The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus aren’t tough to take apart and repair. James Martin/CNET You likely would never need to take apart your new iPhone 6S or 6S Plus. But the folks at iFixit did as part of their usual teardown testing and found the journey mostly smooth sailing. The iPhone 6S and iPhone …

Cricket Wireless is yet another option if you want one of the new iPhones contract-free. James Martin/CNET Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S Plus officially launch on Friday, and Cricket Wireless is getting it on the action by selling the new phones both online and at select retail locations. A subsidiary of AT&T, Cricket offers prepaid, no-contract mobile phone plans …

A phone as bold as a BlackBerry running Android rather than its own software deserves a bold name. According to frequent Twitter tipster Evan Blass (@evleaks), that name will be Priv. Now known by the code name Venice, the device, which is rumored to touch down in November, marks the first time BlackBerry has embraced a different operating system for …

Spring cleaning can become a relatively involved process. That’s because you’re usually adding these tasks to your normally scheduled ones, like grocery shopping or picking up your kids. Here are a few apps for your Android or iOS device that can help you remember what to do, when, and even where so you can get that spring cleaning done. Note: …

CNET’s Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. Microsoft Office 2016 has arrived , and with it the same pricing model Microsoft adopted a couple years back: $69 per year for the single-user Personal Edition, $99 per year for the five-user …

Samsung Pay has scored well in South Korea. But how will it fare in the US? CNET Samsung Pay has proven both popular and profitable during its first month of use in South Korea, according to the company. On Wednesday, Samsung announced that its mobile payments system took in more than $30 million in transactions in South Korea between August …

Enlarge ImageIs your view of the candidates in virtual reality? Josh Miller/CNET Like to be at the Democratic presidential debate next month but can’t attend in person? CNN is promising to take viewers there through the wonders of virtual reality. CNN said Thursday that it will live-stream the October 13 debate from Las Vegas in full 3D immersive virtual reality. …

Verizon’s new upgrade program promises a new iPhone every year. Andrew Hoyle/CNET Verizon is joining the move toward annual smartphone upgrades. The largest US wireless carrier announced Thursday that customers who purchase Apple’s smartphone when it goes on sale Friday will have the option of upgrading to the latest iPhone model each year. To qualify, customers must choose Verizon’s monthly …

When the world is faced with the horror of a Facebook outage, luckily there are other social-media sites for sharing our collective grief. And so it was that Twitter momentarily got transformed into a worldwide stream of freak-outs and one-liners Thursday morning. Facebook.com showed an error message for an estimated millions of users worldwide, starting around 9:45 a.m. PT and …

Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET If you use a cloud storage service such as Box, Dropbox or Microsoft’s own OneDrive, you’ve probably noticed that they appear as links in the navigation panel in File Explorer. Maybe you want this (after all, it’s a convenient way to quickly access your files from those folders), or maybe you don’t. If you don’t want this, …