Motorola Photon Q Screenshot by CNET Scratch Wireless, a company that has partnered with Sprint to piggyback on its network, aims at making mobile communication a little cheaper. The company launched on Wednesday with $5 million in funding and a “Wi-Fi First” offering. When Scratch customers connect to Wi-Fi from their Android handsets, they’ll be …

T-Mobile has decided to ax grandfathered plans and fit its current customers into its existing plans. The company confirmed to Engadget on Tuesday that starting November 1, existing customers on its older plans will be moved into another option that has “similar or better features at a comparable price.” T-Mobile didn’t say exactly how it goes about determining what’s best …

The wearable technology market is set to expand rapidly in the next several years, according to new data from Juniper Research. The research firm on Tuesday forecast that worldwide spending on wearable technology will hit $1.4 billion this year. By 2018, that figure will hit $19 billion. The increase is due in large part to “heightened consumer awareness of wearable …

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 owners can download a near-final build of the company’s Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) distribution. The folks over at Samsung-tracking site Sammobile on Sunday released an Android 4.3 build that’s designed to run on the Galaxy S4. The near-final build can be downloaded from the Sammobile site. However, it’s not clear whether (a) it’s a safe download and …

Sapphire is becoming an increasingly popular material for smartphones, a new study from research firm IHS discovered. Last year, global demand for sapphire ingots used to make substrates in electronics hit 32 kilometers — the unit by which usage is calculated — and that figure is expected to reach 54 kilometers by the end of this year. By the end …

Now playing: Watch this: LG’s ultra thin, super fast G2 3:37 The LG G2 smartphone will be making its way to Sprint, and now the carrier’s customers can preorder the handset. As expected, LG and Sprint started offering preorders on the Android 4.2-based handset on Friday. New Sprint customers who want to pick up the smartphone will pay $99.99 with …

Sony’s attempt to reassert itself in the smartphone market will start outside the US. Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai told reporters on Friday that his company’s smartphone-related resources will be dedicated to Europe and Japan. According to Reuters, which was in attendance at the talk, Sony’s smartphone division has no big plans for the US and China. Related stories New PS5 …

The mixture of new software and hardware improvements is enough to make apps running on the iPhone 5S more crash-prone than those on other iPhone models. Apps running on the iPhone 5S crash twice as often as those available on the iPhone 5 or iPhone 5C, data from mobile app analytics company Crittercism shows. The information, which was presented to …

It won’t be long before HTC finally unveils the long-rumored One Max handset. The company will unveil the HTC One Max in China on October 15, Engadget said Tuesday, citing reports out of the country. The technology blog also received an invite for a Hong Kong launch event on October 16 and a Taiwan launch event on October 18. Related …

LG is rolling out a new slate in Korea that will be hitting US store shelves soon. Dubbed the LG G Pad 8.3, the tablet comes with an 8.3-inch HD display featuring 272 pixels per inch. The slate has a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and 16GB of onboard storage. The G Pad 8.3 comes with an included microSD …