Smartphones

Sprint's HTC 4G phone poised for CTIA announcement

Based on recent leaks, a pair of HTC handsets, the Supersonic and Incredible, appear all but ready to ship. The Google Android smartphones have appeared in the wild and they look like final products.

A handful of pictures of the Incredible trickled out early last week from a Twitter user known as DevDroid. As you can see in the image, the handset is black with red accents. Though the color scheme doesn't resemble anything else HTC has done lately, it does have an air of Verizon Wireless about it. According to rumors, the Incredible runs Android 2.1 with … Read more

Overclocked: How does an 800MHz Pre run?

The stock Palm Pre has an adequate but ho-hum 500MHz processor inside with 256MB or RAM. And even the Palm Pre Plus simply doubles the RAM. So how would the Pre run with a much faster processor? Now we know.

One modder overclocked his Pre (1.3.5.1 software) from 500MHz to 800MHz. He lost a good deal of battery life. And the phone persistently ran warm. Chances are the phone may one day get so hot it melts his Hanes to his hip.

But hey, marginally faster performance. You can't beat that. If you're interested, download … Read more

Typing time savers--David's iPhone tip of the week

This week's tip will make you a faster typist on your iPhone. Rapidly select symbols from the iPhone virtual keyboard and return to typing letters in mere seconds.

If you are typing a note, e-mail, etc., you can rapidly add a period, comma, question mark, or other symbol by pressing and holding the 123 key. Then, without lifting your finger, slide it over to the character you need and let go. You'll get that character and find yourself back in letter mode on the virtual keyboard, where you can rapidly type out the rest of that sentence or … Read more

Opera Mini 5 beta for Android: First Look video

Earlier this week, Opera Software released Opera Mini 5 beta for Android, a vast improvement to the version 4.2 browser that had previously been available for Android. Opera Mini 5 beta isn't new to the scene--it's been out for some months on Java phones, BlackBerry, and interestingly, it just hopped on board Windows phones.

In this First Look video, we take you on a hands-on tour of Opera's slick-looking browser alternative for Android smartphones, which is available for free in the Android Market or by downloading it from www.opera.com/mini/next/.

Friday Poll: What else should iPhone OS 4 get?

Right now the Interwubs are all a-flutter with rumors about the forthcoming version 4 of the iPhone OS. Chief among these tittle-tattles is that it will include the ability to multitask, something other advanced phone operating systems can do that the iPhone can't, much to the chagrin of its users.

Other rumors include an updated interface with widgets in addition to apps; speed improvements; and a lock screen that displays texts, e-mails, and other alerts.

There are more things Apple could do to the OS within the constraints of the current hardware, and we'd like to know what … Read more

And now, it's the iPhone's turn

Earlier this week, we shared 10 ways that Google's Android operating system beats the iPhone. And now, as promised, we offer 10 ways that the iPhone fights back. Even as Android continues to gather steam, Apple's device still can hold its own in a number of areas like the music player, app selection and video recording feature. We're not saying the iPhone is better, but we want to acknowledge the strengths of each competitor. So for the full story, check out our slideshow.

Novothink's iPhone Solar Surge charging case finally shipping

Back in November of last year we wrote about an upcoming Apple-certified iPhone and iPod Touch solar charger from a company called Novothink. Well, four months later, the Solar Surge charging case, which Novothink is marketing toward "outdoor enthusiasts," is now available for purchase.

As anybody who's tried to charge an electronic device using a solar charger knows, it doesn't juice up the device nearly as quickly as your typical power adapter would and the Surge is no exception. The charging case can provide up to 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network or … Read more

Motorola Cliq XT reviewed

As the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. That's certainly true of the upcoming Motorola Cliq XT for T-Mobile.

Announced at Mobile World Congress 2010, the XT might be quickly dismissed by some people as a slight revamp of the Motorola Cliq, but we think that's a bit of a disservice to the device. After all, the smartphone offers a sleeker design with a capable onscreen keyboard courtesy of Swype, a more full-featured and connected media player, and, thankfully, better performance than the Motorola Backflip. There are issues, of course, but we found much more … Read more

Motion-aware phones may be your new nemesis

Trust the Japanese to come up with this. By analyzing how smartphones with built-in accelerometers relate to everyday actions, i.e. walking or running, KDDI Laboratories has apparently found a way to help supervisors do their jobs better.

The motion patterns from the cellular are sent to a back-end analytical server, which then matches and determines the type of actions associated with the phone. Of course, the accuracy of such an implementation will get better over time as more data is collected, but it's really all moot if you don't carry the handset with you when you're … Read more