Archive

Minimal signal bars? In the middle of nowhere? Your phone should automatically roam onto alternative networks designated by carrier roaming agreements, but sometimes it doesn't -- the phone can appear biased towards your home network. I've been looking at Roam Control, an Android app -- not avail...

It wasn't too long ago that you'd have to pore over shortwave radio schedule listings, cross referencing time of day, with frequency in kilohertz, in order to listen to long range, overseas broadcasts -- picking out the words from the spooky radio harmonics. Then along came the Internet, which allow...

HTC is on its fourth incarnation of Sense, and in my opinion, no one has come close. In fact, they've got nowhere near. Muddy teal menus, and crude buttons from Motorola fail to delight; the Honeycomb UI on my Toshiba Thrive tablet with its neon-effect borders looks like it should be part of the UI ...

Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S III smartphone will be the company's first device to be officially branded and sold under its new SAFE program. SAFE stands for "Samsung Approved for Enterprise." The Galaxy S III will be available in the U.S. from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S.

We've been seeing applications that allow you to remotely access desktop PCs for years. They have tended to function on a PC-to-PC connection basis over the Internet -- like Symantec's pcAnywhere software, which is often used for remote PC troubleshooting. More recently, we've been seeing tools that...

Many Android devices ship with stripped-down office suite apps that offer limited functionality loosely based on the kind you'd get with Microsoft Office on your desktop. Having had a discussion recently with someone who now regularly travels without a laptop, depending solely on his Apple iPad for ...

Ever since the Galaxy Nexus, the Samsung-built Android phone that will usher in Ice Cream Sandwich, was announced in Hong Kong in October, the device has been making the headlines. On Thursday alone, there were stories about its launch in Canada, Verizon Wireless' excluding Google Wallet from the de...

Believe it or not, antivirus software makers are now pitching solutions for our smartphones. Do you believe the hype? Statistics floating around the sea of press releases from antivirus merchants proclaim the end of innocence for our lovable little Android. He's grown up. The amount of malware aimed...

A slew of free texting apps are out there right now, and they have the potential to cut your phone bill by enabling you to bypass your phone carrier's SMS functions. These third-party solutions take advantage of data networks, including the Internet, to send and receive texts, and they let you text ...

Users of eight HTC smartphones will be among the first to receive an upgrade to Google's new Android Ice Cream Sandwich. The company described the set of devices named as "the first wave" of HTC phones that will receive upgrades, adding that "we're continuing to assess our product portfolio, so stay...

My first experience with trying to consume news on-the-go was back in the eighties using the original CompuServe text-based online service -- the first commercial online service. The process generally involved trying to connect a laptop to the hotel phone system through a combination of alligator ...

Orb Network's media server software has been around for years; in fact, Orb and TVersity are the grandparents of current media-everywhere apps. However, this is the first time Orb has officially been available in an app for Android phones. Orb functions by grabbing indexed media content from your ...

Consumers who have put off buying their first smartphone or upgrading an aging one are facing a more complicated decision as of Thursday. Into a market already very heated with the recent launches of Apple's iPhone 4, carried exclusively by AT&T, and HTC's EVO 4G Android, via Sprint, comes Moto...

Google has begun rolling out Android 2.2 in over-the-air updates to owners of its Nexus One smartphone. Android 2.2, also known as "Froyo," has several new features, including a few that target the business market. Updates for other Android smartphones will have to wait until their customized interf...

When Samsung's Android-powered Galaxy S makes its U.S. debut in the coming months, it will do so as five different phones tailored for five different carriers. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and U.S. Cellular will all support a Galaxy S device, though the handset will be renamed and recast slig...