Competitive carriers both large and small, urban and rural are banding together to take on the nation’s two largest carriers, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, as they amass more control over the wireless market. On Monday, the Rural Cellular Association will announce that it is rebranding its organization and calling itself the Competitive Carrier Association. Steven …

Apparently Samsung’s unique Galaxy Note II is slated to arrive on Verizon. If a report is accurate, not only will the big-screened, pen-toting gadget boast 4G LTE data but also Samsung’s quad-core Exynos processor. It’ll be the first time a Galaxy Note has been scooped up by Big Red as well. Related stories Best Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 Cases …

Today, LG and U.S. Cellular launched the LG Splendor, another Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich handset. The Splendor, which comes in at a very reasonable $79.99 (with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate), features a 4.3-inch screen, 5-megapixel camera, and a VGA front-facing camera for video chats. Related stories TV in the Bathroom: Technically Doable but a …

Nokia’s newly unveiled Lumia 920 could be the UK’s first 4G phone, with the Finnish phone-maker reportedly in talks with British network conglomerate Everything Everywhere to offer the new mobile exclusively. Everything Everywhere, which comprises Orange and T-Mobile, has been granted permission by Ofcom to kick-start its own 4G network ahead of rival networks like O2 and Vodafone. That headstart …

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 …

If you’ve watched any “American Idol” the last couple of years, you’ve probably noticed a heavy dose of record impresario Jimmy Iovine’s Beats headphones on the show — from the hat that he always wears to the omnipresence of the product itself. It’s awful in many ways, but that’s what corporate sponsorship is all about. And it seems to be …

Good news (of sorts) if you’re thinking about buying the new Kindle Fire HD. Amazon has announced you’ll be able to get rid of the annoying adverts that pop up on it, Engadget reports. But it’ll cost you. The Kindle Fire HD sells at a Nexus 7-matching £159, but the price you pay is adverts appearing on-screen every time you lock …

commentary I’m not sure I understand what Motorola was doing last week when it announced three Droid Razr models for the remainder of 2012. On one hand, I get that an iconic company like Moto wants to show that it’s still in the game. And I understand the benefit in giving customers choices. In this case, however, the number of …

commentary At Motorola’s “On Display” press event in New York City last week, most eyes centered on the company’s new Razr phones. Yet, there were also a couple of tech celebrities in the audience, both of whom drew their own share of attention. A man One of those luminaries was a person, a former Motorola vice president and division manager …

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 …

Sprint wants you to know that although it’s far behind AT&T and especially Verizon in deploying its 4G LTE network, the carrier is hard at work. This morning, Sprint announced its plan to roll out LTE in over 100 more cities “in the coming months” where it currently offers 3G coverage — including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington …

Amazon has updated its OS X app with some new features readers should find useful. First up, Amazon’s new 1.10.3 version of Kindle comes with support for more OS X gestures, including panning and swiping. The app now supports Amazon’s Kindle Format 8 books, which deliver some improved formatting options. Heavy readers will be happy to discover that the app …

Apple has reduced its orders for mobile phone memory chips from Samsung, its arch rival, following the $1bn court case between the two. The Californian company is tapping up Toshiba, Elpida Memory, and Korea’s SK Hynix to provide more chips in place of Samsung’s, Reuters reports. Though it hasn’t cut off Samsung altogether. “Samsung is still in the list of …

Nokia committed a major gaffe in promoting its Lumia 920, and now the company says it’s trying to figure out why. Last week, the company unveiled its new Windows 8 Phone handsets, with the Lumia 920 starring as its flagship device. Touting the phone’s optical image stabilization (OIS), Nokia released a promotional clip supposedly comparing video shot by the 920 …

Even though it doesn’t really come as a surprise to hear that teenagers love smartphones, there’s now new data to back up all previous assumptions. Young adults aged 25 to 34 own smartphones more than any other age group with 74 percent of the market, according to a new study by Nielsen, which included interviews with 20,000 mobile users in …