Boost

Relief is a little iffy for contract-free customers thirsting for smartphones.

Weak quarterly earnings for prepaid carriers, like leader MetroPCS, TracFone, and Cricket-owner Leap Wireless, are making the ability of these second-tiered carriers to act effectively as alternative smartphone providers to the big-four operators a little murkier.

Why? As CNET Senior Writer Roger Cheng noted, the overall growth of tier-two customers is slowing--even dropping, in Cricket's case--and in addition, smartphone-seekers appear to be signing on to other options, including prepaid plans with the major carriers like T-Mobile, or dropping down to government-subsidized feature phones in response to financial … Read more

Ford's been taking advantage of its EcoBoost forced-induction technology to downsize engines across its line. V-8s give way to turbocharged V-6s. V-6s give way to turbo four-bangers. Continuing the trend, Ford has just announced the smallest engine it's ever built: a 1.0-liter EcoBoost three-cylinder engine.

Besides the obvious fuel savings from its lower displacement, Ford's new tiny terror packs in all sorts of economy-boosting technologies. For example, Ford's split cooling system helps the cylinder block to warm faster which helps to save fuel during the least efficient warm-up phase, especially in cold weather. The three-cylinder'… Read more

Motorola has added three new phones to Boost Mobile's offerings today with the Motorola Clutch + i475, the Motorola Theory, and the Motorola i412.

The Clutch +i475 is an update to the Motorola Clutch from a couple years ago. The new Clutch has a larger display while still maintaining that candy bar design with a full QWERTY keyboard. Features appear to be mostly the same. They include push-to-talk, GPS, Bluetooth, threaded messaging, e-mail and Web, and unfortunately, a VGA camera.

The Theory is another candy bar QWERTY phone, but it lacks push-to-talk. It has a slightly better 1.3-megapixel camera. … Read more

While the Ford Taurus SHO may not be getting a new heart, lesser Taurus models for the 2013 model year will see two new mills find in their list of available options.

First up is a 2.0-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder engine that outputs 237 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque. This is likely the same mill that will also find its way under the hood of the 247-horsepower Ford Focus ST, albeit with a slightly less aggressive tune and a few fewer ponies. The object of the game here is efficiency, which Ford estimates at 31 mpg highway.

A naturally … Read more

Ford and Sony threw a party and somewhere along the way unveiled a new car. That's how the automaker and consumer electronics supplier's pre-New York auto show event felt. After building a bit of suspense, the cover was pulled back on the new 2013 Ford Taurus SHO. A few specs were shared, a bit of praise hefted on the sedan, but whole event seemed to have more to do with the show that followed the unveiling than it did the SHO itself.

The new Taurus SHO--which will go into production in 2012, bearing a 2013 model year designation--features … Read more

Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Prevail and you may agree, it's one classy-looking smartphone. A silky-smooth 3.5-inch touch screen is rimmed with metallic gray, and the phone's sides and back are robed in soft-touch material.

However, this is no premium Android phone, and that's OK. The handset runs a respectable Android 2.2 Froyo operating system (sans TouchWiz), has a regular HVGA display (versus the Super AMOLED screen of other Galaxy phone,) and sports only a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder without a flash.

For the most part these specs are perfectly fine, but they'… Read more

Boost Mobile introduced a couple of international services yesterday that will please those who need to make calls to Mexico, Canada, and a few other nearby countries.

The first is a $5 International Connect plan that will let Boost customers make unlimited calls to landlines in more than 150 cities in Mexico, unlimited calls to Canada, and unlimited international texts from the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. IDEN customers get some extras, too, like unlimited walkie-talkie capabilities from the U.S., Canada, and Baja California to Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chile.

If you pay … Read more

All good things must come to an end. At least that's likely the case for T-Mobile USA customers who like using the carrier's Wi-Fi calling feature on certain smartphones.

In this week's column, I discuss whether I think AT&T will keep the Unlicensed Mobile Access Wi-Fi calling feature that T-Mobile offers on some of its smartphones. I also discuss Samsung's problem with long delays for Android OS updates. And I explain to a Boost Mobile customer that he has two years to pick out a new phone before Sprint turns out the lights on … Read more

At first glance, the Samsung Factor is a sturdy and attractive little flip phone that looks like nearly every other appealing Samsung flip phone to predate it.

While it's true that the specs are deliberately modest--an e-mail app and browser are its only software trills--the Factor does a few things right.

Call quality was good enough in our tests to add the Factor to the ranks of simple phones with strong call quality, and the dial pad is very nice to use.

The Factor does elicit one major complaint, however. Find that, plus a video and other details and … Read more