CES - Cell phones and smartphones

LAS VEGAS--AT&T introduced the latest addition to its Android family today, the Samsung Infuse 4G.

The Infuse 4G will be one of the first smartphones in the U.S. to rock Samsung's next-generation Super AMOLED Plus touch screen, which claims 50 percent more subpixels for better contrast and outdoor visibility. If that weren't enough, the screen measures 4.5 inches diagonally, making it one of the largest displays on a smartphone today.

Aside from the new display technology, the Infuse 4G will run Android 2.2 and feature a 1.2GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera with … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Hot on the heels of the LG Optimus 2X, LG has just introduced another Android smartphone here at CES 2011 called the LG Optimus Black. The Optimus Black promises a super bright 4-inch "NOVA display" in a very thin 9.2mm design. In fact, LG claims that it tapers down to 6.0mm to make it the world's thinnest smartphone.

The NOVA display claims to be the brightest and most readable mobile screen with "700 nits of brightness" for optimal visibility. The new display technology also promises improved battery life. The Optimus Black will … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Underscoring two smartphones trends at CES 2011, Qualcomm is getting behind ooVoo to show the latter's video chat app on an Android phone.

More specifically, the two companies are demonstrating ooVoo's multi-party video chat app on a yet-to-be-released, dual-core Android phone running Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset.

This exercise is important for a few reasons. First, as with any hardware change, performance specs only sink in when you can see how much faster or smoother they can execute tasks compared with the previous version. Take dual- and quad-core desktops and laptops, for example. At first glance, they look … Read more

LAS VEGAS--At CES, the start-up Peep Wireless Technology is trying to find partners to adopt its mobile phone mesh networking technology. It looks like the company has a long road ahead of it.

The mesh concept, which is not new, is that instead of phone voice or data moving as it does now, from low-powered mobile devices to high-powered, fixed towers, phones (and possibly other radio-equipped devices) would act as a miniature cell towers and repeaters on their own, handling data transmission for nearby devices. So if you're calling someone across the street, chances are you might be able to connect to their device directly, or maybe in just one or two "hops," using other people's devices as the towers and repeaters of your ad-hoc network.

Without cell towers, of course, there's no need for cellular carriers, no expensive private infrastructure to support, and no need for big recurring bills. A peer-to-peer mesh network is, in some cases, more robust than the traditional cellular infrastructure. It's certainly faster and cheaper to build. Mesh networks are in use today. Dust Networks, for example, provides technologies for sensors that are used in industrial and military applications for which there is no infrastructure. In a mesh network, the devices are the infrastructure.

On the other hand, building a mesh network of smartphones presents serious challenges that I don't think Peep has solved. The battery hit is a big one; many modern smartphones can barely make it through a day of use right now. Turning them into mini data repeaters would take even more power. And once a mesh network gets big, route-finding for data packets becomes a nontrivial computational task, and that introduces delay or lag into communications. Security, at least, should not be a big issue, since Peep's data is broken up and AES-encrypted end-to-end.

But the real challenge is getting the chiefs of the smartphone universe--the carriers--to play ball and invest in this technology. Peep President Scott Redmond is here at CES meeting with the carriers, he says.

I hope those meetings go better than his talk with me did.

… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Vizio announced its first-ever smartphone at a press conference ahead of CES today. The Vizio VIA is an Android phone. It's got a 4-inch touch screen that sports a Vizio skin on its interface, a 5-megapixel camera, and a mini HDMI-out port.

The most significant characteristic, however, is the IR blaster, which, when coupled with a Vizio app, can control the also-just-announced Vizio tablet (we got a hands-on), and compatible Vizio TVs. It should also control 95 percent of other infrared-controlled devices, Vizio said.

Vizio isn't ready to announce pricing, carriers, or a whole lot of other … Read more

LAS VEGAS--We managed to get a sneak peek at the booth that LG is setting up in preparation for CES here at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and it looks like the company will be unveiling at least two new phones here in the next couple of days. One of them looks to be the LG Revolution, and it seems it's headed to a 4G network, most likely Verizon's LTE. It looks very similar to the LG Optimus 2X, which will also be at the booth. Another phone that caught our eye is the Optimus Black, which we … Read more

Once upon a time, we mortals could make resolutions and, as quietly as we wanted, get busy ignoring them. Those days are numbered. Which is a good thing for personal health and wellness, right?

This week, Sprint gets more heavily involved in the your-phone-knows-when-you're-lying game by partnering up with BodyMedia, enabling the FIT armband to transmit such personal data as vital signs and sleep patterns using Sprint's 3G wireless network.

To mark the occasion, Sprint will be showcasing its suite of apps (dubbed the Sprint ID BodyMedia Pack) for its Android-based phones at the Consumer Electronics Show in … Read more

With the ever-growing popularity of tablets and smartphones, more and more manufacturers are attempting to combine the best features of both types of devices. Not to be left out in the cold, dark, dank world of tablet/smartphone obscurity, on Tuesday Asus announced the Eee Pad Memo.

The Memo includes a 7-inch IPS (in-plane switching) multitouch screen and a separate media phone extender. The device can be used as a phone and includes SMS text messaging.

The tablet/smartphone hybrid comes with with a stylus and includes the Media Note text application and Painter.

Media Note allows users to draw, make handwritten notes, as well as insert external media into said notes, like images, video, and Web links.

Painter allows users to paint on the screen using using the stylus, you know, for those of you so inclined to do so.

Specs:… Read more

A short battery life is bad news for any consumer electronics device, and tablets are no different. Unless we've been recently burned, battery life is that one thing we usually take for granted when looking at device specs, but it's always there, waiting to bite us in the rear when we least expect it.

Now a 16-hour battery life isn't ideal, but it would get most of us through our day with room to spare. For its Transformer tablet, Asus claims up to 16 hours of battery life; however, this figure is based on beta hardware and … Read more