Smartphones

One of the biggest complaints people have had about the iPhone is that if they drop it, lose it, or it gets ripped off, they're out of luck. AT&T doesn't offer any insurance programs for the iPhone like it does for other handsets; I'd wager to guess that's because the iPhone is, indeed, more expensive than the others when not subsidized.

But that appears to be changing. Boy Genius got his recently manicured hands on some evidence that on June 6, AT&T will roll out an insurance program for iPhone users. Awesome. … Read more

We've got some good news and bad news for Samsung Behold II owners. We'll start with the good first: you're getting an update to Android 1.6. The bad? You won't be getting anything beyond Android 1.6.

Samsung dropped the bomb late Thursday evening via its Twitter account, and its official statement reads:

Samsung Mobile and T-Mobile USA are planning to update the Behold II to Android 1.6 which provides access to Google Maps Navigation, Google Voice Search capability and quick search box for Android.

The update will also supply additional benefits including Swype, … Read more

Acer has officially announced its next Android smartphone on Thursday, the Acer Stream.

The handset maker bills it as the "Perfect Entertainment Machine" and the Acer Stream certainly has the the hardware to back up that claim. It features include a 3.7-inch AMOLED display and a 5 megapixel camera capable of recording 720p HD video. The inclusion of an HDMI output port makes watching videos on large screens a breeze and the 1GHz Snapdragon processor keeps things humming along.

While some of the Stream's features resemble those of the HTC Evo 4G and Droid Incredible, to … Read more

Remember the fracas when Google launched Google Buzz this past February?

We described the desktop manifestation of Google's then-new social networking as a privacy nightmare that was aggravating to disable, and the mobile version of Google Buzz as a confusing service lacking in unity--though one that does have some use to social butterflies, especially those using Google Maps for mobile (video).

Since then, Google has changed some of its ways and continues to push Google Buzz as a social tool. On Thursday, Google announced a new version of Buzz online (buzz.google.com) that's written in XHTML and … Read more

Android owners who use the IM and VoiP app Fring on their smartphones will now be able to place two-way video calls like their iPhone and Symbian S60 counterparts.

A Thursday update to Fring for Android 2.1 adds free video chatting as a method for reaching out. You'll recognize it by the blue icon of a camcorder now sitting alongside a chat bubble and telephone image when you tap a contact's name to initiate a conversation. As far as we know, this is a first for Android telephony.

Of course, there are a handful of caveats any … Read more

Rumors are swirling this week that AT&T and HTC are gearing up to announce an Android 2.1 device called the Aria.

The smartphone may be the one that was outed by the FCC in late April, but there is still very little known about the phone other than it will run the HTC Sense UI.

However, of all the days for the carrier to announce a new phone, I'd recommend against its rumored launch date of June 7 as that is the day Apple takes the stage at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Anything AT&T … Read more

Updated: 5/27/2010 at 10:10am PT with a few more details that redirect some of our speculation.

Well, this is interesting. On Wednesday, Mozilla gave us a heads-up that it was releasing an iPhone app that would "let Firefox users open their favorite Web sites on their iPhones." We assumed this mystery app would be similar to the Opera Mini browser, which dives through a loophole in Apple's notoriously restrictive non-compete clause that keeps developers from supplanting the Safari browser.

Instead of going the proxy browser route, as Opera Mini does, Mozilla's forthcoming app, … Read more

If you're the kind of person who likes to trace your own footprints, you may be interested in the new experimental feature that Google introduced Wednesday for mobile phones.

When you opt into the Latitude location feature on Google Maps and enable Location History, you'll find a brand-new beta dashboard view that doesn't just report your meanderings in a linear, chronological way, but will attempt to group your visits by trends, like trips away from home. The addition of map thumbnails helps keep data visual, liberating your history from traditional text-based constraints.

Privacy has been a key concern of late, … Read more

Hulu on an iPad? How about Photoshop, or FarmVille? While all of these are technically possible thanks to the Air Display app, they're not all recommended, or even viable. But yes, they can be done. So can using the iPad as a wireless tablet interface for graphic or music applications.

You will, however, need a Mac running close by.

Many owners of iPads, myself included, have noticed how the device actually works quite nicely as a "second screen" when placed next to a home computer. Air Display takes the metaphor literally, by enabling the iPad to become an extended desktop display for your Mac.

Air Display works over local Wi-Fi, with the aid of software that's installed on any Intel Mac with OS X 10.6 or later (Windows support, says maker Avatron, is "coming soon") and toggled via a toolbar. The setup is dead simple: First, launch Air Display on the iPad. Then, enabling Air Display on the Mac shows a list of whatever iPads happen to be on the same local network (odds are, just the one you're using, unless you're at an Apple Store). Click the name of your iPad, and you're set.

The extended display activated fairly quickly, and worked just like a second monitor does: We were able to drag any window on our Mac onto the iPad. While the reaction time was quick, unlike the several-second lag that occurs on Intel Wireless Display-enabled computers, there was a noticeable framerate drop on secondary display functions. On version 1.0, the image sometimes broke up or clipped oddly as well--the technology at work is not unlike what enables you to use your computer remotely via VNC.

There is a nice surprise, however: Touch-screen controls do work. We could tap to click links in Safari and to browse, although the mouse cursor tended to leap from point to point instead of smoothly dragging. We even were able to drag a window and highlight text, though that was a bit hit-or-miss. Continuous motions such as drawing on-screen work better. Still, even in its first release, touch works nearly as well as any Windows 7 tablet PC we've seen. And, windows had the sense to auto-expand to fill the iPad's screen space properly--maximizing anything from Safari to GarageBand was easy to do whether we were in landscape or portrait mode.

Well, so now that the iPad can be a Mac extension, what exactly would we do with it?

Our first instinct was to load up Hulu, of course.… Read more