Mobile

People with visual impairments just got a new champion in the cell phone world. Odin Mobile launched on Wednesday with a vision of bringing specialized cell phones to customers with limited eyesight.

Accessibility features -- inputs meant especially for those with special needs -- are baked into nearly every cell phone and smartphone, but the three handsets that Odin Mobile stocks in its online shelves are specifically created for blind and low-vision customers.

The Huawei Vision ($300), a Project Ray device backed by Qualcomm and built on an Android phone, was designed specifically for the blind.

Phone owners will navigate … Read more

Big Red faithful who have long been craving a physical keyboard's reassuring typing touch, this is your moment. Verizon will begin offering the new BlackBerry Q10 smartphone in stores starting next Monday, June 10 -- but eager beavers can preorder theirs starting Thursday.

Verizon and the other three major carriers -- AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile -- are pretty much on target with previous timelines that marked sales starting in early June.

Another consistency is the price. BlackBerry's QWERTY master sells for $199.99 on Verizon and AT&T with a new, two-year service agreement. Expect … Read more

My Verizon Galaxy Nexus is getting long in the tooth, as they say. Old. Sluggish. I bought it soon after it launched with Verizon in December 2011 because I wanted a "pure" Android experience on a network I felt had the best speed and coverage. Now I'm ready to replace it, but there's no alternative in sight.

Sure, Verizon has other Android phones I could buy. But those don't have a pure or "stock" experience, where the Android operating system hasn't had modifications made to it by the handset maker.

Pure Android … Read more

A 16-year-old programmer named Ash Bhat is attending Apple's WWDC next week for free. How? He created an iOS app that earned him one of 150 scholarships.

Tickets to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference sold out within two minutes after going on sale in April. But the company held out hope for student developers, promising scholarships for 150 of those able to create an app that would knock Apple's socks off.

The scholarship awarded one free ticket to join the conference, which runs from June 10 to June 14 in San Francisco.

Those qualified to enter the competition … Read more

Research firm ComScore has released its latest U.S. smartphone industry report, estimating that Apple remains top of the pile in the smartphone industry with a market share of 39.2 percent. 

Based on data gathered through the company's MobiLens service -- which harvests user information based on subscribers 13 years and older -- ComScore says that in the three month period ended April 2013, Apple and South Korean rival Samsung were the only manufacturers that enjoyed a positive increase in market share values. 

Tech giant Apple managed to snag 39.2 percent of U.S. smartphone … Read more

HTC's popular One smartphone might be getting squished a bit.

Estonia-based site Forte.delfi.ee posted several pictures on Wednesday of what it claims is the long-rumored HTC One Mini. The device, it says (and the pictures corroborate), has the same basic design as the larger HTC One, but comes with a slightly smaller 720p HD screen measuring 4.3 inches. The standard HTC One comes with a 4.7-inch display.

According to Engadget, which was first to report on Forte's find, the smaller device has a 720p display, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. A … Read more

Sure, Samsung won a victory over Apple when a judge imposed a limited sales ban on older iPhones and iPads. But Apple would survive such a ban virtually unscathed, according to Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster.

Tuesday's ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission found Apple guilty of infringing on certain Samsung cellular technology patents. Assuming the ruling stands, a ban on the infringing devices would halt sales of the AT&T models of the iPhone 4 and 3GS and the 3G versions of the first and second iPad.

A ban on most of those devices would … Read more

Microsoft will be offering a free version of Office in the smaller versions of tablets running its operating system, a new report claims.

According to The Verge, which quoted Windows CFO Tami Reller at Computex on Wednesday, Microsoft will allow vendors to bundle Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote into 7- and 8-inch tablets running Windows 8. Outlook 2013 will not be bundled with the device, despite the fact that Windows RT 8.1, the latest version of that software, will come with Outlook RT.

Like other tablet makers, Microsoft is trying to make a push for the smaller side of … Read more

Samsung's long-rumored Galaxy S4 Active has entered the realm of officialdom at last, and will be out in the U.K. this summer, Samsung has confirmed.

The S4 Active is a rugged version of the regular S4, aimed at outdoorsy types who don't want a phone that'll faint at the first sight of dust or water. The phone has a sealed design that -- Samsung promises -- will protect the S4 Active from water damage for up to 30 minutes of submergence at a depth of one meter.

More than enough protection against dropping it in your … Read more