Smartphones

Lenovo K900 Hands-On: This Tall, Skinny Hottie Needs to Get In My Pants

The Lenovo K900 is a big phone, yes, but it’s a designy big phone. It’s handsome, skinny, and slick like the finest smartphones ever made. We never thought we would be into a 5.5-inch phone until the K900’s brushed metal back landed in our hands. This phone is all about the hardware. The unibody construction…

T-Mobile now has a No-Contract Unlimited Plan for $70 a month. That’s unlimited voice, data, and text. Very sweet deal.

WSJ: Apple’s Building a Cheaper iPhone (Again)

The WSJ, never ones to pass up a good (or bad) Apple rumor, is reporting that the company is working on a less expensive alternative to its $200 (on-contract) iPhone. And if that sounds familiar, well, it should. It’s the same rumor they trotted out back in February of 2011. In other words? Don’t get…

ZTE Grand S Makes It Official: Everyone and Their Mother Will Make a Superphone This Year

The name ZTE doesn’t mean a ton in the U.S. The Chinese company has only had a handful of phones make it stateside and they’ve been way on the low end. Now, suddenly, they’re going for broke with the Grand S. On paper, this thing looks mighty appetizing. It has a 5-inch 1920×1080 screen (1080p,…

Why 4K Phones Aren’t Such a Bad Idea

Moments ago, at a small press event, Raj Talluri, Qualcomm’s VP of Product Management dropped this little nugget. “You are just starting to see 1080p display phones. I think that will go even higher.” My brain instantly exploded. If people are working on UltraHD screens for mobile phones, Raj would know about it, as Qualcomm…

Sony Xperia Z and ZL Hands On: Two Phones Worth Getting Excited About

Last year Sony kept finding itself behind the curve with Android phones. The new Xperia Z and ZL are the company’s attempt to break that trend. These two phones basically check off every box a spec-hungry geek could want and then some. It’s hard to say which of these phones is the flagship since their…

Best Buy Lost $65K In One Day Trying to Price Match Walmart’s iPhone Discount

Best Buy dropped the price of the 16GB iPhone 5 to $150 last month, and Walmart bested that with a $127 iPhone. Now Best Buy says lost a whole $65,000 on this one product in just one day because it was forced go meet that lower price. In a recent WSJ article, Best Buy alleges…

Android Adoption: Jelly Bean now over 10% with ICS nearing 30% while Gingerbread has finally ducked under 50%. [Android]

Smartphone Camera Features That Need to Appear In 2013

Cameras in cell phones have come a mighty long way in the past few years, from the pixelated shit-vision of yore to the current breed that have replaced most of our compact digicams. But the sense of wonder is fading, and we need some new features. Who’s gonna step up? No matter how serious a…

South Korea Wants to Block Swearing and Porn on Teenagers’ Phones

While we’re over here, yammering on and on about sexting and the best ways to do it, things are moving in a bit of a different direction in South Korea. The country’s government is currently rolling out a plan to block swearing and pornography on all its teenagers’ phones. Championed by country’s Ministry Of Gender…

Is This BlackBerry’s QWERTY Savior?

The hole RIM has found itself in is deep, dark, and doused in despair. And as much as the company’s gambling on its new BB10 platform to pull itself up, an operating system’s only as good as the phones running it. So take a good, hard look at this supposed BlackBerry N-Series device. It could…

Google’s Making a Superphone with Motorola, But It’s Not Going Well

In a bit of news-that-makes-you-say-duh, the WSJ tells us that Motorola is working on making a really good phone, and Google is helping. The interesting bits, though, come in surrounding all the trouble surrounding the project, which Motorola is calling “X Phone”. Motorola is still working on its Droid line for Verizon, but is now…

Galaxy S III users are noticing their mainboards suddenly sputter out after just five months.

Within five years, IBM’s smartphone will hear, see, smell, taste, and feel

At the end of each year, IBM Research lists “innovations that will change our lives in the next five years.” This year’s “IBM 5 in 5” is particularly intriguing in that their braintrust is heralding the age of “cognitive computing” — a technological era in which computers and handheld devices can better approximate and even…

Smartphone Analyzer Can Spot Ingredients You Might Be Allergic To

Every meal can be a minefield when you suffer from severe food allergies. So researchers at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a sort of mine detector for food that’s able to analyze, detect, and warn a user about food allergens before they dig in. Dubbed the iTube for the…

If This Is Blackberry’s New OS, It Looks Very Familiar…

Vietnamese site Tinhte (link currently down) claims to have gotten its hands on some advanced screenshots of BB10, which is expected to launch at the end of next month. For the revamped operating system, it looks like RIM has taken pieces from Apple, Google, and Microsoft competitors and jammed them together. It’s the best looking…

Report: Amazon Is Possibly Maybe Building a Smartphone

Amazon just might be building a smartphone, according to the Taiwan Economic News. It claims Amazon has ordered 5 million devices and will launch the phone in the middle of 2013. This is one of those rumors that pops up every so often. It’s not very reliably sourced, so we can’t say that there’s a…

How To Rescue Wet Gadgets

So you did it. Or maybe you did it again. Dropped your favorite gadget in a sink or a toilet. Or you spilled an entire 40oz on it. Oops. That doesn’t mean you can’t save it though. Here are a few tips that might just bring it back to life. Step 1: Cut the power…

If you live in one of these seven markets, congrats! AT&T just flipped on your LTE switch.

Now that Republic Wifi is out of beta, unlimited data is just a monthly $19 and Wi-Fi signal away.