SAN DIEGO — Though a significantly smaller show than January’s Consumer Electronic Show and February’s Mobile World Conference, MobileCon 2012 still kicked off its first day with a handful of new phones. However, hardware companies didn’t hog all the fun; there was plenty of carrier news as well. T-Mobile T-Mobile introducedits first Windows Phone 8 …

RIM’s Dev Alpha test phone is the closest thing you’ll get to a real BlackBerry 10 phone this year. Lynn La/CNET Research In Motion, the ailing smartphone maker with seemingly more lives than the average cat, may not dish out the new range of BlackBerry 10 devices until March, according to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. Writing in a research note …

A new E Ink reader has been announced for Europe, boasting to be the smallest and lightest e-reader ever — and priced at just €9.90. (Credit: txtr) Called the Beagle, from German company Txtr, it may be making a few big claims, but it certainly looks handsome, with four different coloured backs and specs that seem, on the surface at …

The Samsung Galaxy Music is a new budget blower with dual front-facing speakers to let you share your tunes with those around you — whether they like it or not. The Galaxy Music’s diddy 3-inch display offers a muddy resolution of 240×320 pixels, but will run a relatively up to date version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich. Samsung hasn’t …

The economy may be slowly recovering, but that doesn’t mean you need to hand over more of your hard earned cash to your wireless provider. In this edition of Ask Maggie, I help two different readers figure out how to get the most value out of their wireless service. Of course, cheaper isn’t always better. If the service doesn’t work …

Now playing: Watch this: Shortcuts: Smart tweaks in iPhone Accessibility 1:08 Use the iPhone’s flash to notify you of missed calls and messages, and create your own vibrating tones in the Accessibility menu in iOS.

Walmart Wal-Mart is testing a same-day delivery service in a bid to outmaneuver Amazon in the increasingly cutthroat retail world. The Bentonville, Ark., retail giant has been tested the service in Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. It will next expand to San Francisco and San Jose, Calif. The service, called Wal-Mart To Go, is a trial run for the holidays …

Apple now spends more money on patenting stuff than it does on coming up with new ideas. That’s the result of Steve Jobs’ vow to “patent it all” when the iPhone was created. Last year for the first time Apple spent more money on patenting ideas than on research and development — the result of a strategy of patenting everything, …

To you and me it’s a big phone, to wilful language manglers it’s a “phablet”. Either way, Samsung’s 5.5-inch monster Galaxy Note 2 stretches the boundaries of mobile gadgets as much as it does the sinews of your mitts. With its ingenious S Pen stylus and Samsung’s pen-driven TouchWiz tweaks to Google’s latest Jelly Bean Android software, there’s a bunch …

Uncork the champers, string up the bunting and activate the Queen — Windows Phone 8 is primed for a very British debut on 29 October, the same day that Microsoft’s new operating system goes live in the US. We’ve been sent a ‘save the date’ invitation to a London-based box social in just under three weeks’ time, where we’ll doubtless …