Smartphone

AT&T looks like it is ready to be taken seriously when it comes to Android. A recent string of leaks indicate that a rather powerful Samsung handset is right around the corner, ready to battle the likes of the Droid Incredible.

The latest phone to surface, the Samsung i897 is rumored to be running Android 2.1 and powered by a Snapdragon 1GHz processor. In fact, almost every hardware detail from the i897 matches up to the Samsung Galaxy S.

Late last week, the AndroidGuys published the first "in the wild" shots of the phone, which … Read more

The iPhone is No. 1 in customer satisfaction, says a new ChangeWave survey, but Motorola also has its share of happy Droid users.

Among the 1,009 smartphone owners interviewed by research firm ChangeWave, results released this week found that 77 percent of all Apple iPhone owners said they're very satisfied with their phones. Motorola came in second, with 64 percent of its smartphone users who expressed high satisfaction with their phones.

In comparison, 51 percent of HTC owners and 46 percent of RIM Blackberry buyers said they're very satisfied with their smartphones.

Among specific models, Apple fans who own the newest iPhone 3GS models were more satisfied than those who still use the older 3G. And Motorola can thank the Droid for its high level of customer satisfaction--69 percent of Droid users said they're very satisfied with their phones, while only 50 percent of those who own other Motorola phones said the same.

Of course, we know that iPhone satisfaction varies a lot between rural and urban areas and by geographic location. But ChangeWave spokesman Paul Carton says the customers surveyed were a representative sampling geographically of the U.S. and Canada. Most of those surveyed were U.S. residents, he said.

Looking at HTC's customers, 68 percent of the HTC Hero owners expressed a high degree of satisfaction, compared with 50 percent of those using a Droid Eris and 38 of those with an HTC Touch. ChangeWave was running its survey just when HTC's Droid Incredible hit the market, so it couldn't provide feedback on that new model. But the research firm promised to do a follow-up survey of Droid Incredible owners.

ChangeWave also asked about the mobile operating systems running on smartphones.… Read more

Motorola is counting on Verizon to use its marketing prowess to help the handset maker stage a smartphone recovery, and the wireless carrier has promised to do just that, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Motorola has worked out a deal with Verizon Wireless to make sure some of its new smartphones for Verizon will get a heavy promotion by the carrier, says the Journal.

As Motorola has struggled to turn a profit, its co-CEO Sanjay Jha has bet the farm on Verizon Wireless and the Droid to help turn the tide of its sluggish handset business. But the Android … 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

Pop quiz: Which one is the true tablet? Apple iPad, JooJoo, Dell Streak, or HP Slate?

If you guessed any of them you're right. Or you're wrong. Because the answer seems to depend on whom you ask.

The tablet category is heating up lately. IDC expects more than 7 million tablets to ship by the end of the year and more than 46 million units to ship by 2014. That is in large part due to the success of Apple's iPad, which has flown off store shelves since its introduction in April. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Fuijtsu, Acer, Archos, and many others have also flocked to the the decidedly gray area that tablets occupy between a smartphone and notebook.

Perhaps because the category is new, the definition of "tablet" seems sort of up for grabs, depending on who is defining it. Size, features, and specifications are the traditional way of breaking down consumer electronics and PC categories, but the few products currently for sale or coming soon are blurring those lines.

We take a crack at dampening some of the confusion around the latest crop of consumer tablets. (For a complete list of tablets, see the guide put together by CNET's Donald Bell.)

What makes a tablet a tablet? Traditionally the categories of mobile computing devices break down in terms of size: smartphones have 3- to 5-inch screens, MIDs (mobile Internet devices) range between 5 and 7 inches, and tablets are between 7 and 10 inches.

But the feature set, or what the device can do, is the other half of the equation. According to Gartner, a true tablet is any slate over 5 inches running a full operating system like Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

IDC breaks the devices down into media tablets and tablet PCs. A tablet PC has an x86 processor, runs a desktop OS, and has a screen size anywhere from 5 inches to 21 inches. Despite what it may look like, "A tablet PC is a PC," said Richard Shim, IDC analyst. "There's no real limit to them."

These are generally the traditional idea of a tablet, the kind that look like a laptop with a screen that twists that you can close and write on with a stylus, like the Dell Latitude XT or the Asus Eee PC T91.

"A media tablet we're defining as ARM-based, running a smaller OS (non-Windows)," he said. "The screen sizes are between 7 and 12 inches." ARM is a type of low-power processor typically used in mobile devices, whereas x86 processors are used in more robust applications where power consumption isn't as much of an issue.

How do the current crop of tablets compare? There's a pretty big range in IDC's and Gartner's definitions if you compare the features of a few of the recently announced or released tablets intended for consumer use.… 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

Bonnie is out sick, so Jessica Dolcourt from Download.com is here to discuss Android 2.2 FroYo and what it means for future Android smartphones. We also discuss the latest iPhone news, the LG Fathom, and more.

News Android 2.2 in action! Android 2.2 coming to Nexus One, other HTC phones Motorola plans to update Droid to Android 2.2 Leaked Motorola Droid Shadow headed to Verizon this summer? Get a new 16GB iPhone 3GS for $97 Verizon iPhone: Sooner or later? … 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

Gaming on cell phones has long promised to be an important revenue generator for mobile carriers and game developers, but it took quite awhile for it to drive real revenue in the U.S. But worldwide, especially in Asia, mobile gaming has been emerging as an important revenue generator for a number of years.

Last week, research firm Gartner predicted that worldwide mobile-game revenue will grow 19 percent, reaching $5.6 billion in 2010 with an expectation to more than double to $11.4 billion in 2014.

Mobile gaming is a very broad classification which also includes new and interesting … Read more