With a cash investment of $20.1 billion, Softbank plans to take control over struggling U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel next year under an agreement announced today. Under the all-cash deal, expected to close in mid-2013, the Japanese technology and investment firm will purchase 70 percent of Sprint’s stock for $12.1 billion and will invest $8 billion …

It might not be easy to use an iPhone to record and edit a Hollywood-style short, but it’s possible. Anna Elizabeth James and Michael Koerbel, the duo behind Majek Pictures, have a history of seeing how well the latest Apple devices handle cinema production values, not just point-and-shoot video, and this time around they’ve used an iPhone 5 to create …

Moo, a company that specializes in elaborate business cards, has announced it will sell NFC-enabled cards that can be programmed to share data wirelessly with smartphones. The idea is kind of like encoding data in the checkered grids known as QR codes, which phone cameras can scan to extract contact information. Near-field communications (NFC) uses small chips with labyrinthine antennas …

Google won’t be able to compete with the attention lavished on Apple for the launch of the sixth-generation iPhone, but it did announce the notable milestone late tonight of half a billion device activations. “Today is a big day for Android… 500 million devices activated globally, and over 1.3 million added every single day,” said Hugo Bara, Android’s director of …

For years Wacom has ruled the digital stylus market for artists, photo retouchers, and others who want to marry the worlds of pens and computers. But touch-screen tablets are rewriting the rules for digital input, and Ten One Design hopes its new Pogo Connect stylus will prosper as a result. The company already sells the more ordinary Pogo and Pogo …

commentary Smartphones are great. But it’s time to lower your expectations, because the smartphone industry has moved from an era of revolutionary improvement to a much more bland era of incremental refinement. Progress will continue, to be sure: screens will get better, networks will get faster, prices will come down. But these days, it’s just a lot harder to come …

BERLIN — If you’re the kind of person who worries about Frank the Fern and Gertrude the Geranium while you’re on vacation, a $99 cloud-connected plant monitor could be just the thing for you. The Koubachi device monitors soil moisture, temperature, and light. Stephen Shankland/CNET That’s what start-up Koubachi started selling in May and was showing off here at the …

Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Galaxy Camera hands-on 1:41 BERLIN — Smartphones are taking over the point-and-shoot camera market, but Samsung today announced a product it hopes will reverse the trend by building phone technology into a 16-megapixel camera. The Samsung Galaxy Camera is an Android 4.1 device with a large touch screen on one side, a 21x zoom lens …

A big screen may be awkward for a phone you hold up to your ear, but it’s nice for movies and games — which likely is why Samsung announced a bigger new 5.8-inch model of its Galaxy Player line. The company offers smaller versions — for example, its $200 Galaxy Player 5.0 with an 800×480 screen. The 5.8-inch version, though, …

Many of us remember how liberating mobile phones were when it came to meeting people: “Which street corner was that again?” “Should I buy tickets for both of us?” “Sorry, I’m running late.” A start-up called Twist, though, believes phones can make the process much more convenient — by automatically handling some of those messages. With an iPhone app, the …