Not every rugged or semi-rugged phone has to look like a rubber tire. Yesterday, Motorola announced its newest handset, the Defy Pro, which can resist dust, water, and scratches, but still looks sleek enough to be your day-to-day phone. It has a 2.7-inch Gorilla Glass touch-screen display, and has a four-row physical QWERTY keyboard. The …

AT&T plans to launch a service that will allow customers to report and block stolen mobile devices. The service was initially reported by the Verge earlier today. The service would let a customer block data, voice, and text message access to the phone or tablet but keep their account information in place, avoiding the hassle of creating a new account …

Online scammers have hijacked Android phones to fire off a tidal wave of spam emails. A Microsoft researcher has spotted spam emails that appear to carry authentic message IDs and declare that they are, “Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android”. Microsoft researcher Terry Zink reckons the spam is coming from Android phones that have been infected by a botnet. If …

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has disappeared from Google’s online shop — but it’s coming back stronger with Jelly Bean on board. The Galaxy Nexus is on sale directly from Google Play, Google’s online shop for apps, games, movies and music, and its own phones and tablets. Or rather it was — the Galaxy Nexus is not currently listed. But the …

At the risk of sounding reductive, New Zealand is most famous for three things: “Lord of the Rings,” those guys on HBO, and sauvignon blanc. Now you can add a fourth item to the list: New Zealand is the home of what claims to be the world’s first film to be sold to the public as a 4K resolution file …

Now playing: Watch this: The Nexus 7 Tablet 3:49 Gadget fans who preorder Google’s Nexus 7 tablet outside the U.S. will not get full access to all of the tablet’s features as first revealed at Google I/O last month. U.S. buyers will see the full range of content, including TV shows, music, and magazines, whereas the remaining countries — Canada, …

Image Composite by Joe Aimonetti/CNET Sources in the industry speaking with DigiTimes (via AppleInsider) have reportedly been expecting the competition in the smartphone world to heat up around the adoption of quad-core processors as early as this year’s holiday quarter. HTC, Samsung, LG, and China’s Meizu already have quad-core processors in their phones, leading industry sources to believe that indeed, …

The Sony Xperia Go has been given a ‘coming soon’ date of July by oxygenated operator O2, suggesting the UK is mere weeks away from seeing the rugged, splash-happy smart phone in high street shops. SoMobile spotted the listing, which also promises 50GB of free cloud storage forever, so long as you splash out (geddit) before the end of the …

With unprecedented losses, evaporating market share, and enough competitive pressure to smash it into irrelevancy, you’d think Research In Motion would show a bit of urgency. In fact, it’s showing quite the opposite. Rather than rush out a half-baked product, the company said last week that it would push back the debut of BlackBerry 10 from later this year to …

What would you do for free Internet on the go? A new phone network called Samba is offering free data if you watch a couple of minutes of adverts from the likes of Samsung, Volvo, Xbox Kinect, Unicef and Gillette. Sign up to Samba and you’ll get a 3G SIM card or micro-SIM costing £3, with a 3G dongle also …

The Kindle Fire 2 will see the Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and then raise it, according to an analyst. Amazon will bring out at least three new Kindle Fire models, according to Richard Shim, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch. Shim gets his information from sources in the “supply chain” — a collection of companies that manufacture components and assemble products. …

Archos today announced new Android tablets for its new Elements series. First in line for a July release is the Archos 97 Carbon. Though it runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and sports a 9.7-inch IPS display, the tablet’s feature set is decidedly middle of the road. Inside you’ll find a 1GHz processor, 16GB of flash memory, front and …

Near-field communication (NFC) has been slow to catch on in Australia; gradually, however, the technology is making its way in. The Commonwealth Bank introduced its NFC app Kaching six months ago; the NSW Government recently released an NFC tourism initiative down at The Rocks; and RIM is integrating it into its newer smartphones. (Credit: Samsung) However, it’s not something with …

Apple has lost its fight with HTC here in Britain over slide-to-unlock and other patents. The High Court in London has ruled HTC did not infringe four of Apple’s patents, and that slide-to-unlock is so obvious Apple has no right to claim it. The first patent involved unlocking a device by performing a gesture on the screen, or swiping your …

Seems like customers in Korea will have their LTE and eat it, too. Related stories Samsung Galaxy S III hands-on Seven myths about quad-core phones Samsung Galaxy S III phones by carrier, by the numbers Qualcomm: We’re ready for quad-core arms race The Samsung Galaxy S3, globally offered as a quad-core device without LTE, will now be available with LTE …