chronos

This week I stepped back into the land of reviewing to test the Samsung Chrono 2 for U.S. Cellular. And, wow, what a trip it was.

With its basic calling features and retro design, the Chrono 2 took me back to a cell phone era that greeted me when I first joined CNET almost nine years ago. Before Android and the iPhone democratized the smartphone, most of us used a handset like the Chrono 2. You may have had a camera or Bluetooth, and you probably toyed with a wireless browser, but mostly we used the handsets for making … Read more

U.S.Cellular and Alltel Wireless have joined up with Wal-Mart to take on the cell phone frontier of big-box retail distribution.

U.S. Cellular, a regional carrier out of Chicago, and Alltel, based in Little Rock, Ark., will begin selling select phones under the U Prepaid brand in 18 states some time in May.

U Prepaid, a pre-existing Alltel brand, will kick off at Wal-Mart with four phones: the Android-powered Samsung Repp, LG Attune/LG Exchange and LG Saber feature phones with QWERTY keyboard, and the simpler Samsung Chrono.

Customers will ride either U.S. Cellular or Alltel's … Read more

A computer monitor and keyboard are so yesteryear.

At Microsoft's annual TechForum expo earlier this week, the company showed off several amazing concept products that will have you thinking far into the future. Luckily, we have some great pictures and videos of some of these devices, which deliver a computer experience unlike anything commercially available today.

Buckle up and click on our gallery below to see innovations including a 3D augmented-reality desktop, software that tracks the history of the world, a mirror with holograms, and much more. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--No matter how much you prepare for a trade show like CES, what you see on the floor never quite matches what news you get beforehand.

In the case of Samsung, we had a chance to look at the new Samsung Series 9 and Series 5 Ultra ultrabook, but were surprised by quite a few intriguing laptops at Samsung's booth, which we should expect to see later this year.… Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--At the Launch 'Pad conference today, two back-to-back presenters showed how they are trying to modernize the doctor/patient relationship with iPad apps.

The more ambitious and better-established company, Dr Chrono, is an iPad-centric, complete office automation suite aimed primarily at small medical practices. Patients may encounter it when they're asked to sign in at their doctor's office; it will collect the insurance information and medical history data that most offices collect on generations-old paper forms.

But doctors can use the app for ordering labs, handling billing, and even taking medical notes.

What's interesting to … Read more

Cricket Wireless isn't wasting any more time turning up the volume on its Muve Music service, which adds all-you-can-eat music downloads to its talk, text, and data plan rates.

Almost two weeks after introducing the Samsung Vitality, its first Muve Music smartphone, Cricket is announcing the launch its second Android act, the ZTE Score. But this time Cricket won't be orchestrating the sales; Best Buy will.

In an effort to acquaint a greater audience to the Cricket brand, the prepaid carrier has partnered with national retailer Best Buy to exclusively sell the ZTE Score later this month, as … Read more

Managing inventory can be a difficult task if you don't have the right tools for the job. Chronos eStockCard Inventory Software packs a lot of useful inventory management features into an intuitive interface, making a complicated process easier to handle.

The program's interface is attractive and easy to navigate, with tabs down the left side for sales, purchases, inventory, reports, tools, and settings. Within each of these features are displayed in a format that is similar to a flowchart, which organizes the features in a way that makes a lot of sense. For example, the sales quotation icon … Read more

Just weeks after the Samsung Chrono arrived at U.S. Cellular, it also lands at Cricket Wireless.

The Chrono is about as simple a flip phone as you can get, with a VGA camera and Bluetooth support. It's light (just three ounces), comfortable to use, and has a smooth, attractive body. It also manages to extract top-notch call voice quality, or at least it did on the version we tested with U.S. Cellular.

The Cricket version costs $59.99 without a contract. That's triple the price of the U.S. Cellular version, which will make you part … Read more

The Samsung Chrono may not stray much from the well-worn path tread by Samsung's flip phones before it, but we will say one thing: the phone can make calls.

Large dial pad buttons keep it simple, and a call quality so unclouded we had to ask several times to make sure our callers were still on the line is a rarity among most cell phones, period, no matter how many rabbits their software pulls out of a hat.

Of course, we wouldn't say no to a few more software tricks and to updated specs in general, but for … Read more