Telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson will show a new variety of LTE mobile networking next week that can reach data rates of 450 megabits per second. The demonstration, at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, uses a technology called carrier aggregation, which broadly speaking combines signals from multiple base stations and multiple radio frequency bands. …

Firefox OS is a smartphone operating system so far aimed at lower-end phones in cost-sensitive markets. Telefonica Brazil screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET In an impressive first-year achievement, Firefox OS has found a toehold in a fiercely competitive smartphone market. The next challenge for Mozilla’s browser-based mobile operating system will be to convert that toehold into a foothold. As the struggles …

Touch screens were just the start. User interface experimentation is blossoming as new sensors liberate computing devices from keyboards and mice, and a new glove from Fujitsu Laboratories embodies the trend. The device has a near-field communications (NFC) reader and gyroscopic sensors for gesture-based interactions with a person’s environment. Fujitsu will show the wearable device at the Mobile World Congress …

LG Electronics announced its LG G Pro 2 phone Wednesday night, a high-end machine with a bigger 5.9-inch screen, front-facing flash, Android 4.4 KitKat, more powerful speakers, and a technology called Knock Code that lets people unlock their phone with a particular pattern of taps on the screen. The South Korean company detailed the phone just ahead of the Mobile …

Jumping up from 2013’s lower-end Keon and Peak models, Spanish phone maker Geeksphone plans to sell its new Intel-based Revolution starting February 20 for 239 euros, or about $327. The Revolution comes with either Google’s Android or Mozilla’s Boot2Gecko — the open-source browser-based OS that’s better known as Firefox OS. “Firefox OS is a brand currently not available for independent …

Google removed Google Play access to Themer, an app to let Android users give their phones a different look, after a copyright infringement complaint from Apple about its icons. The theme in question, called Seven, gives Android phones an iOS 7 styling, and that led to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint, said MyColorScreen Chief Executive Ashvin Dhingra, leader of …

An update on Wednesday night brought Retina display support to the iPad e-book app of “A New Kind of Science,” Stephen Wolfram’s mammoth tome on mathematics, computing, cellular automata, and the nature of the universe. Ordinarily, you’d think that would be a good thing. But for this particular project, it reveals how much more needs to be done to really …

Firefox OS, Mozilla’s smartphone operating system, is getting a new app for launching apps. “The app integrates the contextual adaptive app search from EverythingMe with the Firefox for Android Web browser to offer users a personalized and customizable Web experience that is fun and intuitive,” Mozilla said Wednesday in a blog post. The non-profit organization showed a preview of new …

In a surprise move, Nvidia has contributed software that will help Linux take advantage of the graphics horsepower of the company’s new Tegra K1 mobile chip — and Linux project leader Linus Torvalds is happy about the reversal of fortunes. “This time I’m raising a thumb for Nvidia. Good times,” Torvalds said Sunday night on Google+, a strong contrast to …

If you’re not annoyed by seeing an ad for J. Crew, Adidas, Target, or Best Buy when you wake up your smartphone, a new app called Slidejoy could lop some money off your monthly phone bill. The app, which is set to launch Monday, shows an ad from these and some other advertisers on an Android phone’s lock screen, said …