CES - Cell phones and smartphones

With the advent of 4G bandwidth, the time may finally be ripe for high-data mobile video calling to take root. That's what video chat company OoVoo is banking on: it just announced its intention at CES to translate its desktop and Web video chat interface to the mobile phone.

Oovoo's desktop video-calling apps (Windows|Mac) can handle up to six conference-call lines at once, and can record conversations, to boot.

We can only guess at this point if video conference calls will figure into OoVoo's mobile app, since it won't even have a product to formally … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs is about to speak here at CES 2010. We'll be posting frequent updates once he gets started, in about five minutes.

Update 11:20 a.m.: Jacobs opens his speech with a prediction: that all consumer electronics devices will essentially be phones one day. Because inside they'll have chips from cell phones for downloading books, apps, and connecting to other devices. This is what he'll be talking about today.

Update 11:25 a.m.: A lot of computing power is going into mobile phones, and that will impact the user experience, Jacobs … Read more

Editor's note: This speech was blogged live, so be sure to scroll down for updates.

LAS VEGAS--Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is just taking the keynote stage at CES Friday to discuss the company's strategy for reaching the world's developing markets with its products.

Update at 9:15 a.m. PST: Nokia is the world's leader in cell phones. And while the company has struggled over the past year to hold its dominance in the high-end market, it clearly dominates the emerging market with low-cost phones tailored to the millions of customers who live on … Read more

LAS VEGAS--After we got a good look at the LG Lotus Elite, we turned our attention to the LG Rumor Touch, the other phone LG announced at CES.

The Rumor Touch has very little in common with the other Rumor handsets--the previous Rumor phones were rather basic and didn't even have 3G. As the name suggests, the Rumor Touch now has a 3-inch WQVGA touch-screen display in addition to a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a design reminiscent of the LG Xenon.

In our few minutes playing with the phone, we have to admit that the touch screen interface didn't … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Mobile TV may finally hit the mainstream when cell phones throughout the U.S. are able to access local TV for free.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition, an organization made up of consumer electronics companies, broadcasters, and mobile TV companies, has finished a standard for new chips that will allow mobile devices, such as cell phones, to receive broadcast TV signals. The new technology is already making its way into prototype devices and is being shown off here at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Starting in March, broadcasters in Washington, D.C., will be the first to test the mobile … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ever since Apple opened up the door for developers to create turn-by-turn GPS applications with the third-generation iPhone operating system, there have been many GPS applications for the iPhone. However, soon owners of phones running on different platforms, including Android and Windows Mobile, won't be missing out anymore.

Navigon, the developer of the Navigon MobileNavigator for the iPhone, which for the time being is the most comprehensive iPhone GPS app with potentially more features than you can ask for, announced Thursday at CES 2010 its upcoming MobileNavigator app for Windows phones and Android platforms.

Unlike the version for … Read more

At November's CTIA show in San Diego, Slacker outlined a plan for its music-streaming Slacker Radio apps for BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone. A few months later and several cities over, my colleague, Jasmine France, takes you through a hands-on look at Slacker's embellishments to its iPhone app (caching!) from CES in Las Vegas. In the meantime, I've been tooling around the most recent beta version of Slacker Radio for BlackBerry 3.0.

At CTIA, Slacker told us that version 3.0 of its BlackBerry app would soon be able to sync cached stations over the air, through … Read more

If you're a Palm Pre owner looking for some serious protection for your smartphone, you're in luck: OtterBox has announced its Tandem Series, a new case line designed for slider phones with the first model offering "flagship protection" for the Pre.

Building a case for a slider like the Pre is tricky. According to OtterBox, the Tandem Series provides two custom fit polycarbonate shells with overmolding and an adhesive screen to shield against scratches.

"Overmolding is an injection molding process that combines two materials into one interconnected component," says Curt Richardson, OtterBox's CEO. &… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Mere hours after LG announced the Lotus Elite, we headed over to the company's booth to get a closer look at the touch-screen successor to the LG Lotus. The Lotus Elite is indeed much curvier and sleeker than the original. Measuring 3.43 inches wide by 2.44 inches long by about three-quarters of an inch thick, it still has that square-ish design and is quite lightweight at less than half an ounce as well.

The most interesting part of the new design is, of course, the new external touch screen. It is 2.4 inches diagonally, which … Read more