It’s taken a long time for Nokia’s MeeGo-packing N9 to make its way into our top secret labs (the N9 moniker was first applied to early E7 prototypes), but it’s here in our dirty little hands, at last, and it’s glorious — well, as glorious as a stillborn product can be, anyway. The N9 is the latest and greatest in a long line of quirky, interesting, yet ultimately flawed touchscreen experiments from Nokia that includes the Hildon-sporting 7710, a series of Maemo-based “internet tablets” (770, N800, N810, N900) and most recently, the N950 MeeGo handset for developers. What makes the N9 special is that it represents Nokia’s last flagship phone as an independent player. MeeGo is already dead, and future high-end devices from the manufacturer will run Windows Phone and use Microsoft’s services. So, is this the company’s final bittersweet hurray? Did MeeGo ever stand a chance against Android, iOS and Mango? In its attempt to stay relevant, is Nokia throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Most importantly, how does the N9 fare in today’s merciless dual-core world? Find out after the break.

Continue reading Nokia N9 review

Nokia N9 review originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There were some mumblings that T-Mobile’s OG Galaxy Tab would come packing a Micro SIM, but that rumor never came to pass. Now a similar tale is being spun about Verizon’s LTE-sporting Galaxy Tab 10.1. Android Central got its green, fingerless arms on a purported image of Big Red training docs that reveals the Honeycomb slate will not use the standard-sized 4G SIMs found in the Thunderbolt, Droid Charge, Revolution — instead, it will come stuffed with a tiny 3FF card. The company has already made it abundantly clear that there will be no LTE roaming with its devices, perhaps now it’s trying to discourage users from swapping a single SIM between a phone and tablet to save cash. Or, maybe Samsung chose the format due to space constraints. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see — which hopefully won’t be much longer.

Verizon’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 may pack Micro SIMs, force Charge owners to break out the scissors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ve got to admit, this is a little weird: we’ve received a number of tips today about T-Mobile USA customers being shipped Micro SIMs rather than the typical Mini SIMs. We’ve gotten a picture of just such a module (see above), and you can plainly see it’s not a hybrid — it can’t be snapped out as a Mini SIM, meaning that unless you’ve got an adapter lying around, you need to head into the store to get it swapped out for the right kind. The only consumer devices out there in any measurable quantity right now that make use of Micro SIMs are, of course, the iPad and iPhone 4 — and when you pair this up with the fact that T-Mobile stores are starting to sell iPhone cables right now, the situation is starting to get wacky. Now, we still want to stop short of suggesting this means T-Mobile is getting either the iPad or iPhone any time soon; after all, Apple would have to provide a new hardware variant that supports AWS 3G, and it’s totally reasonable to think the carrier could be offering other phones in the near future that’ll use Micro SIMs. We do love us a good conspiracy theory, though.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

T-Mobile customers being mistakenly shipped Micro SIMs, just begging to get shoved into iPhones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Nov 2010 19:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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