phones

Some airlines have been allowing BlackBerrys to be used as electronic boarding passes and soon standard cell phones will follow.

Now there is news of the iPhone being used to board a plane. Blogger Gerald Buckley writes about how he was allowed to board an American Airlines flight from San Antonio to Dallas by having the gate agent scan the bar code of the ticket on a PDF displayed on his iPhone.

Don't think you can waltz quickly to the gate by flashing your iPhone, though. Buckley makes it clear that he showed TSA his paper boarding pass to … Read more

AT&T plans to sell the 3G iPhone for $199 when it arrives in AT&T's stores in June, according to a report, in a sign that Apple may have given up on locked iPhones.

Fortune is reporting that you'll be able to buy a $199 iPhone in AT&T's stores, and only in AT&T's stores, when the new model arrives around the one-year anniversary of the iPhone launch. The report says Apple will sell 8GB and 16GB versions of the new iPhone for $399 and $499 in its own retail … Read more

Madonna fans who can't get tickets to the intimate concert kicking off the release of her latest album in New York City on Wednesday night can catch a glimpse of the show on their cell phones.

Verizon Wireless and Vodafone are teaming up with the pop diva to promote the new album Hard Candy, which hit stores on Tuesday. And as part of this deal, the wireless operators will deliver a live global mobile simulcast of Madonna performing four songs at New York's Roseland Ballroom.

The simulcast, which is the first time Verizon or Vodafone has ever streamed … Read more

On Tuesday, Check Point Software Technologies announced support for the Apple iPhone through its Virtual Private Networking (VPN) software tool VPN-1.

Using the iPhone's embedded Layer 2 Transport Protocol (L2TP) client, VPN-1 is able to provide secure, encrypted access for iPhone users communicating with enterprises currently running Check Point's VPN-1 gateway.

Apple's iPhone is expected to cross the Canadian border later this year, the country's largest wireless provider said Tuesday.

Rogers Communications, which is also Canada's only GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) provider, will serve as the region's iPhone carrier.

"We're thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can't tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned," Chief executive Ted Rogers said in a statement.

The announcement comes 10 months after the Canadian company let it slip out of the bag that it would be the exclusive iPhone provider in Canada. … Read more

It's unclear why anyone would want to make a knockoff of Vertu's phones. For one thing, it would seem virtually impossible to do justice (or something) to its unique designs and highest-end materials. Perhaps even more difficult would be keeping up with its production schedule because Vertu keeps paying homage to itself with new lines.

None of these reasons are enough to dampen the spirit of Chinese entrepreneurism, which has manifested itself in the form of the "Veptu." This phone is purportedly also a luxury handset, finished in 18k or 24k gold plate and even diamonds … Read more

Following a pair of new XpressMusic handsets last week, Nokia today unveiled three more handsets: the 6600 folder, 6600 slider, and 3600 slider.

The Finnish giant is marketing these three phones as "beautiful to use" even though we think they look just like regular handsets. According to Aki Laine, the man responsible for the 6600 clamshell, the phone is designed to fit the contours of your face (which sounds like the "banana" phone sometime back), and there's no need to manually open the handset because there's a dedicated button to do that. The pictures … Read more

Question: How did the Borg--the not-so-lovable cyborgs in Star Trek--get to be that way?

Answer: it all started with Bluetooth headsets.

I see more and more people walking around with Bluetooth headsets lodged behind their ears every day. Most states are passing hands-free laws for drivers. Even my technophobe wife wants one.

I could be wrong, but I think it's only a matter of time before some enterprising startup comes up with an implantable device.… Read more

As the mobile phone industry churns out new handsets every day, the opportunities to distance a product from the massive pack can seem infinitesimal. For that reason Philips deserves some credit for trying some new tricks on the Chinese market.

Its latest offering, the M600, attempts to capitalize on the continuing evolution toward music devices with a design that looks almost more like a media player than a phone. Not only does it have a giant play button just above the keypad, according to SlashPhone, but it also features MP3 hotkeys, 40 hours of playback, and the same "SRS … Read more