It’s hard to shoot pictures in the dark. You typically have the choice of either taking a blurry, dim photo, or using a flash and ruining the ambiance. So you buy a DSLR and an appropriately bright lens, but then you're toting around a big, clunky, and very obvious camera setup. But what if you...
Spending two weeks with Sony's best
We'd always thought the cane was a relatively mature technology — it's very good at helping you walk around, and really can't be improved. We were wrong. Hidden against a bright white wall inside Fujitsu's booth at MWC was the Next Generation...
Nokia launched its latest Lumia devices at Mobile World Congress this week. While many were hoping the company would unveil a 41-megapixel PureView device, or a Windows tablet, Nokia opted to flesh out its range of Lumias and give us an early look at where it's heading for 2013. With 12 Lumia products launched, excluding variants, Nokia's strategy is clear: offer colorful Lumia devices at...
Mozilla says that in order for Firefox OS phones to bear the Firefox logo, they'll need to meet a variety of software and hardware requirements, including mandatory installations of the Firefox mobile browser and the official Firefox Marketplace app store.
Though the existence of a "blessed hardware" program is similar to Google's model for Android — which only permits compliant devices to ship with the Google Play store, the Gmail app, and other elements — there's a key difference: Mozilla is actively encouraging carriers and developers to embrace alternative app stores and payment methods. A carrier launching a "Powered by Firefox OS" device would very likely have its own branded app store on deck alongside the Firefox Marketplace, for instance, since it could enable direct billing and give the carrier a cut of the sales...
A page out of Google's playbook
At MWC this week, showgoers are finally getting a look at the first Firefox OS devices that will come to market in the next few months.
To be blunt, they’re not very good: the ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire look and feel like low-end handsets from two or three years ago. The operating...
Face and eye tracking is slowly turning into a reality that could make it into malls and stores in the near future. At Mobile World Congress this week, Vodafone is demonstrating a vision of that reality in the form of an Intel-powered webcam and TV. The demo works by tracking the faces of people...
Nvidia is making a big deal at this year's MWC of proving its bold claim that the upcoming Tegra 4 system-on-chip is "the world's fastest mobile processor." The first benchmarking runs show the company's new silicon comfortably outpacing every...
Samsung took the wraps off of its new Samsung Wallet app during a developer conference at Mobile World Congress on Wednesday. The Wallet app is designed to let users store things such as event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards, and...
For all the speculation surrounding Nokia's MWC plans, the eventual launches from the Finnish company this morning proved somewhat underwhelming....
GM brought a Cadillac ATS to Mobile World Congress this week. This isn't a run-of-the-mill ATS, though — it's fitted with a number of LTE...
HP just announced that it's getting back in to the tablet game, but this time with Android instead of webOS. The Slate 7 is a perfectly straight-forward 7-inch Android tablet, with specs as middling as its build quality. For $169, you'll get an Android machine running on a 1.6GHz Arm Coretex A9 of mysterious provenance (HP wouldn't tell us...
At an event today at MWC, Visa announced a partnership with Samsung that will result in its payWave mobile wallet app getting installed on the "next generation" of Samsung smartphones. PayWave will...
Nokia Music has been available for Windows Phone in the US since September, but the company is making the move to Windows 8 and Windows RT shortly. As part of a Nokia Music+ offering, the Finnish company is launching a native version of its Music app specifically designed for Windows 8 tablets. It's not in the Windows Store just yet, but we got an early look at the app at Mobile World Congress today.
Samsung's recently announced Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet features an integrated IR transmitter, which lets you control various televisions and set top boxes in your living room. To go along with the IR blaster, Samsung is bundling its new Video...
What do you get when you mix a phablet and a tablet? You get the Asus Padfone Infinity, which the company just announced at MWC. The docking device remains first and foremost a phone, just a big one now — a 5-inch, 1080p phone that feels...
Before Asus announced the Fonepad at MWC in Barcelona today, we knew the device's name and little else. Now we know what Asus gets when it inverts the Padfone, in name anyway — the Fonepad is a 7-inch tablet that's a dead ringer for the Nexus 7,...
Asus is launching a 7-inch Fonepad today at Mobile World Congress. Running Android 4.1, the 7-inch Fonepad uses Intel's Atom Z2420 processor with 3G voice and mobile data support. Asus has equipped its Fonepad with a 1.2-megapixel front facing camera and a 3-megapixel on the rear. The display runs at 1280 x 800, and Asus has 1GB of RAM in its latest tablet.
Battery life is estimated at around 9 hours, and Asus will release 8GB and 16GB versions in titanium gray or champagne gold colors with...
Asus has just announced its latest PadFone, the PadFone Infinity, confirming an image that leaked earlier today. Like previous models, the PadFone is an Android smartphone that docks into a large display to become a tablet. The Infinity has a...
LG is demonstrating its wireless Ultra HD transmission technology this week at Mobile World Congress. At the company's booth I got a chance to walk through a gaming demo on an Android device that was displaying at 1080p on the phone, upscaling to...
Is it a Google TV? Yes and no: Samsung's new HomeSync media streamer runs Android 4.2 and has access to the Google Play store, but you won't find a Google logo anywhere on the box — nor will you find a single mention of the actual "Google TV"...
"BYOD" — Bring Your Own Device — is one of the hottest buzzphrases in business right now, the idea of users bringing in their own smartphones to use with their corporate email accounts rather than taking a company-issue BlackBerry that they don't really want. Samsung's Knox software tries to capitalize on that: your company installs it on your Galaxy device and you've got two distinct, secure environments for personal and business use.
It's not a new concept: LG first announced dual-boot...
LG announced updates for its L-series of smartphones a few weeks ago, and they're demoing the new handsets here at MWC. The L stands for "low-end" here — these are aimed at price-conscious European and Asian consumers. The L7 II has a 4.3-inch...
We might not be seeing new phones, but webOS is still alive in some form, at least: LG has reportedly agreed to buy the rights to the OS from HP and use it in smart TVs. According to CNET, the Korean manufacturer has acquired source code,...
Nokia's just unveiled its latest low-end Windows Phone 8 device, and I've spent some time with the budget handset ahead of its release by the end of March. The Lumia 520 borrows the same design language from its high-end siblings, but you're not going to get similar specifications. This is very much a low-end device, with a 4-inch WVGA display, 8GB of storage, and a 5-megapixel rear camera. Nokia has nixed NFC support, and there's no front facing camera for Skype and other video calling apps.
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Nokia just announced its latest mid-range Lumia 720 at Mobile World Congress today, and I've had a chance to take a look at it ahead of its release later this quarter. At first glance this particular Lumia embodies the same design as the latest...
