The late launch of the HTC One smartphone put a damper on HTC’s first-quarter profits. For the quarter ending in March, net profit plummeted to 85 million Taiwanese dollars ($2.85 million), a fall from 10.9 billion Taiwanese dollars ($363 million) a year ago and the company’s lowest quarterly profit since 2004. Results also disappointed analysts …

Those of you willing to shell out $649 for an unlocked and tweakable version of the HTC One can preorder the device in the U.S. as of today. A tweet yesterday from HTC confirmed that the Developer Edition would be available for preorder starting at 7 a.m. PT today. Buyers can place their orders directly at the HTC Web site. …

BlackBerry watchers may have just gotten a peek at the upcoming BB10 R-Series QWERTY smartphone. A purported image of the R-series phone popped up yesterday in the BlackBerryOS forums. The image doesn’t show much other than the familiar BlackBerry QWERY keyboard and screen. But further details about the new phone may have been revealed by blog site BlackBerry Empire. Related …

Nokia Lumia 810 owners hoping for an update to 4G LTE are out of luck. The Lumia 810’s hardware can support both HSPA+ and LTE; however, T-Mobile has confirmed that an update to LTE isn’t going to happen — at least not at this point, according to a statement sent to CNET today: While the Nokia Lumia 810 features a …

Android has grabbed the lead over iOS in the battle for U.S. smartphone buyers, according to a report out yesterday from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. From mid-November through mid-February, Android increased its share of U.S. smartphone sales to 51.2 percent, up from 45 percent during the same three-month period in 2012. Over the same time, Apple’s iOS dropped to second place …

MetroPCs wants its shareholders to vote thumb’s up on the T-Mobile merger. In a letter sent today by MetroPCS to its investors, the company said it could provide no assurance that it would offer better shareholder value remaining as a standalone carrier, according to Reuters. If approved, the deal would see MetroPCs declare a 1-for-2 reverse stock split and give …

Safari has won back some of the ground it lost recently to rival mobile browsers. Apple’s iOS browser captured 61.79 percent of all mobile browser Web traffic seen by Net Applications in March. That was a healthy rise from the 55.41 percent tracked in February. Safari remained firmly in the lead last month, followed by the default Android browser in …

Buyers of the new BlackBerry Z10 phone will find updated versions of both its Facebook and Twitter apps. As detailed in a BlackBerry blog yesterday, Facebook 10.0.1 offers the following features: Friends Nearby: You can now find out if your Facebook friends are in the area by seeing if they’ve checked into a nearby location. Photo Updates: You can now …

Windows Phone is outshining the iPhone in several countries. But relax, Apple, there is an explanation. In a blog posted Tuesday, Microsoft corporate communications VP Frank Shaw cited an IDC report revealing that Windows Phone has reached 10 percent market share in a number of countries. Along with that milestone, Windows Phone has outshipped Apple’s iPhone in seven markets across …

A successor to HTC’s Droid DNA phone is in the works, says HTC Chief Marketing Officer Ben Ho. Speaking with reporters on Monday, Ho said that HTC would soon launch a second-generation Butterfly to take advantage of consumer appetite for large-screen smartphones, the Focus Taiwan news site reported. The current 5-inch model is known as the Droid DNA in the …