Here’s a juicy little tidbit courtesy of Boy Genius. Take it for what it’s worth, but don’t complain if the info’s not accurate. But the Motorola CLIQ, still running the now antiquated 1.5 should be getting the 2.1 treatment sometime next month. Hopefully we’ll hear something official from T-Mobile in the next couple of weeks, our fingers are crossed. Thoughts?
A recent PowerPoint slide (shown below) revealed that the Motorola Zeppelin (shown above), named the CLIQ XT should be coming to T-Mobile USA launching on March 10th. It’s been described as a “CLIQ without a keyboard”, and should appeal to users that want MotoBLUR, but in a much slimmer design. Specs include MOTOBLUR running on 1.5 (why oh why?), a 3.2-inch HVGA screen, GPS, 5 MP camera with flash, and touch sensitive trackpad and navigational buttons. The price point is rumored to be at or below the current CLIQ, making it an attractive option for new smartphone buyers that don’t need to the high end specs of more expensive models.
You’re looking at a chat transcription between a Cliq owner and what appears to be a Motorola rep about 1.6 coming to the Cliq. The rumor seems that it’s in development and should be released next month. Of course, with no official announcement, it’s still in the rumors section. Seems about time for an update, or is Motorola hoping everyone forgot about the Cliq when the Droid came out?
Thanks Rezzenonne for the tip!
Remember the excitement when the G1 was first rooted? Now there’s the same for owners of the Sprint Hero and Samsung Behold 2. For the Hero, there’s a thread over at xda-developers with clear instructions on how to Root your Sprint Hero. Not much yet in the way of custom ROMS or other goodies, but you can run applications that require superuser such as wireless tethering.
For Samsung Behold 2 owners, head over to All Droid for your rooting instructions.
I don’t have either of these handsets, so I can test myself, but if anyone successfully roots (or doesn’t), let us know in the comments how it went. And as always with hacking and modifying your phone, do so at your own risk.
[Thanks Ted for the tip on the Behold 2]
Perfect for the music lover, the T-Mobile® myTouch™ 3G Fender™ Limited Edition is the newest in the T-Mobile myTouch franchise. Anticipated for later this year, the myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition has a guitar-inspired wood-grain finish and provides access to the growing Android Market, which now offers more than 10,000 applications. In addition to offering the vast personalization options and integration of Google™ services available on the myTouch 3G, customers can also enjoy a more complete mobile media experience with a 3.5mm headset jack, pre-installed 16GB microSD card, and exclusive pre-loaded video and audio clips by iconic musicians.
Hungry for the new Motorola CLIQ and don’t wanna wait for it to actually be on sale? Well, it isn’t your lucky day, because one lucky person already scored their new Moto CLIQ from Ebay. And they had to dish out $799 for that honor, well over the retail price. What do you guys think? Is it worth the hundreds of dollars over retail just to be able to say you were the first person to get one?
Personally, I can wait. Maybe if I was told the phone wouldn’t come out till next year sometime it might be worth it, but a few more weeks isn’t going to make much of a difference.
[Ebay] [via TmoNews]
T-Mobile has started their OTA rollout of the Android 1.6 Donut update. We’ve all been anxiously waiting, but if you don’t feel like waiting anymore, here’s how to do the update manually:
A quick note, you do not have to have your phone rooted to update, but if you are rooted, this update will lose your root access. Questions, comments, issues? Let us know in the comments.
UPDATE: A reader wrote in with the process for myTouch owners:
There is no need to root or flash from a computer and upgrading is just as easy as with the G1. Put the update.zip file on the SD card, hold home+power until you get to the screen with the exclamation mark in a triangle. Once at that screen just press home+power again. It will take you to the recovery screen where you can use the trackball to to select “update from sd card”.
All cheesy post titles aside, TmoNews is reporting that T-Mobile US is starting to deliver OTA Donut (Android 1.6) updates to select G1 handsets as of midnight last night, and select myTouch handsets later on tonight. As with the previous Cupcake update, it’s very slow at first, presumably to catch and issues before everyone can be affected. And if all goes well, everyone (excluding rooted, custom ROM phones) will get a delicious box of Donuts in their inbox. It comes as no surprise since they updated the My Account application just last night to be Donut-compatible.
Drop us a comment if you have gotten an update yet, or if you haven’t and just want to share your excitement. And we’ll keep you posted once we dig up a link to the official firmware for those wishing to do manual updates.
And in case you’ve been under a rock, here’s what the update brings:
[TmoNews]
*UPDATE* There’s now an official announcement on the T-Mobile forums.
Yeah, so what we’re a little late on this announcement. But the T-Mobile website is live with a countdown to the preorder date of October 19th, just over 18 days left. Pricing is $199 when signing a new 2 year contract, so it looks like Boy Genius called this one first, when every other blog was shouting it was going to be free on contract. The CLIQ will be available in stores starting November 2nd. As an added bonus, T-Mobile is running a little contest where you can win a free CLIQ and some sort of vacation, I’d almost rather have the phone.
T-Mobile customers and potential buyers, are you excited? Is this your next smart phone?
And in case you’ve been under a rock, here’s some gratuitous shots and a spec sheet:
- Networks: GSM Quad-band phone capable of global roaming (850/900/1800/1900 MHz); UMTS tri-band global 3G (900/1700/2100 MHz); GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s/HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s/HSDPA 7.2 Mbit/s
- Display: 3.10 inches HVGA screen, 320 x 480 pixels, Color, TFT
- Camera: 5 megapixels with AF
- Operating system: Google Android MOTOBLUR
- Input: 5-way navigation, Capacitive touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, Virtual keyboard
- CPU: 528MHz MSM7201A
- Memory: 256MB
- Memory card: microSD/microSDHC
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, 3.5mm HeadPhone Jack
- Misc: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WAV, AMR
- Media: MPEG4, 3GP, H.263, H.264
- Form factor: Slide-out
- Battery: 1400mAh
- Talk Time: 6 hours (360 mins)
- Standby Time: 324 hours (14 days)
- Dimensions: 4.49 x 2.28 x 0.62 inches (114 x 58 x 16 mm)
- Weight: 5.75 oz (163 g)
[T-Mobile]
A fun little fact for all you T-Mobile myTouch owners out there. The Environmental Working Group has published a list of phones ranked by how much radiation they emit during usage, and the myTouch is right at the top of the list, clocking in at 1.55 W/kg. There’s not much detail as to the testing procedure, or exactly what this means for the end user, but they seem to think it’s important. Will the myTouch give you brain cancer? Probably not. But if something like this is important to you, you may want to consider, say the Nokia 9300.
