smartphone

Now that Google Glass is in the hands of developers, it seems like everybody wants a smartphone connection on their specs. That pesky $1,500 price tag is a little annoying, though. Let's say you don't need all the fancy Glass features, like an eyeball-level display, camera, directions, search, and voice commands. If you're satisfied with just notifications, then you may soon be able to connect your smartphone to your glasses for $25.

The NanoGlass Indiegogo project from EmoPulse consists of a small Bluetooth device that attaches to the side of a pair of glasses. A fiber optic strip extends toward the front, just enough to show up in your peripheral vision.… Read more

The world will see combined shipments of PCs, tablets, and smartphones rise past 1.7 billion next year. And more of those will be headed toward developing markets, research firm IDC said today.

Out of that 1.7 billion figure, 1 billion devices will end up in emerging markets. China, India, Brazil, and Russia will grab around 662 million devices, for a value of more than $206 billion. Developed markets will see around 650 million units shipped, with more than 400 million devices valued collectively at $204 billion arriving in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan.

Tablets and … Read more

Sprint announced today that it will be offering a 4G LTE, Android Jelly Bean handset called the Vital, starting June 14 for $99.99.

Packing a 13-megapixel camera, a dual-core processor, and an expansive 5-inch HD screen, the Vital joins the ranks of the Warp Sequent and Sprint Flash as high-end phones from Chinese manufacturer ZTE.

With its release, the Vital is unquestionably the best handset that ZTE has put out in the U.S. market. Compared to the other two, it shows marked improvements in both processing speeds and camera quality.

That'd be fine if ZTE were only … Read more

Samsung has announced a new addition to the company's smartphone line.

Dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Ace 3, the device comes with a 4-inch screen and a 1GHz dual-core processor. It's running Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and comes in the customer's choice of 3G or 4G LTE. The 3G option comes with 4GB of internal memory, while the 4G LTE option has 8GB of internal memory. Both support a microSD card of up to 64GB of storage.

On the back, users will find a 5-megapixel camera. The software coupled with that lens allows for users to share … Read more

For all of your smartphone-owning life, you've been told you can't use your expensive device while wearing gloves, no matter how low the mercury plummets. You weren't really sure why, you just knew it wasn't going to happen.

And so rocketed sales of fingerless gloves, conductive gloves, and even conductive thread for those brave (or thrifty!) enough to hack their own touch-screen hand coverings.

Then something wonderful happened that obliterated this sad certainty of specialty winterwear dependence forever, and that was Nokia.

Starting with the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820, the industry got a … Read more

When sharing a post from the previous version of Facebook for Android, you may have forgotten to tap the itsy-bitsy people-sharing icon before you sent it off to the Interwebs. This icon controls the settings for who can see your post, be it Public, Friends, or other groups you're part of on Facebook. Fortunately, this icon hasn't gone anywhere, but in case you forget to use it, there's a fix -- and it doesn't involve logging in on the desktop Web site.

First, make sure you have the most recent version of Facebook for Android. Just … Read more

Huawei, the embattled China-based telecom equipment maker that has been trying unsuccessfully to make an entrance into the U.S., thinks it has the right recipe to be successful in smartphones.

Speaking to Reuters in an interview published on Friday, Huawei deputy chairman Guo Ping said that his company wants to expand its presence in smartphones and not co-branded devices with carriers, as it has in the past. As part of that strategy, the company wants to try and combine the benefits of flashiness and high-tech to appeal to customers.

"In some ways, (designing) a smartphone is in the … Read more

Despite Samsung's claims last month that its Galaxy S4 was performing quite well on store shelves, and had reached 10 million units sold in less than a month, analysts are concerned things are changing.

Samsung's shares were down around 6 percent Friday, representing their largest drop since August. Blame analysts worrying about flagging demand for the Galaxy S4. JP Morgan was among the analyst firms that expressed concern about Samsung, and it cut its share-price estimate by 9.5 percent.

In a note to investors, JJ Park at JP Morgan said that supply chain checks are showing "… Read more

No matter how slick the new hardware is or how hard BlackBerry strives to convince us that its new BB10 handsets are the cat's meow, there's still one massive stumbling block -- quality apps. Apparently even the BlackBerry faithful agree and intrepid tweakers have stepped in to fix the situation themselves.

Read on to learn how you can quickly take advantage of free BlackBerry 10 apps that others have kindly ported from Android. Best of all, the entire process takes minutes and loading apps to your Z10 or Q10 just a matter of seconds.

Gather your tools So … Read more