Mobile

Nokia's new Lumia 925 smartphone can show you the time and battery life without you having to press a button.

Consumers in Germany will get their first crack at the 925 as the phone debuts there on Monday. Sales will then ramp up in other European countries and in China, followed by the United States and other global markets.

The 925 will sport several innovations, with the phone's Glance Screen among them.

The new screen can display the time and battery level. And it does this while in sleep mode, so there's no need to press a … Read more

Sprint announced today that it will be offering a 4G LTE, Android Jelly Bean handset called the Vital, starting June 14 for $99.99.

Packing a 13-megapixel camera, a dual-core processor, and an expansive 5-inch HD screen, the Vital joins the ranks of the Warp Sequent and Sprint Flash as high-end phones from Chinese manufacturer ZTE.

With its release, the Vital is unquestionably the best handset that ZTE has put out in the U.S. market. Compared to the other two, it shows marked improvements in both processing speeds and camera quality.

That'd be fine if ZTE were only … Read more

Soon enough, iOS 7 users will be greeted with dramatic new changes to the familiar interface, at least according to the latest details offered up by 9to5Mac.

Based on a peek at an early beta of iOS 7, 9to5Mac said it discovered the much-rumored new "flat" design adopted by Apple. A couple of mockups created by the blog site show that Apple has taken the edge off the icons that populate the home screen. Some of the icons also sport a new logo and color.

Samsung has announced a new addition to the company's smartphone line.

Dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Ace 3, the device comes with a 4-inch screen and a 1GHz dual-core processor. It's running Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and comes in the customer's choice of 3G or 4G LTE. The 3G option comes with 4GB of internal memory, while the 4G LTE option has 8GB of internal memory. Both support a microSD card of up to 64GB of storage.

On the back, users will find a 5-megapixel camera. The software coupled with that lens allows for users to share … Read more

Apple will unveil a new paint job for iOS and introduce its new iRadio music service at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, forecasts Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

In an investors note out today, the analyst offered his predictions on what to expect from Apple as WWDC kicks off. Several reports have already pointed to a redesign for Apple's mobile OS with iOS 7, and Munster sees that as 90 percent likely.

iOS 7 will mark the first change to iOS … Read more

Comcast is making it even easier for its broadband subscribers to access the Internet outside the confines of their homes.

For the past couple of years, the company, along with several other cable operators, has been building out a Wi-Fi network in public areas, such as train platforms and in small businesses such as cafes and retail locations, to allow its broadband customers mobile access to the Internet at no additional charge.

On Monday, the company will make two announcements that will expand this network.

The first is the launch of the new home-based, neighborhood hot-spot initiative, in which subscribers … Read more

Following the lead of Verizon Wireless, AT&T has increased the period of time customers must wait to upgrade their devices.

Customers who had previously had to wait 20 months before they were eligible for an AT&T-subsidized device will now have to wait 24 months, the wireless carrier announced on a company blog Sunday. The change applies to all new customers and to existing customers whose contract ends in March 2014 or later.

AT&T said the policy change is intended to align its device upgrade eligibility with its standard two-year wireless contract.

After completing six … Read more

When it comes to building out a network to deliver high-speed wireless service, size increasingly doesn't matter.

In fact, the wireless industry, which usually thinks big, has been buzzing about something a bit more diminutive. Wireless executives can't go through a public speech without mentioning them, tech conferences devote whole sections toward them, and one trade group has named itself after the technology in order to draft behind the growing hype.

They're called small cells, and they're poised to dramatically improve your wireless service, bringing higher speeds and more capacity to networks that are facing ever-increasing … Read more

For all of your smartphone-owning life, you've been told you can't use your expensive device while wearing gloves, no matter how low the mercury plummets. You weren't really sure why, you just knew it wasn't going to happen.

And so rocketed sales of fingerless gloves, conductive gloves, and even conductive thread for those brave (or thrifty!) enough to hack their own touch-screen hand coverings.

Then something wonderful happened that obliterated this sad certainty of specialty winterwear dependence forever, and that was Nokia.

Starting with the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820, the industry got a … Read more