mobile

Amid markedly lower sales and sluggish demand for its cell phones, Motorola saw a dramatic boost in earnings for the second quarter.

The company on Thursday reported net profit of $26 million, or 1 cent a share, for the quarter ended July 4, compared with $4 million for 2008's second quarter.

The jump in earnings surprised analysts, who had expected a loss of 4 cents a share, and Motorola itself, which had forecast a loss of 3 cents to 5 cents per share.

Quarterly sales fell to $5.5 billion, a drop of 32 percent from $8.1 billion … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Researchers have discovered a way to take complete control over an iPhone merely by sending special SMS messages and demonstrated it on my iPhone at the Black Hat security conference on Wednesday.

Although an attacker could exploit the hole to make calls, steal data, send text messages, and do basically anything that I can do with my iPhone, the researchers were kind and merely rendered it temporarily inoperable.

Here's what happened: While I was talking on the phone to Charlie Miller, his partner, Collin Mulliner, sent me a text message from his phone. One minute I'm talking … Read more

Among the bevy of problems--some large, some small--reported by iPhone users following the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS lurked a bug I encountered in Find My iPhone on Apple's MobileMe service.

Find My iPhone remembers all your devices, including any old iPhones turned off or sold after you upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. Until now, there was no way to make Find My iPhone forget that old iPhone.

Apple has quietly released an updated Apple support document, "MobileMe, iPhone OS 3.0: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe," which now states:… Read more

Sprint defies the slow economy by buying prepaid giant Virgin Mobile for $483 million, and its exec admits that it needs to "let go." We then chat about Android, the Palm Pre vs. iTunes debacle, the Garmin Nuvifone going to Asia, our weekly reviews, and more. And, of course, we answer a few of your questions, too. Be sure to check out our live video stream every Wednesday at 2 p.m. PST on live.cnet.com!

News Sprint to buy Virgin Mobile for $483 million Sprint exec admits need to "let go" … Read more

After more than a month of waiting, Apple has finally brought its MobileMe iDisk application to iPod and iPhone users. Originally announced during Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in early July, the free iDisk app offers users of Apple's MobileMe service a way to access files they, or their MobileMe contacts have stored on Apple's servers.

Some of the nicer features include being able to view and send any native file types. This includes music, so if you've got a bunch of tracks stored on iDisk, you can stream them from the app. Movies work as … Read more

Chances are that you have seen extremely long links when you receive an e-mail that contains a Google Maps address or driving instructions. This gets annoying, especially on mobile devices, because not only do the links take up a lot of space, but they also make it hard to find out the important information, such as the address, hidden within it.

Now that has just changed for Gmail users who use the iPhone or Android-powered devices to read their e-mail.

On Tuesday, GoogleMobile announced the Smart Links feature, a mechanism that automatically shortens a raw link and converts it into … Read more

Update: Sorry, sports fans, but it's already sold out. Check back later for another deal. Hint: free stuff!

Remember the $279.99 HP Netbook from a couple weeks ago? Here's an even better deal: Woot Sellout has the Asus Eee PC 1000H for just $249.99. Shipping will run you a very reasonable $5.

Because this is a Woot deal, it expires when the clock strikes midnight--and may well sell out before then.

As Netbooks go, this one's pretty loaded. In addition to the 10-inch screen, you get 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 802.11n … Read more

On Tuesday,T-Mobile answered the prayers of many smartphone fanatics and officially announced the upcoming release of the HTC Touch Pro2 smartphone. The Touch Pro2 will be available starting August 12 and will come in a mocha finish, but pricing was not revealed at press time.

First announced at GSMA 2009 as the successor to the HTC Touch Pro, the Touch Pro2 will finally bring T-Mobile customers a much-needed update to the T-Mobile Wing, which has been in circulation since 2007.

While the smartphone will still run on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, it brings a number of notable improvements, … Read more

Sprint on Tuesday announced it was planning to snatch up Virgin Mobile in the U.S. The buy puts Sprint in a good position to compete with prepaid offerings from other carriers. We talk to CNET News writer Maggie Reardon to hear what kind of money Sprint is making off customers of these prepaid programs, and what it's planning to do with Boost Mobile, the prepaid mobile phone service it already owns.

We also cover Tuesday's billion-dollar acquisition by IBM, and a new study that's found that text messaging while driving can take away enough concentration to … Read more