Personal communications

Samsung and wireless technology provider InterDigital have reached a settlement in their long-running patent dispute involving 3G and 2G technologies, InterDigital announced Monday.

Under the agreement, Samsung will receive a royalty-bearing license to cover all of its 3G products through 2012. The agreement, which also resolves a dispute over Samsung's royalty obligations for its 2G sales, will also include products built on WCDMA and cdma2000 standards and related extensions.

The parties did not disclose the terms of the agreement, however, a report in the Wall Street Journal cites a telecom analyst who puts a value of $400 million to $… Read more

Only yesterday Opera Mini 4.2 beta joined Google's Android Market. On Tuesday, the mini update to Opera's mobile browser for Java phones became the app's new benchmark.

The version 4.2 release appears identical to the beta version (review), made available for download just two weeks before. It boasts speeds up to 30 percent faster, a modified video playback that triggers a media player to stream a video, greater multilingual support, and the reintroduction of skins, a visual extra that had made a short hiatus when Opera upgraded Mini to version 4.0.

In addition, Opera'… Read more

Opera Mini 4.2 beta, a test version released for Java phones just two weeks ago, on Monday became the first third-party browser available for Google Android.

Opera Mini for Android, which was previewed in April, includes most of the familiar Mini 4.2 features: zooming, saving, bookmarking, and searching for in-line text has stayed intact, as has syncing via Opera Link and swapping skins.

We couldn't make the video playback workaround that debuted on other Java phones work in this build, though T-Mobile's USA's G1 phone does support video playback (see our review on TuneWiki.) We … Read more

Faced with strong competition from Apple and Research In Motion, as well as economic headwinds, Palm has decided to lay off some workers.

Valleywag reported that the layoffs could involve as many as 10 percent of the company's 1,050 employees. A Palm representative confirmed that layoffs were taking place but did not comment on exactly how many people were affected.

"There have been some layoffs as a result of challenges facing our company and the industry, and we're restructuring our worldwide operations to better position ourselves for profitability and long-term growth," said Lynn Fox, a … Read more

Perhaps no one has benefited as much from the downfall of the Treo than Apple.

On Thursday, ChangeWave released the results of an otherwise dismal survey predicting a tough time ahead for anyone who relies on corporate IT spending for their livelihood. But the news was good for those in the smartphone business not named Palm; smartphone shipments to U.S. corporations are expected to grow even as overall IT spending falls.

And Apple's iPhone is seeing the bulk of the growth, according to ChangeWave. Companies still love Research in Motion's BlackBerry, as we covered earlier this month, … Read more

It's been a busy two days for AOL Mail. On Wednesday, AOL launched a beefier version of the AOL Mail gadget for iGoogle. On Thursday, AOL won a few more fans with the introduction of its beta feature AOL Sync.

AOL Mail for iGoogle improves upon the previous gadget by replacing the preview-only capability with functionality that lets you compose, reply, and fully manage your in-box from the iGoogle page.

AOL Sync beta, launched today, targets mobile and desktop users with the ability to sync their AOL address book and calendar in real time to Microsoft Outlook, the iPhone, … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Inspired by a new generation of smartphones, Adobe Systems has begun a new, higher-power effort to spread its Flash technology to mobile devices.

The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones, but it now is working to bring the full-fledged Flash Player 10 to higher-end smartphones, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch said at Adobe's Max conference here.

"We are in the midst of evolving Flash Player 10 for mobile," Lynch said. "We're taking the full Flash Player and making that run on the higher end … Read more

LONDON--Mobile operator 3 has unveiled a phone designed for accessing Web 2.0 services such as Facebook that it hopes will do for data consumption what Apple's iPhone has done for smartphone uptake.

Speaking at a launch event here, Kevin Russell, CEO of 3, said: "The iPhone is a fabulous product--a breakthrough in usability. The Google (Android) phone is an exciting direction. But for us, we want to open this whole marketplace up, in terms of usage of data for mobiles."

The operator announced that it will be offering the new phone, the Inq1, to tap into … Read more

Article updated 11/13/08 at 11:15 am to include more details.

Two months ago, MySpace and Research In Motion announced a joint effort to create a rich native freeware app for MySpace on BlackBerry phones. On Thursday, RIM made MySpace for BlackBerry globally available. You can also download it from the BlackBerry browser when you point to www.blackberry.com/myspace.

Unsurprisingly, the functions and feel of this BlackBerry'd MySpace application have been modeled on RIM's Facebook app for BlackBerry, which has been going strong for about a year.

Navigating from icons at the top of … Read more