Have you ever noticed that your old flip phone held its charge for days, even weeks sometimes, but a half-hour spent surfing the Web or watching a video on your new smartphone and the battery is dead? You aren’t alone. As cell phones get more sophisticated, all those bells and whistles come at the cost …

Verizon Wireless is making a big announcement in New York on Tuesday. Could the news be the long-awaited Verizon iPhone? On Friday, the company sent reporters an invitation to a press event hosted by Lowell McAdam, Verizon’s chief operating officer. The event, which will take place at Lincoln Center, is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. ET. (That’s 1/11/11 at …

Editor’s note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes’ bio below. LAS VEGAS–Attendees at a standing-room-only debate over Net neutrality were treated to a rare occurrence at the Consumer Electronics Show: consensus. Unfortunately, the only thing that Federal Communications Commission and congressional officials, along with representatives from industry and public interest groups, could agree on was that the fight …

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a smart phone or tablet PC fan — Dell’s got your back in 2011. The company used its press conference at CES 2011 to show off the new Streak 7 tablet and Venue smart phone, both of which run the Android 2.2 operating system. The Streak 7 is probably the more interesting of the two. …

At its CES press conference, Samsung apparently announced a tablet that has a sliding keyboard and runs Windows 7. We say ‘apparently’ because the press conference was rammed and we weren’t allowed in. From what we can tell though, the TX100 is a 10.1-inch multi-touch PC that will sell in the US for $700 (£450). Under the hood, you’ll find …

Roll up, tablet fans. Google’s just released some tantalising information about Android 3.0 Honeycomb — the operating system designed specifically to power the next wave of tablet PCs. The company has published a teaser video showing the design of the user interface and some of the OS’ swankiest features. It also outlined some of Honeycomb’s finer features on the Google …

Back in November I told you about Bluefire Reader, an iOS app with support for the ePub e-book format used by many public libraries. In other words, you can use it to check out books free of charge–but you had to do a lot of desktop hoop-jumping to make it happen. Enter OverDrive Media Console, an app that cuts out …

SmartPhone Medic Despite not mentioning a word about a possible Verizon-compatible iPhone during his presentation at CES, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg still found his company in iPhone-related news as pictures have surfaced purporting to be of the outer casing for the iPhone 5 or Verizon’s CDMA iPhone. The case photos, provided by SmartPhone Medic, show comparisons of Apple’s current iPhone …

Attention home-cinema enthusiasts: Sony’s new range of Blu-ray players is on the horizon, and the forecast is 3D with a chance of iPhone apps. The S380 (pictured above), S480, S580, E280, E380, E880 and E780W Blu-ray players turn your iPhone or Android smart phone into a remote control as you watch 3D Blu-ray movies such as Cloudy With a Chance …

Samsung has announced its smart televisions will integrate with its mobile devices, offering cloud-based video content and support for Flash. (Credit: CBSi) The president of Samsung’s Visual Display business, BK Yoon, announced several new services at its keynote at CES in US-based deals for subscriptions without the need of a set-top box with Time Warner and Comcast, which is similar …