Hardware > Earlier Phones
Samsung's next smartphone to scroll by watching your eyes
Samsung's next Next Big Thing, the Galaxy S IV smartphone, will scroll text by watching your eyeballs.
So says an unidentified Samsung employee tattling to The New York Times' Bits blog, a worthy who "spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media" – a time-honored custom of companies …
Global smartphones sales set to outpace standard handsets in 2013
While the lion's share of the world's six billion mobile phone users are still on plain-old feature phones, sales of those handsets' smarter successors will become the majority in 2013, according to the latest predictions from IDC.
The analyst house reports that for the first time, 50.1 per cent of all mobile sales are expected …
Apple: OK, we tracked your every move... but let's call it a caching bug, m'kay?
Apple's lawyers have asked a Californian judge to dismiss a case against the company on the basis that no harm was caused by Apple storing detailed maps of users' movements.
Apple has already redefined the case as a question of information storage rather than a privacy invasion.
The iPhone users who sued Apple can't prove that …
Sony: Can't beat Apple and Samsung, so let's be the Other Guy
Sony's head of mobile has said today that the company is aiming to be the third most loved smartphone maker over rivals like Huawei, ZTE and Motorola.
The Japanese firm has no illusions of being able to knock Apple or Samsung out of the top two spots, but it's hoping to at least get onto the podium for a bronze medal, Kunimasa …
BlackBerry Z10: Prices pruned despite eager iPunter interest
How well is the Z10 from BlackBerry - née RIM - faring? Reports on the handset’s retail success, on which BlackBerry’s recovery as a business is riding, are mixed.
Late last week, Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone separately pruned the price of the handset, not a good sign for a premium device that has been on sale for less than a …
New Japanese craze: Knickers for iPhones' nether regions
Ever worried that your smartphone is putting just a little bit too much of itself on show? Well worry no more, thanks to SmartPants, the latest eccentric invention from Japan.
Available in several different colours and designs, these iPhone “pants” are the brainchild of Japanese video game maker Bandai and are being marketed …
O2 pops out vital new feature: Making phone calls from phones
O2 has launched TU Go, the awaited VoIP service allowing customers to make and receive calls from five devices at the same time.
The move is no surprise: O2 has been promising TU Go for a while, but its now available to all contract customers who can sign up and download the apps for iOS, Android and Windows 7. Calls are routed …
Sergey Brin emasculated after HORROR smartphone disaster
Seething mass of testosterone and Google co-founder Sergey Brin has stated that smartphones are emasculating.
Speaking at the Technology, Education and Design TED conference series on the subject of Google Glasses and the future of Google, Brin let drop that he finds the fastest growing technology of the past decade to be " …
Now even MORE 'interns' make iPhones - Chinese labour watchdog
The number of students forced to "intern" on iPhone assembly lines has increased, says a new report from a China-based labour rights watchdog.
The report 'Apple Fails in its Responsibility to Monitor Suppliers', published on 26 February by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) also says that Apple …
Ten smartphones with tablet ambitions...
Product Round-up How we all laughed when Samsung launched the Galaxy Note toward the end of 2011. Who could possibly want a phone with a 5.3-inch screen? It turned out rather a lot of people did, and the unqualified success of the 4.8-inch Galaxy S III and 5.6-inch Galaxy Note 2 proved that what many punters want is a phone with a really, really …
Four firms pitch hi-def DRM for Flash cards
Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba have begun licensing their new DRM technology for memory cards to anyone who feels the world needs yet another copy protection technology for HD content. They hope many content providers do indeed want a new DRM system, specifically one that secures content but doesn’t prevent content …
Nokia opens Maps to rivals, flogs uber-budget €15 phone
MWC 2013 A Linux phone running Mozilla OS can be found on Nokia’s stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week – but it’s not a "Plan B". It’s more a statement of intent from the Finnish handset company about its Maps platform, which Nokia is opening up and licensing more aggressively to non-Nokia mobile devices.
CEO Stephen …
Review: Britain's 4G smartphones
Product Round-up It’s been a good few months since the first 4G LTE network fired up in the UK, and wiser men than I have already tossed their orbs about the what and the how of EE’s monopoly 4G network. Time then to consider the 4G handsets now available for use in Blighty, and in the process cast a beady eye on speeds and coverage outside the …
Cheap iPhone mini 'makes sense' for world domination
After meeting with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, one well-placed analyst sees "several signs" that offering a lower-priced iPhone "makes sense."
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty's reasoning about the release of the long-rumored, downsized iPhone "mini" or "nano", says Forbes, is based on the success of the iPad mini in …
Blackberry Z10 sales fail to impress analysts
It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of BlackBerry, the renamed Research in Motion, is hanging on success of its new BlackBerry smartphones, the Q10 and, particularly, the Z10. Revised forecasts from a number of market watchers suggest the troubled company has not yet put its woes behind it.
Earlier this week, two …
WTF is... Miracast?
Less than six months ago, there were just a handful of Miracast-certified products listed in the Wi-Fi Alliance’s kit database. Now there are nearly 150. A spectacular improvement for a little known technology. So what is it?
Miracast was formally launched in September 2012, but it was Google’s announcement a month and a half …
Mobes with monster 72-core GPU to debut in China
Nvidia’s supercharged quad-core Tegra 4 SoC, which packs a mighty 72 GPU cores, has finally found a mobile home after handset maker ZTE announced new smartphones featuring the chip will debut in China in the first half of 2013.
The Tegra 4 was unveiled last month at CES but has so far been left to stand at the altar by the …
Samsung under fire over copy-paste bricking
Users of a variety of Android-based Samsung smartphones are becoming restive at the mobo’s apparent inability to fix a simple bug that has catastrophic consequences.
According to this Samsung forum thread, the copy-paste bug bricks the phone, requiring a factory reset or, if the owner has root access, to empty the contents of / …
Apple updates iOS, does not fix passcode-bypass hack
Apple released iOS 6.1.2 on Tuesday, an update that it says will fix the battery-draining Exchange bug — which it very well may do – but the update does not fix the finger-dancing hack that allows you to bypass an iPhone's passcode, launch the Phone app, and access all of its contacts, phone-history information, and the like. …
Kiwi cops to buy 6,500 iPhones, 3,900 iPads
New Zealand Police will acquire 6,500 smartphones and 3,900 fondleslabs to improve the force's efficiency.
The force says using the devices will mean each cop gains 30 minutes of time a day, which when will add up 520,000 hours of time savings or the equivalent of putting an extra 345 officers on the street.
The Police's …
iOS 6.x hack allows personal data export, free calls
Hackers can access iPhones running iOS 6.x without passcodes, and will then be able to access and export the address book, send emails and make phone calls.
Jailbreak Nation has discovered the method for doing so and The Reg can confirm the method works after a sequence of swipes and key presses. It worked for us on an iPhone 5 …
The official iPhone actually runs Android - in Brazil
Apple has lost the rights to the trademark "iPhone" in Brazil to a local manufacturer which makes an Android phone called the iPhone NEO. Yesterday the Brazilian Trademark and Patents Office rejected Apple's claims to the trademark "iPhone" in the category of telecoms and the category of electronic devices.
"Registration …
Nokia's Elopocalypse two years on: Has Microsoft kept its side of the bargain?
Analysis It's two years since the "Elopocalypse". This week in 2011 Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop set Europe's biggest technology company off in a radical new direction.
Nokia would license its flagship phone software from Microsoft, rather than develop its own, set fire to three of its own mobile platforms, and eventually shed thousands …
Android? Like Marvin the robot? Samsung eclipses Google OS - Gartner
Samsung's soaraway successful Galaxy smartphones are starting to overshadow their Google-built Android operating system. That's in the mind of the public at least, who can't tell the difference between an Android mobe and a Samsung Galaxy, according to Gartner.
Gartner Analyst Anshul Gupta explained in the report Mobile Phones, …
Perky smartphone figures can't stop droop of worldwide mobe sales
Worldwide mobile phone sales fell 1.7 per cent in 2012, a shrinkage of 30 million units from 2011. Increasing smartphone sales were not enough to compensate for the fall in feature phone sales, according to a Gartner report. Total global sales to end users for 2012 were down 30 million units to 1.75 billion from 1.78 billion in …
Home Depot pulls out of newly-named RIM, gets in bed with Apple
Home Depot is the latest US company to drop BlackBerry, handing out 10,000 iPhones to executives and other management staff and wiping out 3 per cent of BlackBerry's share price in the process.
News of the decision left BlackBerry shares down, but it remains unclear if Home Depot made its decision before or after the launch of …
iOS 6.1 KNACKERED our mobile phone networks, claim Vodafone, Three
Updated Vodafone has urged iPhone 4S owners to not upgrade to iOS 6.1, the latest available, because it believes the software jams 3G and phone connections.
Vodafone claimed that the bug is Apple's fault and that it affects Voda's rivals as well as its own UK network, although it only named Three Austria* as another impacted telco. The …
Smartphone-in-a-box maker cooks up cheap Facebook-flavoured chips
Smartphone platform provider Spreadtrum will work with Facebook to integrate its the social network into the platform at firmware level, putting the interactive life blog into the cheapest hardware.
The deal will see Spreadtrum working with Facebook to optimise client software running on its chips, just as it does with Google ( …
BlackBerry Q10: This quirky QWERTY will keep loyalists perky
Hands On Eight million people in the UK use a BlackBerry and almost every single one of those phones has a physical QWERTY keyboard. And as good as the virtual keyboard on BlackBerry's touchscreen Z10 may be - it's the best, for my money - a fair number of people will want to use a smartphone with a real keyboard. The Q10 is BlackBerry's …
Review: Seagate Wireless Plus Wi-Fi hard drive
In the week Apple finally released an iPad with a storage capacity greater than 64GB - double that; 128GB to be precise - Seagate made its Wireless Plus available. Of course, if Apple’s Flash mark-up wasn’t so colossal, or it had had the wit to either built a Micro SD port into its tablets or allow USB mass storage devices to …
BlackBerry bets fans are willing to upgrade skills
First Look BlackBerry OS 10 is slick, fast, usable and oozes potential, but is sufficiently different from previous that users of older BlackBerries won't see an upgrade as a natural choice, based on what we've seen so far.
That means the company's greatest strength – millions of users, many of them very enthusiastic – is somewhat negated …
Spanish startup to ship first Mozilla-phones
Mozilla has taken a small step closer to finding out whether the world wants another smartphone operating system, with Spanish startup Geeksphone (working with Telefonica) announcing developer previews of two Firefox-based devices.
Details are relatively sketchy about the two Qualcomm Snapdragon-based 3G mobiles. One, the Keon, …
Nokia lets Lumia 820 owners 3D print their own case
Nokia has posted the templates 3D printer users need to make their own shell or case for its Lumia 820 smartphone.
The mobe is already designed to swap some of its plastic parts, with the rear plate available as inert plastic or one of Nokia's inductive charging gadgets.
Three different batches of files are offered to DIY mobe- …
ST-Ericsson uncloaks 2.5GHz Jekyll & Hyde smartphone chip
CES 2013 The CES 2013 show floor may be crammed with smartphones, tablets, and other ARM-powered gadgets, but there's more news from the show than just the gadgets themselves. There's also a new chip that can power them – namely a new 2.5GHz part from ST-Ericsson.
"Building on the architecture of our first generation NovaThor L8540 LTE …
Review: HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 handset
It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for HTC. Eighteen months ago it was the darling of smartphone manufacturers having reinvented itself from a maker of unbranded handsets for the likes of O2 to an outfit boasting some of the best Android smartphones around.
HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 Platform alteration: HTC's 8X Windows Phone 8 …
Big screened quad-core Chinese beasts splash down at CES
CES 2013 Not content with squeezing out foreign rivals in their domestic market, China’s homegrown smartphone giants are set to make a splash overseas this month with some impressive handset designs including the world’s thinnest smartphone and a giant 6.1in phone/tablet hybrid.
Leading the charge at this week’s annual gadget-fest CES in …
Samsung confirms Tizen-based mobes to debut this year
Samsung says it is pressing ahead with plans to release mobile phones running the Linux-based Tizen OS, with more than one model due to arrive in 2013.
"We plan to release new, competitive Tizen devices within this year and will keep expanding the lineup depending on market conditions," the company told Bloomberg News in an …
Kickstarted mobe charger 'kicked to death by Apple'
Apple has apparently screwed a bullet into a project to build a charger for iPads, iPhones, Android mobes and other handheld gadgets.
The device includes Apple's new Lightning power and high-speed data connector but, we're told, the Cupertino giant refused to grant a licence for its use because the charger can also top up rival …
Brazilian-made 'iphone' runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread
There's a new official iphone out this week, but it's only available in Brazil and it doesn't run iOS 6, the latest incarnation of Apple's smartphone OS. In fact, it runs Android.
The Associated Press reports that Brazilian consumer electronics maker Gradiente has begun marketing a device under the iphone brand after being …
iPhone 5 launches in China, late and expensive. Chinese say 'meh'
The iPhone 5 has finally launched in China, but reaction has been lukewarm.
Launching their fastest-selling product ever in the world's biggest market is an opportunity for Apple to clock up major sales. And Apple need to maintain global market share against Android, which took 75 percent of smartphone sales in the last three …
Nokia uncloaks Lumia 620: A 'budget' $249 Windows 8 mobe
Nokia has announced its third Windows Phone 8 mobile, the sixth from any manufacturer to use Microsoft’s new operating system. Priced at $249 (£154) SIM-free, the Lumia 620 is a diminutive "budget" model with a 3.8in screen, parking it at the rather pricey end of where the budget market it is today.
The 620 includes a microSD …
Twenty years of text messages: We've reached Peak SMS
The first SMS text message was sent twenty years ago, when Neil Papworth sent a Merry Christmas to a mobile phone, an innovation which went almost unnoticed for the next half-decade.
The Short Message Service took a while to take hold, longer still before network operators realised what a cash cow SMS could be, and longer again …
