phone

Qualcomm said Monday that its top lawyer is leaving the company.

Lou Lupin, who has served as Qualcomm's executive vice president and general counsel since 2000, is stepping down from his post, the company said. The company didn't provide any details about why Lupin is leaving. But his departure comes just a week after the company was dealt another legal blow in its ongoing battle with Broadcom.

Last week, the Bush administration declined to step in to veto a ban imposed by the Federal Trade Commission on importing cell phones using Qualcomm chips that have been found to … Read more

Earlier this month, New York enacted an Air Passenger Bill of Rights. Among other things, it requires that airlines make minimal provisions for passengers stranded on the tarmac for more than three hours. If you've done any traveling with kids, you probably know how difficult it is to both pack light (a key strategy for successful travel generally) and to pack enough stuff so that if there's a delay, you can keep the little ones occupied. The New York law bounds the problem a little bit: if your longest leg is 6 hours, you can be relatively assured that your outbound leg from a New York airport won't add more than 3 hours to that. But as the US Customs and Border Patrol SNAFU at LAX confirms, airport authorities don't seem to get particularly concerned about tarmac waits of 6, 8, or 10 hours, be they outbound or inbound. I think that when traveling with children, that's a bit much. What's a parent to do?… Read more

There's certainly no shortage of "smart" helmets on the market, especially where Bluetooth is concerned. But we always feel obligated to write up as much traffic safety equipment as we can, particularly when there are people out there using computers and GPS units while on the road.

The latest example of fortified headgear is the "BlueBike" Votronic, which Engadget describes as a "modular communication system" that can be built into any helmet to listen to MP3s or talk on the phone, either by Bluetooth or wired connection.

The only thing we find slightly … Read more

It's a modern-day conundrum of the two-wheel lifestyle: While multi-tasking with your on-board PC and navigating with the handlbar-mounted GPS unit, where does one keep the mobile phone?

Leave it to those insane but prolific inventors at Hong Kong-based Brando to come up with a "Bicycle Phone Holder," which GeekAlerts says can actually be used to hold a variety of gadgets, including music players and PDAs. The mount also allows the secured device to be rotated 360 degrees, so you can even keep your camera there at the ready when you're working your night job as … Read more

Well, hey now! (Does anyone else remember this episode from The Larry Sanders Show?) Symbian-Guru.com received this alleged promo flyer for a U.S. version of the Nokia N95 super smart phone. The revamped model includes the addition of HSDPA (850/1900 MHz) 3G support, a higher-capacity 1200mAh battery (compared to the old 950mAh lithium-ion cell), increased 128MB of RAM, a 1GB microSD card included in the box, and a redesigned black back cover. Some say that this flavor of the N95 could land stateside as early as next month with the backing of AT&T, but we'… Read more

Motorola announced today that its second-generation Razr phone will be arriving at most major U.S. carriers by the end of the summer. The GSM Razr2 V9 will come to AT&T while the CDMA Razr2 V9m will come to Alltel, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile is out of the game at the moment, mostly due to the carrier's lack of a 3G network. That said, it theoretically could adopt the GSM Razr2 V8, which tops out at 2.5G EDGE speeds, but that's just speculation for now.

Announced in May, the Razr2 line adopts the now … Read more

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." --Albert Einstein

Oh goody, you can watch YouTube on your iPhone, but what if you just want a phone? I tried to buy a phone that's just a phone, and wound up with a Samsung SCH-u540. Is it just me or do you think it's odd that a phone comes with a 151 page User Manual?

Manufacturers load on features to sell product--whatever it is--phones, coffee makers, micro-wave ovens, or A/V receivers. Here's the deep, dark ugly truth: the features don'… Read more

Like the Harper's Index, here are some numbers I've observed over the past 40 days... (well, 42 days actually).

Number of days in my possession: 42

Number of iPhones I purchased: 2

Number of which I kept: 1

Percent, to the nearest whole integer, of commission I took for getting a certain someone their iPhone: 0

Approximate number of hours waited in line: 10

Approximate number of days after I waited in line until the iPhone was sold out: 1

Number of people who cut in front of me in the line: 40

Number of people I allowed … Read more

It seems that a few iPhone users are encountering problems with the iPhone's touch screen, prompting Apple to replace some units.

Posters on Apple's support discussion boards and forums belonging to both AppleInsider and MacRumors have complained of dead spots on their iPhone's touch screen, almost like the old floor at the old Boston Garden. On a phone based almost entirely around touch-screen input, this would obviously be a serious problem.

It's not at all clear how widespread a problem this is. There were several active discussions about the problem on Apple's own support forums, … Read more