Amazon offers a range of hardware, including its Kindle e-readers and tablets, but now it’s looking to expand the line with two new smartphones and an audio-only device that streams music, according to the Wall Street Journal. The phones include a high-end one with a glasses-free 3D screen, as well as another about which details were not included in the report, which presumably would be a more… → Read More
LG is an Android smartphone OEM that, like many others, finds itself in the shadow of Samsung. But it scored an impressive hit with the Nexus 4, the $300 unlocked Google-branded Android reference phone it released last year, and according to the Korea Times, it’s already working on a follow-up with the search giant. → Read More
HTC really wants you to buy an HTC One, and it’s making sure that you have every opportunity to do so. First, it opened up pre-orders for the HTC One Developer Edition, a carrier-unlocked 64GB version of the phone with an unlocked bootloader for custom ROMs. Now, it’s also offering a network-unlocked 32GB version of the handset, which doesn’t have the unlocked bootloader, but which is less… → Read More
The HTC One, the Taiwanese company’s flagship smartphone device, goes on sale today across the U.S. at retail stores including AT&T, Sprint, Best Buy, Walmart Target and more, as well as online via those retailers, HTC itself, Amazon and beyond. The phone has already been highly praised by early reviews and anyone who seems to have gotten their lucky mitts on one, but will that be enough to… → Read More
Verizon said today on its earnings conference call that it had activated 4 million total iPhones during Q1 2013, of which half were LTE devices and half were 3G. That means 50 percent, or around 2 million were iPhone 5, with the remaining 2 million making up iPhone 4 and 4S devices. → Read More
Apple has indeed managed a significant turnaround in India’s smartphone market, according to new figures out from IDC today (via CNN). The Apple smartphone grabbed 15.6 percent of India’s smartphone market in Q4 2012, according to new data from the research firm, just behind market leading Samsung with its 38.8 percent, a significant change from the third quarter of last year, when IDC showed that… → Read More
A new survey from software security company AVG announced today reveals that a full 25 percent of mobile users keep “intimate photos or videos” on their smartphones or tablet devices, a surprisingly high number given that only 36 percent said they would be comfortable checking their bank balances from a smartphone screen. AVG surveyed 5,107 smartphone users in the U.K., U.S., France, Germany and… → Read More
Handy, a smartphone rental service out of Hong Kong, has launched operations in Singapore. The company offers smartphones for rent to travelers at $9 (HKD 68) a day—$12 (S$15) a day in Singapore—and the price includes unlimited 3G data and international calls. The Handy brand comes under its CEO, Terence Kwok’s startup effort called Tink Labs, and is its first and only project thus far. The… → Read More
Chinese mobile maker Huawei rose to third place in the worldwide smartphone rankings for the first time in the fourth quarter of last year, according to analyst Gartner’s latest global mobile report. In the full year 2012, Huawei sold 27.2m smartphones to end users, up 73.8% from 2011. However the gap between number three in the rankings and the top two, Samsung and Apple, is more like a gulf. → Read More
Slowly but surely, Chinese smartphones are making their way into consumers’ hands. While Huawei is a leading infrastructure company, it started designing and manufacturing smartphones only recently. So far, the company preferred to sell white-label smartphones to carriers around the world. But in 2012, Huawei has shipped 85 percent of its devices under its own brand, compared to a scant 20 percent… → Read More
This morning saw a flurry of RIM news, including the debut of a beta program among enterprise and government clients, and a firm location for the January 30 launch event in NYC. In another curious development, major Canadian mobile network operator Rogers has opened up reservations for BlackBerry 10 devices according to BGR, letting customers reserve their spot in line for a device about which we… → Read More
The Nokia Lumia 920 can be used with any gloves: it’s a miracle. But for the vast majority of other smartphones, that’s not the case, so there are a variety of sellers making touchscreen compatible gloves. Netherlands-based Mujjo was one of the first to try and make some that are actually stylish and durable, and they’ve been updated this year with a number of improvements. → Read More
Last Friday, I told you how to get your Nexus 4 working on LTE networks in Canada. All through this past weekend and today, I’ve been using that device as my primary phone on the LTE band the entire time. And despite some definite reduction in battery life, I couldn’t be happier with the Nexus 4 now that it’s playing nice with Rogers’ LTE network. → Read More
Reports surfaced this morning that the Nexus 4, Google’s latest flagship Android smartphone, supports LTE via a relatively easy software hack. After testing, it turns out that’s definitely true, so I’ll show you exactly how to enable it on your device. Fair warning: the Nexus 4 only supports LTE on the AWS band (1700 or 2100MHz), which is currently used for LTE networks in Canada and on T-Mobile. → Read More
Google finally introduced its latest Nexus Android reference phone to the world (meaning the device that gets major OS updates first, and the one that’s guaranteed to receive all of them first, untouched by individual OEM bloatware). LG takes its turn at a Nexus device this time around, delivering the Nexus 4, the first smartphone with Android 4.2 on board. → Read More
A new report from Flurry Analytics released today details some of the key differences between smartphone and tablet usage. The study finds that tablets are used overwhelmingly during the evening, prime-time hours, and that users spend more time per-session on tablet devices compared to smartphones. Also, users tend to game and consume media more heavily on tablets vs. smartphones. → Read More
Apple’s web traffic share among mobile devices is huge, according to new numbers from Chitika. The online ad network is seeing 43 percent of smartphone web usage coming through iPhones up to the 4S, plus another 3 percent from the iPhone 5 alone. By contrast, the Samsung Galaxy S III is driving 2 percent of mobile web traffic on its network, combined with 15 percent across all other Samsung mobile… → Read More
Crystal ball-gazing time from Gartner… The analysts, which last night published some stats on how PCs continue to reign as the woolly mammoth of the tech world, today followed up with a list of predictions for one of the areas still on a big upswing: mobile services, and specifically on smartphones and tablets (AKA the devices that are causing all that doom and gloom for PCs). Gartner predicts… → Read More
Amazon’s Kindle Fire has done a remarkable job carving out its own niche in the tablet space, and it seems a sequel is already barreling down the pipeline for a release in the coming months. That new tablet may not be alone though, as rumblings of yet another Amazon hardware project have started up once again.
After conferring with their sources, Bloomberg reported late yesterday evening that… → Read More
Kytephone, the mobile app that transforms Android smartphones into kid-safe devices, is officially making its public debut today. The startup had previously been in beta, following its reveal at this spring’s Y Combinator Demo Day, where founders Renat Gataullin and Martin Drashkov first detailed their company’s vision.
The idea behind Kytephone is simple. It addresses parents’ growing… → Read More
Using a smartphone while shopping to find better deals or to look up product reviews is now pretty mainstream. There are some interesting differences between how Hispanics use their phones while shopping compared to the average U.S. consumer, though. While observing 15 Hispanic smartphone owners in Los Angeles and conducting a nationwide survey of 500 Hispanic smartphone users in late 2011, White… → Read More
I’d wager that only a few of you will remember that Dell sold their own smartphones, and still fewer of you have ever actually owned one.
It should come as no surprise then that Dell, who entered the smartphone market less than two years ago, has announced that they have ceased sales of their last remaining smartphone lines: the Android-powered Venue and the Venue Pro Windows Phone. With… → Read More
There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments… → Read More
With leaks galore and this afternoon’s announcement, there’s not much reason to rehash HTC Rezound deets. So I’ll just cut to the chase and hit you guys with some first impressions. → Read More
Even with Ice Cream Sandwich on the way, Android Gingerbread devices are still as hot as ever. That said, there are way too many Android handsets on the market to parse through each and every one, but that’s why we’re here. We’ve looked through all the latest Android smartphones to give you our brief thoughts on the pick of the litter. These aren’t full-length reviews, but rather a way for you to… → Read More
If you remember from a teaser video posted a few days ago, today is a big day. Verizon and Motorola have finally announced the much-anticipated Droid RAZR, the next LTE beast to grace big red’s shelves. Here at the launch event in New York City, we’re hearing four words over and over again: faster, thinner, smarter, and stronger. And that’s exactly how we’d describe the new Droid RAZR. → Read More
While the dual-screen Kyocera Echo didn’t do much to tickle my fancy, a couple dual-screen devices on their way to market, including the Sony S2 tablet, show much more promise.
As far as handsets go, T-Mobile just announced the Android-powered LG DoublePlay (codenamed Flip II) smartphone — a split-keybord QWERTY slider with not one, but two, capacitive touch screens. → Read More
While I would be absolutely thrilled to indulge my Pokemon addiction on my smartphone (officially, anyway), Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has gone and shot down my dreams. According to a post-press conference interview with Nikkei, Iwata has categorically denied that Nintendo will create games for platforms other than their own.
In his own words:
“This is absolutely not under… → Read More
Adobe Flash is to the smartphone as an unwanted cousin is to your wedding: necessary, yet painstaking. Apple CEO Steve Jobs seems to hate the software, neglecting to support it on all four models of the iPhone. Google’s done a better job of incorporating Flash support into the Android operating system, but still, most of the time Flash ends up being a battery killer, a security risk, not to… → Read More
As originally promised last week, the Motorola Droid Pro will be receiving updates starting today to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. According to users, Android 2.3 Gingerbread comes in the form of an OTA update, where the Droid Pro will notify you once the update hits the device. → Read More
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