Angry Birds developer Rovio announced on its Facebook account a few hours ago that "AT&T is also working on enabling purchases from the Amazon Appstore soon," which would mark a pretty big move on AT&T's part since they've been firm in their resolve to keep apps from outside the Android Market ecosystem off their branded Android devices -- a frustrating (and arguably illogical) stance, to say the least. Well, first the good news -- AT&T has confirmed to us that they are, in fact, setting up access to Amazon's store:

"We're working to give our Android customers access to third party application stores. This requires updates to our systems and finalizing arrangements with Amazon. We will share more info with our customers in the near future."

The bad news is that AT&T's having any discussions with Amazon about this at all, which would seem to indicate that they're planning on making an exception to their Android Market policy for the Amazon Appstore rather than simply enabling sideloading on devices altogether and calling it a day. We suppose this could involve a round of firmware updates that drops the Appstore in ROM, but that seems like an awful lot of work considering how much red tape is involved in pushing even a single update for one handset on a major carrier. More on this as we get it; hopefully, AT&T subscribers will have their Angry Birds Rio fix soon enough.

[Thanks, Thomas]

AT&T planning access to Amazon Appstore, sideloading still an open question originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We chatted with a fascinating French startup by the name of Wysips here at CTIA today that's showing off transparent photovoltaic film -- in other words, it generates power from light... and you can see right through it. It's the only such film in the world, apparently -- and though you can probably imagine a host of possible applications for something like that, turning the entire surface of a touchscreen smartphone into a self-sufficient, solar-powered beast is clearly high on the list. Read all about it after the break!

Continue reading Wysips wants to turn your phone's display into a solar cell (hands-on with video)

Wysips wants to turn your phone's display into a solar cell (hands-on with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Throwing a little caution to the wind over brewing GPS interference concerns, Cricket -- the CDMA budget carrier that specializes in contract-free plans -- has hooked up with LightSquared to deliver additional LTE service through a roaming agreement that'll supplement its own rollout "over the next few years. " All told, the moves should bring it up to technological speed with archrival MetroPCS, which deployed LTE last year (beating Verizon to market, actually) and currently has a pair of Samsung-sourced handsets on the market to take advantage of it. For LightSquared's part, this is exactly the type of deal they've been looking to ink: the company has expressed no interest in lighting up a retail-facing carrier of its own, instead offering wholesale LTE deals to other carriers -- like, say, Cricket -- who don't necessarily have the spectrum, the time, or the budget to roll out 4G in earnest. Follow the break for LightSquared's press release.

[Thanks, Mark]

Continue reading Cricket ties up with LightSquared for LTE roaming agreement

Cricket ties up with LightSquared for LTE roaming agreement originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Regional carrier Cricket surprised at CTIA today by showing off a couple new units that aren't out yet -- but they're in the pipeline for the second quarter, which the company points out is coming "very soon." First up is the Huawei Ascend 2, which -- you guessed it -- would be the follow-on to the original Ascend that the company launched last year. The display's still HVGA; WVGA obviously would've been nice, but Cricket is promising to launch it at the same sub-$150 price point as the first model and it's got a 5 megapixel camera around back (up from 3.2 before).

Next up, the Indulge is pretty much the same midrange QWERTY Android slider that already launched on MetroPCS, albeit with one big difference: this one has no LTE compatibility (Cricket has no live LTE network, after all). As with the Ascend 2, we would've preferred a WVGA display -- this one's just HVGA -- and the four physical buttons up front seem a bit out of style, but Cricket's still in a position where any new Android hardware is a very good thing. Look for it to launch for under $350 -- off contract, of course.

Cricket teases CDMA-only Samsung Indulge, Huawei Ascend 2 at CTIA (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC's HD7 was certainly one of the most handsome devices to be launched back at Windows Phone 7's retail introduction late last year -- and really, when you take the HD2's heritage as your starting point, it's hard to go wrong. Of course, in the last year and a half, mobile display technology has advanced by leaps and bounds -- and the original HD7 was using nothing more than a standard, old-school TFT LCD with less-than-perfect contrast and viewing angle specs. Well, that's where the HD7S comes into play: the "S" in the name presumably stands for Super LCD, the newer type of display that HTC's been using on recent 4.3-inch models like the Thunderbolt. It's quite pretty, but otherwise, it's the same HD7 as usual -- and really, considering how nice this hardware is, that's just alright by us. The phone also comes with the so-called "NoDo" update of Windows Phone 7 preinstalled, a fact we were able to verify with a quick look of the version number being reported in system settings. Check it out in the gallery!

HTC HD7S hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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