BARCELONA, Spain–Mozilla and a slew of allies debuted Firefox OS this week — but one powerful potential partner is passing. That company is Samsung, which like Apple is a dominant smartphone maker. A high-level Samsung executive said at the Mobile World Congress show here that Samsung isn’t interested in Mozilla’s browser-based operating system. Firefox OS …
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BARCELONA, Spain–Mobile network operators traditionally use Mobile World Congress to call for lower taxes and more wireless spectrum. This year, a new word has entered the wish list: harmonization. The mobile industry today must deal with a hodgepodge of electromagnetic frequencies that differ from carrier to carrier and country to country. Franco Bernabe, chief executive of Telecom Italia, wants to …
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BARCELONA, Spain–Mozilla, Ericsson, and AT&T announced today they’re demonstrating technology to place Internet-based voice and video calls that bridge traditional telephone services and the Web. The demonstration, at Mobile World Congress here, uses the nascent WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) standard to set up browser-based communications between different devices. The “proof of concept” links a Web app with a person’s existing …
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BARCELONA, Spain–Laying the groundwork for its nascent Firefox OS, Mozilla has won over a sizeable list of allies including LG Electronics and China Unicom, and the first phones with the browser-based operating system should arrive in the second quarter of the year. Mozilla announced today at the Mobile World Congress show here that it’s persuaded 18 mobile network operators and …
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BARCELONA, Spain–On Sunday, we’ll find out how well Huawei is doing meeting its ambition to become a top-tier smartphone manufacturer. That’s when the up-and-coming company plans to debut a brand-new phone at a Mobile World Congress press conference. CNET will be there to provide all the details about that phone — you can expect a premium Android model — and …
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Hoping to carve out a new type of personal computing, Google has shown off how to use its computerised eyewear to search, navigate, chat and take photos. (Credit: Google) “OK Glass.” Those are the two words that Google showed overnight will initiate a variety of commands for its Glass computerised eyewear. In the Google Glass “How it Feels” video embedded …
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“OK Glass.” Those are the two words that Google showed today will initiate a variety of commands for its Glass computerized eyewear. In the Google Glass “How it Feels” video, people speak the words “OK Glass” and then pick from a list of featured voice commands to send a message, record a video, take a photo, launch a video-chat hangout, …
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After some earlier teasing, LG Electronics fully detailed its Optimus G Pro Android phone today, a high-end model with 5.5-inch screen, LTE networking, and a quad-core 1.7GHz processor. LG often sells its phones first in its home market of South Korea, and it looks like that’s the plan for the Optimus G Pro, too. But it’ll arrive in other areas, …
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A small Spanish startup called GeeksPhone has started selling phones that let developers get a taste of Mozilla’s new Firefox OS. GeeksPhone announced two 3G phones for the browser-based operating system, the lower-end Keon and higher-end Peak. The phones, while geared for programmers rather than mainstream customers, make Mozilla’s open-source mobile OS a lot more real, since programmers will be …
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Software utility maker Bjango has released a new $5 version of its iStat app for iOS that now lets people remotely monitor their Windows machines, not just Macs. I’ve been a big fan of iStat Menus, a $16 utility that uses the OS X menu to show a variety of usage details such as CPU utilization, upload and download speeds, …
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