There’s not much to explain the timing behind Beeline Interactive’s new Ghostbusters game for iOS. It’s not like there’s a new movie coming out, nor even a Blu-ray or 3D re-release of the original. But here it is all the same, a cartoony but complex resource-management sim that’s reminiscent of other freemium games like Men …

Huawei may be cooking up a super-skinny follow-up to its ace Ascend P1 smart phone, if a freshly leaked product pic is to be believed. The snap of the sultry smart phone surfaced via Unwired View’s evleaks, and suggests (from the number on the back) that it packs a 13-megapixel camera into what looks like a very slim frame. We’ve heard nothing …

The new Star Wars film has reportedly found a director. JJ Abrams is here to rescue the series by taking charge of Star Wars: Episode VII, but can the same man captain both Star Wars and Star Trek? TheWrap reports that after successfully rehabilitating Star Trek, JJ Abrams appears to have beaten other contenders to the Star Wars gig, including Ben …

Top reasons you skipped your workout today: It was too dark or cold outside to run. Your hotel didn’t have a fitness center. You’re sick to death of the treadmill. You let that pricey gym membership expire. Here’s an easy fix for these and other excuses: Obstacles XRT, which bills itself as “extreme reality training” — a fancy way of …

Nokia might be down, but it’s certainly not out. The company today reported its fourth-quarter earnings, and offered up performance that might make its doomsayers think twice. During the fourth quarter, Nokia was able to generate a profit of 202 million euros ($269 million), a massive gain over the 1 billion euros the company lost during the same period in …

Brevity is the soul of… oh, I’ve no time for sayings. Twitter has acquired Vine, an app that lets you shoot and publish six-second looping videos, and has launched its iOS app today. Available to download right this minute, the app is impressively simple to use. Hold your finger on your phone’s screen kicks off filming, and fills up a …

A record 700 million smartphones shipped last year, with Samsung and Apple together accounting for half the market, according to new research released today. While global smartphone shipments increased 490.5 million units over 2011, the 43 percent growth rate slowed in comparison to 2011’s growth rate of 64 percent over 2010, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics. The research blamed …

AT&T posted a narrower fourth-quarter loss, which was again weighed down by a change in the valuation of its employee pension plan. Reporting results today, the company, however, added 780,000 contract subscribers in the period, and sold a record 10.2 million smartphones, of which 8.6 million were iPhones. AT&T posted a loss of $3.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, …

Now playing: Watch this: Get started with Vine 4:10 Screenshot by Sharon Vaknin/CNET As a social network built on keeping things short and sweet, it’s no surprise that Twitter released today a secondary app that lets users (Twitter and otherwise) shoot and upload 6-second videos. Of course, no later than a few hours after its launch, Vine was already being …

Nokia shipped just a third as many smart phones in the last three months of 2012 as it did in the same period a year before — a meagre 6.6 million mobiles, compared to 19.6 million in the  last three months of 2011. The wince-inducing decline was revealed as part of Nokia’s quarterly earnings report (PDF link). While our favourite …

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) decided yesterday to review a ruling made by an administrative law judge in the ongoing patent-infringement saga between Apple and Samsung. Judge Thomas Pender in October ruled that Samsung had violated one of Apple’s iPhone design patents, as well as three software feature patents, in some of its mobile products. Two other patents brought …

Nokia’s next top mobile will be a proper PureView — a Windows Phone with all the impressive camera gubbins of the ludicrous Nokia 808, according to the Verge. Codenamed ‘EOS’ — surely a nod to Canon’s range of high-end dSLR cameras, and I wonder how the Japanese company will feel about that — the new PureView will have a “similar …

Nokia’s got a pulse again, but it will take a lot more juice to fully jolt the company back to life. The Finnish mobile device maker today reported its fourth-quarter results, and the signs are encouraging. After several quarters of losses, the company returned to profitability. Its Lumia smartphone brand, which features the Windows Phone operating system, appears to be …

Safaricom today announced a smartphone based an Intel design — part of the chipmaker’s effort to enter the global low-cost phone market. The Yolo smartphone is aimed “cost-conscious…first-time buyers” in Kenya, said Intel, which is responsible for both the core electronics and phone’s design. Related stories Xolo X900: Meet Intel’s first smartphone That design was announced at CES 2013. Inside …

commentary Dear HTC, I have been a fan of your hardware since my time with the T-Mobile MDA back in 2007. When you became the first company to produce an Android smartphone (T-Mobile G1), I upgraded my loyalty status to “die-hard” and enjoyed releases such as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, HTC Hero, and HTC Evo 4G. With relatively few companies …