Fairbanks -- Engadget Mobile

fairbanks posts

More of Motorola's 2009 Verizon lineup leaked

by Joshua Topolsky posted Dec 18th 2008 @ 7:38AM

Apparently the Motorola leak-fest begun yesterday hasn't come to a halt. After witnessing some compelling renders of smartphones the company has headed to Verizon, we're now privy to a set of featurephone / dumbphone mockups -- all courtesy of the Boy Genius Report. The new images show off a device supposedly called the "Niagra" (pictured), a slider in the vein of yesterday's "Calgary" QWERTY phone, a dowdy looking number called the "Fairbanks" (a PTT device), and a clamshell called the "Harmony." The latter two phones could hardly stoke much excitement, but the Niagra definitely gives us some hope for Moto's big comeback. Now -- these will all be powered by Android, right?

No joke: Qualcomm's Snapdragon prototypes don't use Snapdragon

by Chris Ziegler posted Jan 10th 2008 @ 10:11PM

We seriously have no idea what Qualcomm was thinking here, but it turns out that those two so-called "Snapdragon prototypes" being shown at CES this year... wait for it... don't use the Snapdragon platform. Now, that would've been just fine with us had Qualcomm made it clear that they were built using its existing chipsets, but they didn't. Here's the best part: Qualcomm actually contacted us with a minor correction on our original story (they wanted us to point out that their ARM-based cores are highly customized) without bothering to mention that our "Snapdragon-powered" statement was not accurate. Anyway, it turns out that the Anchorage and Fairbanks prototypes are merely meant to demonstrate "examples of what Snapdragon-enabled devices will feature," which begs the question: if the current MSM series chipsets are capable of the same functionality, aren't those probably the wrong features to be demonstrating? That behavior walks a fine line between poorly executed PR and outright deception, Qualcomm, and we'd ask that you not let it happen again.

[Thanks, Sascha]

Qualcomm shows off new mobile reference designs

by Chris Ziegler posted Jan 8th 2008 @ 1:11PM

Let's put aside Qualcomm's legal woes for just a moment and turn our attention to something a little more interesting and heartwarming: awesome-looking prototype devices. The company is showing off a pair of reference designs showcasing its new Snapdragon chipset, a heap of silicon said to offer one of the best power to performance ratios in the mobile world. First up, the "Fairbanks" is Qualcomm's idea of what a next-gen dedicated GPS unit might look like, rocking a 3 megapixel still / video camera, TV tuner, and microSD expansion on some sort of custom Windows CE base. Next up, the "Anchorage" (pictured) does the typical slide-out QWERTY smartphone concept in pure style with one critical difference -- this one is humming along at a staggering 1GHz. It's got pretty much every kind of radio one could want or need and apparently has enough horsepower to hoist a full OS, which only serves to further our deep, dark depression that they're not-for-retail concepts.