US Cellular’s Moto X will come with black, leather, or bamboo backplates. Josh Miller/CNET US Cellular is the latest carrier to pick up Motorola’s vivacious Moto X , selling the personality-driven smartphone for $100 with a two-year contract, or for a total of $480 without one (you can break this up over a period of …

Already available for sale in Asia, the lowest-cost Lumia yet heads to the U.S. Nokia Microsoft’s lowest-cost Lumia phone, the Nokia Lumia 530 , brings its colorful polycarbonate style and money-saving mobile computing to the US this month. Cricket Wireless will be the first to sell it, in cyan, for $50. That begins tomorrow. T-Mobile follows suit with the white …

The LG G3 joins its fifth US carrier. Andrew Hoyle/CNET U.S. Cellular is ready for a status update. It may not carry the LG G3 flagship smartphone yet, but that will change in October. The regional carrier will sell the G3 for $99.99 with a two-year contract, and for $20.84 per month for 24 months, with $0 down. This latter …

Now playing: Watch this: iPhone 6 Plus vs. Galaxy Note 4 3:30 The days of Android fanboys and fangirls mercilessly mocking the 4-inch Apple iPhone screen are over. The 5.5-inch Apple iPhone 6 Plus (and to a lesser extent the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 ) smash the iPhone screen record, and in doing so, start competing toe-to-toe with today’s top big-screen …

Ready, player two? Cricket Wireless is. The prepaid carrier, now owned by AT&T, announced a new partnership on Monday that will just about double its retail footprint: video game store GameStop will start selling phones on Cricket’s network. Stores in Dallas and Los Angeles have been running the pilot program for roughly 9 months already. The plan is to rapidly …

With a blockbuster IFA conference in Berlin under our belts and a Moto 360 smartwatch on our wrists, Apple’s iPhone 6 launch next Tuesday, and T-Mobile’s Uncarrier 7 event on Wednesday, next week’s CTIA Super Mobility Week conference won’t have much in the way of high-profile smartphone news to show for itself. In an experiment to breathe life into the …

The round Moto 360 is already on sale for $250. Sarah Tew/CNET After months of waiting, Motorola finally launched its Moto 360 smartwatch . At the time we first learned of the event, the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear 2 were its most serious competitors. In just a few short months, the landscape has completely shifted, making way for …

Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has improved camera, screen resolution… 1:56 This Samsung Galaxy Note 4 edition of Spec-versus-Spec compares the hardware and software features crammed into Samsung’s fourth-generation Note (and to a large extent, the curvy Note Edge ) with stats from other top handsets. This time, we weigh the Note 4 against the likable Sony …

The iPhone 5S successor is right around the bend. Sarah Tew/CNET One could argue that the entire modern smartphone market has been largely built around aping Apple’s revolutionary iPhone, which first appeared in 2007. Indeed, that phone still looks remarkably “current” in some ways: the minimalist rectangular design, the no-keyboard glass touchscreen, and tap and swipe interface are all mainstays …

Now playing: Watch this: Giant Mate 2 wants to be your wallet’s friend 3:23 This summer, Chinese phone-maker Huawei ran an experiment, to see if it could sell its well-priced, midrange Huawei Ascend Mate 2 4G smartphone without the help of a US distribution partner. Instead, Huawei sold the phone on its own site, GetHuawei.com, for the competitive off-contract price …