Lost among the kerfuffle of Kevin versus Julia last week was an announcement that will gladden the hearts of those suffering from blindness: the ABC will begin a trial audio-description TV service in the middle of 2012. The trial will run for roughly 14 hours per week during primetime viewing hours on ABC1. The trial …

Samsung’s tablet size bingo continues, with its latest effort being a 10-inch Galaxy Note. But the company’s tablets aren’t faring too well, one executive has revealed at Mobile World Congress. “Honestly, we’re not doing very well in the tablet market,” Hankil Yoon, product strategy executive for Samsung, told reporters, including CNET News’ Roger Cheng. Ouch. So how’s it going to …

Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G (T-Mobile) 1:01 BARCELONA, Spain–Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G: try saying it five times fast. Or better yet, just call it the “Blaze” like I do, and appreciate the simple pleasures of what is by today’s standards your regular upper-mid smartphone. T-Mobile and Samsung first announced the Blaze 4G at an intimate …

The iPad 3 is unlikely to look much different from an iPad 2. Apple This isn’t our first rodeo. The wild, often contradictory rumors that precede an Apple product unveiling would have you thinking that the iPad 3 could take just about any form or shape. But really, so long as you don’t get hung up on the specifics, it’s …

BARCELONA, Spain–Where do the largest telecommunications companies in the world want to be in in the future? In the cloud. John Chambers, Cisco Systems’ CEO, talks about cloud services at Mobile World Congress 2012. Marguerite Reardon/CNET We’ve all heard this schtick before: Carriers don’t want to be the purveyors of dumb pipes. Their equipment suppliers–namely, Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent–also don’t …

Editors’ note: This is a guest column. See Morgan Reed’s bio below. In the Broadway musical “Oliver!,” orphaned Oliver Twist famously holds out his empty bowl and asks, “Please sir, may I have some more?” For those of us who make mobile applications, we feel like Oliver, holding out our virtual bowl, begging for more spectrum to fill the hungry …

Toshiba wowed us back in September with the vanishingly thin AT200 tablet, pictured above. Only just launched in the UK, the Japanese giant’s about to unveil a follow-up at Mobile World Congress — and the good news is it’s smaller, faster and runs Ice Cream Sandwich, Pocketnow reports. We’re still awaiting an official announcement, so there’s no word on name, …

Back in January during CES (yeah, with all this Mobile World Congress stuff, it can be hard to remember), Samsung announced its tablet, the Galaxy Tab 7.7. We liked the initial look and feel of the device, and if you’re interested in purchasing one, it will be available this Thursday, March 1, on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. As CNET’s Stephen …

BARCELONA, Spain–Technology is going to make it harder to be a repressive dictator, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt believes, but censorship could still create a “digital caste system” that will mean some people remain laggards in the global economy. Information inevitably will leak like water out of areas where censorship prevails, he said in a speech at the Mobile World …

The HTC One X has been easily one of the most impressive phones at Mobile World Congress so far, and it’s heading this way soon, courtesy of Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and online retailers including Phones4U. Excellent. Retailer mobilephonesdirect.co.uk is offering the One X on T-Mobile and Vodafone for £31 per month, or pay as you go for £470 — not …

BARCELONA–Chinese mobile-phone maker Huawei has joined the Tizen Association and said it plans to build phones using the open-source, Linux-based operating system. In addition, Huawei joined Tizen’s board, which also includes Intel, NEC, Casio, NTT Docomo, Orange, Panasonic, Samsung, SK Telecom, Telefonica, and Vodafone. The association also announced the open-source release of the Tizen beta and a Windows version of …

Get the edge of your seat warm and prepare your best excited faces — the iPad 3 is set to be unveiled at an Apple event in San Francisco on 7 March. The news came via an official Apple invite: “We have something you really have to see. And touch.” And although it sounds like something that could be whispered …

BARCELONA, Spain–We now know the two Android phones on which Panasonic is pinning its hopes for a successful re-entry into the world market for mobile phones. The good news: they’re both sleek, waterproof designs with buttons tucked into the back. The bad news: they’re named “Eluga.” Maybe the name test-marketed better in Europe and Japan, where the phones will arrive …

Now playing: Watch this: Asus Padfone 1:57 BARCELONA, Spain–It may be early days yet, but I’m really liking what I’m seeing so far of the Asus Padfone and Padfone Station. Or, as I like to call it, the turducken of mobile devices. The Padfone essentially mashes up the concept of the Asus Transformer Prime tablet with its docking station, and …

BARCELONA, Spain–Even with some significant engine trouble, it took me a day to go from zero to addicted to XCom Global‘s MiFi rental service for travelers. TheInter Communications subsidiary offers a handy service–$14.95 a day to rent a mobile MiFi network access point with unlimited data access when you’re traveling abroad. The price looks painful until you compare it to …