Sprint’s delivery service arrives in Las Vegas and six other cities

Sprint continues to expand its in-home sales and service effort, making a trip to its retail stores a thing of the past. The carrier’s Direct 2 You home delivery option is heading to seven more cities: Charlotte, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City. This means that if you’re in those locales, the in-store experience comes to your home or office to save you a trip. Direct 2 You not only drops off your shiny new handset, but a Sprint employee can walk you through the setup, transferring contacts and answer any questions that may arise. The free service began back in April and is already available in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and other major US cities. Sprint says it plans to take Direct 2 You to even more cities in 2016.

Source: Sprint (Business Wire)

Engadget giveaway: win a trio of Qi chargers courtesy of Fonesalesman!

It’s a subtle pleasure, but not needing to plug cables in to charge your phone is a beautiful thing. If you have a smartphone that supports the Qi wireless standard (or an adapter), you can simply plop it down at work, near your bed or wherever you have a charger handy without thinking about cables. To promote this state of technological zen, UK-based Fonesalesman has been providing a variety of Qi charging solutions, from its eco-minded WoodPuck model to its portable and powerful QiStone+ version. Right now, the company is also running an Indiegogo for its newest product, the FurniQi table. It offers a minimalist design and a Qi charging zone embedded in the water-sealed bamboo tabletop. This week, two lucky readers will win the whole set including the table and two individual chargers. All you need to do is head to the Rafflecopter widget below for this wireless charging package from Fonesalesman.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

• Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
• Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winners will be chosen randomly. Two (2) winners will each receive one (1) WoodPuck Bamboo Edition Qi wired charger, one (1) QiStone+ portable wireless charger and one (1) FurniQi table with embedded Qi charger.
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email or Facebook login. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
• This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Engadget and AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
• The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
• Entries can be submitted until October 14th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!

Nucleus wants to take the friction out of video calling

Video calling is a great example of a technology that once felt highly futuristic but is now available on nearly every computer and smartphone out there. FaceTime, Hangouts, Skype — there are plenty of options, and they all work pretty well, and work in pretty much the same way. A new company called Nucleus thinks that there’s still a lot of room for improvement in video calls, particularly in terms of connecting people instantly. That’s the goal of its new product (also called Nucleus): it’s a tablet you can mount on your wall or place on a counter that lets you connect with other users in less than a second. Slideshow-328137

The first main use case for Nucleus is as an in-home communication device: with multiple Nucleus devices (Nuclei?) spread around your home, it’ll work as a modern intercom device. You can just say “call the living room” and a video and audio feed from the designated space will pop right up in less than 200 milliseconds. To make things this speedy, the Nucleus actually sets up a mesh network in your home, similar to the technology Sonos uses to speed data between multiple speakers. You can also use the 8-inch touch screen to make calls, but the Nucleus team talked up its voice recognition features — they cited the usefulness of just being able to talk to the Amazon Echo as a comparison.

That same near-instant communication feature outside the home, as well — the Nucleus team imagines you being able to call your grandmother instantly just by telling the device to do so. While the idea of “grandma-friendly tech” is hardly a new one, Nucleus thinks it can make a difference by removing as much friction from the video calling process as possible, and making things nearly instant and voice-activated seems like a good way to go about doing that. Nucleus can even be handy when calling someone who isn’t home — there’s an iOS and Android app that will let you take calls from Nucleus users when you’re out and about.

Of course, the Nucleus team is taking privacy into account — you can’t just automatically call any room in your house that has a Nucleus device with impunity. You can set auto-answer by device, so you can always get a hold of the living room while keeping one in your bedroom set to private, for example. There’s also a low-tech but clever solution to the idea of having a camera pointing in your room at all times — the Nucleus is designed so that you can physically flip the camera around so it’s pointing at the wall if you want to make sure no one can see into your room.

Beyond its communication features, the Nucleus can also hook into some specific smarthome systems — the creators of the device specifically noted that they want it to be a multi-function gadget that lets you do more than just place video calls. The Nucleus will work with Nest, SmartThings, iControl and three other (as yet unannounced) home automation services when it launches. Nucleus also is working with one of the big streaming music providers (they wouldn’t say which) to get the service onboard by the time it launches. The company doesn’t expect people to buy its products just for that, or for its smarthome features, but they look at it as added value for a device that’ll be hanging on your wall.

As for when and how you can get your hands on a Nucleus, the company is opening up pre-orders today for $209 — $40 less than the $249 price it’ll go for once it formally launches next year. It’ll be a while before the devices get into the hands of people who pre-order — the company is targeting a spring 2016 release. And while having some concerns about ordering hardware from a new company is reasonable, Nucleus is touting its manufacturing deal with Foxconn as evidence it’ll be able to get products out to customers on time.

There’s also the question of whether or not households will spend the money necessary to get this product off the ground, particularly when so many people have a phone that can just do Hangouts or FaceTime. The Nucleus team says its done the research and found that plenty of people are interested in having home intercom-style systems that cost a lot more than Nucleus — whether or not that spells success for this new hardware remains to be seen. If it sounds like it’ll be useful to you, pre-orders are open now.

Source: Nucleus