Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy.
After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater, and soup among his myriad interests.
It’s hard to believe that Mobile World Congress is right around the corner, but here we are with just under two days to go until the festivities begin.
TechCrunch’s MWC delegation is ready to bring you the latest and greatest in mobile tech straight from the heart of Barcelona from the moment MWC kicks off, but there’s going to be gobs upon gobs of nifty stuff on the show floor. Just for your reference, here’s a quick recap of some of the things you should see once we touch down and head into the breach.
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Judging by the way Samsung is trying to eliminate bezels from their products, you’d think Samsung found that extra rim of material offensive somehow. The consumer electronics titan is already working on ridding your next television from the confines of a bezel, and if a new report South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper holds true, one of their next smartphones will be the first to feature an edge-to-edge screen.
Aside from a small area along the top of the device that houses a speaker and a front-facing camera, the screen on the Galaxy B is reported to cover all of the device’s face. → Read More
With Google’s purchase of Motorola nearing completion, some anonymous sources close to the situation have revealed that a management shakeup is in the works too. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha will be replaced by veteran Googler Dennis Woodside when the deal comes to a close.
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Another day, another take on Amazon and Apple duking it out in the tablet market. The data comes from NPD’s DisplaySearch wing, and the results don’t come as much of a shock. By their count, Apple is still sitting at the top of the heap, accounting for 59.1 percent of the tablets shipped in Q4 2011 while Amazon is sitting pretty in second place with 16.7 percent of tablet shipments under their belt.
At first glance, the results seem very similar to those announced by iSuppli this time last week — the only major shift is that iSuppli has book retailer Barnes & Noble slightly ahead of Asus. → Read More
It’s something of a universal truth: standing in line sucks. The folks at GoPago know it and apparently so do the people at JPMorgan Chase, because the financial firm has just pumped an undisclosed amount of money into the Mountain View company in exchange for some of GoPago’s Series A Preferred Stock.
I don’t blame you if you haven’t heard of GoPago (more on that later), but think of it as a purchasing accelerator. Rather than have to wait in line while some putz agonizes over the exact mustard-to-mayonnaise ratio on his sandwich, GoPago users can store their credit card’s payment information in the GoPago smartphone app and place their orders remotely. → Read More
Though Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, Amazon, and HP don’t always see eye-to-eye, the six of them have entered into an agreement brokered by California Attorney General Kamala Harris to take a tougher stance on the issue of mobile privacy.
Going forward, the six companies involved must provide users with a privacy policy if the app in question collects personal information. Though the move will affect the app submission and downloading process for users the world over, it was designed to bring those six companies into compliance with California state law.
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It’s safe to say we’ve all been in a situation where a few extra pairs of eyes could come in handy, and the folks at Google know just how that feels. In an effort to give people that backup when they need it, they’ve just pushed out a useful new update to the Google Docs Android app. → Read More
Calling all developers: if you know your way around HTML5 and JavaSrcipt and have a great idea for an app, Mozilla wants to hear from you. The web-friendly nonprofit has just announced their intention to launch a new cross-platform app market later this year, and the submission process is slated to start next week at Mobile World Congress. → Read More
When serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavky launched Fon in late 2005, his goal was to blanket the world with easily-accessible, crowdsourced Wi-Fi. While the service hasn’t quite made it everywhere yet, Fon has just announced that they now have over 5 million hotspots in operation across the globe. → Read More
Things are beginning to look even dimmer for LightSquared. Just one day after satellite network operator Inmarsat announced that LightSquared had defaulted on a $56 million payment, new reports indicate that the company plans to slash its workforce by 45% in an effort to cut costs and keep fighting.
“This and other cost savings measures will allow LightSquared to continue to navigate the regulatory process as it works with the appropriate government agencies to find solutions to the GPS interference issue,” reads a statement issued to Reuters.
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Though it may not always seem like it, big wireless carriers are still stuck on the concept of push-to-talk communication. It’s easy to see why — instanteous communication between multiple people can be a huge benefit in certain lines of work, and and catering to those groups often leads to some hefty service contracts. To that end, AT&T has announced that they have launched a new charter program geared toward getting push-to-talk smartphones in front of business customers.
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Like the original Galaxy S before it, Samsung’s Galaxy S II sure knows how to get around. After having touched down on Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T (twice even), the Korean giant’s one-time flagship handset is now being embraced by the folks at U.S. Cellular.
Customers who have pledged their allegiance to the nation’s sixth-largest wireless carrier are probably celebrating the news, considering the last big Android handset to grace their shelves was the Motorola Electrify, a non-WiMax version of the Photon 4G. → Read More
While initial reports pointed at a launch on February 22, Barnes & Noble has just taken to the wires to officially announce the release of the new 8GB Nook Tablet. As expected the new Nook variant has a price tag to match its reduced memory capacity, and with both now selling for $199 the battle between the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire seems ready to heat up once more. → Read More
Cultivating the perfect party playlist requires more than a little time and effort, but when there are kegs to be tapped and cheese plates to be arranged, the task can sadly fall by the wayside. That’s where a new iOS app called Anthm comes in — instead of putting the playlist together all on your lonesome, you can have your guests do it instead. → Read More
Microsoft’s SkyDrive is an adequate cloud storage service (and one that boasts 17 million customers to boot), but it’s not something that the folks at Redmond can afford to leave in its current state. With Apple playing up their iCloud integration in their forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion update, SkyDrive program managers Mike Torres and Omar Shahine took to the Building Windows 8 blog to outline what’s next for their own cloud service.
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Barnes & Noble seemed pleasantly surprised when they announced their Nook Tablet “exceeded expectations” over the holidays, but their 70% year-over-year jump in device sales paled in comparison to rival Amazon’s 177%.
That their flagship Nook Tablet cost a full $50 more than the Kindle Fire certainly didn’t help, but that should change soon — according to a document obtained by The Verge, Barnes & Noble will release a new 8GB version of the Nook Tablet on February 22. → Read More
With the end of February nearly in sight, the tech community is all abuzz with talk about Mobile World Congress, the huge mobile conference set to take place in beautiful Barcelona in just over a week. All the big players will be there (though some will be less conspicuous than before), and of course among them will be Taiwan-based phone giant HTC.
There’s little doubt that Samsung knows how to put together a handsome television or smartphone, but to produce a stylish memory card — well that’s another story entirely. Samsung’s certainly willing to give it a shot though, and the end result is their new line of brushed metal SD and microSD cards.
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While larger carriers like AT&T and Verizon are duking it out to cover the country in LTE signal, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there are other contenders in the ring too. Case in point: U.S. Cellular, the nation’s sixth largest wireless provider, announced earlier today that they plan to light up their forthcoming 4G LTE network in 14 additional states before the year is out.
U.S. Cellular revealed earlier this month that their LTE network would go live some time in March, and would initially cover “select cities in Wisconsin, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas.” → Read More
Don’t get me wrong — Ice Cream Sandwich’s stock keyboard is pretty fantastic, but after having spent the past year or two Swyping my way though text messages and emails, most other modes of text input just feel slow in comparison. Thankfully, the latest Swype beta has just been made available, and with it comes full support for Google’s latest and greatest mobile operating system.
Aside from being able to slip and slide your way through a few lengthy missives, Ice Cream Sandwich users can also take Swype’s Nuance-powered voice dictation for a spin. → Read More
Barcelona, Spain
New York City
San Francisco, CA
