Tracking packages, monitoring their every movement from the vendor to your front door, can feel a bit like an addiction at times. Once you have the tracking number, you're either refreshing the respective carrier's tracking page, or you're mercilessly opening and closing your favorite package-tracking app hoping you can will the item to inch closer to its final destination.

As someone who has used iOS as my primary device for the last three years, I have often relied on the Delivery Status app to do the dirty work for me. There's a free OS X widget … Read more

With violent street thefts of smartphones and other mobile gear continuing to be a problem, top law enforcement officials from New York and San Francisco will meet with Apple, Google, and other manufacturers next week to discuss possible tech solutions, such as a "kill switch" that would render stolen devices worthless.

"With 1.6 million Americans falling victim to smartphone theft in 2012, this has become a national epidemic," San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said in a press release Wednesday. "Unlike other types of crimes, smartphone theft can be eradicated with a simple technological … Read more

Big Red faithful who have long been craving a physical keyboard's reassuring typing touch, this is your moment. Verizon will begin offering the new BlackBerry Q10 smartphone in stores starting next Monday, June 10 -- but eager beavers can preorder theirs starting Thursday.

Verizon and the other three major carriers -- AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile -- are pretty much on target with previous timelines that marked sales starting in early June.

Another consistency is the price. BlackBerry's QWERTY master sells for $199.99 on Verizon and AT&T with a new, two-year service agreement. Expect … Read more

My Verizon Galaxy Nexus is getting long in the tooth, as they say. Old. Sluggish. I bought it soon after it launched with Verizon in December 2011 because I wanted a "pure" Android experience on a network I felt had the best speed and coverage. Now I'm ready to replace it, but there's no alternative in sight.

Sure, Verizon has other Android phones I could buy. But those don't have a pure or "stock" experience, where the Android operating system hasn't had modifications made to it by the handset maker.

Pure Android … Read more

A 16-year-old programmer named Ash Bhat is attending Apple's WWDC next week for free. How? He created an iOS app that earned him one of 150 scholarships.

Tickets to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference sold out within two minutes after going on sale in April. But the company held out hope for student developers, promising scholarships for 150 of those able to create an app that would knock Apple's socks off.

The scholarship awarded one free ticket to join the conference, which runs from June 10 to June 14 in San Francisco.

Those qualified to enter the competition … Read more

Research firm ComScore has released its latest U.S. smartphone industry report, estimating that Apple remains top of the pile in the smartphone industry with a market share of 39.2 percent. 

Based on data gathered through the company's MobiLens service -- which harvests user information based on subscribers 13 years and older -- ComScore says that in the three month period ended April 2013, Apple and South Korean rival Samsung were the only manufacturers that enjoyed a positive increase in market share values. 

Tech giant Apple managed to snag 39.2 percent of U.S. smartphone … Read more

Sure, Samsung won a victory over Apple when a judge imposed a limited sales ban on older iPhones and iPads. But Apple would survive such a ban virtually unscathed, according to Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster.

Tuesday's ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission found Apple guilty of infringing on certain Samsung cellular technology patents. Assuming the ruling stands, a ban on the infringing devices would halt sales of the AT&T models of the iPhone 4 and 3GS and the 3G versions of the first and second iPad.

A ban on most of those devices would … Read more

Samsung's long-rumored Galaxy S4 Active has entered the realm of officialdom at last, and will be out in the U.K. this summer, Samsung has confirmed.

The S4 Active is a rugged version of the regular S4, aimed at outdoorsy types who don't want a phone that'll faint at the first sight of dust or water. The phone has a sealed design that -- Samsung promises -- will protect the S4 Active from water damage for up to 30 minutes of submergence at a depth of one meter.

More than enough protection against dropping it in your … Read more

FreedomPop, provider of "freemium" services including free broadband and 4G, has announced a mobile service that gives users free voice, text and data usage without a contract.

FreedomPop's new service will give users a guaranteed 500MB of 4G data for free, unlimited texts, and 200 voice minutes per month. Users registered on the network will also be given free unlimited calls to each other. The service will launch later this summer on several phones running Google's Android operating system.

The service will enable the first-ever all-data devices running 100 percent VoIP over cellular networks, according to … Read more