cellular

Pardon us for not telling you about this last week, but we were pretty busy with all the cell phone news at CES. On Friday, however, Samsung announced that its new TwoStep was coming to U.S. Cellular.

Why the company didn't break the news in Las Vegas, we don't know. Indeed, Samsung's cell phone division had a very quiet week at the show.

Also known as the SCH-r470, the TwoStep offers a slim flip phone design in orange, red, and purple. On the front face you'll find a monochrome display, music controls, and stereo speakers. … Read more

During its touch-screen phone marathon this autumn, Samsung left almost no carrier untouched. And that includes both U.S. Cellular and Alltel. Instead of the Behold, the Omnia, or the Eternity, both carriers opted for the Samsung Delve instead.

From the outside, both the Alltel Delve and the U.S. Cellular Delve look a lot like their touch-screen counterparts. They show some unique physical aspects, but front and center on both devices is an expansive touch screen with a vibrant resolution and a responsive TouchWiz interface.

Both handsets offer solid mid-range feature sets that center on multimedia. You'll find … Read more

A few years ago, I bought a fancy home phone so I could set it to forward calls to my cell. Not long after, I found a better and cheaper solution by ditching the landline completely.

I am not alone. According to Nielsen, 17 percent of U.S. households--some 20 million homes--are without a wired telephone, instead relying solely on mobile phones.

This brings up a question of what we should do with that fancy home phone. I do miss the comfort of using the big handset rather than fumbling on the tiny, onscreen keyboard of my iPhone.

Xtreme Technology … Read more

Wireless operators like AT&T and Verizon have an ingenious way to improve service to the roughly 50 percent of all subscribers who complain of poor reception at home:

Buy your own cellular tower.

For $100 and a monthly service charge, U.S. wireless carriers will provide customers with a "femtocell," a miniature cell-phone tower for the home. It's a bit galling that customers should have to pay even more to get reasonable cellular service, but it's looking like a sure bet that the program will take off, as consumers (like myself) are desperate to … Read more

(Credit: Somebody Else's Phone)

If you found somebody else's phone, would you look through it? That's a rhetorical question. Of course! Your phone is your life, at least if you're under 25, and there's nothing more interesting than the "lives of others."

The advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy London translated the idea of "cellular oversharing" into a much gushed-about ad campaign for Nokia. "Somebody Else's Phone" depicts the lives of three twentysomethings through their text messages, multimedia messaging service, and pictures, and it essentially creates a new story format: … Read more

VeriSign on Tuesday announced that it has sold its minority stake in mobile-entertainment joint venture Jamba to partner News Corp. for approximately $200 million.

The sale bumps News Corp.' unit Fox Mobile Entertainment's share of Jamba from a 51 percent stake to full ownership. And it enables VeriSign to focus on its core Internet infrastructure business, according to Jim Bidzos, the company's interim CEO. VeriSign runs the master database for such domains as .com and .net.

The joint venture was announced two years ago, when Rupert Murdoch's media company acquired a controlling stake in VeriSign's mobile-ringtone … Read more

AT&T on Wednesday said that it has fixed a problem that caused many iPhone users in the Northeastern U.S. to complain that they couldn't access the mobile Web.

The company told newswire Reuters that the problem, which caused some users to not be able to surf the Web on their phones, was fixed just before noon on Wednesday. The problem did not affect phone calls, text messages or mobile e-mail from devices such as Research In Motion's BlackBerry.

A company spokesman told the news service that it was a "routing issue" that affected … Read more

I recently reviewed the Windy31, a USB wireless router that allows for sharing your computer's existing internet connection with others, and found it a very cool device. Today I got my hands on the Kyocera KR2 Mobile router and its companion, the Kyocera KPC680 CDMA ExpressCard, and I have to admit, I never thought mobile internet access could be that good. Still, of course, it's far from perfect.

Let's talk the good first. The KR2 is actually the upgrade to the Kyocera KR1. Significant improvements include: a better design (though still I found it a little bulky … Read more

Updated 12:34 p.m. PDT to correct the attribution of the cellular phone tracking story. The story that focused on the privacy issues was written by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press.

Cell phone usage tracked in an undisclosed industrial nation revealed a majority of users tend to remain close to home for months at a time, according to a study conducted by Northeastern University and cited Wednesday in the journal Nature.

While the study of 100,000 cell phone users in a country outside the U.S. demonstrated that 75 percent remained within a 20-mile radius of their … Read more