The Samsung Galaxy S II has already taken off in global markets, becoming Samsung’s fastest-selling phone with sales of 3 million units in 55 days, according to a Samsung press release issued July 3. CNET certainly appreciated the dual-core, 4G-capable Android handset enough to give the unlocked version a coveted Editors’ Choice Award ahead of …

MetroPCS quietly made two new phones available on its Web site, the Android-running Huawei M835 and the Samsung Freeform III, a QWERTY messaging phone. Both phones will officially launch on Monday, a MetroPCS representative told CNET. The Huawei M835 is a compact Android 2.2 Froyo smartphone. It has a rather small 2.8-inch QVGA display and stands just 4 inches high. …

Remember when smartphones were enormously, clunky bricks with sausagelike antennas and “high-end” 1.3-megapixel cameras? You could e-mail, get lost in file systems for hours, and clip them to fancy leatherette belt holsters. Relive the good old days of smartphone tech with our gallery of sexy pre-2007 smartphones–and see how far we’ve come since then. If you feel so inclined, we’ll …

Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Trender (Sprint) 2:15 There’s been such a rush of Android messaging phones these days, we almost did a double take when we realized that the Samsung Trender was not one of them. Instead, the basic QWERTY slider runs on Samsung’s proprietary operating system, one that involves using tabs and grids instead of swipes to move …

It was four years ago today that Kent slaved late into the night to review the first-ever iPhone. (He still remembers it with grueling clarity.) Fast-forwarding to today, Poor Bonnie no longer has a phone named in her honor, as HTC and AT&T rebrand the Facebook-centric ChaCha as the HTC Status. This week, we also take up Windows Phone 7.5, …

Research In Motion is expanding its series of developers conferences to European programmers. The first DevCon Europe, as it’s called, is set for Amsterdam on February 7 and 8, 2012. The BlackBerry maker has been slowly increasing its outreach to developers, launching DevCon Asia this year. (The 2012 show will take place in Bangkok.) Meanwhile, the San Francisco area will …

Now playing: Watch this: HTC 7 Pro: U.S. Cellular Windows Phone 2:32 Even glancing at U.S. Cellular’s smartphone lineup, one thing stands out. With the exception of a couple of BlackBerrys, Android completely dominates. Or it did, until the HTC 7 Pro muscled its way in, a rebranding of Sprint’s HTC Arrive. As staunch supporters of mobile platform diversity and …

Samsung The Samsung T404G is one of those messaging phones you don’t hear much about, offered by Net10, a prepaid wireless company you don’t hear much about. With service ultimately supplied by TracFone Wireless, the Samsung T404G has a full, sliding QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, and Bluetooth support. There’s also mobile Internet, an MP3 player, and a …

With more than 500 new and enhanced features coming to Windows Phone this fall in Microsoft’s version 7.5, or “Mango,” update, you’d think we’d be hard-pressed to discern the cream of the crop. Not so! After spending almost a week with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, we found that five major features stood out above the rest. These features are time-saving …

Samsung is one of the most prolific cell phone manufacturers there is, but not every phone is an instant hit. From a smartphone-maker’s standpoint, it doesn’t have to be. Top-of-the-line handsets might wow us with their sheer processing power and camera might, at least compared with the generations that came before, but companies also make strategic decisions about when to …