Articles about Smartphone

This afternoon, I received email with subject line: "The iPhone 5 is available on eBay -- now!" Oh, yeah? I thought the device is pretty much sold out. So I took a peak.

Twenty-two are listed from the link that eBay provides -- to 64GB models, which by far cost the most. Bargain price: Black Sprint model for $750 new, from a seller in Florham Park, NJ. But wait! The price was too good, and the item sold while I wrote this paragraph. For the big spender, a seller from Newark, Del. offers the black Verizon for $3,500. Say, does that come with free AppleCare+ warranty? And a car to drive it home?

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Spring Design, the company that made headlines two years ago for its a dual-screen Android-powered e-reader, is keeping its dual-screen Android tradition alive with a new app that launched in public beta today called ScreenShare.

ScreenShare is an application that lets you connect your Android tablet with your Android-powered smartphone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, so you can utilize the tablet's screen to access data on the smartphone. In a roundabout sort of way, it is a way to connect your Wi-Fi-only tablet such as the Nexus 7 to a mobile data connection.

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Like baseball, the iPhone 5 has been all about numbers and stats, beginning with the two million pre-orders in 24 hours, 5 million units sold in the first weekend and the rumored $207 it costs to build the 16GB variant of Apple's latest smartphone, the latter of these numbers makes us crave more. Specifically, we want to know what the iPhone 5 is packing to make up that cost.

The answer was provided by the teardown experts at iFixit, which has thoroughly examined the iPhone 5, dismantling it so we don't have to.

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Great news for Verizon Wireless Samsung Galaxy Nexus owners -- Google posted the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean factory image for the "forgotten" users of the big red.

The LTE Galaxy Nexus can be updated to Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, build number JRO03O using the factory image posted on Google Developers website. The recent development comes almost two months after the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation released the factory images for the Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ model, and represents a significant delay for the update to reach the LTE model.

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Telecommunications Security researcher Ravi Borgaonkar from the Berlin Technical University has revealed just how easy it might be to perform a malicious factory reset on Samsung Android smartphones running the TouchWiz interface.

Claiming to have used codes for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a session-based GSM protocol typically used to send messages between a mobile device and an application server, Borgaonkar remotely wiped a Samsung Galaxy S III on stage at the Ekoparty Security Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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Based on some quick testing, I can confirm the expected: iPhone 5 is best for someone already living the Apple lifestyle, being invested in companion products or services, including (and perhaps particularly) iCloud. iPhone 5 is also excellent choice for someone migrating from a feature phone. Flip and brick phone users will amaze at the handset's thinness, lightness and marvellous features.

I'm convinced Apple has two main target markets for iPhone 5: People with older models and those migrating from dumb phones, and there is a whole lot of the latter. Smartphones accounted for just 36.7 percent of all handset sales in second quarter, according to Gartner. The global market growth potential is yet huge.

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On Friday, FedEx delivered a pair of his and hers iPhone 5s to my home, which was much better than waiting in line outside Apple Store.

Apple says it sold 5 million units over the launch weekend. I can claim two of them.

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HTC promised, and Samsung delivered.

After a number of leaked beta builds surfaced, the official Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for the Samsung Galaxy S III is now available in select European countries.

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Apple's new iPhone 5 is now available, and I want nothing to do with it. Ever since the September 12 debut, I have wondered why anyone would want to buy the Apple smartphone, and quite frankly I could come up with only one reason -- because it's a new iPhone. For that privilege, on Friday, people queued up outside Apple Stores, from Australia to United States.

Some people started lining up days before miracle device that is known as the iPhone 5 went on sale, which makes no sense to me. I clearly expressed my disappointment a day after the announcement, and knowing what is in store (pun intended) I asked myself: "Why would I want to queue for it?"

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iPhone 5 is not a revolutionary device. Does it really need to be? No. Despite the geek freak-out that iPhone 5 isn't innovative enough, I don't doubt the handset will sell really well. What matters: Is it better enough? From my first impression, playing with one inside Apple Store, yes. More importantly, the device will be better enough for many people moving from feature phones to smartphones but shocked by the huge physical size of other devices.

Apple already has a successful post-PC product and supporting ecosystem of applications, cases, peripherals and other stuff. iPhone 5 isn't the be-all, end-all Apple cloud-connected device but the flagship in a platform continuum. Why else, for example, would the company also offer iPhone 4 (free) and iPhone 4S ($99)? iPhone 5's challenge is to be better enough, and if it's not for some buyers -- say, either the 4 or 4S is good enough -- older models are still available for less. To understand what iPhone 5 is not, you need to understand what Apple is and why the new handset actually is more than upgrade enough.

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Surely Apple is furious as not even a day after the iPhone 5 launched the device is jailbroken.

On his Twitter account Grant Paul posted a photo of an iPhone 5 with Cydia trumping on the screen, indicating that the device is jailbroken. But hold your horses, as the details are scarce at the moment and no date has been provided by the developer as to when or if the jailbreak will be publicly available.

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The Samsung Galaxy S III for Verizon Wireless comes with a locked bootloader, which is a no-go for installing custom ROMs. To aid modders the South Korean smartphone manufacturer released the Galaxy S III Developer Edition, which is still locked on the same United States carrier but has an unlocked bootloader.

The Galaxy S III Developer Edition for Verizon Wireless is available directly from Samsung for $599.99 or $649.99 in 16GB or 32GB capacities, respectively, in Pebble Blue; both sell for $400 more than the models Verizon currently lists and have 30-day parts & labor warranty. The only problem is that the bootloader of the Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III can already be unlocked without purchasing a new smartphone at a premium, that is still locked on Verizon Wireless.

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With each new smartphone and tablet, consumers are given yet another portable photographic and imaging device that can be used not only for casual photography, but also for serious purposes such as archival and preservation. Recently, I began experimenting with my smartphone to see if I could convert photo negatives into workable digital positives without having to buy a single-purpose device like the ION Pics 2 Go smartphone negative scanner.

There are quite a few smartphone applications and accessories to help people use their phone's camera to scan photographs and documents. The $15 Kickstarter project called Scanbox places smartphones an ideal distance from photos for scanning purposes, and mobile apps such as Shoebox by 1000 Memories uses edge detection and perspective correction to clean up digital shots of printed photos.

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I love these informal drop tests. They're unscientific (remember Chaos Theory, anyone?) but still give a glimpse of what to expect in real-world situations. Android Authority conducts one of the first, taking advantage of global time zones and iPhone 5 launching in Hong Kong long before the lines seriously queued in the United States today.

Darcy LaCouvee drops iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III from three different heights, in what he calls typical scenarios: pulling from the pocket, about four feet high (when lifting to ear) and from the head (here about 5 foot 6 inches). For anyone considering either of these flagship smartphones, damage from drops is a serious consideration. Because most carriers subsidize purchase prices, replacement costs can be considerably higher -- more like $600 instead of the original $200, for example.

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On the chance you just arrived back from some alternate universe -- where Windows Mobile handsets with big, bulky keyboards are most popular -- iPhone 5 debuted today in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States. Apple Stores around the globe opened at 8 am local time, some to long lines -- despite 2 million preorders in the first 24 hours.

In the United States, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon carry iPhone 5 today, while several regional carriers start sales on September 28. US buyers with freedom to pick from any carrier should choose carefully. Apple's new handset comes with 4G LTE but with trade-offs. Sprint and Verizon models offer global LTE radios but cannot access data and cellular networks at the same time, meaning you can't talk and surf the web. AT&T's iPhone 5 does both, but offers limited LTE bands; it's not a globetrotter.

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