smartphones

Features

• Analysis: Why Linux is a desktop flop

  By Maria Korolov | 30 April, 2012 21:28

  It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows.

• Mobile malware: Beware drive-by downloads on your smartphone

  By Meridith Levinson | 23 March, 2012 07:39

  While Jeff Schmidt, the CEO of JAS Global Advisors, was surfing the Web on his new Android smartphone (his first Android phone) earlier this year, what appeared to be an ad popped up on his screen. The "ad" looked like the prompt that appears when his phone rings. He clicked the button on the ad to pick up the putative call, and the ad began downloading a binary file - malware - onto his Android phone. Schmidt had been hit by a drive-by download, a program that automatically installs malicious software on end-users' computers--and increasingly, smartphones--without them knowing.

• Samsung's Ice Cream Sandwich update schedule

  By Ross Catanzariti | 23 February, 2012 13:14

  When will your Samsung smartphone get Google's latest Android update, 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich?

• LG's Ice Cream Sandwich update schedule

  By Ross Catanzariti | 16 February, 2012 12:23

  When will your LG smartphone get Google's latest Android update, 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich?

• Android's Ice Cream Sandwich update and why it takes so long

  By Ross Catanzariti | 13 February, 2012 11:44

  We explain how and why Android updates take so long to be released.

• HTC Velocity 4G speedtest

  By Ross Catanzariti | 24 January, 2012 15:40

  The HTC Velocity 4G promises data speeds of up to five times faster than its competitors, but is it really that fast? We put it to the test.

• A first look at the Nokia Lumia 800

  By Ross Catanzariti | 20 January, 2012 11:39

  Nokia's Lumia 800 represents somewhat of a new dawn for the struggling giant. It's the first phone to use the Windows Phone platform, following Nokia's decision early last year to partner with Microsoft for many of its future smartphones.

• 2011's biggest security snafus

  By Ellen Messmer | 02 December, 2011 06:27

  Perhaps it was an omen of what was to come when the city of San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2010 couldn't get a backup system running in its Emergency Operations Center because no one knew the password.

• What smartphones will be like in 2012

  By Jared Newman | 12 November, 2011 01:31

  Since the advent of the first modern smartphone--arguably the original Apple iPhone in 2007--the power of these mobile computing devices that also happen to make phone calls has advanced by leaps and bounds.

• Apple and Samsung: What's behind the patent fight

  By Jonny Evans | 06 October, 2011 05:45

  Samsung took a step toward finding a kind of "pax tabletica" with arch-foe Apple in an Australian court last week, offering to remove features from its Galaxy Tab to avoid a court ban on sales of the device in that country. But what's really interesting about the case isn't the technical litigation, but the underlying attempt to define how much of a product's design is actually protected under existing, fragmented international laws.

• Guide: How to sync your PC, smartphone, and tablet

  By Loyd Case | 29 September, 2011 23:55

  A few years ago businesspeople carried a laptop on the road, used a desktop PC in the office, and worked on another PC at home. Maybe they had a BlackBerry, too--but only if they were real big shots.

• Patent madness! A timeline of the Android patent wars

  By Brad Reed | 21 September, 2011 06:26

  History may look at Android as the tech industry's Helen of Troy: The OS that launched a thousand suits.

• Apple iOS: Why it's the most secure OS, period

  By Robert Lemos | 06 June, 2011 20:04

  In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, and the device quickly took off to become a major brand in the smartphone market. Yet when the iPhone shipped, security on the mobile operating system was nearly nonexistent. Missing from the initial iOS (then called iPhone OS) were many of the security features that modern-day desktop software has as a matter of course, such as data-execution protection (DEP) and address-space layout randomization (ASLR). Apple's cachet lured security researchers to test the platform, and in less than a month, a trio had released details on the first vulnerability: an exploitable flaw in the mobile Safari browser.

• HTC ThunderBolt 4G smartphone: Hefty but fast

  By Dan Rosenbaum | 22 March, 2011 06:41

  Even by the new standards of cell phone advertising, the run-up to the HTC ThunderBolt -- Verizon's first 4G LTE smartphone -- was elaborate and expensive. Gatefold ads in mass-market magazines and high-profile TV spots on the Oscars, NASCAR and college basketball all proclaimed that there was a new 4G phone coming from Verizon, but not much else. Inquiries made of HTC and Verizon were met with official shrugs. The company spent many millions of dollars advertising a phone and didn't tell anyone when it would be on the shelves.

• Android vs. iOS vs. Windows Phone

  By Preston Gralla | 18 March, 2011 05:43

  The past year has been a remarkable one for smartphones, with the meteoric rise of Google's Android OS, the restart of Microsoft's mobile strategy with its much-ballyhooed release of Windows Phone 7 and the continuing success of Apple's iPhone, buoyed by its new availability to Verizon subscribers. Never has there been so much choice in the smartphone market. As a result, hype and overstatement have been the order of the day.