Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S6 smartphone at Mobile World Congress, but left out Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor for the first time for the phone line. Stephen Shankland/CNET Sean Lamar stood behind the Best Buy store counter on a chilly February evening, waiting for customers to browse the smartphones arranged neatly along the tables nearby. Most …

Sarah Tew/CNET When the team behind the Mac app Waltr first contacted me with details of what the app was capable of, I was skeptical. The promise of Waltr is that the app makes it possible to transfer any type of video or audio file, regardless of its format, to your iOS device with playback of the file in Apple’s …

BARCELONA — Microsoft is quietly building a lineup of affordable smartphones it hopes will get penny-pinchers to take a second look in its direction. The Lumia 640 is an afforable smartphone option. Microsoft After introducing a pair of 3G Lumia handsets targeting the emerging markets in January, Microsoft is back with the Lumia 640 and 640 XL, another pair of …

Yahoo broke the world yodeling record on Monday. Yahoo Yahoo may not be breaking world records in mobile revenue just yet, but it did enter the record books for one thing on Monday: yodeling. For the company’s 20th birthday, CEO Marissa Mayer assembled more than 3,400 employees outside of the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., to perform Yahoo’s signature sound …

Microsoft’s new Lumia 640 CNET Day one of Mobile World Congress, the biggest mobile tech show of the year, is coming to a close and already we’ve seen some huge announcements from the proceedings. Yesterday brought new phones from Samsung and HTC, plus a whole slew of device announcements, from Alcatel to ZTE. Today, we look under the hood at …

The 64GB Jolla Tablet, now seeking backing on Indiegogo. Jolla Make sail — Jolla has unveiled the second generation of its Android-rivalling smartphone software, Sailfish OS 2.0, and issued a call to companies from Russia, India, China and Japan to join the Sailfish crew. Setting sail in spring, the new software promises an improved user interface and support for Intel …

Broadcom is about to bring a new meaning to dual-band Wi-Fi. The chip maker announced today at Mobile World Congress the first 802.11ac (or 5G Wi-Fi) combo chip, the BCM4359, that sports real simultaneous dual band (RSDB) for mobile devices. Traditionally, existing dual-band Wi-Fi clients, such as the iPhone 6, when connecting to a dual-band router, such as the Asus …

Google is taking another stab at the mobile-payments market with Android Pay. Google PayPal and Google announced moves Monday to better position themselves for the expected growth in popularity of mobile payments. PayPal, the digital payments unit being spun off from eBay later this year, announced Monday it would acquire Paydiant, a startup that helps companies such as Subway and …

Now playing: Watch this: Blackphone security-conscious smartphone gets a sequel 1:17 BARCELONA — A year after debuting its first Blackphone, startup Silent Circle announced a second-generation secure-phone successor along with a tablet and broader ambition to protect customers’ privacy. The Blackphone 2 will bring the usual upgrades — a faster processor, more memory, better battery life and a bigger display …

Zeroth can recognize faces in real time, letting users immediately categorize their pictures. Ben Fox Rubin/CNET BARCELONA — The smartphone of the future may anticipate a user’s needs before he even prompts the device and utilize behavioral analysis to make itself more secure. Those are two potential features of Qualcomm’s new “cognitive computing” platform, called Zeroth, which is a combination …

Malcolm Turnbull. Stefan Postles/Getty Images As Australians contemplate new data retention laws and the prospect of having their telecommunications data stored for two years, one of the architects of the legislation has revealed he prefers to use messaging services that are explicitly excluded from the bill. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull offered this self-styled “telecom advice” to a group of journalists …

The HTC One M9 takes an evolutionary approach with only minor tweaks to the body. Andrew Hoyle/CNET BARCELONA — HTC formally embarked on its mission to transform itself after unveiling not only a new smartphone, but also a fitness tracker and virtual reality headset. The trio of products highlights the company’s desire to move beyond smartphones, following in the footsteps …

CNET It’s finally here: Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6. The company showed off its colorful, flashy new phone at its Mobile World Congress press conference in Barcelona. This time around, Samsung gave us not just one phone, but two: the Galaxy S6 Edge and other goodies. We sat through the entire event to pick out the best moments, …

Nicole Cozma/CNET In the past, to remove Google+ birthdays from your Calendar (and alerts on Google Now), you would have to remove all individual circles from the Your Circles group. However, the latest update to the Google Calendar app on Android added an option to toggle birthdays from appearing. It’s as if Google realized that the “feature” was more of …

The Orange Klif is Firefox OS phone that the French carrier will sell in 13 African and Middle Eastern countries starting in the second quarter of 2015. The price of up to $40 includes six months of voice, text, and data service. Stephen Shankland/CNET BARCELONA — By bundling a Firefox OS phone called the Klif with six months of data …