Smartphones

It all started at a small academic get-together in Whistler, British Columbia. The topic was speech recognition, and whether a new and unproven approach to machine intelligence—something called deep learning—could help computers more effectively identify the spoken word. Microsoft funded the mini-conference, held just before Christmas 2009, and two of its researchers invited the world’s Continue Reading →

Amazon recently unveiled its long-awaited smartphone, the Fire Phone. Built around the Amazon Prime experience, the Fire Phone runs the same heavily tweaked version of Android found on the Kindle Fire –that means it has a lot of apps, but not every app in Google Play – most notably no Snapchat or YouTube. The phone’s Continue Reading →

Google showed off a few new features of the next version of Android. While the company didn’t say all that much about the new features and instead focused on the new design language, Google director of engineering Dave Burke did show off Android’s new personal login feature. Instead of having to use a pattern or Continue Reading →

The hottest part of the mobile market is the cheap, sub-$100 device. Need proof? At its annual I/O developer’s conference in San Francisco Wednesday, Google announced AndroidOne, a program to seed reference designs to hardware makers in order to speed up the process of bringing the latest hardware to price-sensitive consumers. AndroidOne phones will have Continue Reading →

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled unanimously that the authorities generally may not search the mobile phones of those they arrest unless they have a court warrant. “To further complicate the scope of privacy interests at stake, the data a user views on many modern cell phones may not in fact be stored on the Continue Reading →

Amazon finally unveiled its long-awaited smartphone, the Fire Phone. #epicfail #at&texclusiveareyoukidding #tooheavyandawkward #toolate #seenitbefore #wherearetheapps #shouldhavecalledzuckandaskedfirst #jeffwhatwereyouthinking Built around the Amazon Prime experience, the Fire Phone runs the same heavily tweaked version of Android found on the Kindle Fire. That means it’ll have access to the 240,000+ apps in the Amazon Appstore, but not every Continue Reading →

Smartphones and tablets are playing a key role in the consumption of online videos, a new study from video technology company Ooyala shows. During the first quarter of 2014, 21 percent of all online video-plays around the world were completed through mobile devices or tablets, Ooyala reported Wednesday. In the first quarter of 2012, that Continue Reading →

For several years, cellphone theft has been a growing epidemic worldwide. But the police in New York, San Francisco and London say they are finally starting to see a dip in thefts of one of the most popular smartphones. The reason? The attorney general of New York, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the district attorney of Continue Reading →

Microsoft is planning to update Windows Phone to include anti-theft features that will prevent thieves from using devices after they’re stolen. The software maker signed on the CTIA’s Smartphone Anti-Theft Voluntary Commitment in April, and plans to release a software update to the Find My Phone feature of Windows Phone 8.1 ahead of the CTIA’s Continue Reading →

If you have an iPhone, you probably know a lot of what Siri can do. But there are still a couple tricks Siri has up its sleeve that most iOS users may not know about. If you’ve got World Cup fever, Siri may be your best friend over the next few weeks. Siri is able Continue Reading →