Dialed In- Page 498 - CNET Blogs

Droid won't get hot spot feature with Froyo update

Apologies, but I got a little ahead of myself on Friday when I told you that the Motorola Droid would get the Android 2.2 "Froyo" update. Though Froyo will arrive as scheduled, the Droid will not receive the tethering and Wi-Fi hot spot features that the update can include.

Verizon Wireless did not disclose the omissions when it announced the update last week, but spokeswoman Brenda Raney has confirmed what Phonescoop first reported this morning. "The Droid by Motorola doesn't have a Wi-Fi transmitter so there is no hardware to support a mobile hotspot," Raney wrote in an e-mail to CNET. Indeed, the Droid can transmit and receive Wi-Fi from a hotspot, but it can't act as a hotpot by itself for other devices.

As for tethering, Raney said that there is no connection on the PC side that will support the feature. Verizon originally promised tethering for the Droid last November, but it never extended its Mobile Broadband Connect service to the Moto handset. Even so, some Droid owners have rooted their handsets or used apps to successfully tether their devices.

Indeed, tethering and Wi-Fi hot spot functionality are not listed in the official service advisory on Verizon's Web site. Here's the full list of additions (PDF) that you should expect.

Motorola releases eco-friendly Grasp

Motorola quietly revealed the Grasp over the weekend, sans carrier announcement. The Grasp is your standard bar-style messaging phone, and it looks to have a full QWERTY keyboard, a 1.3-megapixel camera, an MP3 player, a 3.5mm headset jack, messaging features, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, and a microSD card slot.

It also has a purportedly eco design, which Motorola promises is 100 percent recyclable. As the phone is a tri-band CDMA EVDO phone with the 1,700Mhz AWS spectrum, we think this might be heading for Sprint in the near future.

Moto Droid to get Froyo update next week

Update: On Monday, August 2, Verizon Wireless confirmed that the Droid will not receive the tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot features that the update can include. For a full list of additions, see Verizon's site.

Less than 24 hours after Sprint announced that Froyo was coming to its HTC Evo, Verizon said Friday that the original Motorola Droid would also get the latest version of the Android operating system.

According to Verizon spokesman Albert Aydin, the carrier will start issuing Froyo the week of August 1. Aydin did not name a more specific time frame, but we suspect that Verizon … Read more

LTE phone clears FCC

The FCC brings us interesting news this week, most notably the approval of the first-ever LTE phone to arrive in the U.S. The Samsung SCH-R900 will be a CDMA phone for MetroPCS and looks to be using the 1700/1900 bands. It will also have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Another approval worth nothing is the ZTE Peel, which is not a phone, but an EV-DO Rev. 0 Wi-Fi hot spot that may be designed to fit on an iPod Touch. (Get it? A Peel for your Apple iPod?)

Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United … Read more

Droid 2 all but officially confirmed with Froyo

The final pieces of the Droid 2 puzzle are falling into place, confirming early rumors of Android 2.2 and an August release. The last few days have seen a mix of official documents and internal resources leaked, all which point to a Froyo-powered superphone expected in the coming weeks.

To kick things off Thursday, Droid Life posted pages from the official Droid 2 user manual uncovered. Though there's no direct mention of Android 2.2 in the guide, some pages show various screens of the device. Astute readers will notice that the Google search widget on Page 10 … Read more

BlackBerry App World 2.0 beta arrives for some

BlackBerry-maker RIM has certainly been scrambling to generate excitement over the next stages of its smartphone development and operating system release. First there were the video sneak peeks, a couple of new services (here and here), and the invitation to a press event to show off a mystery device, plus a preview of the 6.0 home screen.

Now, RIM has started giving out beta versions of BlackBerry App World 2.0, the next generation of its application storefront, to a waiting list.

Among other feature enhancements, App World 2.0 will introduce an option to bill your phone operator … Read more

The Evo gets Froyo

Editor's note: Though Froyo also can add Wi-Fi hotspot functionality, the update will not change the Evo's current hotspot feature.

Sprint announced Thursday that starting next week it will push the Android 2.2 "Froyo" update to the HTC Evo 4G. The Evo will be the first Sprint device to get the much-anticipated upgrade, which adds a selection of new features and fixes two of the largest drawbacks of the Android OS.

As with most Android updates, Sprint will issue Froyo in waves, with the first batch of users receiving notifications on Tuesday, August 3. The … Read more

Firefox Home for iPhone, Firefox Sync see fixes

Updates to the Firefox Home app for iPhone and to the Firefox Sync add-on for Firefox (Windows|Mac) fix the top three problems users reported for each program, says Mozilla.

The new version of Firefox Home (1.0.1), a companion app for the Firefox browser on iPhone, now supports usernames with upper-case letters for logging in to the URL viewer.

It also inserts a help button on the log-in page that will link you to common troubleshooting tips. The final addition is a set of error notifications that Mozilla hopes will explain application errors with more clarity when they … Read more

T-Mobile back on top in customer care

Few things are certain in the cell phone world, but one is the regular J.D. Power and Associate study on wireless customer care performance. And after finishing behind Verizon Wireless in the February study, T-Mobile has again risen to the top of the rankings.

In the latest study, which was released Thursday, T-Mobile garnered a score of 777 points out of a possible 1,000. AT&T came in second place with 757 points, Verizon Wireless was third with 749 points, and Sprint Nextel brought up the rear with 734 points. J.D Power did not survey U.… Read more

Verizon's Samsung Intensity II available online

The Samsung Intensity II is now available online, Verizon and Samsung announced Thursday. The slider phone will be available in stores in the next few weeks.

Following in the footsteps of the Samsung Intensity, the Intensity II has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, music player, and GPS.

The new model also has an eco-friendly slant. It's partly made from recycled plastic, with its battery cover extracted from 35 percent post-consumer materials. In addition, the packaging is partially made from recycled paper and partially printed with soy ink. Inside, an eco-calculator can track your car's fuel mileage, calculate the auto'… Read more