Way back in the days of Android yore, the stock browser got the job done but did so with a minimum of flair. Now there’s no shortage of first-rate mobile browsers out there, but mobile browser war mainstay Dolphin has just released a new update that packs an equally new (and nifty) feature: it’s called Sonar, and it lets you navigate the web with your voice.
Once the update is installed, a… → Read More
Tired of just hearing about Windows 8 all the time? Well then, you’re in luck — Microsoft has finally released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview to the public, so people outside of the tech bubble finally have the chance to take Redmond’s new OS for a spin. → Read More
Accessibility has become quite the theme here at Mobile World Congress: Nokia and ZTE have announced new low-cost devices to bring push Windows Phone into developing markets, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt highlighted the importance of connecting all people.
Sweden-based Doro is trying to help in their own way — the company has recently pulled back the curtain on the PhoneEasy 740, an… → Read More
The number of people in the world has now reached 7 billion people, but the number that have been online are only at 2 billion, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said today at a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
“We need to be realists about technology,” he said. The future, most easily, belongs to “ultra connected people” who can embrace the future of… → Read More
After hearing that Huawei had revealed “the world’s fastest smartphone” in the form of the Ascend D Quad, we knew we had to seek it out. Well, we finally managed to score a little hands-on time with the Chinese company’s newest device, and we didn’t come away disappointed. → Read More
The Padfone is a peculiar beast, to be sure. Given the right accessories (and enough money, I suppose), Asus’s newest smartphones can easily transform into a tablet and a faux-notebook in the blink of an eye, but how well does the thing work? Asus was kind enough to let us play with one for a short while in their booth here at Mobile World Congress, and we’ve put together a quick video for your… → Read More
The mobile web, not the smartphone or traditional web, is Facebook’s most popular interface. Now those hundreds of millions of users, including prepaid mobile customers in emerging markets who lack credit cards, will be able to make in-app purchases and earn Facebook money thanks to its announcement of mobile operator billing for Credits virtual currency purchases.
This is a big step towards… → Read More
Wow. We expected a lot of news out of Mobile World Congress but who knew HTC would have so. freaking. much.
I was having trouble keeping track of it myself, so for the good of the both of us, I thought it might be fitting to bundle all this news up into something a tad more easily digestible.
And off we go… → Read More
Only yesterday we reported that Evi, a new iPhone (iTunes link) and Android app (link) which was incredibly Siri-like – and some say it’s better – had gotten a call from Apple that it was about to be pulled from the App store. Why? For being – as far as we could figure out – too much like Siri, and maybe, well, just too good.
Today, the buzz at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is that Apple… → Read More
Facebook, currently in a quiet period as it prepares for its IPO, is stone-cold silent on whether it really will ever launch a mobile device, and whether it plans to launch mobile advertising to complement its main revenue driver on desktops.
But that does not mean it is sitting still on mobile — the company’s biggest area of growth at the moment.
In an interview today in Barcelona with… → Read More
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Visa announced a new over-the-air provisioning service for smartphones for use with Visa’s payWave mobile payments system. The service will make it easier for operators, banks and even transit operators to link Visa payment accounts to consumers’ smartphones, the company says.
Although perhaps not as exciting as news of a mobile wallet “app” in consumers’… → Read More
We’ve already caught wind of the Lenovo K800 and Orange’s newly-announced Santa Clara but Intel CEO Paul Otellini isn’t content to leave their push into mobile at that.
Otellini has just announced that Intel has entered into partnerships with a handful of companies in hopes of solidifying their place in the smartphone market. Among those new partners are relative unknowns like Lava… → Read More
I’m no great fan of Samsung’s 5+ inch Galaxy Note — it’s just too darned big for me to use the way I want to. The Galaxy Note 10.1 on the other hand pumps up size to a more familiar level, and the end result is a tablet/stylus combo that makes a lot more sense. → Read More
Isis, the carrier-led joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today new partnerships with Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard. Under the terms of the deal, the banks will include their debit, credit and prepaid cards into Isis’s forthcoming mobile wallet.
In addition, the organization is revealing, for the first time, what the… → Read More
At The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, StumbleUpon, the veteran content discovery platform, will be announcing “its first major integration with Android,” says Co-founder Garrett Camp. What does that mean? Well, nearly as we can tell, Google is calling on a handful of apps at MWC to showcase the new integration possibilities (with Google+ and other Google products) that are part of… → Read More
There you have it folks. The Asus Padfone is about as real as a phone can be, now that Asus has formally unveiled the little beast here at Mobile World Congress.
What we’re looking at is a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with a Snapdragon dual-core S4 chip from Qualcomm. You’ll find an 8-megapixel camera on the back equipped with autofocus and flash… → Read More
I think it’s safe to say that the new 808 Pureview handset was a surprise to just about everyone here at Nokia’s press conference. Not only did Nokia manage to squeeze a 41-megapixel sensor (no, that’s not a typo) into a smartphone, they squeezed it into a smartphone that runs on the Symbian Belle OS.
But first, let’s get the nitty gritty out of the way. Ridiculous camera aside, the 808… → Read More
In Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, Taiwanese handset maker HTC yesterday gave us a glimpse of its new, lean-and-mean smartphone strategy, HTC One — a unified set of Android devices complete with features and services that it hopes will help bring it back into the thick of things.
One thing that was very absent, though, was the M word. → Read More
And there we have it! Nokia’s Executive Vice President of Mobile Devices has just taken the stage again here at Nokia’s MWC press conference to officially unveil their new entry-level Lumia 610 smartphone. → Read More
I’m sitting in the packed press room for the Nokia press conference.
Stephen Elop has just come out and right off the bat praised his company’s performance in the last year, a huge one for the company in its turnaround strategy with a new operating system (Microsoft), and a shift away from its own Symbian platform. It’s proven that “We can rapidly execute our new strategy.” → Read More
Ah yes, the One X. It’s been shrouded by rumors and half-truths for so long now that it’s quite a thrill to get one in my hands.
While I like the One S’s build quality quite a bit, I found myself taking a shine to the One X’s industrial design almost immediately. It’s 9.7mm waistline is remarkably thin considering all that HTC managed to jam into it (Tegra 3 chipset, 1GB of RAM, killer camera… → Read More
Besides a fear of imminent conjunctivitis from handling the same phone as hundreds of others at the Sony Xperia Press Event at the GSMA Mobile World Congress…what else comes to mind?
This phone — a model marketed mostly toward a younger segment — is, to me, reminiscent in some minuscule way of the old Sony W series phones I loved so much (way back in the day). I think it’s the thickness… → Read More
The HTC One X is clearly the device everyone wants to see, which is why I decided to give its little brother a bit of spotlight first.
The One S is sort of a puzzle to me. Though it’s meant to be more of a mid-range device than the powerhouse that is the HTC One X, the One S sports an arguably handsomer exterior. Unlike its polycarbonate-clad counterpart, the One S sports a frame made from… → Read More
Ahead of Mobile World Congress and an appearance by Facebook to explain its next moves in mobile, the social networking giant is coming under increasing strain over its use of users’ personal information. Mobile startups and operators are both fretting over the issue this week, as smartphones and the apps that come with them increasingly eclipse the feature phones of old. We’ve already seen how … → Read More
Last month we reported on the launch of Evi, a new iPhone (iTunes link) and Android app (link) which was very Siri-like in its capabilities. Maybe it was too good at acting like Siri?
Yes, Evi can’t do Siri’s trick of adding things to your iPhone Calendar or hook into reminders. But, ask “How do I make apple pie?” and Evi provides a list of recipes with web links. Siri can’t give you a direct… → Read More
We haven’t heard much from Huawei lately. Aside from a few smartphones here and there, the company hasn’t really made a huge push or impression as of late. But according to this release we’re seeing here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Huawei has quite a bit in store for us, including the freshly announced Ascend D quad smartphone.
Huawei wants to market this as the “world’s fastest… → Read More
The vast event that is Mobile World Congress (all our coverage will be here) is just shifting into first gear. Although the show doesn’t officially start until tomorrow various announcements are coming out today. The latest is about some new devices from Samsung, which hasn’t been shy and retiring with its huge stand here at the Fira venue. Incidentally, this is where, once, George Orwell paraded… → Read More
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