huawei

Muve Music, a music service from Cricket Wireless that impressed us so much that it earned a Best of CES nomination last year, is coming to the Huawei Ascend II.

Muve Music lets you search through thousands of artists and albums available on major U.S. record labels. You can download an unlimited number of songs onto your device for playback, and you can make ringtones as well.

The service also includes a DJ feature that lets you listen to ready-made playlists organized by your favorite music genres, Shazam integration, and a social networking arm that let's you "… Read more

Over the last month, CNET has written a lot about an upcoming trade show called Mobile World Congress. And over the next week, we'll be writing even more about it.

If you've never heard of the event before, I don't blame you. Indeed, Mobile World Congress doesn't have the same name recognition that CES commands in the United States, but for the wireless world, it's almost as big and just as significant. Each February, folks from all corners of the industry and around the world meet in Barcelona, Spain, to make deals, demonstrate the latest technologies, and show off the latest and greatest phones and tablets.

This will be my fifth year at the show, which begins Monday in Catalonia's Gaudi-obsessed capital city. Though a possible transit strike threatens to make getting around a little difficult, there's guaranteed to be a (metric) ton of new devices, from the very fancy to the strictly functional. It will be a massive amount to cover, but CNET will have a large team on the ground, including editors Jessica Dolcourt, Roger Cheng, Maggie Reardon, and Stephen Shankland. And thanks to CNET TV producers Jamie Yee and Mark Licea, the new handsets will get their star turns on video.

Android avalanche So what exactly will we see?… Read more

The first images of a 10-inch Huawei MediaPad have surfaced days ahead of Mobile World Congress, where we expect Huawei to make the tablet part of its announcements.

Early details suggest an Android 4.0 experience, with an 8-megapixel camera, a microSD expansion slot, and 3G connectivity. There's no indication what the processor and memory situation may be; however, I'd expect at least a dual-core CPU and 16GB internal storage.

Judging by the company's recent Android efforts, I anticipate that Huawei will want to keep its foot on the gas to keep pace with other, bigger players. … Read more

Apple won last year's smartphone wars, according to data released today by Gartner.

Other reports have pointed to Samsung as the leading vendor in 2011, but the research firm placed Apple on top with a 19 percent market share overall, barely half a point higher than Samsung's share.

Driven by the iPhone 4S, the fourth quarter was especially strong for Apple with a 23.8 percent share amid sales of 37 million iPhones. And many of those sales came outside the U.S., helping boost the industry as a whole.

"Western Europe and North America led most … Read more

If you ask an average Android user to name the top smartphone brands in the United States, it's unlikely that Huawei would be an answer.

After releasing a string of entry-level and midrange devices across some of the smaller carriers, Huawei has been pushing steadily forward with high-end hardware. And with specs that rival the recent offerings out of HTC, Samsung, and Motorola, the company is positioning itself as a dark horse.

Take, for instance, the Ascend P1S, announced at CES earlier this year. At only 6.68mm thick, it somehow manages to sneak in a 1.5GHz dual-core … Read more

The right price can paper over many a flaw.

That seems to be the case for the Huawei Ascend II, a recent addition for U.S. Cellular (and a phone that Cricket has had for some time.)

Thanks to Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the Ascend II can perform all the basics with communication, connectivity, and downloading apps. Unfortunately, weaker internal features like a laggy 600MHz processor and a camera without autofocus make the Ascend II hard to recommend for anyone but the newest smartphone user.

Or the most budget-conscious. The Ascend II costs only one penny with a two-year contract, … Read more

Score one for Cricket, whose Huawei Mercury is arguably the most feature-rich phone in its lineup.

I say "arguably" because the Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone lacks Muve Music, the all-you-can-download music portion of the unlimited voice and data plan for select Cricket handsets, such as the Samsung Vitality.

Muve would be the icing on the cake, but if you're no audiophile, the Mercury is absolutely a phone that Cricket fans should eye.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--What would the world look like a few years from now if all the emerging technologies we saw at CES this year became as ubiquitous as Android phones, iPads, and DVRs?

Well, let's pretend it's a January morning three years from now. You might wake up to a hot breakfast freshly extruded by your new MakerBot 3D food printer--hopefully you remembered to refill the flavor cartridge the previous night or you could get a mouthful of a bland protein construction.

Next you'll probably turn to your Yoga. Not the ancient practice of physical, mental, and spiritual balance, but the tablet/laptop computer hybrid that became more popular than the iPad last year.

If you're into the meta thing, you could use your Yoga to play a yoga video, but you'd probably rather use a larger screen--a much larger screen like the 96-inch OLED taking up most of your wall. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If life's like a box of chocolates, this week in Crave from CES is like a table full of sandwiches--the same sandwiches day after day after day after day.

OK, here's the inside joke. The fine catering services here at the Las Vegas Convention Center bring us lunch every day; it's a delicious selection of wraps and sandwiches, but it's not all that wide a selection. By the last day of the show, we're tired and cranky and ready to take it all out on inanimate food items, so here's some of the coolest stuff we saw this week and how it compares with our repetitive lunches.… Read more