You might say that Verizon's brand new BlackBerry Tour 9630... ahem, took a "tour" through our offices this morning, gracing us with its QWERTY-having, global-roaming, 8830-killing presence. There's absolutely no question it's the best-looking CDMA BlackBerry to date and we also think you'll be able to stop Bold owners in their tracks as you flash this thing around town; we'd argue that the Curve 8900 is still a cuter handset when you take the company's lineup as a whole, but then again, the 8900 lacks 3G, and the Tour's keyboard might just be the best RIM's ever crafted for a phone. Bottom line, owners of any BlackBerry on Verizon or Sprint should be salivating at the sight of this thing -- and if they're not, honestly, they need their salivary glands checked. Stay tuned for our full review, but in the meantime, enjoy an unboxing and a few quick shots of the Tour taking its first breaths!

With home screen widgets, an on-screen keyboard, great notification management, and hands-down the best Gmail experience of any platform, Android 1.5 finally makes it easy (or easier, anyway) to love Google's foray into the mobile world. Of course, if you're coming from an iPhone -- as some users inevitably will be -- there are a few features that'll be sorely missed as you make the transition. For us, a biggie was visual voicemail, and after a little trial and error, we found a cool way to add it into our device without even leaving the Google ecosystem -- and even better, it's totally free. Follow the break for the full story!

We here at Engadget Mobile tend to spend a lot of way too much time poring over the latest FCC filings, be it on the net or directly on the ol' Federal Communications Commission's site. Since we couldn't possibly (want to) cover all the stuff that goes down there, we've gathered up all the raw info you may want (but probably don't need). Enjoy!

Phones
Read - Huawei U9105
Read - Huawei G3500
Read - Samsung SGH-A887
Read - Samsung S6700C
Read - Samsung SCH-W920
Read - Samsung SCH-i920
Read - Samsung SCH-U450
Read - ZTE S131-T
Read - LG AX310

Peripherals
Read - Option GI0452
Read - LG HBM-580
Read - LG HFB-510
Read - Huawei K3715

There isn't much left to say about LG's Versa that we haven't already said, but we've gotta say that this limited edition Transformers one is pretty sweet. The custom battery cover has a cool themed motif with the movie's logo and Optimus Prime himself (itself?) and release date along the bottom, while the keyboard attachment has a reflective Transformers logo on the front and more branding on the back. The device itself has been customized with backgrounds and a new startup / shutdown image, but otherwise this thing's pretty standard. The coolest part may be the box itself, which is seemingly inspired by the Allspark, and is made out of metal and covered with glyphs like those seen in the film. Be sure to check out the gallery to see this thing up close and personal, and stay tuned for you chance to win this limited edition device in the near future!

We've been playing with Motorola's recently-announced Endeavor HX1 for the past few hours, and we're just going to come right out with it: this is the best Bluetooth headset we've ever used. Moto claims that the HX1 is the world's first consumer headset to use "true bone conduction technology," a veiled (but obvious) reference to the external cheek-resting sensor found on Jawbone's devices -- and indeed, the Jawbone Prime is the most obvious direct competitor to the HX1. Both devices offer decent styling, feature optional earloops and a selection of earbuds for a tighter fit, are being positioned as premium headsets, and -- most importantly -- pack a ton of innovative circuitry all in the name of cutting noise in harsh surroundings. Follow the break for our quick impressions!

Hosts: Chris Ziegler and Sean Cooper
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Solvent - Devices and Strategies (Ghostly International)


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We're going to need some real time with the device to make a final opinion, but we're cautiously optimistic that HTC has a winner with its new Hero. Here's what we've got from our first looks at the phone in London and NY:

• The beveled edges along the back makes the handset sit comfortably in the hand, and while the teflon coat doesn't necessarily feel revolutionary, it's going to make a world of difference after a couple of months riding in our grubby pockets. It's certainly solid, but much more so than other "brick" phones.
• The Sense UI (or as HTC terms it, "user experience") riding a capacitive touchscreen offers a people-centric approach to managing your information that is absolutely dreamy at first blush -- though it shares a lot of TouchFLO heritage. In fact, HTC promises to have a very similar Sense-branded experience for Windows Mobile.
  
• The on-screen keyboard also seems quite useable with a nice simulated haptic forced-feedback bounce when you strike each key in either landscape or portrait mode (which can naturally be deactivated). HTC has built its own touch keyboard from the ground up, and in our brief couple of tests we'd say it's probably the best touchscreen typing experience we've ever felt. It never lags behind, and has great colorful visual cues for its auto-corrected words -- green means it's suggesting a correctly spelled word, red means we've gone off the beaten path, and the T9-style multiple suggestions are heavenly.
• This intuitive one-hander isn't shy with the specs either as we've already seen in the official press release. Our only concern is possible sluggishness from the Qualcomm processor that cause the graphic transitions to stutter a bit and results in screen rotations that feel dangerously uncomfortable.
• We were told that the device we saw was running pre-production firmware so there's still time to tweak -- though not much with a July European launch.
• The Hero is not a "Google Experience" device. As such, you won't find the Google logo anywhere (no big deal) but you also won't be downloading any firmware updates over the air -- sideloading only kids. Not a deal breaker but an annoying and seemingly arbitrary limitation nonetheless. There's still a small lack of clarity of how updates will work with HTC's "mods" living on top of basic Android -- even if they're able to port in new Android versions seamlessly, we imagine there will be some breakage.
• For a device without a physical keyboard, the Hero seems a little thick up against its HTC Magic, Nokia N97, and iPhone 3G counterparts, but not overly so.
• HTC has confirmed that whichever (unspecified) carrier gets the phone in the US will have a modified version, both in software (carrier-specific services) and in hardware chassis tweaks. Just don't take our teflon away, ok HTC?
• Battery is the same larger slab that's in the myTouch, and HTC also claims to have done some vague, unspecified things OS-side to improve battery life as well. "Heavy users will be able to get through a day."
• The camera is responsive and seems to do a fine job at autofocus, but wasn't astonishingly great at first glance.
• The phone will be available for free on T-Mobile UK -- if only we could be so subsidy lucky in the US.
  

There are four videos for you after the break. The first shows Flash running at full screen on the HTC Hero courtesy of YouTube. The second, however, shows it failing when running a trailer from Yahoo Movies, just like Adobe did -- in fact, it crashed all four times that we tried it on what we were told was a Hero running the final build of the OS. Third one is a quickie showing the on-screen keyboard rotating from portrait to landscape and back. Lastly, we demonstrate the hardware a little bit and show off our lightning speed at typing. For the real completists, there's also a new gallery of hands-on shots from the NY launch event right below.

Thomas Ricker and Chris Ziegler came away from their N97s with very different opinions of Nokia's premier superphone -- and they weren't afraid to let those opinions be known in a series of vicious verbal volleys. Head on over to Engadget for all the drama!

We here at Engadget Mobile tend to spend a lot of way too much time poring over the latest FCC filings, be it on the net or directly on the ol' Federal Communications Commission's site. Since we couldn't possibly (want to) cover all the stuff that goes down there, we've gathered up all the raw info you may want (but probably don't need). Enjoy!

Phones
Read - Huawei U9107
Read - Huawei U7510
Read - ZTE S315 / S315+
Read - ZTE S130
Read - ZTE S302
Read - ZTE R220
Read - LG GD710
Read - LG GW525
Read - LG GT950
Read - Sharp E06SH
Read - Samsung B7320L
Read - Samsung i6220

Peripherals
Read - Samsung WEP301
Read - ZTE MF210

Hosts: Chris Ziegler
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Solvent - Devices and Strategies (Ghostly International)



Subscribe to the podcast

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes
[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Mobile Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically
[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Mobile Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace

Download the podcast

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Contact the podcast

podcast (at) engadgetmobile (dot) com.

As we know from its WWDC unveiling, the iPhone 3G S is basically a 3G with some faster bits, more memory, and a better camera -- but is it worth the price of admission? Head on over to our full review for the answers you seek (and maybe some you don't)!

We here at Engadget Mobile tend to spend a lot of way too much time poring over the latest FCC filings, be it on the net or directly on the ol' Federal Communications Commission's site. Since we couldn't possibly (want to) cover all the stuff that goes down there, we've gathered up all the raw info you may want (but probably don't need). Enjoy!

Phones
Read - ZTE A292
Read - ZTE A712+
Read - ZTE S315
Read - Samsung SCH-U640
Read - Samsung SCH-R350
Read - Samsung SCH-R451
Read - Samsung SPH-M560
Read - Samsung S6700
Read - Samsung S5630C
Read - LG GW820

Peripherals
Read - ZTE AC2746
Read - Huawei ETS1360
Read - Pantech UMW190

We've just taken delivery of one of the very first retail Nokia N97s ever to be sold anywhere, and we wanted you to revel in the experience with us. We haven't formed any impressions yet, but we're being told that the retail device includes some last-minute improvements to keyboard feel -- and we can confirm that it feels pretty usable (the tiny right-aligned space bar could still be an issue for some, though). Stay tuned over the coming days for plenty of coverage on this sucker, but for now, enjoy a quick unboxing, won't you?

It won't be available en masse until the 17th of the month, but the gold build of iPhone OS 3.0 is now available to developers -- a promising sign that apps taking advantage of a wide variety of 3.0's new features (push notifications, in-app payments, and the like) will be available by the time it's released to the general public. We've been toying around with the latest cut here and have noticed a few small changes from beta 5; nothing groundbreaking, but notable nonetheless. Most importantly, iTunes is now offering movie, TV and music video downloads directly from the phone, which has caused the bottom navigation bar to be rearranged a bit. We also noticed that the App Store's nav bar was rearranged a bit to accommodate a "More" button where you'll find Top 25 and Redeem links. The Store screen in Settings now shows a nicely-formatted account information screen -- nice, we suppose -- but unfortunately, MMS configurability is still missing, so it's unclear whether AT&T will need to push an update once it flips the switch. Dive into the gallery for a closer look.

The very first thing we want to know about this newfangled iPhone 3G S is exactly what we're getting for our extra Benjamin (or two, depending on the model you spring for). We don't have all the answers just yet -- Apple's being coy about processor specs on the 3G S, for example -- but here's what we do know so far.

Basics
	iPhone 3G	iPhone 3G S
Price	$99 8GB ($299 for ineligible upgraders)	$199 16GB, $299 32GB ($399 and $499 for ineligible upgraders)
Processor	412MHz ARM 11	600MHz ARM 11
Graphics capability	OpenGL ES 1.1	OpenGL ES 2.0
Camera	2.0 megapixel fixed focus	3.0 megapixel autofocus with macro mode and auto white balance
Video recording	None	30fps VGA with on-device editing capability
Voice control	None	Dialing, music control
Nike+ support	No	Yes
Wireless technologies	3.6Mbps HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR	7.2Mbps HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Water- and oil-resistant finish	No	Yes
Integrated magnetic compass	No	Yes
Included headphones	Standard	Inline remote for music control
Battery life	Up to 5 hours talk time / data on 3G, 10 hours on 2G Up to 6 hours data on WiFi Up to 24 hours audio Up to 7 hours video	Up to 5 hours talk time / data on 3G, 12 hours on 2G Up to 9 hours data on WiFi Up to 30 hours audio Up to 10 hours video
Dimensions	115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3mm	115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3mm
Weight	133 grams / 4.69 oz.	135 grams / 4.76 oz.

Update: Turns out the original 3G only supports OpenGL ES 1.1, not 2.0. Thanks, Andri S.!