Verizon bounced back from a tough fourth quarter and started the year off strongly. The telecommunications provider today posted a first-quarter profit of $1.95 billion, or 68 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $1.67 billion, or 59 cents a share. Revenue rose 4.2 percent to $29.42 billion from a year ago. Analysts, …

Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Galaxy S4 Camera Features hands-on 3:19 Samsung showed off its swanky new superphone, its Samsung Galaxy S4, at a London launch event, so I took the opportunity to take a deeper look at some of the new camera features. I was only able to get a brief hands-on and wasn’t able to perform the usual …

TalkTalk has been given a talktalking to for calling people and hanging up. Ofcom has fined the phone company £750,000 over excessive silent and abandoned phone calls. Telecoms watchdog Ofcom slapped TalkTalk with the fine for making 9,000 silent or abandoned calls to potential customers during a telesales campaign in 2011. TalkTalk blames two call centres, run by Teleperformance Limited …

It appears that when Dish wants something it doesn’t give up. After making a surprise bid of $25.5 billion to acquire Sprint on Monday — which would snatch the mobile provider from the hands of Japan’s SoftBank — Dish submitted a filing to the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday claiming a SoftBank acquisition of Sprint wouldn’t be good for U.S. …

Nokia may jump into the “phablet” market this year. A source with “knowledge of the company’s plans” told the Financial Times that the company has several new devices up its sleeve for this year. The “most innovative” will be a phablet, or a hybrid phone/tablet, similar to the Samsung Galaxy Note, the newspaper reported. Nokia also is looking to unveil …

BlackBerry is shoring up its latest BlackBerry 10 operating system with a slew of changes slated for the next update. Reaching developers this week, the software developers kit for BlackBerry 10.1 ticks off 14 new features to start, as listed by blog site Crackberry. Some of the notable additions include a higher-quality HDR option for photo takers, PIN-to-PIN messaging available …

Nokia is still struggling in the U.S., but there’s hope that another flagship phone is on its way. CEO Stephen Elop said on a conference call Thursday that this current quarter will mark a season of new product introductions. Most importantly, he hinted at a phone carrying “hero,” or flagship, status with a leading U.S. carrier. The product is likely …

With customer trials just around the corner, Vodafone has shown off 4G speeds of up to 109Mbps. 109.9Mbps was the highest speed recorded on the day. (Credit: CNET) Vodafone is aiming for a June launch of its 4G network, and customer trials are just around the corner, according to a Vodafone spokesperson. CNET Australia was able to trial the long-term …

Nokia reported its latest first-quarter earnings on Thursday, sending a clear signal to partner Microsoft that it continues to struggle to get back on the track. This comes only a few days after Microsoft — Nokia’s partner in the smartphones — said that it believes the Finnish phone maker is a “great” company and partner and that Microsoft has no …

TalkTalk has joined the fleet of UK networks confirmed to be flogging the Samsung Galaxy S4, with the phone, broadband and TV company promising to have stock of the 5-inch super-phone ready to go next Friday. That’s 26 April, the same date that other operators will start selling the Galaxy S4. TalkTalk says you’ll be able to get the much-anticipated …

It’s a format war no one was paying any attention to, but the struggle to control and define wireless charging has burst dramatically to life. Today Samsung, HTC and LG joined the Power Matters Alliance, a grandly titled group of superheroes gadget makers devoted to charging up your phone without you having to plug it in. To be honest, I …

Owners of Sony’s Xperia S tablet will finally get a crack at Android 4.1.1, aka Jelly Bean, early today. Sony expects to push the update to its production server sometime between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. PT. Xperia S owners will then receive a notice in the bottom right Notification Area alerting them that a system update is available. Users …

Verizon Wireless’ decision to extend the wait time for a phone upgrade has some concerned about the potential consumer reaction. Verizon recently said it would do away with early upgrades, forcing consumers to wait the full 24 months before they are eligible to buy a new phone with the lower subsidized price. Customers previously had to wait only 20 months …

Nokia Lumia Windows Phones, such as the low-cost Nokia Lumia 520, are gathering momentum as Nokia reveals a relatively small loss in the first three months of 2013. Sales of Lumia phones increased to 5.6 million devices shifted in the first three months of this year, up by 27 per cent from the end of 2012. Two thirds of those …

Nokia’s Lumia 920 is one of the heftiest phones around, but the Finnish phone fabricator is reportedly planning something even more massive — a big-screen phone-tablet hybrid to take on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. People “with knowledge of the company’s plans” told the Financial Times Nokia was working on a so-called ‘phablet’, similar in size to …