October, 2011

• 12 October

  Samsung Transfix: Hands

  

  Now playing: Watch this: Samsung Transfix (Cricket) 1:18 Samsung may have crushed our CTIA dreams by pulling back on its biggest announcement here at CTIA, but thankfully it still introduced a number of new handsets. The Samsung Transfix sits on the opposite end of the grandeur spectrum from the Galaxy Nexus we were all anticipating, …

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• 12 October

  BlackBerry services beginning to be restored

  

  Research In Motion has posted an update on its Web site listing the current status of service for its beleaguered worldwide e-mail and messaging service. RIM Chief Information Officer Robin Bienfait noted that e-mail systems are working worldwide, though the company is continuing to clear backlogged messages. In the United States, Canada, and Latin America, the BlackBerry Messenger and browsing …

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• 12 October

  BlackBerry service issues spread to U.S. and Canada

  

  BlackBerry subscribers throughout the world continued to experience disruptions in service for a third consecutive day as problems with Research In Motion’s equipment in its data centers appears to now be affecting North American subscribers as well. Customers using Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones in the U.S. and Canada are now also without access to e-mail and BlackBerry messaging in …

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• 12 October

  LightSquared’s GPS fix could cost industry $400M

  

  SAN DIEGO–It could cost the the GPS industry as much as $400 million for gear to protect its precision devices from interference caused by LightSquared’s planned wireless network, although the company believes the figure will be ultimately be lower. LightSquared Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben told CNET on Wednesday that there are roughly 500,000 commercial precision GPS devices in the …

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• 12 October

  ZTE Score with Muve Music: Hands

  

  Even as we lick our lips over Google’s upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich update to Android, I’m impressed that even the more modest new Android phones are on board with Gingerbread. The ZTE Score is one of them. First introduced exclusively through Best Buy, the Score is also Cricket’s latest Muve Music phone. ZTE Score (photos) +2 more See all photos …

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• 12 October

  iPhone 4S may not fit into iPhone 4 cases

  

  The iPhone 4S sure looks identical to the iPhone 4, right? Wrong. The buttons have been moved slightly, which could mean iPhone 4 cases don’t fit the new phone. The hold button and the two volume keys have shifted slightly up the side of the phone. There appears to be a couple of millimetres difference for the hold button, possibly …

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• 12 October

  Nokia testing labs: Breaking phones to fix them

  

  SAN DIEGO–Without a doubt, the biggest highlight of CTIA was spent in the company of fellow journalists touring Nokia’s testing facilities here, otherwise known as the chambers of torture. It’s here that testing engineers inflict a variety of mechanical and chemical abuse on their electronic quarry. Make no mistake: destruction is the labs’ principal goal. As the phones get smashed, …

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• 12 October

  BBM still down as BlackBerry blames ‘core switch failure’

  

  It looks like BlackBerry is still down for users around the world — on the day Apple releases iMessage, Apple’s rival messaging service. Cut off from BlackBerry Messenger, BBM addicts are descending into madness, their only contact with the outside world being angry tweets, Facebook updates and comments on this very site. iMessage is built in to iOS 5, the …

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• 12 October

  BlackBerry outages due to message backlog

  

  The BlackBerry outages are all down to a message backlog, apparently. A backup failure in Europe meant undelivered messages broke the entire global network, BlackBerry makers RIM said in a press conference this evening. It’s working to fix the situation, but users all over the world are still suffering, with some with no BBM, others no email or internet as well. Read …

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• 12 October

  Sprint’s Kyocera DuraMax and DuraCore: Hands on from CTIA

  

  They’re tough, they’ve got rock-hard bodies, and they can communicate. We’re talking about the Kyocera DuraCore and DuraMax phones, of course, the first two in Sprint’s lineup to use push-to-talk over 3G CDMA. While not exactly twinsies, the handsets are quite similar, with the DuraCore being the more basic of the two. Both feature phones operate under the Direct Connect …

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