Nokia has sold off its luxury mobile phone brand Vertu. The company said today that EQT VI, a private equity group in Northern Europe, has acquired Vertu. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but after it closes at the end of the second quarter, Nokia plans to hold a 10 percent minority stake …

Now playing: Watch this: A hands-on look at the Sony Xperia Ion Android phone 1:05 Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an embattled consumer electronics company is counting on its latest smartphone to vault it back onto the U.S. consumer’s radar. I could be talking about Nokia, Research in Motion, or LG. But today, it’s Sony and the …

AT&T officially confirmed the pricing of its new Xperia Ion smartphone. The manufacturer’s first 4G LTE handset, the device will cost $99.99 and ship to stores beginning June 24. Since the Android-powered Xperia Ion won’t run Ice Cream Sandwich but Android 2.3 Gingerbread, many hard-core Android fans aren’t likely to be impressed. Neither will people who have been waiting for …

The App Store is home to lots of weather apps, most of which are good at forecasting the upcoming days and even hours. But few excel at telling you what the clouds might bring in the next hour. That’s where Dark Sky comes in. This new app, the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign, predicts the weather for your exact …

In the weeks leading up to the formal unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Internet was full of rumors, conjecture, and a smattering of “leaks.” In some cases we saw dummy displays, and other seemingly legitimate fanboy fodder, but for everything that landed online, no one leak turned out to be 100 percent accurate. So how was Samsung …

Now that we’ve had some time to fully digest the Galaxy Nexus (as well as get over its rather worrying shortcomings), we can sit back and appreciate just how much of a step forward Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is over the previous Android version, Gingerbread. Cited by Google as the operating system that will unify the tablet …

Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Galaxy S3 3:44 It’s a sad fact of life that not all tech is born equal, and so it happens that now and then a phone comes along that’s of a sufficiently high pedigree, even hardened tech reviewers need a moment to take stock. And so it is with the Samsung Galaxy S3. The budget …

We’ve run the Samsung Galaxy S3 through a barrage of benchmark tests, with our results showing that Samsung’s latest toy is a proper performance powerhouse that manages to beat the beefy HTC One X. Read on, folks, and brace for numbers. In the Antutu benchmark, which tests memory, CPU speed and graphics, the S3 racked up an impressive 12,112 points, beating …

The spanking-new Samsung Galaxy S3 is on its way to the shops this week, but we’ve already wrestled it into the CNET UK testing arena to see how it performs. One thing we were particularly keen to test is the battery, so mobile phones editor Natasha Lomas took it for a spin to see just what it can do. The …

As the saying goes, there’s an app for that, and now there’s one that claims it can deter crime. The app, iWitness, is free to download for iPhone users (it’s coming to Android soon), but requires a subscription to use. Basically, it works like this: When you’re about to enter a “potentially threatening environment” you launch the app and “arm” …

iOS 6 was only revealed on Monday — and hackers have already cracked it. The first jailbreak of the new software for iPhone and iPad has been revealed, although it’s still pretty limited. iOS 6 isn’t available to the public yet, but has been offered in beta to developers to build and test their apps — or jailbreak faster than …

No, it’s not a typo — Sony’s latest budget Android phone is called the Xperia Tipo. It’s a 3.2-inch smart phone that packs the latest Ice Cream Sandwich software and can take two SIM cards at once for all the network switching you could want. I’m reliably informed by Sony that Tipo actually is pronounced “typo”, which makes it the …

Stick’em up! Samsung has unveiled a very cool accessory for the Samsung Galaxy S3 and other Android phones: TecTiles NFC stickers, which let you perform any task on your Android blower by simply waving it at a sticker. TecTiles are small square stickers that talk to your phone just by tapping the two together. Program the sticker with a specific …

We’ve long bemoaned the Android rollout process, but now comes good news, of sorts. Ice Cream Sandwich — the latest version of Android — is now used on 7.1 per cent of devices, according to Google’s stats. This is up from the 5 per cent a month ago. But it still pales in comparison to Gingerbread, which accounts for 65 …

Sorry, Google Wallet fans, but Apple may have just pulled the mobile-payment rug from under Android’s feet. In signature Apple fashion, the new iOS 6 Passbook app takes a shockingly simple approach, which is just why it’ll prove a hit. The slick new features of Apple iOS 6 (pictures) +11 more See all photos Google Wallet’s dilemma Now, let’s be …