First Look

Cutting your own ringtones from songs in your mobile library isn't hard at all, and there's even one ingenious Android app that takes a much more creative approach than the usual slice-and-serve.

iPhone apps also handily make ringtones. Apart from choosing the start and stop times--which can be frustrating and time-consuming depending on your level of meticulousness--the most trying portion of the creation process is transferring your newly created selection to iTunes and then back to your computer as a ringtone.

No, it doesn't make sense, but the apps show you how to do it and ultimately … Read more

Mozilla lifted the lid off Firefox for Android earlier this week, but what's the big deal? Oh, just that this is Firefox's most important mobile appearance since browser-maker Mozilla began its mobile project, notably as the Minimo browser for Windows Mobile 5 and 6, and later as Fennec for Windows Mobile 6. (Mozilla later dropped Windows Mobile support when Microsoft began work on Windows Phone 7.)

There's also the fact that Firefox offers a couple of unique mobile components, like its signature add-ons convention, as well as Firefox Sync, which gives your smartphone access to URLs that … Read more

Burly and coated in ridged rubber, the forthcoming Sonim XP3300 Force can take its share of abuse.

Rugged phones are sturdy, but certainly not indestructible. That said, this "Force" fared better encased in concrete than Han Solo did in carbonite, and it also passed our dunk test. Several enhancements kick it up a notch from some other Sonim phones. We'll have a more in-depth look in our hands-on review, so stay tuned. In the meantime, see the dust-covered contours of the XP3300 Force filmed just today in our San Francisco headquarters.

Lazy eaters, stop simply searching for restaurants to call for takeout. The GrubHub and Seamless Web apps for iPhone and Android go one step further to place your delivery order.

Seamless what? Seamless Web is a nonsequitor of Web nomenclature for sure, but the app and its GrubHub rival do a decent job walking you through the ordering process. Of course, you are limited to the establishments displayed in each app and the apps may not serve every U.S. city. Still, if you use either Web site, or are looking for a new way to find and secure food, … Read more

We're all familiar with Yelp, Google, and Bing as go-to mobile apps for searching out restaurants, movies, and gas stations. Here's Poynt, another undersung app that squeezes the same operation into an equally-compelling package.

It's been awhile since we last took a look and it's high time we revisited the perfectly respectable app for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smartphones.

SugarSync, Dropbox, and Box.net all have several things in common. They're freemium cloud-syncing services that let you upload files to download again elsewhere; they all have free apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android smartphones; and they're all featured in this week's episode of Tap That App.

Check out our video to see how one of these apps could solve your storage problems.

Hulu Plus may have been the first major entertainment app to stream television shows and movies on Apple's iOS 4, but now it's facing stiff competition from Netflix for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, which has also now taken up residence in the App Store.

So how is Netflix's streaming app? So far, pretty darn good. We take you on a tour of the app's ins and outs in the latest edition of Tap That App, CNET's show about the hottest apps in the mobile space.

Apple isn't likely to allow Firefox or any other competing HTML Web browser on its iOS platform anytime soon, but Mozilla's Firefox Home for iPhone, released to the App Store late last week, does at least bring the heart of the Firefox browser to your iPhone: your URLs. 

Before getting into what Firefox Home is, you should know that a browser is the one important thing it's not.

Firefox Home is not a WebKit browser, though it does incorporate a WebKit viewer, and unlike Opera Mini for iPhone, it's not  a proxy-based Web browser … Read more

Google kept us busy with announcements at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco, like news of a Chrome Web Store, Google TV, a forthcoming update to the Android operating system that includes the first full-fledged Flash Player for a mobile phone, changes to the camera app, and support for tethering and portable hot spots, among a list of other additions.

We happen to have a version of Android 2.2 (albeit a prefinal one) loaded on a Nexus One, and dove inside to survey the new features for ourselves.