Smartphones - News

GSM group: Phones need NFC for mobile payments

Phone manufacturers must build NFC (Near Field Communications) functionality into mobile handsets in order to speed adoption of mobile payment systems, the GSM Association said Tuesday.

Vodafone Australia announces BlackBerry Storm pricing

Vodafone today announced pricing plans for the upcoming BlackBerry Storm, ahead of its launch on 1 December. "Today we announce that we’re bringing the BlackBerry Storm to Australia with a sensational $0 offer with unlimited BlackBerry e-mail and Int...

iPhone Gets Google Search By Voice

Google launched a new application for Apple's iPhone that uses voice recognition technology to enter queries in the company's search engine. The free app should be available now from the iPhone's App Store and through iTunes.

iPhone 3G launch in Taiwan may foretell China debut

Taiwan's largest mobile phone service provider will launch the iPhone 3G in December, a deal that may foretell a launch in China soon.

Cheap Facebook phone wants to attract the masses

Mobile phone outfit INQ Mobile, hopes to attract the masses to mobile data with the new INQ1, which comes with built-in support for Facebook, Skype, Last.fm and Windows Live Messenger as well as a low price tag.

Nokia: Handset market will shrink next year

Handset makers collectively will sell fewer mobile phones in 2009 than this year, and sales for 2008 will be lower than previously expected, Nokia warned on Friday.

Citrix developing XenApps and XenDesktop for the iPhone

By the first half of 2009, Citrix will make its XenDesktop and XenApp client and server software for remote access to Windows applications available for the iPhone.

3 Mobile launches 'Facebook phone'

3 Australia today announced that it will exclusively offer the INQ mobile phone in Australia.

New Nokia device highlights cheap smart phone trend

Nokia's E63 smartphone, announced Wednesday, will cost US$250 before any subsidies -- a price that puts the phone maker ahead in a burgeoning price war and which one analyst described as "eye-popping."

Xperia will be pricey iPhone challenger

Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1 will go on sale in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving, but at US$800 the touch-screen phone may be a tough sell, particularly because it will most likely be used on AT&T's network, the exclusive distributor of the popul...

Huawei to launch Android and Symbian smartphones next year

Chinese network company Huawei Technologies is planning to launch smartphones based on the Android and Symbian operating systems in the first half of 2009, according to James Chen, director of marketing for the company's terminals division. It will a...

Project turns GPS phones into traffic reporters

Researchers from Nokia and the University of California in Berkeley will go live with a new project this week that aims to cull GPS data from thousands of mobile phones in order to tell drivers which San Francisco Bay Area roads are backed up and whi...

Android may not need antivirus software, researcher says

Antivirus developer SMobile released software this week to protect users of the G1 Android phone, although one security analyst wondered if people really need it.

Ballmer doesn't see Google Android as competitor yet

Google's Android mobile platform doesn't "bubble up to the top" of Microsoft's list of toughest competitors to Windows Mobile in the market for smartphone OSes, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday.

Android apps market is a hit, Google says

The average user of the Android-based G1 phone has downloaded 14 applications, out of 200 now available on the Android Marketplace, a Google executive said Wednesday.