Research in Motion will hold its own conference for smartphone developers later this year, as interest in mobile development continues to grow.

Electronista spotted a Web page advertising the BlackBerry Developer Conference, scheduled for the week of October 20 in Santa Clara, Calif. The two-and-a-half day conference will feature the usual keynote speeches and technical sessions, but RIM doesn't seem to have settled on an agenda just yet.

Smartphone application development appears to be the next frontier for software developers. Such applications have already been in development for years for operating systems like Symbian and Windows Mobile, but the … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Designing a user interface for a mobile computer isn't hard; all you have to do is think like a person.

Sounds simple, but it's taken a long time for that realization to set in, said Stu Card, manager of the user interface group at the famed Palo Alto Research Center. Card joined fellow researcher Ted Selker of MIT's Media Lab at Sofcon 2008 to discuss human interfaces for mobile computers, and just how differently engineers have to treat these devices than their older PC brothers.

PCs weren't necessarily designed for end users in … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--The technologists and businesspeople working to create the next generation of mobile computers know they're going to have to play in the cloud.

About 45 miles down the road from the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, where cloud computing is enabling an industry, attendees at Sofcon 2008 on Tuesday morning are thinking about how to unlock all the data stored inside corporations and make it accessible by mobile computers through the cloud. Timothy Chou, author and a former executive at Oracle, thinks that as businesses adopt mobile computers, they'll dramatically expand the need … Read more

The world's largest handset maker is starting to talk about its response to Apple's iPhone, almost 10 months since the iPhone made its debut.

Nokia showed off the Nokia Tube in a presentation slide noticed by Infoworld at a software development conference in California Monday. The Tube, like the iPhone, is a touch-screen phone that can be manipulated using your fingers, and is Nokia's "first touch device," according to Tom Libretto of Forum Nokia.

It's fair to say the iPhone forced just about every handset maker to take a second look at their product … Read more

As far as giveaways go, CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas was unremarkable. There were copious logo pens, bite-size candy bars, and the usual business card raffles that offer you a chance to win this headphone set or that laptop bag in exchange for license to spam you with product updates. I picked up a cheesy no-slip cell phone gel pad for the car dashboard from LogMeIn and a petite cup of chocolate gelato from Yahoo. CNET smartphone reviewer Bonnie Cha snagged a cute little two-inch mouse, perfect for traveling. Oh, and I also got a Nokia N95. I just didn'… Read more

It's a wrap! CTIA 2008 has come and gone and the show produced quite a number of smartphone announcements. Research in Motion unleashed a fleet of new BlackBerrys; Microsoft unveiled its latest mobile operating system; and we even saw a new entrant into the field. There was plenty more action, so take a look at all the new smartphones in this photo gallery.

Call me jaded, but it's been a while since a new smartphone has knocked my socks off. I mean, of course, I get excited when a new product comes out, but (iPhone aside) it's usually pretty much the same innards in a slightly different package. So perhaps that's why I'm stoked on a new company called Velocity Mobile, which debuted at CTIA.

Velocity Mobile is a collaboration between Inventec and a team of industry veterans (including some from the Microsoft Windows Mobile camp). It's not so much the hardware that wows me, but it's … Read more

Sony Ericsson may have been a sleeper at CTIA, but one good thing came out of it: I finally got my hands on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. Unlike at GSMA where you had the battle the crowd and public relations folks just to get a picture of the darn thing, I was able to spend a few minutes with the highly anticipated smartphone and all I've got to say is "me-ROW."

It's pretty easy to see why there's so much buzz about Sony Ericsson's first Windows Mobile device. The hardware is elegant and … Read more

Motorola's phone business has at least one suitor: India's Videocon.

IDG News Service reported Wednesday that Videocon, which sells consumer electronics devices in India, is interested in bidding on the phone portion of Motorola's cell phone business, which is destined to become a separate company one way or another. Videocon is building its own GSM network in India, and might want a ready-made slate of phones to put in its retail stores and run on its network.

It seemed that selling the division was Motorola CEO Greg Brown's first choice, when faced with the dilemma of … Read more