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Lenovo's 'all-screen' smartphone is a lie
After ramping up the hype for the Z5, Lenovo revealed the goods, and they weren't as advertised. Its new phone, teased since May, landed with a bit of a chin at the base -- and a notch at the top. So, that's the worst of both worlds? Now, we'd make less of a fuss if the company hadn't already coaxed out teaser images of a phone with a screen that appeared to truly stretch to the edges. It turns out that the render was just that: A render and nothing else.
HTC Hero heading to Sprint October 11th for $179.99, no chin in sight (update: exclusive to Sprint)
Semi-official no longer, Sprint has now officially announced the HTC Hero for its network. Here's the skinny: it's coming October 11th and will be $179.99 after assorted rebates. Also noteworthy? It's the chinless model we just spied just days ago, but otherwise it looks like the same internals, Exchange Active Sync, and Sense UI we've been toying with for months now, plus Sprint TV. Pre-registration (note: not pre-order) is now available for those eager to already claim stake. We can't help but notice there's no mention of exclusivity here, but regardless, well played, Sprint, between this and the Pre, you're amassing quite a nice collection, there. Update: We spoke to Sprint, and the Hero is in fact an exclusive for the company. Read - Press release Read - Hero pre-registration
Mysterious HTC Hero revision pics surface, angled chin now M.I.A.
It's not unusual for HTC to repackage the same phone in dramatic ways for different carriers (see Sprint Touch Pro vs. Verizon's vs AT&T Fuze), but the Hero that 8080.net reportedly has is a pretty marked difference -- most notably a more conservative chin. Here's what we can glean from the admittedly bad machine translation: the outlet claims it's the Hero200 that the FCC just approved for CDMA bands, and while it certainly seems like a Hero variant one way or another, we have no proof that this is actually the same recently-approved version, nor have we seen what Sprint's Hero will actually look like. With all those caveats all the way, feel free to jump into the read link and enjoy a number of pictures up close and personal with the device. [Via Cloned in China]
Chinese WoW partial relaunch pics, comparison shots of censorship
MMOsite.com has nabbed some pictures of the return to the Chinese World of Warcraft. As you know if you've been paying attention, the game has been offline over there for a few months now, but the game just recently got approved to go back online, and so they're in the middle of a "partial relaunch" (which I believe is taking the form of a closed beta) and the servers are crowding up again. As you can see, there's a stampede (much like ours) going on in Thunder Bluff -- looks like players are happy to be online again.They also have some comparison images of the censorship found over there. Anything with skulls or bones on it is out, and the offending images have been replaced with piles of dirt and bags and debris. Blood appears as black oil rather than red liquid, and even player corpses are out. As you can see, everywhere players die, there are instead little graves and tombstones around. Very interesting. No idea if this actually "helps" in China (or what the point of the censorship is -- seems as though it's a cultural thing, more like it's a respect for death and dead bodies rather than worrying about whether people will be disturbed by the mention of violence), but of course the government over there has final say on what goes into the game, and apparently this is what they approved. Hopefully Chinese players will be headed back to Northrend before long.
