Mobile

United States customs officials have reportedly blocked shipments of two high-profile Android smartphones from entering the country. It's the result of a court injunction obtained by Apple on the basis of alleged patent violations. The affected ... phones are the One X and the EVO 4G LTE, both manufactured by HTC. It's a significant blow to the smartphone maker, as these phones were intended to be its flagship models in the fast-growing Android smartphone market. Apple, Android No Strangers to Courts Apple and various manufacturers of Android devices have been engaged in a lengthy war of ... (view more)

The share price of Research in Motion (RIM), the Waterloo, Canada-based maker of the once-popular BlackBerry smartphone, continues its free-fall. Shares of the faltering company dipped to an eight-year low late last week. Incredibly, that price took ... a 15 per cent tumble in just three days, following the unveiling of a new BlackBerry device. It has been a wild and entirely unpleasant year for Research in Motion. Early in 2012, the company turned away from high-profile co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in favor of a new CEO: Thorsten Heins. The shift in leadership evidently ... (view more)

Research In Motion (RIM), based in Waterloo, Canada, has decided it will no longer target its Blackberry and related products at ordinary consumers. Instead, it will concentrate solely on the business market. A big reason is no doubt that the ... company lost $125 million in just the last three months of 2011. Thorsten Heins, the company's recently hired chief executive officer, said "We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody's darling and all things to all people." (Source: usatoday.com ) Apple iPhone Popularity Too Much for RIM, BlackBerry RIM first made its name ... (view more)

PayPal has unwrapped a new device that allows anyone with a smartphone to accept credit card payments. Unlike some other systems, "PayPal Here" doesn't require any special chips be installed in the phone itself. The idea is to tackle two existing ... problems for merchants who want to take credit and debit card payments: First, card payments usually require the merchant to have a device with telephone connectivity, to allow instant bank verification of the customer's identity and account. Second, taking such payments often entails hefty fees from the card-issuing bank, the merchant's ... (view more)

A recent study has found that some smartphone applications unnecessarily waste battery life. The worst offenders appear to be free games that make money for their developers by bombarding gamers with advertising. Most free apps fall into one of ... three categories: Promotional tools or pieces of larger information campaigns. Trial or demo versions of apps that charge for their "full" version. Advertising-supported apps that normally display advertising as they operate. Excessive App Power Use: Researchers Identify Causes Apps in the third category -- ad supported -- have attracted the ... (view more)

Samsung has unveiled a new, Google Android-based smartphone that not only records movies, it features an integrated projector capable of displaying a 50-inch high-definition (HD) image. The phone improves on an earlier Samsung product launched a ... couple years ago. This innovative projector smartphone is called the Samsung Galaxy Beam. Those who follow the mobile market closely enough will probably recognize the name. That's because Samsung first gave the Beam idea a spin back in 2010, but scored only modest results. This time around, however, the company says in the last two years it has ... (view more)

The world's largest mobile phone maker says it plans to eliminate roughly 4,000 manufacturing positions, or about 7 per cent of its entire work force. Nokia cited efforts to become more efficient in its production of smartphones as the main reason ... behind the cutback. On Wednesday, February 8, 2012, the Espo, Finland-based firm announced that it would eliminate certain jobs from three of its major factories, specifically those located in Komarom, Hungary, Reynosa, Mexico, and Salo, Finland. Nokia says the bulk of the planned layoffs will come at its Hungarian facility, with less drastic cuts ... (view more)

Microsoft's standing in the smartphone operating system (OS) marketplace may have been seriously hurt by the many delays associated with Windows Phone 7, it's most current offering. But a newly leaked video suggests work on the next Windows Phone ... system is well underway and could make up for several current failings. The video, which was leaked to the Pocket Now website, was produced by Microsoft for Nokia, which now uses Windows Phone 7 in almost all of its new smartphones (one of Microsoft's few mobile success stories in recent years). It's not clear why Microsoft created the video, though ... (view more)

Just when you thought you understood the difference between notebooks, netbooks, tablets and smartphones, Samsung has come up with a totally new device: it's a phone with a 5.3-inch display, which may make it the biggest smartphone ever released. ... The Samsung Galaxy Note bridges the gap between smartphones and tablets. To put its size into perspective, most smartphones have a 3.5-inch screen, most tablet computer screens range from the RIM (Research in Motion) PlayBook's 7-inches to the Apple iPad's 10-inch display. The new "phablet" (phone / tablet) will be sold in the same way as a ... (view more)

A new survey draws some interesting parallels between the smartphones we choose and our dating behavior. According to the poll's results, Android users are far more likely to engage in 'hanky panky' on a first date than those who prefer to use an ... Apple iPhone or a BlackBerry, made by Research in Motion (RIM). The survey was recently conducted by Match.com, a major online dating website. Survey questions were asked of Canadian singles, and produced a flurry of fascinating findings. The study should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as the sample size was only 1,000 respondents. (Source: ... (view more)