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Samsung Electronics, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, said its fourth-quarter profit rose 76 percent to another record high on strong sales of Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

The South Korean electronics giant today reported a net profit of 7.04 trillion won ($6.6 billion), up from 4.01 trillion won in the same period a year earlier.

It was the fifth consecutive record quarterly profit for Samsung, which reported fourth-quarter sales of 56 trillion won ($52.6 billion), a 19 percent increase. Nearly half of that revenue came from its mobile communications division, particularly strong sales of its … Read more

Apple's iPhone is the No. 1 pick among prospective smartphone buyers polled in North America, though it's losing some ground to Samsung.

Among 4,000 people looking to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 50 percent plan to buy an iPhone, according to a report out today from ChangeWave Research. That's not a bad number, but it's down from 71 percent in last quarter's survey, which was conducted just as the iPhone 5 debuted.

Over the same time, the percentage of people eyeing a Samsung smartphone rose to 21 percent from 13 percent, … Read more

Face tags on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Note 2 are neat features of the Gallery app. When you take photos of people, the app places yellow boxes over their faces, then allows you to tag them by tapping on the yellow boxes. However, if you're not interested in using face tags, the yellow boxes can be distracting when viewing your photos. Disabling face tags prevents the yellow boxes from appearing. Here's how to disable them:

Step 1: Launch the Gallery app and select a photo to view.

Step 2: Tap the Menu key and select "Face … Read more

iPhone 5 users in Europe are keeping mobile networks busy by eating up the most data.

Among 125 devices included in a study out today by Arieso, users of the newest iPhone downloaded 50 percent more data than did those with an iPhone 4S and four times as much as did those with an iPhone 3G. But Samsung users also proved to be big data hogs, at least in terms of uploads.

Owners of the Galaxy S3 took first place in terms of the amount of data uploaded, followed by those with the Galaxy Note 2. That put the iPhone … Read more

The good news is that owners of the Samsung Galaxy S3 through Verizon now have global roaming capabilities. The bad news is that Verizon apparently believes the "sometime after launch" promise it made equals a half-year wait.

Last June, when the Galaxy S3 was about to launch, I wrote about how Verizon promised it would allow for global roaming and using any SIM card, not just one locked to a Verizon calling plan. From my column back then, Verizon said:

The latest version of Android is now sitting on about 10 percent of all Android devices, while Gingerbread dropped below 50 percent, according to the latest numbers from Google.

Jelly Bean -- that is, Android 4.1 and 4.2 -- is up in the two weeks ending January 3, though it's Android 4.1 that's made most of the gains (see chart below).

That's a sizable jump from the first two weeks of December when Jelly Bean, released in July, was on 6.7 percent of all active devices.

Driving the uptick are devices including the … Read more

Samsung has issued a software update to address a nasty vulnerability found in a handful of smartphones that allowed attackers access to user data and left the handset vulnerable to malicious apps and bricking.

The vulnerability, which was discovered last month, lies in Exynos 4, the ARM-based system-on-a-chip typically found in Samsung smartphones and tablets. An exploit bypasses the system permissions, allowing any app to extract data from the device's RAM or inject malicious code into the kernel of a Galaxy S3. But other devices using the Exynos 4 were also found to be vulnerable, including select Galaxy S2 … Read more

Apple has agreed to withdraw patent infringement allegations against Samsung's new Galaxy S3 Mini in exchange for assurances that the South Korean electronics giant will not market the smartphone in the U.S.

Apple disclosed the agreement today in a filing with the U.S. District Court for Northern California. The iPhone maker requested last month that the new smartphone and other Samsung products be added to the ongoing patent dispute between the two companies. Samsung countered that the S3 Mini was unavailable for purchase in the United States, however Apple noted that the new smartphone was listed on … Read more

The upcoming Galaxy S4 from Samsung is already carrying the weight of the whole Android smartphone world on its shoulders, even though it hasn't been officially announced yet, and we'd be lucky to see it actually available within the next six months.

Many are hoping the next flagship phone from Samsung could finally be the legendary and long-foretold Apple eater first documented in the book of Genesis. Actually, maybe that's something else. But there's still much speculation that Samsung could pull something groundbreaking out of its huge chaebolic hat to vault ahead of the iPhone (some, … Read more