Smartphone adoption is heating up in the United States. Around 583,000 people in the U.S. per week are buying smartphones, Asymco analyst Horace Dediu said in a blog posted on Wednesday. That figure is up from the average 572,000 per week witnessed over the past 41 months. Assuming Dediu’s estimates are accurate, that means the …

Is Acer’s brand-new Windows 8 tablet getting the heave-ho in favor of a new and improved version? A successor to the Iconia W3 is already in the works, Acer spokesperson Sterre Swank reportedly told Dutch Web site Tweakers. Due to reach consumers in September, the new model would be thinner and lighter than the current Iconia W3 and offer a …

Nokia’s Lumia 625 phone will try to lure potential buyers with a 4.7-inch screen. Specs released online via various sources point to the supersized screen — the largest yet for a Lumia — and a few other features. Despite the larger display, the 625 will be considered a low-end, entry-level Lumia, sources told The Verge, with a resolution of just …

Samsung’s dominance in the Android world is borne out by a new report from Chitika. Among all Android smartphone and tablet vendors in the U.S. and Canada, Samsung scored 47.2 percent of all online traffic seen by the advertising and Web analytics firm. The percentage is based on the number of ad impressions recorded by Chitika from June 17 to …

The much-touted mobile wallet has yet to catch on with a majority of consumers. But dollars generated by mobile payments continue to rise. Payments made via a mobile phone will surpass $1 billion in the U.S. this year, research firm eMarketer said Thursday. That’s more than double last year’s figure of $539 million. Peering into the future, eMarketer predicts that …

Android users will find several new features and fixes in Opera’s new mobile browser. Available as of Tuesday through Google Play, version 15 of the Opera browser is powered by the Chromium 28 engine. As such, the app should offer a faster performance and does promise a quicker startup time right off the bat. You can now download video files …

BlackBerry is eyeing another round of layoffs as part of its ongoing restructuring, according to The Wall Street Journal. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the Journal said Wednesday that the job cuts would affect middle management across the sales and support divisions. The new layoffs would come on top of the 5,000 cuts planned during the company’s last fiscal …

AT&T subscribers may soon see Nokia’s Lumia 1020 smartphone added to the carrier’s lineup. Equipped with a 41-megapixel PureView camera, the Lumia 1020 was spotted in an AT&T inventory list, according to an anonymous person who tipped off blog site Windows Phone Central. The tipster added that employees at AT&T have been seen testing the new phone. The list also …

A game called Angry Trayvon has managed to anger enough people that the developer has promised to shut it down. Available through Google Play, Angry Trayvon depicts a man in a hooded sweatshirt walking through such areas as Brooklyn to complete “his world tour of revenge on the bad guys who terrorize cities everyday.” Players of the game can use …

Amazon plans to update its fleet of Kindle tablets by launching at least three new models this year, according to blog site Boy Genius Report. Citing “trusted sources,” the folks at BGR claim that the first tablet would be a new version of the 7-inch Kindle Fire. The screen size of the tablet would remain the same as the existing …