cellular

Even glancing at U.S. Cellular's smartphone lineup, one thing stands out. With the exception of a couple of BlackBerrys, Android completely dominates. Or it did, until the HTC 7 Pro muscled its way in, a rebranding of Sprint's HTC Arrive.

As staunch supporters of mobile platform diversity and consumer choice, this is a very good thing. The handset, while heavy, has some interesting design elements, including a screen that tilts up when you slide open the QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard itself has rubbery buttons that are easy to press, and the HD video capture and playback are … Read more

As U.S. Cellular promised last week, the carrier is launching its first Windows Phone 7 device this summer (and by this summer, we mean tomorrow). The carrier announced today that the HTC 7 Pro will be available on June 14 for $199.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

Similar to the HTC Arrive for Sprint, the smartphone features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.6-inch, WVGA touch screen. The HTC 7 Pro also has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video capture, along with the Xbox Live and Zune integration and other goodies that come with Windows Phone.

The HTC 7 Pro will require a data plan, which starts at $79.99 per month for 5GB of data, unlimited text and multimedia messages, and 450 voice minutes. Customers on one of U.S. Cellular's Belief plans will be able to get the smartphone at the $200 price without having to sign a new contract. … Read more

In most respects, the HTC Merge for U.S. Cellular is a fairly standard Android 2.2 Froyo smartphone. It's got a decent but standard touch screen, a nice but not superlative 5-megapixel camera (with 720p HD video capture and playback, we might add,) and an unremarkable keyboard that's nevertheless sufficient.

The phone's primary point of difference lurks below the back cover, a SIM card slot that international travelers can use while taking the phone abroad. Even if you never step foot outside the continent, there are plenty of other features to keep you handy and connected. … Read more

Sprint isn't the only one ramping up its lineup today. U.S. Cellular just announced its product road map for the remainder of the year, and it includes eight smartphones and two tablets.

Seven of the eight handsets will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the eighth will be the carrier's first Windows Phone 7 handset. One of the models among the group will also be U.S. Cellular's first 4G LTE smartphone, due out in November.

HTC will provide four of the devices, beginning with the Windows Phone handset due out this summer. This will be … Read more

The Samsung Chrono may not stray much from the well-worn path tread by Samsung's flip phones before it, but we will say one thing: the phone can make calls.

Large dial pad buttons keep it simple, and a call quality so unclouded we had to ask several times to make sure our callers were still on the line is a rarity among most cell phones, period, no matter how many rabbits their software pulls out of a hat.

Of course, we wouldn't say no to a few more software tricks and to updated specs in general, but for … Read more

First introduced at CES 2011 and made available just a little more than a week ago, T-Mobile's Rocket 3.0 Laptop Stick USB 4G modem faced huge expectations as the company said that it would offer twice the download speed of other 4G devices, up to 42Mbps.

In our testing in the San Francisco Bay Area, the device didn't deliver.

Throughout the city of San Francisco, including in specific locations designated by T-Mobile as offering the new speed, the modem's connection capped at about 13Mbps. Now, this is by no means slow, in fact it's one of the fastest speeds we've seen from a 4G device, and it is capable of downloading a full 1080p movie (about 10GB of data) in about or under 2 hours. Still, it's quite far from 42Mbps.… Read more

U.S. Cellular scored quite a coup today with the announcement of two new Android phones, the HTC Merge and the LG Genesis.

The HTC Merge is U.S. Cellular's first "global ready" smartphone, meaning it supports both CDMA and GSM chipsets for travel abroad. It has a 3.8-inch touch screen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, plus it ships with Android 2.2 Froyo. Other features of the phone include a 5-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, and mobile hot-spot capability. There were rumors that the Merge might head for Verizon Wireless, but it looks like U.S. Cellular beat it to the punch. The Merge ships with an 8GB microSD card.… Read more

U.S. Cellular gains another budget flip phone for its repertoire of entry-level feature phones. The Samsung Chrono has Bluetooth, speakerphone, and is Web-capable.

It also includes GPS and texting with predictive text. Physically, it sports a 2-inch QVGA screen and a VGA camera.

The Chrono weighs just over 3 ounces and stands 3.7 inches tall, 1.8 inches wide, and is 0.7 inch thick. It promises 4.45 hours of talk time.

The Chrono costs just a penny ($0.01) on contract, or $19.99 as a prepaid option.

It's been my personal experience that that nerds love their room in the basement, which tends to be kinda dark even during daytime, where they have fast Internet access and lots of gadgets. And I have to admit that it's nice down there here, where you I can do all kinds of fun things, such as playing games, programing, playing more games, or just quietly enjoying the sound of crunchy Cheetos while pondering over the prospect of some romantic date...without being bothered.

But it's not true anymore that you can only have fast Internet at home.… Read more