Up to now, the list of phones running Android 2.3 Gingerbread has been a sadly short one.  But at least one Android phone maker seems to be stepping up to the plate to take a bite: Motorola.

According to Moto employee Moto_Calvin, the Droid X will be the first to receive the update followed by the Droid 2 and Droid Pro.  There were also loose dates in the post: the Droid X Android 2.3 update will be ready to roll by the end of next month, while the other handsets mentioned will be updated “"before the end of the third quarter…”  Not exactly speedy, but at least it’s something.

Update: The forum post by Moto_Calvin has been edited and most of the interesting information above is now gone.  We’re not sure if this means the information was incorrect or if ol’ Cal just posted out of turn. 

via ComputerWorld

T-Mobile has just announced it has increased the speed of its ‘4G’ wireless data network to a theoretical 42 megabits per second (Mbps) in 55 U.S. markets.  While this doesn’t mean much for smartphone users just yet, it is great news for laptop users who want faster internet access on their mobile PCs. 

To go with the new data transfer speeds, T-Mobile is also launching a new 4G USB modem, the ZTE Rocket 3.0, which will go on sale tomorrow for $99 with a two-year contract (after a $50 mail-in rebate), $199 sans contract. 

Smartphones with support for the new network speeds are certainly coming, though we don’t know anything definite on that point just yet.  Stay tuned.  It also should be noted that a “theoretical speed” is just that; real-world speeds will be slower, but we’ll have to wait to see just how much slower once the devices launch.

We’ve posted a list of the locations where the new data speeds are available after the jump.

Albany, GA, Athens, GA, Auburn, AL, Augusta, GA, Austin, TX, Bentonville, AK, Boulder, CO, Chattanooga, TN, Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX, Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL, Denver, CO, Detroit, MI, Durham, NC, El Paso, TX, Fort Collins, CO, Gainesville, FL, Gainesville, GA, Greeley, CO, Honolulu, HI, Houston, TX, Jacksonville, FL, Long Island, NY, Los Angeles, CA, Long Beach, CA, Santa Ana, CA, Macon, GA, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, Miami, FL, New Orleans, LA, Oklahoma City, OK, Olympia, WA, Omaha, NE, Oxnard, CA, Thousand Oaks, CA, Ventura, CA, Phoenix, AZ, Pittsburgh, PA, Ponce, Puerto Rico, Portland, OR, Salinas, CA, San Francisco, CA, Oakland, CA, Fremont, CA, San Jose, CA, Sunnyvale, CA, Santa Clara, CA, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Santa Cruz, CA, Watsonville, CA, Santa Rosa, CA, Petaluma, CA, Savannah, CA, Seattle, WA, Spokane, WA, Tampa, FL, Tulsa, OK, Valdosta, GA, Vellejo, CA, Fairfield, CA, Warner Robins, GA, Wichita, KS.

Reuters is reporting that sometime this summer Verizon Wireless will join AT&T in killing off unlimited data plans for all smartphones, including Windows Phone, Android, the iPhone 4 and upcoming iPhone 4S / 5. 

If true, the transition could go one of two ways:

Verizon could, like AT&T, offer two options, one relatively inexpensive with a ridiculously low data cap, and one basically the same cost as the previous unlimited plan but with a new 2GB monthly limit.  Or, they could do something truly competitive and offer say 200MB for $5 per month with several tiered options up to a maximum limit of, say 4GB, that still costs less than the current $30 unlimited plan. 

We’ll let you guess which they’ll choose.  In any case, it looks like with this move by Verizon and AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile, unlimited smartphone data will soon be a thing of the past.

We were expecting a March release… then April, but May works, too. This morning Verizon Wireless announced that their first Windows Phone 7 handset, the HTC Trophy, will launch – at last – next Thursday, May 26th.

Other than the date of sale, there were no real surprises: 3.8-inch touchscreen, 16GB of onboard storage, no microSDHC memory card slot, 1GHz Shapdragon CPU, 5MP camera with 720p video recording.

Verizon will begin selling the Trophy on May 26, 2011, online for $149 after a $50 rebate and a two-year contract; the Windows Phone will show up in Verizon retail stores a week later.

Microsoft announced some business features of the upcoming “Mango” update to Windows Phone, widely expected to be called Windows Phone 7.5.  There’s nothing terribly exciting here, but the new features will be welcome additions to Microsoft’s smartphone OS.

Email Conversations: Essentially a new threaded view, this will allow you to view email back-and-forths in a grouped thread rather than scattered throughout your inbox according to time sent/received. 

Pinnable Email Folders: If you’re working on a project and want to keep email messages regarding these tasks in one easy-to-find location, you can place email folders on the on the Home Screen for quick access.

Server Search: If you search for an email on the phone, the search will go beyond locally stored messages and include those stored on the server.

Office 365: Mango will bring integration with Microsoft’s Office 365 service (currently in beta).  The ability to save and share Office documents through the service will be added along with, we assume, more direct access to the service from the handset.

Lync Mobile: Bringing Lync-based communication, this app will allow collaboration and other activities via the Microsoft Lync service.

Other features like complex passwords, protection of email and documents, HTML5, multitasking and native Twitter support are also expected.  Microsoft hopes to release this update by the end of the year.

Further Reading:

Productivity Takes a Big Step Forward in Mango

Microsoft Announces New Business Features in Windows Phone 7.5

Verizon’s LTE phone lineup is a bit larger today: the wireless carrier has released the new Samsung Droid Charge.

The Droid Charge (aka Samsung Stealth) has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, a 1GHz Samsung CPU, 512MB of RAM, an 8MP primary camera, a 1.3MP front-facing camera, LTE connectivity, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and aGPS.  Still no Android 2.3, though – the Charge comes with Android OS v2.2 “Froyo.”

In light of its great specs, you’d expect the Charge to go for $199 like other high-end smartphones, but Verizon isn’t letting this handset out the door for less than $299 on contract – ouch. However, WireFly and Amazon.com each have the Droid Charge for $50 less: $249.

A little bit Gingerbread, a lot Honeycomb, the next version of the Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich, was officially announced today at Google I/O 2011.

Ice Cream Sandwich will replace both the current smartphone and tablet iterations of Android for a more unified “One OS Everywhere” user experience across all devices. The UI is said to be a mixture of Honeycomb, the version of Android found on late-gen tablets like the Motorola XOOM, and Gingerbread, the latest version of the OS running on smartphones (though not on as many as we’d like).  Specifics were nowhere to be found.

And there were no release details, either.  But you can bank on the fact that the OS will be rolled out slowly (or very, very, very slowly) sometime in the coming months.

We’ve known it was coming for, well… years – and today Google Music has been released to the masses.  Er, well, to the potential masses at any rate.  The new service, currently in beta, is available by invite only for the foreseeable future and only in the United States.

So, what exactly is Google Music?

Unfortunately it is not – at least in its current version – a way to get new music.  Nor is it an iTunesesque USB-based jukebox sync center.  Like Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player,  Google Music is a way to store your existing music collection online, access it via the Cloud, and manage and playback audio over an internet connection from a number of devices, including Android-powered smartphones and tablets.

Here’s how it works: upload your music collection from iTunes or from folders on your Mac or PC to your Google Music account.  Once stored there, you can access and listen to your music from a Flash-enabled web browser or on an Android 2.2+ device with the Google Music app installed.  You can also create and manage playlists manually, or even allow the service to create a playlist for you based on a selected song in your library. 

The real advantage to this service appears to be its ability to keep your music collection in sync via the web.  Because changes made to your Google Music collection on one device is mirrored to your other connected computers and devices, you can change and manage your collection from the comfort for a laptop or desktop, and have your changes available when you use your phone or tablet – and vice versa. 

In its current beta form, Google Music allows you to upload 20,000 tracks (no word on a numerical storage limit).  The web site also says the service is free for now, which means there’ll be a price at some point down the road.  This would most likely be based on the amount of storage used, something like 10GB free, $5 per year for an extra 20 gigabytes, a type of pay-for-storage structure already found in Google accounts. 

If Google can iron out agreements with music industry bigwigs, it’s easy to imagine an evolved Google Music service that allows you to purchase new songs instantly stored in the Cloud and available for streaming.  This was apparently the hope at launch, but has failed to materialize, which resulted in the service being relegated to use with digital music obtained from other sources.  Hopefully, this will change soon.

If you’d like to get in the line for invitees, head over to the Google Music web page and sign up.  It’ll be interesting to see how many invites go out in the near term.

The HTC Thunderbolt can now be had for about $50 less than a few days ago: the LTE Verizon Wireless Android phone is now $129 @ Amazon.com with a new two-year contract. The price remains at the pervious $174 at Amazon.com for contract renewals, which is still $70 less than the direct Verizon price. Both are eligible for free two-day shipping.

WireFly and LetsTalk.com are also offering the ThunderBolt for $174 with a new or renewed contract, but if you’re eying this smartphone, Amazon is the way to go.

Found a better price?  Share it in the comments section…

Though lacking the dual core processor already powering some of its contemporaries (Atrix 4G, T-Mobile G2x), the HTC ThunderBolt has been one of the most highly anticipated phones of the first half of 2011.  The reason is simple: it’s the first Android phone compatible with the Verizon Wireless LTE “4G” data network, and if you’re lucky enough to live where the service has been deployed – and are a fan of large screen smartphones – the ThunderBolt is a no-brainer.

Similar in feel and design to the HTC’s EVO and Inspire, the ThunderBolt sports a 4.3-inch display, an 8MP camera, nearly 800MB of RAM and an array of wireless technologies: 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and aGPS.  The phone is very solidly constructed, but it’s also large – about 4.8-inches tall, 2.6-inches wide and just over half an inch thick.  The ThunderBolt is also compatible with 3G EV-DO, but the real story here is LTE.

LTE, what Verizon Wireless and AT&T call “4G”, is a wireless data technology that allows for much faster download and upload speeds.  Though it’s only available in several cities in the United States, if it’s deployed in your area you can see download speeds of up to 12Mbps and upload speeds topping out at around 5Mbps; you can also share the high-speed connection with up to 8 devices via Wi-Fi if your plan allows it.  Thunderbolt will also work with Verizon’s 3G network in the rest of the country, and while using this slower connection isn’t as sexy as LTE, it will give you much better battery life.

The handset runs Android 2.2, and you’ll find all the usual OS software features.  Since the ThunderBolt is built by HTC, it also includes the Sense UI overlay, which is probably the best of the bunch when compared to Motorola’s and Samsung’s UI replacements, which often take away from the OS more than they add.  Even with its single-core CPU 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, the ThunderBolt is very responsive and had no trouble chewing through any task I put in front of it. 

The ThunderBolt does a descent job with music and video playback, but stills suffers the same annoyances as other Android devices, particular when pitted against the iPhone.  The 8MP primary camera shoots fairly impressive still shots and decent video at 720p, but the front-facing 1.3MP camera leaves much to be desired – and there aren’t many Android video chat clients that work well at this point.  The phone includes a 32GB microSDHC card, so you have plenty of room of media and apps.

Call quality is also descent, but not exactly at the top of the smartphone list. 

If you’ll be using the ThunderBolt in a 4G area, battery life can get pretty ugly; consider an extended battery if you’re planning to be using a 4G data connection very often – you’ll need it.  On LTE, the battery can last less than 4 hours.

Still, the ThunderBolt is an impressive device, though you’ll obviously have to consider the battery limitations.  If you’re a mobile speed demon, they may just be worth it.

M. Nichols, Products Editor

HTC ThunderBolt Direct Verizon Price w/ Contract: $249

Best Online HTC ThunderBolt Price w/ Contract: $129

The HTC ThunderBolt was provided by Verizon Wireless for this review.