Android starred at the Mobile World Congress show, with dozens of tablets and smartphones announced. As if that wasn’t good enough news, Google confirmed that some Honeycomb features would be coming to handsets. And a new app turns your Android device into a wireless media server. Read more »
Join Matt and Kevin for the live podcast as they round up the tablet and phone news from Mobile World Congress, discuss tablet pricing, share more custom ROM experiences on the Galaxy Tab and explain how to turn an Android device into a wireless media center! Read more »
Mobile World Congress is over, and in just three years time, Google’s Android platform has gone from idea to star of the show. Clearly, it’s now a two-horse race for first in mobile ecosystems, while other players are fighting it out for the third dominant platform. Read more »
Underlying the entire mobile ecosystem are semiconductor firms that supply the radios and brains inside the handset and those that make the chips to power the network. From their product launches this week, it’s clear to see where the mobile world is heading. Read more »
We’re still a ways off from our prediction that every mobile app will have location. But we’re seeing more and more of that reality take shape, especially as location-as-a-service providers create the tools necessary for developers to weave location into their mobile apps. Read more »
Will electric car charging networks have the type of roaming commonly found between cell phone providers? Nokia Siemens Networks and a German utility group called Smartlab are developing an authentication service to enable electric vehicle drivers to “roam” when charging up via various service providers. Read more »
Amid news of upcoming dedicated Facebook phones, HTC decided to pre-empt such devices by today introducing two new Android 2.3.3 handsets with a dedicated Facebook button. One tap and the phone will automatically share images, media or location, and Facebook is tightly integrated in HTC Sense. Read more »
HTC today announced the Flyer, a 7-inch, 1.5 GHz tablet that runs Google Android 2.4 with a customized HTC Sense user interface. Most intriguing is the inclusion of a digital pen for taking notes, but that’s going to be a problem. Here’s why. Read more »
Acer’s Iconia A100 is on the show floor at Mobile World Congress running Android 2.2. But this 7-inch tablet is expected to run Honeycomb, or Android 3.0, when it launches in April, which gives hope for Samsung and others to bring Honeycomb to smaller tablets. Read more »
Sony, Orange, SanDisk and SoftBank are proposing a new standard called HQME for getting content to mobile devices using SD Cards and Wi-Fi networks in the home, but is a download model for mobile content going to fly in a streaming world? Read more »
After Nokia’s much-publicized decision to embrace Windows Phone 7 over MeeGo last week, early previews of MeeGo on a tablet are underscoring why Nokia was probably right to move on. The OS looks buggy, unpolished and far behind competitors in the mobile space. Read more »
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the MWC stage to share improvements consumers and developers can expect to see in Windows Phone 7. Features such as Twitter integration, multitasking and cloud document storage are coming, but most functionality isn’t arriving until the second half of 2011. Read more »
Research in Motion has announced its acquisition of social contacts service Gist, two months after Om said the two were in talks. The value of the acquisition was undisclosed, but the rationale is clear. With Gist, RIM adds a social element to its messaging capabilities. Read more »
Apple’s iOS currently offers a better mobile gaming platform than Android, but Sony aims to address that with the Xperia Play smartphone: the first Sony PlayStation Certified handset. Running Android 2.3, the phone uses a slide-out set of gaming controls to duplicate the PlayStation portable experience. Read more »
When it comes to mobile devices, the gigahertz race is just beginning. Here’s why phones and tablets will need 4 GHz or even 10 GHz processors. The answers range from gesture controls to virtualization, but the computer of the future is mobile, connected and fast. Read more »
The mobile app boom is still largely a smartphone phenomenon, requiring more expensive hardware and often pricier data plans. But we’re now seeing more examples of apps that avoid the need for better hardware and data plans, bringing the love to a wider array of users. Read more »
Apple doesn’t have to physically attend a trade show to loom over it like a thick, dense fog. CES and Macworld are prime examples, as is the Mobile World Congress, which began today. Already at MWC, Apple’s presence is undeniable. Read more »
The broadband-enabled smart energy home finally started to make some initial headway as the new year ushered in 2011, and if the news trickling out from the massive wireless conference Mobile World Congress this week, is any indicator, this trend will only continue throughout the year. Read more »
LG is betting big on mobile 3-D: first, the G-Slate with dual cameras and now the Optimus 3D smartphone with a dual lens camera for recording 3-D. No glasses are needed to view content, which can be piped to a 3-D television or YouTube’s 3-D channel. Read more »
Samsung kicked off Mobile World Congress with the introduction of a new, larger tablet and an update to its popular Galaxy S handset. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will run a stock version of Honeycomb, or Android 3.0, while the 4.3-inch Galaxy S II will use Gingerbread. Read more »
In a crowded market for speech recognition, Vlingo will focus on becoming a personal assistant, signaling an evolution from voice as a user interface and a means to avoid cramped keyboards, to voice as a natural means of getting a computer to do what you want. Read more »
Now this is a surprise. Ericsson doesn’t think the growing demand for mobile data will overwhelm existing telecommunications networks, a rare thought in the smartphone world, and an even rarer one coming from a telecommunications gear vendor. Read more »
Next week, the mobile-obsessed hordes will descend on Barcelona for the hottest tech show on Earth: the Mobile World Congress. For those who are staying behind and are worried about being overwhelmed, here are the five themes worth paying attention to during the show. Read more »
Qualcomm introduced a new peer-to-peer communication technology today to allow devices to connect to one another to share broadband speeds. Dubbed, FlashLinq the technology is one of several attempt to change the way devices connect–creating a more distributed and more resilient network. Read more »
