Mobile phone

Founder of Massive Robo-Text Service Accused of Running Secret Spying Operation: Report

The company has reportedly contracted with the likes of Twitter, Google, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Slack.

What Will Smartphones Be Like in 10 years?

"The future of the smartphone—or connection device(s)—will likely rely on more deeply engaging us sensorially as humans. "

Pickpockets in Brazil Are Reportedly Going After Smartphones to Clean Out Victims’ Bank Accounts

São Paulo gangs are now cracking into banking apps on stolen devices rather than pawning them off.

Federal Ban on Warrantless ‘Stingrays’ Finds Bipartisan Support

A new bill would institute a probable cause standard that applies to the FBI.

Boris Johnson Left His Cell Phone Number on the Internet for 15 Years, Screened Our Call :(

Boris Johnson, British prime minister who’s been passing out his deets like a sloppy rando at last call, has left his personal cell phone number online for the past 15 years. The British gossip site Popbitch used a sophisticated hacking tool called Google and discovered his direct cell line at the bottom of a 2006…

No Good Evidence That 5G Harms Humans, New Studies Find

Concerns over the potential harms of 5G technology are overblown, according to two large new reviews of research recently published by scientists in Australia. Both found no clear evidence that the type of radiofrequency energy used by 5G mobile networks poses any danger to human health. 5G is the next generation of wireless communication. It…

Why These ‘Revolutionary’ Phones Failed So Hard

Here are some of the most significant phone flops of all time.

Engineers Are Teaching Smartphones to Think Like an Autonomous Car

A team of researchers from Cambridge University is borrowing some of the techniques used in autonomous vehicles to teach your phone to navigate, even when it doesn’t have access to positioning information like a GPS signal. In fact, the team has developed two new pieces of software that run on mobile phones but think a…

What Police Can Learn From a Terrorist’s Discarded Mobile Phone

The dramatic raid on an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis that left two dead and eight arrested followed the discovery of a mobile phone by police that was discarded by the terrorists who days earlier had launched their bloody attack. It’s understood that the data police were able to extract from the…

North Korea’s Internet and Mobile Phone Network ‘Paralyzed’ 

Chinese news agency Xinhua is reporting that North Korea’s internet is down. Again. But this time the country’s 3G mobile phone network has been taken down as well. The report was confirmed via landline from North Korea to China. North Korea’s internet has faced numerous outages in the past week, but this appears to be…

Watch 30 Years of Mobile Phones Come Together as a Digital Orchestra

What do you get if you take 30 mobile phones and 4 pagers from across the last 30 years, and wire them together with a sound system? An oddly catchy bit of music is what. This video, which celebrates Korean carrier SK Telecom’s 30th birthday, uses everything from a Motorola StarTAC to an LG Optimus…

A gold-colored HTC One part has come to light in China. The start of a new trend, perhaps?

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…

“Pocket Telephones” Made for Cheap Calling All the Way Back in 1910

You’ve almost certainly got a telephone in your pocket (or clutch), but don’t think for a second that it makes you any kind of pioneer. People were predicting—and using—pocket telephones more than a century ago, for reasons every bit as lethargic as your own. A story in the April 30, 1910 Reno Evening Gazette explained…

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.”…

How Did Samsung Keep The Galaxy SIII Secret?

Apple can’t seem to keep its new phones under wraps to save its life: there are leaked images, phones left in bars, you name it, and an Apple employee has done it. So how the hell did Samsung keep the SIII a secret? In truth, there were a few leaked photographs just before its launch,…

With a Ceramic Transducer, You’ll Hear Voices Inside Your Head

Japanese electronics company Kyocera has developed an innovative new transducer to replace outmoded—and underperforming—speakers in a phone. Whereas conventional phone speakers transmit sound waves to your ear drum via a multistep process of vibrations and wave travel, stopping at various aural checkpoints along the way—with the pressed to your ear, Kyocera’s ceramic transducer will transfer…

If You’re Reading Gizmodo On The Toilet, You’re Not Alone

According to the New York Times, 91 per cent of Americans aged 28 to 35 use their mobile devices on the toilet. So, a big hello to anybody reading this while relieving themselves. But there are more mobile phone toilet facts. And they get better. According to the survey reported by the Times, apparently a…

A Mobile Phone From 1922? Not Quite

I recently came across a short, silent film from 1922 called Eve’s Wireless. Distributed by the British Pathe company, the film supposedly shows two women using a wireless phone. Apparently this video has been making the rounds for the past few years. Could it be an early demonstration of some futuristic technology? I hate to…

Americans Like To Secretly Record People In Embarrassing Outfits

Americans love to use their mobile phone cameras. We take videos of our pets, videos of our kids and shockingly 50 percent of us covertly take video of someone else. Those that confessed to taking secret spy videos of strangers said their favorite target was someone in an embarrassing outfit. Yes, we are talking about…