Data collected by GfK Network Intelligence has unearthed some pretty startling information for those of us in the industry who have preconceived notions of what people are into and how most smartphone owners use their mobile devices. GfK has discovered that Android users use their web browsers the most and tend to visit on average…
ZTE Skate: 4.3 inches of Android 2.3 goodness [EU and Asia only]
Chinese firms like ZTE and Huawei are breaking into the mobile phone industry in a big way. They’re eating margins from the established players, they make devices for operators and are happy to slap a Verizon logo in place of their own on the back of your next smartphone, and thanks to the likes of…
Opera Mini to come installed by default on Qualcomm’s Brew MP platform
Our Norwegian friends at Opera Software have just announced that they’ve signed an agreement with Qualcomm whereby Qualcomm’s Brew MP operating system will come with Opera Mini installed by default. Brew MP may be something you’ve never heard of, but it’s a highly popular feature phone operating systems used by multiple handset vendors, even HTC,…
Broadcom BCM4330: Dual band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio support, all on a single chip [Shipping Now]
If you want to build a mobile phone and use something other than the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform then you’re going to need to buy separate pieces of silicon to handle all your WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and FM radio functions. That changes today thanks to Broadcom who introduced the BCM4330. It does dual band WiFi 802.11n,…
Gemalto shoves Facebook right on your SIM card [For the unconnected crowd]
Gemalto is a firm you probably never heard of, but they’re important since they make those tiny pieces of plastic that make your mobile phone actually work. Yes, I’m talking about SIM cards. Without one you’re carrying around what’s essentially a glorified camera and MP3 player. Today they’re announcing Facebook for SIM which will enable…
Apple set to buy over $7.8 billion worth of components from Samsung this year
It’s no secret that Samsung is a huge company. Forget about their mobile phones for a second, and think about all of the other things they make. From kitchenware to the memory chips that store the naughty photos you take of your girlfriend and share with your closest friends, Samsung touches damn near everything. We’re…
ScanBuy partnering with operators to let people scan barcodes with no app required
Several years ago there was a lot of hype around barcodes, specifically QR codes that were tailor made for mobile phone users to capture and then navigate to a webpage where they would get more information about a product, film, whatever. Even Microsoft tried to get in the game by inventing their own version of…
Qualcomm MDM8225: Bringing you 84 Mbps HSPA+ sometime in 2012 [T-Mobile]
Qualcomm’s expertise in the radio space has once again been proven with the release of the MDM8225. It isn’t the sexiest name in the world, but it’s got full support for HSPA+ Release 9. What does that mean in English? It can do 84 Mbps download speeds using the cutting edge of what used to…
Pelican Imaging: Shoving an array camera into a mobile phone makes it thinner and take better photos
Handset vendors need to strike a delicate balance between putting an awesome camera sensor in their device, and matching it with equally impressive optics, or sacrificing image quality all in the name of trying to break the world record for world’s thinnest handset. Take the Nokia N8 for example, the uncontested leader of cameraphones, it…
Motorola Gleam: Because the world needs yet another RAZR variant
Say the word Motorola and people think one of two things. They either remember the iconic clamshell device, the RAZR, that changed people’s perception of thin a mobile device could be or they foam at the mouth from all the new and cutting edge Android powered smartphones they’ve released over the past year and are…