Cellphone

Echelon’s Connected Rowing Machine Proves Content Is Key

The pandemic has proved that the future of fitness is online. Companies like Peloton and Apple have embraced online training completely, offering classes that seem as real and vibrant as anything held in a sweaty gym. Other companies like Hydrow are taking a more refined approach by creating a real-life experience in the real world,…

Trump’s Bodyguard Leaks the Defense Secretary’s Phone Number ‘the Old-Fashioned Way’

Donald Trump famously doesn’t trust computers. At an event on New Year’s Eve, he told reporters, “You know, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way.” Well, a pen and paper screwed him when his bodyguard recently displayed the cellphone number of the Secretary of…

The Great Public Holiday Exodus, Visualiszd Using Cellphone Data

In France, they know how to relax: on public holidays, virtually all city dwellers flee the urban environment to hit the beach and countryside. And this analysis of cellphone location shows that in quantified, data-driven form. This visualization, put together by researchers from the Catholic University of Louvain and Free University of Brussels, uses data…

This Credit-Card-Size Cellphone Would Be the Ultimate Backup

Smartphones are great and wonderful in almost every way, but they’re also as needy as a newborn puppy — if you don’t feed them on electrons every night, they turn very quickly into useless hunks of glass. That’s why I am seriously excited for this credit-card-sized backup phone that you could slip into your wallet…

Sprint has announced that, from Friday, a new family rate will allow 10 lines to share 20GB worth of data for $100 per month. (Though, everyone will need to be moving to Sprint from a different carrier, and the pricing will only last until the end of 2015.)

How to Safely Use Your Phone at a Protest

With major protests in the news again, we decided it’s time to update our cell phone guide for protestors. A lot has changed since we last published this report in 2011, for better and for worse. On the one hand, we’ve learned more about the massive volume of law enforcement requests for cell phone—ranging from…

HTC One Mini 2 Review: Premium Looks for Smaller Pockets

As soon as the flagship HTC One M8 was revealed back in March it seemed inevitable that HTC would follow it up with a smaller, more affordable miniature version. With the HTC One Mini 2 now revealed, that’s turned out to be only half true — it may look like the M8 but, as its…

Everything You Need to Master Your New Smartphone

Welcome to our annual New Smartphone Set Up Guide. Someone thought enough of you to help replace that dumb ol’ brick you’ve been lugging around these past few years. Now what? Getting Started Out of the box, most smartphones aren’t all that smart. In fact, many can be downright idiotic. Prepping your new pocket ‘puter…

Do You Lock Your Phone?

Confession time: I don’t lock my phone. No password or key, no swipe pattern, no fingerprint scan. Nothing. It’s really stupid and I will probably regret it someday. Mainly I don’t put a lock on because I check my phone a lot/too much. If I had to do a thing, even a quick thing, in…

A Galaxy S4 Active Mini Might Be on Its Way

This phone here appears to be yet another miniature version of a popular full size model, with official filings revealing something we suspect might end up being known as the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active Mini. Could do with a smaller name, too. The phone popped up in regulatory filings on Chinese site Tenaa, which describes…

Report: NSA Spied on German Chancellor Before She Even Took Office

Well this puts a new wrinkle on things — according to a new report from Der Spiegel, the NSA has been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone since 2002. That’s long before she became chancellor, though it’s unclear how deep the snooping went. https://gizmodo.com/report-the-nsas-been-spying-on-35-world-leaders-1451598576 According to the report, secret NSA documents show Chancellor Merkel’s…

HTC One Max: Shiny Aluminum, 5.9-Inch Screen and a Fingerprint Scanner

HTC’s zapped its flagship One design with its embiggening rays, and scaled the One Max up to gigantic proportions. At 5.9-inches, it’s in that scary land where it’s either a really large phone, or a phablet. We’re not quite sure HTC knows what it is either. On sale by the end of this week, the…

House Defeats Amendment, Allowing NSA to Keep Spying on You

An amendment designed to stop the NSA from collecting phone records of millions of Americans has been narrowly defeated, 205 votes to 217, in the House of Representatives. The amendment, attached to an annual defense budget bill, was led by Michigan Congressman Justin Amash and sought to defund the NSA’s collection of phone records. Clearly,given…

Is It OK to Talk on Your Phone When You’re at the Checkout?

The UK media is weirdly ablaze this morning over a story about a store attendant who flipped out when a customer refused to stop talking on her phone while at the checkout. But is that rude, or is it now socially acceptable? According to the customer, a 26-year-old Jo Clarke, the store assistant barked “I…

How Hollywood Is Making Texting Look Dramatic

We all increasingly rely on non-verbal forms of communication—email, IM, texting—to let people know what’s going on in our lives. That’s great for us, but it’s causing headaches in Hollywood when it comes to creating drama. The problem is that TV and film have to remain topical to keep our attention, but it’s difficult to…

The Cellphone Turns 40 Today

Forty years ago today, senior Motorola engineer Marty Cooper made one very important phone call. From midtown Manhattan, Marty called Joel Engel, then the head of rival research department Bell Labs. When Joel picked up, Marty uttered something rather unexpected: “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cellphone, a real handheld portable cellphone.”…

A Cellphone Base Station in the Palm of Your Hand

How will the billion people who still use older 2G cellphones use them to pay for goods, just like people with smartphones equipped with near-field communications (NFC) wireless links? One answer is to place a tiny 2G base station at the point of sale so that those older non-NFC phones can also make a short-range…

Snooki’s Cellphone Gets Hacked, Naked Pictures Get Leaked, Eyeballs Get Hurt

Someone has allegedly hacked into the cellphone of the beautiful Snooki, the elegant lady who is the beacon of good taste and faithful love in a show called Jersey Shore, the epitome of modern American values. Surprisingly enough, the hacker found naked pictures of her, which obviously were taken by coercion. Apparently, the hacker also…

A Blind Camera For The Photographically Challenged

The Blind Camera is perfect for those people bored by the mass-produced point and shoot cameras. There’s no viewfinder, no lens, or flash. All it has on the outside is an LCD screen and a shutter button. Inside is a Sony Ericsson cellphone that pulls down images from Flickr. Whenever you click the shutter button,…

Couples In a Relationship Like To Snoop On Each Other

Face the facts. People can’t resist the urge to snoop on each other. It doesn’t matter whether you’re married or dating. If you’re in a relationship, you have probably looked at your mate’s personal information without them knowing. Online shopping and review site Retrevo surveyed 1,000 online respondents and found that one in three people…