Android and 4G were the big themes here at CES, with several smartphone announcements from Motorola, HTC, LG, and more. We go over the Best of CES nominees and also mention the Verizon event next week that may or may not feature a certain Apple product.
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For me, the essence of the four days I spent at CES can be boiled down to four booths with two competing personal computing dynamics: two of those booths represent the PC's future, two do not.
Here's the quickest way to make the point. Google's Android is the future and Microsoft Windows--let me put this delicately--is the present. More specifically: Motorola-Nvidia (Android) are on one side, and Microsoft-Intel (Windows) are on the other.
Motorola-Nvidia: The Motorola and Nvidia booths shouted future. Lots of Android tablets, high-end Android smartphones, and a very interesting Motorola technology called Atrix 4G. (… Read more
LAS VEGAS-Verizon Wireless unveiled a slew of devices for its new 4G service here last week at the Consumer Electronics Show. But what does the No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier think of its competitors' 4G claims?
CNET caught up with Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone after the company's press conference here Thursday to get the dirt on what he really thinks about rivals' pronouncements that they're offering 4G wireless services that are comparable to Verizon's new LTE 4G service. Verizon Wireless announced its 4G LTE service in December. The new network gets average download speeds of … Read more
Note: With almost all of us decamping to Las Vegas last week, we never got around to posting the blog for the January 3 show until now.
All the buzz this week is about CES 2011, but besides that, the Digital City crew outlines how they all survived NYC's snowmageddon 2010, and find out what cool tech goodies we got (and gave) for the holidays.
Bonus: You can download the show's theme song as a free MP3 here for a limited time!
LAS VEGAS--I reviewed the Clear 4G+ Mobile Series S USB modem right before the holidays, and people have been asking me how it performs outside of the San Francisco Bay Area (CNET's home base). CES 2011 seemed like the perfect opportunity to find out.
Las Vegas during CES is congested, both in terms of traffic and cellular signals. There are hundreds of thousands of people here in the city, each with at least one Internet-connected handheld device. These devices connect to the Net via 3G, 4G, or GPRS (or Edge) signal. If you want to know how a cell … Read more
On the heels of Verizon's announcement of a special press conference on January 11, Boy Genius Report says a source has confirmed that Apple has blacked out retail employee vacation time for February 3 to February 6, covering a possible Verizon iPhone launch weekend.
When I was a manager at an Apple Store here in Portland, this was a fairly common occurrence for big launch days. Generally these employee vacation blackout days would come months in advance, allowing our staff to make plans around those dates.
This of course is only a theory, but in my experience we never … Read more
LAS VEGAS--Fear not, Verizon customers, never again will you have to miss an episode of your favorite TV show, as Sling Media has just announced that it will offer a subscription service to a select number of Big Red's upcoming 4G smartphones.
The service includes a Slingbox, SlingPlayer application, and networking accessories, which, coupled with Verizon's 4G network, will allow you to watch programming from your home TV on your smartphone.
Sling says that Verizon customers will be able to sign up for the service later this year through Verizon's mobile app store, V Cast Apps, beginning … Read more
LAS VEGAS--Mobile device maker ZTE welcomed a trio of additions to its tablet family at CES.
All three are 7-inchers running Android and each has a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera, plus a VGA front-facing camera. Other specs vary slightly between the tiered models. The ZTE Lite tablet, for instance, features Android 2.2 (Froyo), 800x480 screen resolution, a 600MHz processor, and Dolby Surround 3.0 for an audio boost.
The more upscale ZTE Lite 2 tablet boasts a 1GHz processor, a 1,024x600-pixel screen, and DLNA support. It has 4GB internal memory. Both the Lite and Lite 2 are already available … Read more
Have you ever noticed that your old flip phone held its charge for days, even weeks sometimes, but a half-hour spent surfing the Web or watching a video on your new smartphone and the battery is dead?
You aren't alone. As cell phones get more sophisticated, all those bells and whistles come at the cost of heavy power consumption. Sure, we all like the convenience of hitting Google on the go or getting turn-by-turn navigation on our smartphones, but when the battery life is drained almost instantaneously, those new features become a drag.
In this week's Ask Maggie … Read more
LAS VEGAS--One of the most anticipated smartphones coming into CES 2011 had to be the HTC Thunderbolt.
Unveiled today at Verizon's press conference, the Thunderbolt is HTC's first LTE device and has been described as "blazingly fast." However, we had to find out for ourselves and luckily we got some hands-on time with it.
In short, the HTC Thunderbolt is fast. Granted, there aren't too many people on Verizon's LTE network right now, but we were impressed at just how fast it pulled up CNET's full site and played video. On other devices … Read more
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