smartphones - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• BlackBerry owners encouraged to switch off for Earth Hour

  Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has launched a Web site for users of the smartphones dedicated to the latest news about Earth Hour.

• Palm sales plummet as Pre waits in the wings

  Palm's revenue plunged in its most recent quarter as the struggling company, preparing for the release of its next-generation device, sold 42 percent fewer smartphones than in the same period last year.

• Acer smartphones to hit markets soon

  Two new smartphones from Acer will be available in some markets early next month, while the company's two premium handsets, the M900 and F900 will be out later in the second quarter, according to company representatives.

• Mobile handset market to decline 8% this year says IDC

  After years of growth, the global market for mobile handsets will contract by about 8 percent this year although smartphones will remain a growth area, according to a new forecast from IDC.

• Gartner: Smartphone growth continues to slow

  Sales of smartphones increased by 3.7 percent during the fourth quarter last year, compared to the same period in 2007, according to Gartner.

• Ballmer promises faster Windows Mobile development

  Under pressure from popular phones from Apple and Research In Motion, Microsoft hopes it has put in place changes that will help it meet that mobile competition faster, said CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday.

• Hacking contest to pay $10,000 in cash for smartphone bugs

  A hacking contest slated for next month will award cash prizes of $10,000 to anyone who can break into the most popular smartphones, including Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

• Nokia, Qualcomm to work on smartphones together

  The world's largest mobile phone vendor and the biggest cellular chip developer said Tuesday they plan to make 3G (third-generation) mobile devices together for the North American market.

• Smartphones becoming prime platform for app makers

  The smartphone is increasingly becoming the platform of choice for a wide variety of application providers. For example, at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday, Cisco Systems, MySpace and Yahoo all unveiled tools -- a webconferencing application and two social networks, respectively -- for the growing number of smartphones coming from several vendors.

• Sony Ericsson, Samsung Battle for Megapixel Supremacy

  How many megapixels can you squeeze into a cell phone? On the eve of the big Mobile World Congress wireless telecom trade show here in Barcelona, Spain, the race is on. At pre-show press conferences, Samsung and Sony Ericsson between them unveiled three handsets, each with cameras boasting at least as many megapixels as my current Canon point-and-shoot (a PowerShot SD1100 with 8 megapixels).

• Samsung plans new netbook, smart phones

  Samsung Electronics plans to follow-up its NC10 netbook in the coming few months with a new model and expand its range of smart phones with models based on a number of different operating systems, it said Friday.

• Smartphones key as phone vendors regroup

  The fourth quarter wasn't a good one for the mobile phone manufacturers, and now they are looking to smartphones to save the day.

• Kogan "indefinitely" delays Google Android-based smartphone

  Melbourne-based company Kogan today announced that its Android-based smartphones, the Agora and the Agora Pro, have been "delayed indefinitely". The cancellation, announced on the company's blog, comes only two weeks before the phones were meant to be released.

• New Palm handset and OS coming on Thursday?

  Palm is set to preview this week its latest incarnation of mobile operating system - Nova - in a bid to re-ignite the company as a smartphone leader. Latest developments say that Palm will also release a new device that runs Nova as well. The unveiling is expected during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009, which starts on Thursday, January 8 in Las Vegas.

• IPhone, economy spur better phones, apps

  Just two years ago, the mobile phone market was pretty ho-hum. You had your candy bar phones and your flip phones. There were BlackBerry devices and Windows Mobile phones. Those phones had calendars and contact lists, and a few other apps that were too annoying to use. Few people ever added any new applications to their phones. Surfing the Web was for emergency use only, since it was slow and ugly.