succeed where AT&T continues to fail.

The image above says it all. It shows a screen capture of an actual speed test performed on an Apple iPhone 4 while connected to AT&T’s 3G network in northern New Jersey. It is not an anomaly. In fact it’s pretty standard in my home town and in the surrounding areas. Sometimes my download speed is faster and sometimes it’s slower, but it generally stays between 3.5 and 5Mbps¹. I can’t give that up.

Verizon Wireless has an incredibly strong network. It works everywhere, seemingly without fail, and hopefully the carrier can maintain its reputation as a rock solid network even after it is infested with data-gulping iPhones. What the Verizon Wireless network is not, however, is fast. In my town, which is roughly 15 minutes northwest of the George Washington Bridge, Verizon’s average download speed sits around 800Kbps¹. The fastest I’ve seen it in this area is just over 1Mbps. I use Verizon devices all the time as part of my job, and I often carry them with me outside my job. When I want to do something that involves downloading large files or streaming video content, I use an AT&T phone.

But what about reliability? AT&T is horrible! Wrong. AT&T might be horrible for you, but it works just fine for me. Not always, of course, but often enough that I have no interest in switching my main personal account to another provider and sacrificing data speed in the process. In late 2009 and early 2010, it was a very different story. I could rarely make phone calls in the area around my office in New York City and had Verizon scored the iPhone back then, I would have switched in a second. But beginning last summer, however, AT&T’s service in midtown Manhattan improved dramatically.

The other big part my decision comes down to the core reason any “my network is better than your network” argument is patently ridiculous. A network’s coverage, performance and reliability vary greatly depending on region — without exception. Notice the full five bars my iPhone 4 was reporting when the screen shot above was captured. Along with every other AT&T phone I have lying around, my iPhone just about always displays five bars of coverage near my home, office and nearly everywhere else I go in the area. Even when I give it the death grip.

In 2012 when AT&T and Verizon Wireless each have LTE networks that offer widespread coverage and speedy data connections, I’ll reassess the situation. I expect a 4G LTE iPhone to launch for both networks in 2012, so pricing and coverage will become the two main factors I consider. Today, however, switching from AT&T to Verizon would be like switching from broadband to dial-up — and I just can’t handle that.

¹Figures represent estimated average download speeds observed on AT&T and Verizon Wireless’ 3G data networks. The figures are based on independent speed tests performed using various devices with various speed test applications and are in no way scientific.

It wasn’t included among the stockpile of devices Verizon Wireless announced Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but Verizon may have another exciting new device in store. As we now know, Microsoft will soon release a software update for its Windows Phone 7 platform that will bring CDMA compatibility to the platform. The update is due to become available later this month and following its arrival, HTC’s Trophy may be the first Windows Phone 7-packing device headed to Big Red. Known as the HTC 7 Trophy outside the U.S., a new version of the Trophy with CDMA radios passed through the FCC recently. Based on previous rumors, the sleek smartphone is headed for Verizon Wireless as opposed to Sprint. We still have a few days of CES left for Verizon to make make this puppy official but even if the carrier opts to stay focused on 4G devices, we could certainly still see the Trophy launch very soon. Mobile World Congress, perhaps?

[Via Pocketnow]

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I have to be perfectly honest here… I was anything but excited when FedEx dropped a BlackBerry Style 9670 review unit from Sprint at my door. I have nothing against BlackBerrys and I certainly have nothing against Sprint, but the idea of reviewing what would probably end up being just another BlackBerry was not exciting to me in the least.

Part of me wanted to skip the review altogether. A big part of me. After years of seeing nearly identical BlackBerry devices hit the market one after the next, is there really anything left to say?

So in this review, I tried to focus mostly on what makes the BlackBerry Style 9670 different from its predecessors. If you want to read about why RIM’s email system is great or how awesome BlackBerry Messenger is, feel free to look back on any of the thousands of BlackBerry reviews that have been written over the past few years. You’ll surely find your fill. If you want to read about how crazy it is that in 2010, BlackBerry devices still can’t synchronize read statuses properly with Gmail accounts, please look elsewhere. I’m not here to beat a dead horse.

If instead, you want to know what makes the BlackBerry Style unique and why it might or might not appeal to you, read on.

The Outside

RIM’s last clamshell device, the Pearl Flip, was a mess. It felt cheap and dated, and I wasn’t a fan of the SureType keyboard. Plainly put, it did nothing to push the BlackBerry brand forward. The Style, on the other hand, is a very well designed and well built phone.

When closed, the handset is very compact — it measures less than 4 inches tall, less than 2 1/2 inches wide and less than 3/4 of an inch deep. But it’s not light or cheap feeling at all, weighing in at 4.62 ounces. It fits quite well in the hand and when flipped open, it doesn’t feel overly top-heavy as some clamshells do.

The build is also very solid. Whereas the Pearl Flip felt like a cheap toy, the Style feels sturdy and well made. It’s no HTC Desire or iPhone 4, of course, but for a $100 phone it’s not bad at all. The flip mechanism is smooth and sturdy with no play whatsoever, and the battery cover has a nice aluminum feel to it despite the fact that it is made of plastic.

Like the Pearl Flip, the inner display on the BlackBerry Style is angled slightly inward when the device is flipped open. While the design is nifty from afar, I find it less than ideal. RIM’s best phones all utilize the candy bar form factor, where the display and keyboard are perfectly aligned. On the Style, this is not the case. If you hold the phone as you would any other BlackBerry while you type, the display is angled down slightly, toward your chest. It’s still visible but it’s a bit awkward. If you tilt the phone back a bit in order to achieve the proper viewing angle for the display, typing becomes uncomfortable.

The only time I like the display angle on the Style is when I place it on a flat surface while flipped open. The protrusion on the back of the flip combined with the angle of the display give it a nice viewing angle while resting on my desk. It also makes a pretty formidable catapult at the dinner table.

Another difference between the Style and BlackBerrys of old is the button configuration on the sides of the device. Like the Torch, the BlackBerry Style has a volume rocker and a convenience key on the right side of the device, but there is no configurable button on the left. I’ve grown accustomed to having the left button configured to launch BBM while the right button launches AIM. On the Style, I obviously have to adjust my habits a bit.

The internal display on the Style is about as good as you might expect. It only supports 65,000 colors and the resolution is not spectacular at 360 x 400 pixels. I highly recommend going into the device settings and disabling the option to auto-adjust display brightness. Any setting above 60% will look fine, but the display becomes very difficult to see when it auto-dims.

The Inside

On the software side of things, BlackBerry 6 brings some new features to the table that BlackBerry fans have been waiting for quite anxiously. The full HTML Web browser, for example, is a massive improvement compared to the old BlackBerry browser. Compared to other operating systems such as webOS, iOS or Android, however, RIM still has a long way to go before its browsing experience is up to snuff.

Other new features such as Universal Search and the revamped Options menus are also well received. The former works wonderfully, allowing me to find any app, setting, song, email or contact with ease. The Options section is still overcomplicated though, making even the simplest task far more arduous than it needs to be.

Coming from the BlackBerry Torch, which I’ve spent quite a bit of time with, it is glaringly obvious that many of the styling changes in BlackBerry 6 are designed for use with touchscreens. On several occasions I’ve caught myself motioning toward the display in an effort to flick open the app tray or poke at the on-screen camera shutter button. This likely won’t be a big deal for people who aren’t coming from the Torch, but the UI is still awkward at times.

Have you noticed that there is a touchscreen on every iOS, Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7 device on the market? This is because using an OS designed for touch on a device without a touchscreen is awkward. RIM pulls it off much better than any of the aforementioned operating systems could, but that’s because BlackBerry OS is still in its infancy where touch input is concerned.

As a phone, the BlackBerry Style does its job quite well. This is one area where I’m happy BlackBerry devices haven’t changed much over the years. Reception is terrific, call quality is outstanding and I’ve yet to drop a call — even in areas with spotty coverage. The top speaker is crystal clear and parties on the other end say they can hear me with impressive clarity. The 9670 also has a fantastic speakerphone speaker, even at high volumes.

It makes you wonder why some competitors aren’t prying these puppies open and learning from RIM’s fantastic phone technology.

The Upside

Having a sizable external display on a flip phone is great, and RIM did a good job making use of it. Beyond the nice big analog clock that appears when any side-key is tapped, the display shows signal strength and remaining battery charge along with unread message counts. When new messages hit one of my inboxes, I can view the sender without having to flip the phone open. What’s more, if I have multiple unread messages I can cycle through them on the external display using the volume keys. I can then tap the convenience key on any email to view the message body.

The camera on the BlackBerry Style does not take great shots. It does, however, take ok shots, and that’s more than I can say for most BlackBerry camera phones. The flash works surprisingly well in moderately low light, and well-lit scenes come out pretty crisp. There’s still a bit of grain on images but it’s definitely not as bad as older models.

Battery life on the BlackBerry Style is not great compared to other BlackBerry phones, which typically afford jaw-dropping longevity. On the other hand, this is a compact little phone with a tiny 1050 mAh battery. With that in mind, the battery life on the Style is impressive. Power users might have trouble getting through a long day, but with average to above-average amounts of usage, the Style will go at least a day between charges.

Another big plus on the Style took me by surprise — the music player. The music player app itself is nothing special but the quality of music playback seems to be improved compared to similar BlackBerry models. It’s no iPod, but when I plugged in my Ultimate Ears Triple.Fis and cranked some Taylor Swift… umm… err… I mean… Metallica, I was pretty impressed with the sound quality. It’s still a bit muddy, but it’s really pretty decent considering the phone’s pedigree and price range.

Last up on the plus side but certainly not least, is the keyboard. I don’t really need to get into how great BlackBerry keyboards are, so instead I’ll gauge it among its peers: on a scale of Pearl to Bold, it’s above a Torch and below a Curve 8900.

The Downside

On a device without a touchscreen, BlackBerry 6 is not very exciting. Yes, seasoned BlackBerry users are still giddy over the introduction of a halfway decent Web browser. Yes, BlackBerry 6 does introduce some nifty new features such as Universal Search on the home screen. But overall, it’s still just BlackBerry OS.

It’s slow, it’s clunky and it just doesn’t feel modern or sexy at all. That may seem like a superficial complaint, but I assure you it’s not. There’s a reason you have Windows 7 installed on your computer and not Windows 3.1. And trust me… when RIM finally does start releasing new devices with a modern QNX-based operating system, even the most hardcore BlackBerry junkies you know will be gushing over the new OS while wondering aloud how they dealt with the old OS for so long.

Managing applications is also still very painful. Installations take way too long, deletions still often require a painful reboot, and so on. The first app I installed was WeatherEye, a simple weather forecast viewer I downloaded from BlackBerry App World. The first time I tried to launch the app, I got an “Uncaught exception” error. I cleared out the error and tried again. This time WeatherEye displayed a splash screen, ran through a bunch of text and then froze. I had to pull the battery to exit the app.

The next app I installed was Gmail but it’s nowhere to be found in App World, so I had to search the Web for it.

And so on.

If an app has a fatal error or is not compatible with my phone model, why is it available to me in App World? And why should I have to go hunting around the Web for apps when there’s a perfectly good centralized portal on my device?

Needless to say, this is not an optimal user experience. It’s slow, it’s painful, it’s full of roadblocks and it’s anything but consistent. It needs to be fixed.

My other big complaint is the camera. I’ve already stated that the camera takes decent pictures, but there is a pretty significant flaw that could have easily been avoided — the lens positioning is terrible.

It’s a ridiculous design flaw, actually. The camera is located on the back of the Style just above the battery cover, and it is situated exactly where you would naturally place your pointer as you take a picture by pressing your thumb on the optical trackpad. As a result, you have to adjust your grip when snapping shots and it feels very unnatural. The camera should have been situated on the top of the flip beneath the BlackBerry logo.

As an aside, the BlackBerry Style is clearly aimed at the consumer market. Adding a “self portrait” mode that allows people to take pictures of themselves using the external display as a front-facing digital viewfinder should have been a no-brainer. It would have scored the Style some major points among tweens. Come on, RIM.

The Bottom Line

In the end, the BlackBerry Style isn’t a terrible $100 smartphone from Sprint. It’s also not a great one.

It’s definitely aimed at consumers and it doesn’t have much of a place in the enterprise market. For the younger crowd already hooked on BBM and RIM’s famous BlackBerry keyboards, the Style is a great option. Add to that Sprint’s solid network and extremely competitive rate plans, and you’re good to go.

On the other hand, those who are looking for a modern, streamlined smartphone experience should look elsewhere. I’ve said it before; you’ve said it before; everyone has said it before… the BlackBerry experience as we know it peaked long ago. But if you look toward the horizon and squint your eyes at just the right time of day, you can see QNX riding south with guns blazing. Whether or not he’ll make it to town with enough ammo left to save the townspeople remains to be seen.

We get the feeling that early 2010 is going to be big for Sprint’s WiMax. We came by one of these training slides for a new 3G/4G mobile hotspot, precisely like the Mi-Fi, for Sprint. Like many of Sprint’s wireless data cards, this one is also going to be made by Sierra Wireless. What we’re hearing is that this new device will be able to support up to five users via Wi-Fi and its range is being increased to 100 feet. In addition to the added range and power, it will also support SD card storage; while that doesn’t sound like a big deal, the data can be shared by every user who is connected to the data card. No official pricing or release date just yet, but we’re looking at a possibly February launch for this dual 3G-4G wireless hotspot in your pocket.

Sprint has just added a new device to its BlackBerry family — the Curve 8530. Though this is on the low-end for BlackBerry devices, that doesn’t mean it skimps out on any features. The BlackBerry 8530 for Sprint comes with Wi-Fi, 256MB of on-board memory, support for 32GB of expandable memory and a host of social networking applications already built in. Best of all, for those of you who want a smartphone but are on a budget, the Curve 8530 is only $49.99 after two-year contract and MIR. If you’re wondering where you can grab yours, it’s available through every Sprint sales channel: telesales, online, their business channel and of course, Sprint’s retail stores.

UPDATE: Well, maybe not retail stores just yet.

[Product page]

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