As just about every major smartphone maker gears up to introduce their own 1080p-resolution Android “phablets,” one platform that apparently won’t be getting larger screens with higher resolutions is Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8. According to Bloomberg, HTC (2498) canceled plans to build a large-screened smartphone with Windows Phone 8 “because the screen resolution would have been lower than competing models” – 720 horizontal lines instead of 1080. The company recently released the Android-powered DROID DNA with 5-inch 1080p-resolution display in a svelte chassis and had plans to “claw back share from Samsung Electronics Co.,” with a large-screened WP8 smartphone. But Bloomberg reports HTC concluded large-screened WP8 phones “wouldn’t be competitive against Android devices from HTC, Samsung and others.” While there’s no standardized definition for what is a phablet and

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As Research In Motion’s (RIMM) January 30th BlackBerry 10 unveiling draws closer, nearly every last detail surrounding RIM’s first two BlackBerry 10-powered smartphones will likely soon emerge. The vendor has a long history of leaks leading up to its new device announcements, and this time around RIM reps toured the world showing the phones to every carrier that would meet with them. Pictured once again over the weekend by N4BB is RIM’s first new QWERTY phone, which is code-named “N-Seriers” and expected to bear the name “BlackBerry X10” at launch. No fresh details accompany the newly leaked photos, but rumored specs from earlier reports include  a 720 x 720-pixel display with a pixel density of 330 ppi and integrated NFC. Additional images

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Research In Motion (RIMM) CEO Thorsten Heins recently said during the company’s Q3 earnings call that BlackBerry 7 is still a “strong success” in the Asian-Pacific markets. Despite the company putting most of its weight behind BlackBerry 10 and the Z10 and X10, Heins said RIM will continue supporting BB7 and consumers “might expect us to even build one of the other new products” based on it. Heins suggested on the earnings call new BB7 phones will target entry-level markets with lower price points over its BB10 devices; now, MobileSyrup has posted a photo of a mystery BlackBerry phone sitting next to the BB10-powered Z10 and X10. Could this HTC (2498) Status/ChaCha look-alike be a new BB7 smartphone? It could be, but then again, it could also

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Windows Phone has had a difficult time battling Android and iOS in the mobile space this year thanks to a glaring lack of apps. Unfortunately for Microsoft (MSFT), its Windows Phone Store falls short compared to Apple’s (AAPL) App Store, Google’s (GOOG) Play Store and even the Amazon Appstore. Microsoft is gaining ground, however, as the company revealed earlier this week that it published more than 75,000 new apps and games to its Windows Phone Store this year alone, more than doubling the catalog’s size. To put that figure in perspective, Google and Apple boast more than 700,000 apps in their respective stores, and Research in Motion (RIMM) will look to start strong with more than 70,000 apps promised for the release of

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Rating: Plus there's something called Windows Phone 7.xWell there has been a spurgle of stories about the impending release of Windows 7.8 for those with existing W7 Mango (7.5) smartphones. As we all know now such handsets will not be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8, so we will just have to be content with 7.8. Or will we? One site says there is something called Windows Phone 7.x. The drawback to these stories (for us here at GoMobile Towers at least) is that the main source of the leak is a Chinese site – WinP whilst the secondary source is a German site WParea. So we can't be 100 per cent sure what exact details have been leaked. However, both sites have anonymously received Windows Presentation slides which appear to have emanated from Nokia itself. Continue reading →

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The digital divide is wider than ever between diners who talk, tweet and snap pictures mid-meal and those who wish they'd just shut up, shut down and be present.

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Shares of Research in Motion Ltd. plunged 17 percent before Friday's opening bell, after the BlackBerry maker said it will delay the launch of critical new phones and revealed that its business is crumbling faster than thought.

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How many times can a company abandon its users and still retain their loyalty? Microsoft may be about to find out.

Microsoft has a history of abandoning its mobile users. It happened when the Windows Phone 7 transition occurred, with Windows Mobile users. Based on the Windows CE kernel, Windows Mobile evolved from the PocketPC OS into a full fledged, if clunky, mobile phone operating system. When Microsoft shipped Windows Phone 7, the company essentially abandoned Windows Mobile users.

There were some very good technical reasons for this, but the upshot was this: Both users and developers had to start over.

Similar abandonment happened with digital music players. Microsoft presented a standard called PlaysForSure, which created interoperability standards between digital music players. Later, Microsoft abruptly dumped support for the standard, abandoning its OEMs for Zune. Zune adhered to the iTunes model, with player and software locked to each other.

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Microsoft is holding a Windows Phone Developer Summit on June 20. It is expected to officially announce Windows Phone 8, while giving developers a clue about some of its new features and showcasing tools for creating apps using the new mobile OS. We probably won't see much in the way of new phone hardware, but this may be our first look at the next generation of Windows Phone. In that way, it's a lot like Apple's iOS 6 announcements at WWDC last week—targeted at developers, but interesting for tech enthusiasts.

Join us at 9am pacific for our liveblog of the keynote presentation, where we hope to get our first glimpse of Windows Phone 8.

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With its gigantic 5-inch display, the LG Optimus Vu might be easily mistaken for a tablet at first glance. Much like the Samsung Galaxy Note, the Optimus Vu is a tablet-sized phone--which some have dubbed a "phablet." PCWorld did manage to get some hands on time with the Vu back at this year's Mobile World Congress, but this week LG sent us an international version of the Vu. The company told us that it currently has no plans to bring the phone to the U.S. Still, the Vu is worth taking a look at for its unique, larger-than-normal size and accompanying stylus.

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While everyone is still buzzing about the upcoming release of the Samsung Galaxy S III, another Samsung product is making its way to carrier stores today. No, it isn't another phone, but rather a small sticker that contains a programmable NFC chip. Dubbed "TecTiles," these stickers can be programmed to automatically perform specific actions when you tap them against any Android phone with an NFC chip installed.

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Political pollsters have been under pressure to make sure their samples include Americans who rely solely on cell phones—and the latest NBC News/Marist polls of Florida, Ohio and Virginia exhibit why. As NBC's First Read flags, Romney narrowly pulls ahead in Florida among voters who were polled over landlines—48 percent to 45 percent. But among [...]

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Russian forensics firm ElcomSoft earlier this week announced that it has discovered a way to easily access iCloud backups of iOS devices, incorporating the functionality into its Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker software. While the Apple ID and password must be known in order to access the iCloud data, once that information has been obtained the software makes it easy for investigators to download full iCloud backups and then follow incremental backups in near real-time to track a device's use without the knowledge of the user.

ElcomSoft researchers analyzed the communication protocol connecting iPhone users with Apple iCloud, and were able to emulate the correct commands in order to retrieve the content of iOS users’ iCloud storage. It’s important to note that, unlike offline backups that may come encrypted and must be broken into (a time-consuming operation), data retrieved from iCloud is received in plain, unencrypted form . The 5GB of storage space can be retrieved in reasonable time, while receiving incremental updates is even faster.

Obtaining a user's Apple ID password may not always be trivial, but ElcomSoft tools can also be used to capture that information from offline backups stored in iTunes. And of course if the user disables iCloud syncing on its device or changes the Apple ID password, remote access is lost.

ElcomSoft has been at the forefront of development of password-cracking tools, last year incorporating a tool to bypass hardware encryption included in iOS 4. Such tools are increasingly being used by law enforcement to aid their investigations as smartphones become increasingly common and collect a growing amount of information about users and their activity.

ElcomSoft offers several levels of its software, with the most powerful versions restricted to certain governmental agencies, including law enforcement, intelligence services, and other qualified forensic organizations.

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Mobile phone sales worldwide suffered a rare dip in the first three months of this year on softened demand in Asian markets, industry tracker Gartner reported Wednesday.

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Mobile phone sales worldwide reached 419.1 million units in Q1 2012, a 2% decrease compared to the same period last year, Gartner's latest report says.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co has received some 9 million pre-orders for its third-generation Galaxy S smartphone from more than 100 global carriers, the Korea Economic Daily reported on Friday. Samsung toppled Apple as the world's biggest smartphone maker in the first quarter, helped by its line-up of Galaxy named devices running on Google's free Android software. The latest version of its flagship phone, unveiled this month, will first go on sale on May 29 in Germany before being rolled out to other countries. ...

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Beep on the Cheap: A Hack to Cut Cell Phone Charges

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