Tag archive: cell phones

It’s now been over two years since we first gazed upon the well-stocked shelves of the iTunes App Store. While our Top iPhone Apps were tough to choose the first time around, the task has become even tougher as developers have flooded the market with apps, now to the tune of over 500,000 (that’s a separate app for every person in the city of Portland). Even for a niche tasks like calculating your blood alcohol content after a night of drinking,… Read More

One of the most annoying aspects of changing phones is making sure all of your contacts are transferred to the new device. In the olden days, this meant manually typing in countless names and phone numbers, but our smartphones can now do most of the work for us. This guide will focus on moving contacts from iPhone to Android, but the main principles of this guide will help out other platforms. Setup The first thing you will need to do is to… Read More

2011 was not a year of huge developments in the smartphone world. Mostly, phones just got bigger and faster. Instead of phones with 3.7-4.0 inch screens, most phones now have 4.3-4.5-inch screens, and instead of 1.5GHz processors, most phones now sport 1.5GHz dual-core processors. Keyboards have become more rare, appearing in slide-out QWERTY designs, if they are present at all, and phone cameras have improved significantly in the last 12… Read More

It’s never a bad year to soak up new technology, but we’ll still go out on a limb and say 2011 has been a particularly good one for gadget fiends. Sure, on the surface, 2011 lacked the many landmark product introductions that have changed the landscape of technology. A year like 2007 brought the first iPhone, first e-reader, and first netbooks. Even the tablet revolution we’re experiencing now started back in 2010. No, the last 12 months can’t… Read More

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) voted unanimously today to recommend states completely ban the use of cellphones and other portable electronic devices in vehicles, reports the Associated Press. The recommendation suggests going far beyond the current restrictions on texting and talking on the phone while driving to include outlawing the use of hands-free devices. The five-member board of the NTSB made their decision after a… Read More

It's both good and bad to be a Verizon subscriber right now. On the plus side, Verizon is getting some of the best handsets on the market and its high-speed 4G LTE network is the best in the country. These innovations come at a cost, however, as Verizon has become the most expensive carrier to deal with. New phones are about $100 more expensive than competing carriers like Sprint and AT&T, and the cost of data has more than doubled in… Read More

When T-Mobile launched the very first Android-powered handset – the G1 – back in 2008, the app library to go along with it looked like a minimart beside Apple's Walmart. But the past few years have been kind to Google. The steady release of high-profile, high-power Android handsets like the HTC Droid Bionic, Samsung Galaxy S II and Motorola Droid Razr have turned that initial drizzle of apps into a torrent. Now with over… Read More

President Obama has signed an Executive Order to cut how much government agencies spend on technology devices, printing, swag, and vehicles by 20 percent. This new Order builds on the “Campaign to Cut Waste” that the President stated back in June. According to a White House press release, this campaign has already saved about $3.5 billion in real estate costs and $5 billion on “no bid contract” spending. Obama's… Read More

Occurring on early Friday, a handful of T-Mobile customers were treated to a test of the Personal Localized Alert Network (PLAN) that occurred before any scheduled public test. Originally reported by Lance Ulanoff over at Mashable, the test involved a startling noise that played on his HTC Radar 4G that was similar to the alert siren heard when the Emergency Broadcast System is tested on a television, likely taking T-Mobile customers by… Read More

A new long-term study from Denmark's Institute of Cancer Epidemiology examined the medical histories of more than 350,000 mobile phone users over a period of eighteen years. The study's conclusion? Mobile phone users are at no greater risk for developing cancer in the brain or central nervous system than people who don't use mobile phones. The study has been published in the British Medical Journal. The finding is no doubt… Read More

AT&T hasn't had a good year. Verizon's 4G LTE network has already launched and is an entire year ahead of its own, the U.S. Justice Department is now suing to stop its merger with T-Mobile, and the iPhone is now available on not one, but two rival wireless carriers. The good thing is, with the pressure on, AT&T's handset prices are much lower than Verizon's, and their specs are quite comparable (minus the whole… Read More

For many, Sprint is finally becoming a viable option as a carrier again. With AT&T and Verizon continually raising rates on data, Sprint remains as the only wireless carrier in the U.S. that offers unlimited data for $30 a month. It's 4G network isn't as good as Verizon's, but it outpaces AT&T and T-Mobile, and this year Sprint has upped its commitment to quality handsets, now offering competitive Android, Windows… Read More

Phone manufacturers will have to add GPS capabilities to every phone model by 2018, according to the FCC (via TechCrunch). While those of us with smartphones already have GPS, many feature phones do not, instead relying on cell-tower triangulation and other methods to determine location at any given time. While Assisted GPS will still be usable, actual GPS functionality will be required for all phones in seven years time. The FCC is also quick… Read More

As the world continues adjusting to new technologies and social norms change at a rate on par with Moore’s Law, sociologists and pollsters have had a plethora of interesting data to examine. A new study from Pew Internet has shed some startling, if not somewhat humorous light on how Americans adults are using their cell phones. (Only 17 percent are without the device today.) The survey of 2,277 adults found that 13 percent of cell phone users… Read More

The San Francisco Bay Area's mass transit system, known as BART, admitted to temporarily shutting down cell phone service in four of its San Francisco stations last night. The suppression of cell signals was apparently a response to the threat of a possible protest over a man shot by BART police last month. “Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive… Read More