Articles about Smartphone

It looks as though Motorola may be making it a little easier to buy the perfect smartphone. The Google company is taking mobile devices in something of a new direction, and all is revealed in a post on the Motorola blog. The company plans to do something new by developing "a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones" -- a click together phone, if you will.

So what's the idea? You know how you find the perfect phone but it has a camera that you just know you'll never use? You feel like you're paying for something unnecessary right? Or you find a phone you like but the battery doesn’t last quite long enough? Problems like this could become a thing of the past with Project Ara.

Continue reading →

Flat screens are so yesterday; curves are where it is at these days. Not content with constantly increasing the size of phone displays, handset manufacturers are now looking for a new twist. Both LG and Samsung have decided that curves are the way ahead. LG has officially announced the G Flex following on from the Galaxy Round that was revealed by Samsung just a few weeks ago, but it is the Samsung handset that is highlighted in a new ad.

As the Galaxy Round is destined for the Korean market, it should come as no surprise that the commercial is in Korean. This matters little as the looks of the phone speak for themselves. The advertisement demonstrates various curved objects that sit neatly in the hand to highlight that a great design decision has been made. Oddly, most of the objects shown -- an egg, a hand, a lemon, a glass -- are convex in curvature, so it's not really a direct comparison with how the handset will sit in the palm.

Continue reading →

When Samsung announced the Galaxy Round, the company's first smartphone with a curved display, many folks (myself included) struggled to see the real-life benefit that such a form factor would allegedly bring. The natural direction for the curve is considered to be on the long side, and not on the short one as the Galaxy Round has it. The rather gimmicky Roll Effect feature, that shows users some information when tilting the device, did not add more credibility to the touted benefits of the Galaxy Round either.

Rival Android maker LG has also announced its first smartphone with a curved display, that is called G Flex. The company markets it as the "world's first 'real' curved smartphone", in a (clever) attempt to take advantage of the negative feedback that the Galaxy Round has received so far.

Continue reading →

Apple took center stage this week. At a special event the new iPad Air, iPad mini, Mac Pro and a raft of free software were all revealed, and we liveblogged through the whole thing. Not to be outdone by Microsoft, Apple decided to give Mavericks away free of charge along with iWork and iLife. But it was the iPad Air and mini that stole the show, sharing the same innards as the recently announced iPhone 5s, but boasting a redesigned exterior -- at least in the case of the Air.

Of course, no tablet launch would be complete without matching cases. There was also the interestingly designed Mac Pro which looks delightful and is a serious powerhouse, but has a price tag to match. After the big launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple showed off the latest addition to the iPhone range in a TV commercial.

Continue reading →

Even though LG is the second-largest Android smartphone vendor and showing strong growth in the market, the South Korean manufacturer does not want to put all its eggs in one basket. The company is now also pursuing success with Firefox OS, with its new Fireweb smartphone.

The smartphone launches today in Brazil, alongside the Alcatel Onetouch Fire, at local mobile operator Telefonica Vivo. Like other Firefox OS devices, the Fireweb is aimed at the low-end smartphone market, featuring modest hardware by modern standards.

Continue reading →

I will admit to being intrigued by BBM. I have never owned a BlackBerry smartphone (nor do I have plans to buy one) so I have never had the chance to find out what all the fuss is about. But, after the Canadian maker revealed that the service will also arrive on Android and iPhone, my interest piqued.

And I am definitely not the only one who is interested. Following the second release on rival platforms, in its first 24 hours on Apple App Store and Google Play BBM surpassed 10 million downloads, which is impressive for a service that only had 60 million users before the second half of the year.

Continue reading →

A new study by Juniper Research finds that a combination of increased use of analytics along with new advertising formats and buying mechanisms will push mobile ad spending close to $40 billion by 2018.

Targeted in-app advertising is seen as offering a major opportunity and the report notes the way Facebook has used ads in its native apps over the past year as an example of the technique's success. Mobile now makes up 41 percent of Facebook's overall advertising revenue and the company recently announced it's to start rolling out video ads in a bid to boost performance with more media-rich content.

Continue reading →

Finnish mobile maker Nokia has taken the wraps off its latest, and largest, Windows Phone 8 devices, called the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320. The smartphones represent the company's entry in the phablet market, which so far has been dominated by Android handsets from Samsung's Galaxy Note series.

Nokia has built the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320 around Windows Phone 8 Update 3, that ships with support for 1080p displays and quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors. Both hardware features have been available on Android smartphones but were missing from devices running Microsoft's tiled OS which only supported up to 720p displays and older Snapdragon S4 processors.

Continue reading →

With Android handsets and iPhones taking the lion's share of the smartphone market, Windows Phone is quite often overlooked by most consumers in their purchasing decisions. The popularity, or lack thereof, of devices running Microsoft's mobile OS likely plays an important part but it also detracts folks from getting the smartphone that may be right for them. Ask yourselves how many of your acquaintances have been in this position.

Many do not even take Windows Phone into consideration and the ones that do easily find a couple of reasons to dismiss the platform and jump on the Android or iPhone bandwagon. Yes, Windows Phone may not be the right answer for everyone but it might be for more people than naysayers think. And I have got 10 good reasons why consumers should give Windows Phone a chance.

Continue reading →

The name "Maxthon" likely evokes some memories for long-term Windows users. The browser, that was once known as MyIE 2, is among the oldest of its kind, having launched on Microsoft's OS more than a decade ago. It has never risen to the popularity of Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer, but it has been a perennial alternative ever since. To keep up with the changing computing landscape, the company behind Maxthon has also launched the browser on Android and iOS.

And, now, Maxthon arrives on Windows Phone 8 as well where, once again, its biggest rival is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which the former has long struggled to surpass in market share. But, this time around, the balance can tip in Maxthon's favor as smartphone users are not as enamored with (or, better said, glued to) Internet Explorer as Windows PC users used to be. But there is one barrier to overcome: Maxthon has to clearly best Internet Explorer. And that may prove to be, once again, a difficult task.

Continue reading →

Apple's first TV ad for the iPhone 5s shows off the gold version of the phone, but fails to mention the existence of the space gray and silver models. Backed with Goldfrapp's Ooh La La, the commercial seems to draw inspiration from the liquid metal effects seen in Terminator 2. There have already been ads for the cheaper iPhone 5c but this is the first time the premium version of the iPhone has been showcased on television.

In the ad, ribbons of liquid gold swirl and intertwine before converging and melding together to form the body of the iPhone. Shortly after airing, the advertisement was also uploaded to Apple's YouTube channel. As is the norm with Apple, comments are disabled, but it's likely that views and shares will rocket over the coming day.

Continue reading →

This was another week in which Microsoft managed to steal the show, this time with the public release of Windows 8.1. Here at BetaNews we were fully prepared for the upgrade and showed off what's new. While we're generally impressed with the update, there's still a little room for improvement. Of course the Start menu (or lack thereof) is still a sticking point, but you can get this back. The operating system update was preceded by a raft of updates to Window's built in apps.

Windows 8.1 may be where it's at right now, but there are still plenty of people running Windows XP. Google announced that Chrome users on XP would be supported for a year after the OS is retired.

Continue reading →

Google's Nexus 5 is a hotly anticipated handset, and over the past few weeks there have been numerous leaked images purporting to show what the device looks like.

Now it looks as though the speculation can come to an end after Google accidentally listed the device in the Play store, complete with pricing details. The temporary listing -- which has now been removed -- showed the 16GB model costing $349, and featured the tagline "capture the everyday and the epic in fresh new ways".

Continue reading →

According to a new survey conducted by J.D. Power among US mobile operator subscribers, Apple and Samsung lead the pack on "overall satisfaction performance". The iPhone maker ranks first for AT&T and Verizon customers while Samsung takes the top spot for Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers.

The J.D. Power survey identifies Apple and Samsung as the sole smartphone vendors to rank above the average value on all four counts -- performance, exterior design, features and ease of use. The findings of the survey are based, according to J.D. Power, on the experiences of 16,421 users who are customers of the aforementioned four-largest local mobile operators and have had their current smartphone for less than a year.

Continue reading →

Smartphones have become such a big part of many people's lives in recent times, allowing us to stay in touch with the Internet wherever we go, that occasions when you can't get a data network or Wi-Fi signal become extremely frustrating, it's almost like losing a limb.

French developer Altheia has an answer in the form of a new app for Android phones called Be-Bound which it claims can keep you in touch with the Web even if there's no 3G, 4G, Edge or Wi-Fi signal available.

Continue reading →