If you’re game for Windows Phone 7 on Bell, you’ve got one lonely option right now, and you’d better like landscape QWERTY sliders: the LG Optimus Quantum, a phone you may know better simply as the Quantum on AT&T in the US. Looks like that might change in just a few days’ time, though, as MobileSyrup has scored some launch documentation for HTC’s HD7 — a phone that’s on T-Mobile in the States — that indicates it’s launching on the 10th of this month. Unfortunately, pricing is a little uncertain because the documents are showing CAD $599.95 (about $606) regardless of contract length, so realistically, that’s probably what you can expect to pay if you choose to forgo a contract altogether. At this point, we’d be curious what Microsoft and its hardware partners have in store for round two of Windows Phone 7′s retail push rather than buying a first-generation device — but then again, it’s always hard to resist a 4.3-inch display, isn’t it?
Up in Canada, Mobilicity’s CEO made an odd comment recently that Bell, Telus, and Rogers will all be getting the Nexus S around the same time that his carrier does in March. Why is that odd? Well, as it stands, no variant of the Nexus S supports the 850 / 1900MHz WCDMA that would be necessary to run (at high speed, anyway) on those three networks. Circle back around to the Bluetooth SIG, where PocketNow has discovered an entry for a GT-i9020A; you might recall that the European version of the device is the i9020, while T-Mobile’s AWS-compatible build is the i9020T, with “T” ostensibly standing for “T-Mobile.” By extension, it’s definitely conceivable that the “A” here is for “AT&T” — which, again, would line up with the Mobilicity exec’s verbiage. If this is true, it’s theoretically possible that we could see AT&T and its similarly-equipped Canadian cousins get their own Nexus S as soon as five-odd weeks from now. Like the Nexus One before it, we’ve got a hard time picturing AT&T officially subsidizing this thing — but hey, an unlocked full-price version is a solid start, we’d say.
Canadians, you must chafe under the yoke of a Gingerbread-free existence no longer, for the Nexus S is coming to the Great White North sometime in March. According to Mobilicity CEO Dave Dobbin, the handset will be available on the company’s AWS band, but he also said that Bell, Telus, and Rogers will carry the Nexus S as well. If true, that means Samsung will be providing another model of the phone with support for WCDMA 850 / 1900 for it to work with Canada’s big three wireless providers. We can only hope that’s the case, as said model would be usable on AT&T’s network — making an awful lot of us living south of Canada quite happy. Peep the video after the break to hear the good news for yourself.
AT&T were at pains to highlight the fact that the Motorola ATRIX 4G was a network exclusive when they launched the Tegra 2 based superphone yesterday, but it seems that limitation only applies to the US. Canadian carrier Bell has just announced that the ATRIX 4G will be winging its way to their HSPA+ network in the coming months too.
The handset itself will be identical to the AT&T version, which means a dual-core 1GHz processor, qHD resolution display, Android 2.2 Froyo, a biometric fingerprint scanner and both front and rear cameras. There’s also Citrix Receiver support, together with two optional docks: the Motorola HD Multimedia Dock, with three USB ports and an HDMI port, and the Motorola Laptop Dock, with an 11.6-inch screen, full keyboard, stereo speakers and 36Wh three-cell battery that delivers up to seven hours of battery life, all in just 2.4 pounds.
No word on pricing but we’re expecting this behemoth to be carry a flagship tag when it arrives in Canada. More information on the ATRIX 4G here.
Press Release:
Motorola Mobility Canada and Bell Announce ATRIX™ Coming Soon to Canada
The world’s most powerful smartphone transforms into a laptop, desktop or home entertainment center through Motorola’s revolutionary webtop application
Jan. 05, 2011
LAS VEGAS (CES ) and TORONTO – Jan. 5, 2011 – Motorola Mobility Canada and Bell today unveiled Motorola ATRIX, the only smartphone with the Motorola webtop application that puts a true desktop browser in the user’s pocket. The ATRIX will be available to Canadians exclusively from Bell Mobility on Canada’s Best Network.
Designed to bring unprecedented computing to a smartphone, Motorola’s webtop application brings a PC browsing experience with a full Mozilla Firefox 3.6 browser to a mobile environment. Motorola ATRIX supports Adobe® Flash® Player to open up all the rich graphics, animations and video on the web. Featuring a dual-core processor –with each core running at 1 GHz, delivering up to two GHz of processing power – 1 GB of RAM, coupled with webtop and a unique docking system, the Motorola ATRIX is, simply put, the world’s most powerful smartphone.
“Motorola ATRIX ushers in a new era in mobile computing and converged electronics experiences, and we’re thrilled to offer it to Canadians on Bell’s state-of-the-art network,” said Sanjay Jha, chairman and chief executive officer of Motorola Mobility. “The Motorola ATRIX is a symbol of the innovation consumers can expect from the new company that is Motorola Mobility. ATRIX is a revolutionary tool for staying connected, informed and entertained at home, on the job and anywhere in between.”
“Motorola ATRIX is a ground-breaking product and offering it exclusively to Canadians fits with Bell’s commitment to deliver products and services that lets business and consumer clients say ‘today just got better,’” said Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility & Residential Services, and Bell’s Chief Brand Officer. “ATRIX and its mobile computing capabilities are ready to leverage the speed, coverage and quality of Bell’s world-leading wireless network.”
Motorola ATRIX delivers unprecedented mobile computing capabilities in a package less than 11mm thin, including:
A dual-core processor – which outputs up to two GHz of processing speed – for opening web pages twice as fast as most other smartphones, rendering games faster and displaying HD quality video on big-screen TVs.
A full 1 GB of RAM is twice that offered in most other smartphones and delivers effortless multi-tasking, such as watching a movie while receiving and responding to email.
The world’s first qHD smartphone display, offering high resolution and 24-bit colour, making it easier to read indoors and outdoors
Facilitated by Motorola’s webtop application and optional docking system that offer a larger screen, full-size keyboard and trackpad for an enhanced and more interactive experience, Motorola ATRIX can be used as a primary digital hub to create, edit and enjoy documents, media and content.
Motorola is introducing two industry-leading companion docks for the ATRIX:
The Motorola HD Multimedia Dock has three USB ports and an HDMI port, enabling connections to a keyboard, monitor, mouse, speakers or HDMI monitor for working on traditional PC tasks, and connects to an HDMI-enabled television and home theater audio system for enjoying video, music, games and more.
The Motorola Laptop Dock has an incredibly thin design with an 11.6-inch screen, full keyboard, stereo speakers, 36Wh three-cell battery that delivers up to seven hours of battery life and weighs just 2.4 pounds. Users simply dock their Motorola ATRIX 4G into the back of the Laptop Dock to experience true mobility at work, home and playing on-the-go in a form factor that’s lighter and smaller than most laptops on the market.
While using the webtop application, business users with an existing Citrix account will benefit from the integrated Citrix Receiver application that provides secure, high performance access to virtual desktops as well as Windows®, web and office applications hosted on Citrix XenDesktop. In addition to the full suite of office productivity and email applications, users can also access a number of web applications such as Salesforce.com, Google Docs, and any HTML application or service from a full desktop browser.
Motorola ATRIX runs Android™ 2.2 with access to more than 100,000 apps and games in Android Market™.
Key features and specifications:
A dual-core processor capable of opening web pages twice as fast as most other smartphones, rendering games faster and displaying HD video on big-screen TVs
Front- and rear-facing cameras for video chat and the ability to record and output in HD
Biometric fingerprint reader for easily unlocking your phone while providing extra security
Under 11mm thin, with an extra large 1930 mAh battery for extended standby and talk time
Keep up to date on social networks with automatic delivery of messages through MOTOBLUR™, including the ability to locate, wipe and restore data if the device is lost or stolen
Up to 48GB of storage (16GB internal and optional 32GB MicroSD card) – enough to store thousands of songs, photos and as many as 15 full-length movies
Mobile Hotspot service for connecting up to eight Wi-Fi-enabled devices
Availability
Motorola ATRIX will be available exclusively to Bell Mobility clients in the coming months. For more information, go to Motorola.ca or to pre-register please visit www.bell.ca/atrix
Bell‘s apparently pegged January 14th as the day to add the LG Optimus Chic to to its Android lineup — to the tune of 250 smackers hors-contrat. This 3.2-inch Froyo-laden 5MP device also packs a 480 x 320 HVGA display, DNLA support, and even has a 2GB microSD as a pack in. Of course one, two, or three-year contract pricing is still up in the air, but we could definitely see a three-year price of $free being a good bet — though with competition from the likes of the Moto DEXT and the Samsung Galaxy for the same potential $0 price point, the jury’s out if this’ll fly off the shelves or not.
A quick gander at Samsung’s Canadian support site for the Galaxy S line reveals that two Android 2.2 updates are currently available: one for the Vibrant — offered by Bell, Virgin Mobile, and SaskTel — and one for the Fascinate as sold be Telus. This all follows just a few days after Sammy had to pull the Vibrant’s Froyo update on word that it seemed be killing the internal microSD storage, so hopefully, this build will be just a little more drama-free. Oh, and Samsung had originally said that Telus Fascinate owners would be waiting until next year to upgrade their units, so it’s pretty neat that they were able to rein that in a bit and get it pushed at the tail end of ’10. So have fun, Canadians — you’ve beaten your friends with T-Mobile Vibrants and Verizon Fascinates to the punch on this one, and we encourage you to lord it over them at every opportunity.
We have no idea why Samsung’s having such a hard time delivering its overdue promised Froyo upgrades worldwide for the Galaxy S series, but it’s not looking any easier for them this weekend: the only Canadian Galaxy S to get upgraded so far, Bell’s Vibrant, has just had its update pulled. Seems a healthy number of users attempting the upgrade using Sammy’s Kies desktop software ended up with inaccessible internal storage, which sucks for a variety of obvious reasons — and that would be the apparent reason for the removal of the update. Here’s the official statement:
“There have been intermittent issues reported during the firmware upgrade process with Kies for the Samsung Galaxy S i9000M series of phones. Samsung’s development team is currently aware of this issue and working towards a solution. Accordingly, The firmware update feature, which affects the ability to upgrade to Android 2.2, is temporarily disabled until a solution is released. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Those promised December Froyo updates for Canada’s Galaxy S models? Yeah, they’ve started hitting — or at least one of them has. Owners of Bell’s Vibrant are the first to get hooked up, though you’ll need to use Sammy’s Kies desktop software to facilitate the setup — they’re not doing over-the-air updates for some reason we won’t even pretend to understand. Interestingly, the support page for the update process says that both Rogers’ Captivate and Telus’ Fascinate are having their updates tested as we speak and that they are “working on a release for later in December 2010,” which goes against an earlier statement that the Fascinate wouldn’t get 2.2 until “early 2011.” But hey, if they beat that estimate, who are we to complain?
Samsung’s probably wishing it could just forget its claim that it’d have Froyo rolled out to all carriers last month, but at least it’s providing a little bit of updated guidance to its Canadian users. Turns out Bell’s Vibrant and Rogers’ Captivate are on track for the middle of this month, while owners of Telus’ Fascinate will need to wait a little longer: “early 2011,” to be exact, which really isn’t exact at all since it could easily mean anywhere between January and, say, April or so. Of course, Gingerbread will be all over the place by then — and we might even be seeing our first glimpses of Honeycomb — so be prepared for your version envy to continue unabated.
Samsung’s probably wishing it could just forget its claim that it’d have Froyo rolled out to all carriers last month, but at least it’s providing a little bit of updated guidance to its Canadian users. Turns out Bell’s Vibrant and Rogers’ Captivate are on track for the middle of this month, while owners of Telus’ Fascinate will need to wait a little longer: “early 2011,” to be exact, which really isn’t exact at all since it could easily mean anywhere between January and, say, April or so. Of course, Gingerbread will be all over the place by then — and we might even be seeing our first glimpses of Honeycomb — so be prepared for your version envy to continue unabated.
