faq

Deutsche Telekom is doubling down on its U.S. wireless subsidiary T-Mobile USA with a plan to buy the prepaid regional carrier MetroPCS. But what's it mean for wireless subscribers?

Yesterday, Deutsche Telekom announced it had agree to buy MetroPCS and combine it with T-Mobile USA. The move is an indication that T-Mobile's German parent isn't giving up on the wireless carrier, which spent most of last year in a holding pattern while regulators considered AT&T's $39 billion bid to buy the company. Regulators didn't like the idea of the No. 2 AT&… Read more

Apple's new iPhone is here, and even with a nearly two-hour keynote, a Web site full of specifications, and CNET's must-read review there are plenty of questions that need answering.

CNET has put together this FAQ to help get to the bottom of some of them. These range from what's new to where you can get the phone to the differences between what you get with each carrier.

This is a living document and is likely to be updated this week and beyond. If we missed any big questions, please drop them in the comments and we'… Read more

Apple has made available a small FAQ on its new Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter, which outlines some uses and limitations of the adapter, and also hints at potential troubleshooting for both it and other Thunderbolt devices.

In the FAQ, Apple makes particular note about the daisy-chaining of Thunderbolt devices; each chain can support up to eight devices (including the host computer). While in most cases users will have peripheral devices such as hard drives or I/O controllers attached to their systems, it is also possible to connect multiple computers in the same daisy chain (one use of this is for … Read more

After more than four years writing the Cheapskate blog, I've been asked the same questions more often than I can count.

Alas, time doesn't always permit me to answer each reader's inquiry, so I've put together this FAQ page (at the ingenious suggestion of CNET's George Latourette).

The primary goal of the Cheapskate is to spotlight one killer deal (and maybe a bonus deal or two) every day of the week. I love cheap stuff, and I love sharing deals even more.

Think of me as your buddy who walks into the office every morning … Read more

With a rush of amazing Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, this is a great time to buy a new phone for you or for someone else. There are excellent phones flooding the market (here are our top five favorite smartphones), but unless you plan on switching your next handset before your contract is up, you'll want to consider a few points before making any semi-permanent decisions.

OK, so what if you're looking for even more basic guidance, like which mobile operating system to get? Is the iPhone 4S really a better choice than a shiny, new Android phone? What's the story with Windows Phone, and are BlackBerrys even a thing anymore? Believe me, these are great questions, and they've been at the top of your mind. Earlier this month, I helped take your burning cell phone questions in a live chat, and fielded even more queries at our weeklong CNET Gotham event in New York. I expected questions comparing iOS versus Android, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus versus the HTC Rezound versus the Motorola Droid Razr--but what surprised me is how many of you were considering Windows Phone.

So to get you started, here's a quick primer on iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone (sorry, BlackBerry, you've lost your momentum), and a smattering of the most common questions about smartphone OSes I've received from you. (If you've got more to ask, mark your calendars for the next Ask the Editors live chat on November 29!) … Read more

No matter how inexpensive Amazon.com makes its Kindle Fire tablet, it's no good to you if it doesn't do what you want.

In this blog post, I'm rounding up all the questions I've received from CNET readers about the Kindle Fire and answering them to the best of my knowledge. If you see something we missed, be sure to keep the conversation going in the comments section.

Should I be worried about how the Kindle's Silk Browser uses my data?

Not particularly. Amazon insists that all of the information it processes to make Silk … Read more

Apple last night posted a frequently asked questions page about Final Cut Pro X, a product it released this past week that has since gone on to become an item of controversy among long-time Final Cut users.

"Final Cut Pro X is a breakthrough in nonlinear video editing. The application has impressed many pro editors, and it has also generated a lot of discussion in the pro video community," the FAQ reads. "We know people have questions about the new features in Final Cut Pro X and how it compares with previous versions of Final Cut Pro. … Read more

Apple picked up a patent yesterday that could come in very handy in today's thicket of smartphone-related intellectual property litigation.

The patent gets to the heart of what it means to be a smartphone these days: a user interface with a multitouch display. Patent No. 7,966,578 bears the title "Portable multifunction device, method, and graphical user interface for translating displayed content."

But what's it mean? CNET takes a look at some of the issues involved.

First, what does the patent cover? The patent involves some of the most basic things you can do with a smartphone: touch the screen to move elements shown on it. That could be a touch with one finger, two fingers, or more, and the meat of the patent concerns just how many. Specifically, it has a lot to say about whether a sliding gesture moves a whole page of content or just some elements within a frame.

"Depending on the number of fingers used in the gesture, a user may easily translate page content or just translate frame content within the page content," the patent said.

The abstract of the patent reads as follows:… Read more

It's been a roller coaster of a couple of weeks for Sony and its customers.

At first what seemed like an embarrassing network outage that kept customers from accessing PlayStation Network, Sony's online game play and streaming video service, turned out to be much worse: a sophisticated cyberattack made off with the customer data of 77 million PSN and Qriocity customers.

Sony wasn't very forthcoming with information at first--it was a couple days before it acknowledged why PSN was offline, and two days after that it confirmed the security breach. Then over the weekend, the No. 2 … Read more