LG is teasing a new handset on the web, the Optimus Vu, which could make a debut at Mobile World Congress. The handset would be rather unique, and is LG's first to get a 4:3 aspect ratio for its large five-inch, 1024x768 IPS touchscreen. Otherwise, it shoud sport a 1.5GHz, dual-core Snapdragon chip and 1GB of RAM.
Two of the devices formally unveiled at AT&T's Developer Summit have shipped to stores as of Sunday. The Element is Pantech's first US tablet and focuses on its LTE-based 4G data and its water resistance as its selling points: the eight-inch Android 3.2 device can take splashes and most other common abuse.
South Korean cellphone maker Pantech revealed on Monday it is talking with Microsoft about if it should pay royalties for the patents the software giant holds on Android-powered devices. No specific details have been worked out yet, however, a spokesperson said. How much the patent license is worth hasn't been revealed either.
At a special event ahead of CES, AT&T has announced that it is set to launch six new LTE devices early this year. The offerings include Samsung's Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD and Exhilarate; Pantech's Element and Burst; and Sony's Xperia ion. The Note, a 5.3-inch device that fits somewhere between smartphones and tablets, was the subject of several recent leaks.
The splashproof Pantech Element tablet unveiled a few days ago is now available for pre-order at AT&T stores. The 16GB device should ship on January 22, though there are no examples in stores for demos as of yet, Engadget wrote. The price points of $300 on a two-year LTE data contract and $450 without one make this the least expensive tablet offered by the carrier.
AT&T should play host to at least one new tablet next week, based on a leak Wednesday. The Pantech Element seen by BGR would make water resistance and built-in LTE its selling points. With closeable ports, the eight-inch slate would be splash-proof and survive casual spills, though not a complete immersion in water.
South Korea's KT on Tuesday became the third carrier in the country to launch LTE-based 4G. Its Olleh 4G LTE service is starting up first with four phones, including the Pantech Vega and Samsung's Galaxy S II LTE, Galaxy S II HD LTE, and Galaxy Note LTE. A unique trick of the new network is an adapative system known as Warp: KT can tie as many as 144 cell sites into one virtual station and dynamically put bandwidth where it's needed, potentially avoiding bottlenecks.
Pantech is reportedly preparing to launch an eight-inch tablet that will arrive in the US with support for AT&T's 4G LTE network. Although the company has yet to formally introduce the tablet, the information published by Korean news outlet JKN corroborates earlier reports pointing to benchmark tests for a Pantech tablet that carries the model number P4100.
A new smartphone from China's Pantech has just shown up at the FCC, and is significant as Pantech's second US phone with a 4G LTE radio. It has support for AT&T's 700, 850, and 1700MHz LTE bands. The handset is thus far known only as the P9070, but that's likely to change when and if it does show up at AT&T.
Verizon Wireless has just brought out holiday pricing and a number of new devices in time for Thanksgiving and the Black Friday holiday rish. It will get a new, red HTC Droid Incredible 2 and offer Motorola's 4G LTE-equipped Motorola Xoom tablet for $200 on contract. Both will be available online on November 24, 25, and 28, and in-store on November 25 only. The phone will be free with a new two-year contract, but only after a $50 mail-in rebate. The Xoom LTE will require a two-year contract with at least a $30 monthly plan for 2GB of data.
AT&T has announced that it will be releasing three additional smartphones in its Android lineup. The carrier will begin shipping the Samsung Captivate Glide and DoubleTime, and the Pantech Pocket, on November 20. All three phones carry a $50 price tag with a contract.
Korea's Pantech aims to make distinctive smartphones thanks to adding gesture recognition to its wares. Developed in conjunction with Israel-based eyeSight Mobile Technologies, the feature will come to the Vega LTE. The feature will allow answering calls and controlling music playback without ever touching the phone.
Pantech was steered into striking a patent licensing deal with Intellectual Ventures late Wednesday. The pact gives it use of 35,000 patents for defense against the growing rash of patent lawsuits and countersuits. The Korean smartphone maker's IP strategy leader Chadong Hwang spun the deal as one that let it "stay ahead of the curve" and keep making the phones it wanted.
Although Verizon has been focusing its attention on the upcoming Stratosphere handset this week at CTIA, several Pantech phones were also on hand at the expo. Electronista took a look at the Breakout, Verizon's budget-focused LTE handset. The device is one of the most compact LTE devices, with a feature set that is not far off from the expensive competition.
AT&T rounded out a slew of Android phones with a pair of more affordable models, including just its second for prepaid users. Regular subscribers get the Pantech Pocket, which carries an unusually wide four-inch, 600x800 display intended to improve browsing while staying small enough to be usable one-handed. The carrier is unusually short on performance details but does promise HSPA+ Internet access, a five-megapixel camera with HD video, and Android 2.3.
A new quick messaging phone, the Pantech Link II, is now available at AT&T for just $10 after a two-year contract and subsidies. The BREW Mobile 1.0.2-powered handset replaces the original Link but retains the hardware QWERTY keyboard for quick text messaging, e-mails, and IM chats. The handset is 10.7mm thick, including its rubberized back.
Pantech has taken the wraps off its latest Android smartphone, the Vega LTE. The device should keep Pantech on par with brand new LG and Samsung phones by carrying a 4.5-inch, 1280x720 display, on Android 2.3. Along with the 4G data from its name, it will stay on par with a dual-core 1.5GHz chip and 1GB of RAM.
Verizon has planned an unusual emphasis on design for a basic feature phone with the Pantech Hotshot. The touch-only device sports a thin, 0.35-inch profile more common to modern smartphones and gets a 3.2-inch touchscreen. There are three home screens that can be customized with contacts, photos and shortcuts.
The successor to last year's Pantech Jest will soon arrive at Verizon Wireless, the carrier announced on Tuesday. The Jest 2 has a slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard and has quad-band GSM support for roaming in more than 200 countries. Web browsing on the 2.4-inch LCD is thanks to the preloaded Opera Mini app.
An unheard of device called the Pantech P4100 has been accidentally revealed by a NenaMark benchmark test. The device is likely a tablet and should arrive at AT&T. Processing power will come from a 1.5GHz Snapdragon paired with an Adreno 220 graphics core.
Verizon brought out its first 4G smartphone without a premium price on Monday by confirming the existence of the Pantech Breakout. The Android 2.3 phone still reaches the full 5-12Mbps real speeds of the LTE network and can even create a 10-device Wi-Fi hotspot. At just $100 on contract and with a rebate, however, it costs just a third the price of other 4G phones on the network.
Pantech's Breakout handset appears to have arrived at some Verizon locations ahead of the rumored launch date. Imaged posted by Droid-Life show one of the upcoming devices in the wild, complete with a Verizon badge. The Breakout is expected to be the carrier's first budget-priced LTE smartphone, as a cheaper alternative to the $300 Droid Bionic, $300 Droid Charge or the $200 LG Revolution.
Pantech's Breakout handset may be set to arrive at Verizon stores as early as next week, according to a specifications sheet that was posted by Droid-Life. The fresh leak corroborates earlier reports, suggesting the device will arrive as Verizon's first LTE handset aimed at budget-conscious subscribers.
Verizon on Tuesday confirmed intentions to take its $50 unlimited prepaid plan national this week. As of Thursday, prepaid customers will get unlimited voice, text, and data. New phone picks will be limited to basic phones like the LG Cosmos, Pantech Caper, and those from Samsung.
Two upcoming Verizon handsets were just leaked over at PocketNow. The Pantech Breakout LTE is the more advanced device, with LTE network support and a four-inch 480x800 screen. It will likely be a rare budget 4G Android phone and sport a 1GHz, single-core processor along with 512MB or RAM.
An AT&T roadmap surfacing Tuesday has given clues as to the network's non-iPhone launch strategy for the late summer and fall. Along with known quantities like the Torch 9860, it shows at least two Windows Phone 7 Mango devices. One fall release, the "Kupua," is Samsung's i937, is believed to mostly be a take on the Galaxy S II using Microsoft's OS. The other seen by PocketNow, the HTC "Bunyip," is most likely the Eternity 4.7-inch flagship.
South Korea's Ministry of Knowledge Economy deputy minister Kim Jae-hong stated late Monday that the country was looking to develop its own mobile and desktop operating systems to reduce dependency on outsiders like Apple and Google. A plan due to start before the end of 2011 would see Korean companies, presumably LG, Samsung, Pantech, and others, make their own open-source platforms both for mobile and a Chrome OS-like desktop. It would also hope to establish a "habitat," Kim told Yonhap and other media outlets, where locals were encouraged to pick their own OS over others.
AT&T started off the week with promises that much of its Android smartphone line would get Android 2.3. Starting with the just-live Atrix 4G update, every postpaid (regular subscription) phone would get the OS. The Inspire 4G was next with an August upgrade, but the Samsung Captivate and Infuse 4G, the LG Phoenix, and Pantech Crossover would all get the modern OS.
Apple, Amazon, Nokia, Research in Motion and several other companies are all violating patents related to GPRS networking, a new lawsuit alleges. The plaintiff is GPNE, a company based in Honolulu, Hawaii. GPRS is the basic data platform associated with modern GSM phone networks. 3G, in the form of HSPA, represents an additional layer.
AT&T finished the week by rolling out an upgrade to one of its core messaging phones. Pantech's Pursuit II switches to a vertical QWERTY slider design instead of the original's side slider, but its changes revolve mostly around its use of Qualcomm's Brew MP platform. The OS is built for basic feature phones but gives it more smartphone-like apps and a more accurate HTML-capable browser.
Pantech jumped to Android in the US for the first time on Tuesday with an AT&T model, the Crossover. The QWERTY keyboard slider is aimed at the budget set with a 3.1-inch touchscreen, a three-megapixel camera, and a 600MHz processor, but still promises more than basics. The design is ruggedized and comes with AllSport GPS out of the box for exercising.
Pantech has unveiled a new flagship smartphone that could give it a rare speed edge in the smartphone world. The Vega Racer should be the first to use Qualcomm's dual-core, 1.5GHz Snapdragon MSM8660 and outpace even 1.2GHz dual-core phones like the HTC Evo 3D. The chip's inherently much faster Adreno 220 graphics could give it an edge in visuals not normally associated with Snapdragon chips.
Verizon Wireless today officially launched its "Unleashed" monthly prepaid calling plan. The plan includes unlimited text and calls as well as unlimited "Mobile Web". Three smart phones will be available to customers, the LG Accolade, the LG Cosmos and the Pantech Caper. Initially, the Unleashed plan will only be available in Florida and southern California.
The WebM Project took a defensive measure on Monday with the creation of the WebM Community Cross-License. The approach will see 17 companies and groups give licenses to any WebM-related patents they have to other CCL members. Google, Matroska, and Xiph.org form the core but are joined by AMD, Cisco, Huawei, LG, Logitech, MIPS, Mozilla, Opera, Pantech, Quanta, Samsung, STMicro, TI, and Verisilicon.
(Update: photos fixed) PCD's booth at CTIA inadvertently gave away Pantech's plans for a budget messaging phone on Verizon. The Caper is a prepaid phone explicitly aimed at "your 'tween or teen mobile user" with a candybar QWERTY shape. Most of the details haven't been mentioned, but a 1.3-megapixel back camera and a 2.2-inch display make it an unmistakable starter phone.
Verizon has quietly added Mac support to the second of its two current 4G modems. The LG VL600 now works with any Mac supporting Mac OS X Tiger or later in 32-bit mode. Like the Pantech modem, the USB stick should provide about 5-12Mbps downstream under a real-world network load and up to 5Mbps upstream.
The 4G LTE-capable Pantech UML290 USB modem introduced at the start of December for Verizon has just received a driver that would make it Mac-compatible. Available on the carrier's support page, the software marks the first time Mac users will get access to Verizon's LTE network. The LG VL600 modem introduced alongside the Pantech device doesn't yet offer a Mac driver.
Verizon in an update on Tuesday afternoon said it would both update its LG VL600 4G modem and give Mac users LTE support. The LG hardware should get an update that improves its performance on the new network. Mac support would come in February, a spokesperson told PhoneScoop, though it wasn't said whether that was for existing devices.
Pantech has introduced a new Android 2.2-powered handset in its home market of Korea, unique in that it offers considerably faster DDR2 RAM. Pantech claims the specs make the phone twice as fast as anything that came before it from the company when it comes to 3D graphics processing; it could rival a PC, the phone maker said. Power efficiency is said to be improved by two- to threefold.
Samsung late on Sunday claimed the distinction of outpacing Apple to two million sales of a given smartphone model in Korea. The native firm sold two million Galaxy S phones in the six months since launch, beating the iPhone's 1.8 million since it went on sale over a year ago. The rate was a slight slowdown from the summer, when Samsung sold 800,000 phones in two months.
A new, previously unheard of handset from Pantech has just been spotted on the FCC website. Some technical details on the device were revealed by the listing, including GSM, EDGE and HSPA 3G on the 850MHz and 1,900MHz frequency bands, that would place it on AT&T's network. The device will otherwise get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, while the technical drawing shows a camera, though how many megapixels it packs remains unknown.
PC Mag contributor Sascha Segan revealed in a Twitter update that Verizon Wireless will soon begin offering LTE USB modems without the thus far required contract. This will likely include the current two offerings from LG and Pantech, and while the monthly rates remain the same, at $50 and $80 depending on the choice of a 5GB or 10GB plan, they will have a $250 purchase price when not attached to a contract.
Last week, the California Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit against Nokia, LG Electronics and STMicroelectronics, among others, over allegedly infringing patents related to cellphone camera technology. Nine patents are under dispute, with handsets from the two electronics giants as well as Pantech allegedly violating its works. Caltech seeks unspecified damages for what it said in the suit was willful infringement.
Verizon as promised today confirmed the launch of its LTE-based 4G network. The service will go live in all of the planned 38 initial cities, including 60 airports, on December 5. Average speeds should be about 10 times faster than Verizon's 3G, at between 5Mbps and 12Mbps; the performance is enough that 20 typical photos could download in one minute or a single song in four seconds, Verizon said.
A late leak this evening has provided some details of what will show at Verizon's 4G press conference. The LTE network is now due to go live on December 5 and will start out with the twoUSB modems leaked earlier. LG's VL600 will be a typical thumb-sized drive, while the Pantech UML290 just spotted in the Engadget leak (shown below) has a unique dual-swivel design to accommodate earlier MacBook Airs and others with tight fits.
Verizon at last committed to firmer details of its LTE-based 4G network today with word that it would hold a press event on December 1. Company CTO Tony Melone will provide information on the "major 4G LTE network launch." The company is only providing access to the event from the phone or by Twitter and hasn't given other clues as to what will be involved beyond what was already known.
As Verizon prepares to launch its LTE-based 4G network in select cities, two of the USB modems have surfaced on the company's Testman site. The devices include LG's VL600, which has been detailed in earlier leaks, and Pantech's UML290. Both modems are expected to offer backwards compatibility with existing 3G networks.
Verizon added a second phone today and will begin carrying the Pantech Crux starting Thursday, October 28. Built by PCD, the phone has a 3-inch touchscreen display supplemented with external control keys for the home screen and other common tasks. Pantech pre-installs widgets for accessing social networking sites.
AT&T on Wednesday said the Pantech Laser phone is due to arrive on its network on October 17. The device is the thinnest from the provider equipped with a QWERTY hardware keyboard, at less than 0.4 inches thick. It also sports a 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen and a Drawing Commander app that lets users open messages or make calls by tracing a shape with their finger on the screen.
A more detailed Verizon roadmap has surfaced today that not only provides more color for its tablet and smartphone plans but suggests trouble for RIM. The Motorola Stingray tablet was supposedly verified as real by the Engadget source and should be a 10-inch, Android 3.0 flagship device running on a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 and 16GB of storage. Unusually, it would only ship with 3G but would be "hardware upgradeable to LTE" for 4G, presumably through a card or a USB modem.
