One of the Galaxy S5 features that was leaked before its official announcement and briefly described during the show at Mobile World Congress is the special Kids Mode functionality that allows parents to share their smartphone with their children, but only include certain features including access to games but also Samsung’s pre-loaded apps such as a basic drawing app, a voice recording app, special camera and gallery apps, and a karaoke app. But there’s also a Kids Store that provides access to even more apps. More →
BlackBerry phones still offer the best security of any other smartphones around but what if you want something that, much like Spinal Tap’s famous amplifiers, pushes your security up from a 10 to an 11? If you’re in the market for a BlackBerry that’s more-secure-than-secure then German company Secusmart GmbH has something for you, provided you have the cash. More →
There are two mythical gadgets that we’ve long heard about but have never actually seen: An Apple iTV and an all-metal Samsung flagship phone. Although some rumors had raised our hopes that Samsung would be releasing a premium all-metal version of its Galaxy S5 this year, the company dashed our hopes by announcing a Galaxy S5 that only came in water-resistant plastic that makes it look like a Band-Aid. SamMobile, however, makes the case that Samsung could still benefit from releasing a premium Galaxy S5 this year even as it plans to push the plastic model as its top device. More →
SoftBank CEO and Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son really, really does not like to lose. Son’s iconic quote came when he was asked why he would ever want to buy up Sprint and he said that “I am a man, and every man wants to be number one, not number two or number three.” As a new profile in The Wall Street Journal makes clear, Son hasn’t lost any of his desire to win in the United States even as Sprint has consistently remained the wireless world’s biggest loser. More →
Walmart is ready to sell buyers looking for on-contract smartphone even cheaper iPhone 5s models, as well as other smartphones, CNN Money (via 9to5Mac) reports. Purchased with a two-year contract with either AT&T or Verizon, the iPhone 5s costs only $119, down from its previous $145 price. Similarly, the iPhone 5c now costs $29 on-contract, down from $45, while Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is priced at $49 instead of $99. More →
John Chen has a difficult road ahead of him, something he has acknowledged repeatedly since taking on the role of CEO at BlackBerry. In his latest interview with The New York Times, he went so far as to admit that phones might not be a major part of BlackBerry’s future, depending on where the software takes the company. If BlackBerry can find a profitable way to produce new phones, it will, but otherwise the company plans to focus on embedding its software into other products, forming partnerships and even building new devices altogether. More →
For the past year or so, BlackBerry fans would try to counter reports on BlackBerry’s barely existent U.S. market share by pointing to comScore surveys showing that BlackBerry still had a marginally larger market share than Windows Phone, Microsoft’s mobile platform that is similarly little used in the U.S. However, the latest comScore numbers inform us that even this little factoid is no longer true: Windows Phone has at long last overtaken BlackBerry in the United States. More →
Touch ID might have been better in concept than as a practical security measure, but as with any template for future designs, Apple’s fingerprint scanner is just the beginning of the company’s exploration of biometrics. According to a recent patent, Apple wants to enable a wider range of functionality using your fingers, your eyes and even your voice in the future. The patent suggests that the owner of a device could store any user’s biometric data within the device and then restrict or allow access to certain features depending on the user’s identification. More →
A rather strange Business Korea report cites an unnamed Samsung executive who claims that Samsung announced the Galaxy S5 earlier than many had anticipated because it feared higher-than-expected iPhone 5s sales in Europe would eat into a good chunk of its core market. Samsung decided to make an announcement of the Galaxy S5 earlier than it might have liked even though that meant sharing the stage with numerous other handset makers at the MWC 2014 show that took place in Spain in late February. More →
A new study reveals that Apple is still the most coveted brand in emerging markets, even though not all potential customers can afford its products and end up using Android devices “because of their accessibility,” Fortune reveals, pointing us to a recent Upstream survey performed on 4,505 smartphone buyers in five emerging markets including Brazil, China, India, Nigeria and Vietnam. More →
T-Mobile CEO John Legere loves to talk trash about his rivals’ networks but recent studies have indicated that T-Mobile has some work to do if it wants to match the network quality of Verizon and AT&T. Thankfully for Legere, he has a sugar daddy in the form of parent company Deutsche Telekom that for the time being is willing to lay down the cash necessary to back up Legere’s boasts. More →
Surprise, surprise: A lot of people are interested in buying Samsung’s Galaxy S5. SamMobile notices that T-Mobile senior product manager Desmond Smith has tweeted out that his company has now received 300,000 pre-registrations for the Galaxy S5, which is particularly impressive since it was just over a week ago that T-Mobile announced it had already received 100,000 pre-registrations. Pre-registrations aren’t the same as pre-orders, of course, since they aren’t commitments to buy a device and are only sign ups to be alerted it when it becomes available. Nonetheless, getting 300,000 pre-registers in just a week and a half is definitely indicative of high interest in the Galaxy S5, although it will have a tough act to follow since the Galaxy S4 last year became the fastest-selling Android phone of all-time with 10 million shipments in just one month.
