featuritis

iOS 6 became available for download today, and if you want to get up to speed on what exactly is included with the update, check out my review here. Some of the major highlights are the completely redesigned Maps app, upgrades to Siri, and several other new features. But with iOS 6 there are more than 200 new features, and clearly I couldn't cover them all in my review.

Part of what makes this update a must-have for Apple's mobile devices are the numerous smaller tweaks that make using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch easier. I'm … Read more

While a huge percentage of Africa's more than 1 billion residents have cell phones, far fewer have access to e-mail. Google is trying to change that.

According to the Associated Press, the Web giant is embarking on an ambitious endeavor that will let people receive e-mails via text messages. In effect, Google will be giving people access to the Internet with feature handsets. Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya are the first countries to get the service.

Nigerians began seeing ads posted on billboards around the country for Google's text message email service in July, according to the Associated Press. … Read more

At long last, the iPhone 5 is here, and now the dissection begins.

Of course, whether it truly lives up to expectations won't matter to millions of people with older iPhones (and other smartphones) who've been waiting to upgrade to the next iPhone no matter what. But for those who have an iPhone 4 or 4S and are on the fence about upgrading, here's a look at some key features Apple left out of this model that may find their way into the next iPhone (let's call it the iPhone 5S for now).

No radical new … Read more

Apple continues to be the industry's top device maker, at least in the number of ad impressions recorded by Millennial Media for its September Mobile Mix report.

For the second quarter of 2012, Apple took home a leading 31 percent of all ad impressions (the number of times an ad is displayed). The iPhone retained its top spot among the top 20 handsets, accounting for almost 16 percent of all impressions.

Samsung captured 22 percent of all impressions to win second place among the top 15 phone makers. The company saw eight of its phones on the top 20 … Read more

iPhone owners continue to be the most satisfied smartphone customers of all, at least according to new survey results from J.D. Power and Associates.

For the eighth time in a row, Apple's flagship phone took home top honors for customer satisfaction. Ranking 849 out of 1,000, the iPhone shined in all of the categories tallied by J.D. Power but scored especially well in physical design and overall ease of use.

Based on two separate studies, the results revealed consumer satisfaction with both feature phones and smartphones in performance, ease of operation, physical design, and features. Only … Read more

Mobile phone customers can choose from even more contract-free plans from RadioShack as of today.

Four new plans are available altogether through Cricket Wireless -- two for feature phones and two for smartphones.

The $25-per-month feature phone plan offers 300 voice minutes, while the $35 plan raises that to 1,000 minutes. Both plans up the ante with unlimited data access, unlimited texting, call waiting, and three-way calling.

The $50-per-month smartphone plan adds unlimited voice minutes and promises that the first gigabyte of data will run at full 3G speeds. The $60 plan offers the first 2.5GB of data … Read more

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about AV receiver feature glut. Today's receiver manufacturers put an inordinate amount of time and money into designing feature-laden receivers, and feature glut might be part of the reason why today's receivers don't sound as good as receivers did in the 1980s. I get it, today's consumers rarely compare one receiver's sound with another receiver, but they can count HDMI connections, so that's where the money goes.

It's not that Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony, and Yamaha aren't trying to make great-sounding receivers, … Read more

With the release of iOS 6 highly likely in September (concurrent with the expected iPhone 5 announcement), the rumors around unannounced feature changes at tech sites are reaching an all-time high, so I decided to round up some of the big ones here. We already know about the main features in iOS 6 Apple announced at WWDC in June, but this list is more about leaked info that other sites are talking about. Obviously, we can't know for sure if any of these will be true at launch, but it's always fun to talk about what might be … Read more

Nokia has decided to nix plans to launch a new software platform for feature phones, according to a new report.

The mobile company was working on a new software platform called Meltemi to replace Series 40, Reuters is reporting today, citing sources. However, the platform, which was Linux-based, has been quietly discontinued by the company. Reuters' sources did not say why Nokia made the decision.

Series 40 was first introduced in 1999. The platform, which runs on some of the top feature phones in the world, proved wildly popular. Earlier this year, in fact, Nokia celebrated the sale of the 1.5 billionth Series 40 device. … Read more