Smartphones

Call me inverse Marty McFly, for today I'm writing from the faraway world of the 1980s.

Or at least that's the the era that comes to mind in my home base of Taos, N.M., since about 7:30 Wednesday evening, when one of CenturyLink's fiber-optic lines east of town was severed, knocking out virtually all cell phone service and much of the Internet access in town.… Read more

Facebook on Wednesday announced it was rolling out a feature that allowed users to post a photo as a comment on any thread or status update from the Web site. The feature, a long overdue addition, was slowly activated for users throughout the course of the day and should be active for pretty much everyone by now.

When I first posted about the feature, I had a few friends comment they didn't have access to it via the mobile app, which is expected, because the feature wasn't added to any of the dedicated apps. The ability to use … Read more

You won't last long in the cell phone-selling biz if you can't promise LTE speeds. That's why it's so essential that Aio Wireless, AT&T's prepaid arm, is about to capture this crucial bolt of the 4G lightning.

Aio (pronounced AY-oh) has now announced the ZTE Overture as its debut LTE phone, arriving sometime in July.

The Android handset has modest features by most accounts: a 4-inch LCD touch screen backed by a 5-megapixel camera, the whole thing buttressed by the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS.

Details like the resolution of the Overture'… Read more

Nokia has dropped another clanging hint about the hotly tipped Nokia Lumia EOS camera phone, promising 41 million reasons to get excited about the new device.

In a canary-hued teaser picture, Nokia says "originality" is just one of the 41 million reasons to watch a live video from the New York event on July 11 at which the phone is expected to be unveiled.

That's almost certainly a reference to the 41-megapixel camera expected to be found in Nokia's forthcoming smartphone. It's rumored to be called the EOS, and is set to build on the … Read more

Samsung is planning to launch a Galaxy S4 variant with Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 800 processor, according to a new report.

A user manual for a new Samsung device, known as the SHV-E330S (PDF), shows a spec sheet that includes mention of a CPU called the MSM8974. That product ID is the code name Qualcomm uses for its Snapdragon 800 processor.

The manual was originally spotted by RBmen and was posted again by Engadget.

The Snapdragon 800 processor has been making chip fanatics swoon since its announcement earlier this year. The system-on-a-chip (SoC) is capable of delivering vastly … Read more

Has one of Apple's major suppliers just outted the much-rumored low-cost iPhone?

At a shareholders meeting on Thursday, Pegatron CEO T.H. Tung served up one intriguing comment about the so-called "cheap" iPhone, suggesting that the product is real but that it won't be cheap, according to China Times as covered by blog site Macotakara.

Tung said the price of the phone would be "fairly high," though he apparently didn't reveal any specific price ranges. The CEO explained that compared with cheaper feature phones, today's smartphones are able to do so many … Read more

The successor to LG's flagship smartphone Optimus G will be powered by the speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, the companies announced Wednesday night.

The new smartphone, which as of yet hasn't been officially named, is expected to be announced later this year. The continued collaboration between the two companies isn't surprising considering that the LG Optimus G was one of the first smartphones on the market to be powered by the Snapdragon S4 Pro.

The companies promise that the next iteration of the Optimus G line will "redefine the smartphone experience" by tapping the Snapdragon … Read more

The fact that the LG Optimus F7 is available on more than one carrier is no surprise. It's an excellent midlevel phone that's packed with quality specs, such as a vivid 4.7-inch touch screen, an 8-megapixel camera, and a dual-core CPU.

Boost Mobile announced today that the F7 will be coming to the carrier on June 27 for $299.99 off contract, and U.S. Cellular customers can already get the device for $99.99 with a two-year agreement.

All in all, despite some of its drawbacks (like its sluggish 3G speeds), I'd still recommend it … Read more

LG Display is about to embark on the mass production of smartphone display panels that reportedly don't break, crack, or shatter -- because they can bend.

By the fourth quarter of this year, the electronics company plans to be supplying the flexible displays to a host of major clients, according to The Korea Times.

"We have completed the development of our first flexible displays. We will mass produce flexible displays from the fourth quarter of this year," the company told The Korea Times. "We will apply a 4.5th generation glass-cutting technology for the OLED flexible … Read more