A group of U.S. lawmakers has reintroduced legislation aimed at encouraging government agencies to give up their spectrum by allowing the agencies to share in the profits when the spectrum is auctioned to commercial mobile carriers.The Federal Spectrum Incentive Act, introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives Thursday, mirrors legislation that was introduced in the House in 2013 but failed to pass. But the need for the bill is growing, sponsors argue, because of the skyrocketing consumer demand for commercial mobile and unlicensed WiFi spectrum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When the upcoming Apple Watch goes on sale on April 24, it will be the most complex and downright confusing product Apple has ever released, by far. With an assortment of styles, bands, and materials, there will be a seemingly never-ending selection of options for users to choose from.At the same time, the Apple Watch will be the most expensive product Apple has ever released. While the Sport models will start at just $349 (for the 38mm version), the Edition models will start at $10,000 and range all the way up to $17,000. Naturally, not every Apple Store will carry the expensive gold Edition models. During Apple's most recent Apple Watch event, Tim Cook noted that only select stores will carry the device, and in limited quantities at that. What's more, it's been reported that the Edition Apple Watch models will be safely stowed away in secure safes in-store, much in the same way that boutique watch stores protect their most valued merchandise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not to be outdone by the iPhone 6 Plus, Chinese vendor ZTE has come out with its own high-end phablet, the Nubia Z9 Max—an aluminum smartphone with a feature-packed camera.The Android phone, unveiled Thursday, is slated to come to China first, but the company plans to bring it to North America, Europe and emerging markets later.I tested the device and found it impressive. Chinese vendors are releasing more top-notch handsets, and ZTE’s Nubia team has added to the trend with the Z9 Max.The phone delivers what you would expect from premium handsets, some of which already feature metal frames, the latest Qualcomm chipsets, and 1080p displays.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung's new flagship Android smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, go on sale tomorrow at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon Wireless and ship on April 10. Fortunately, we managed to get our hands on the shipping hardware in advance.
The results of our evaluation: Both devices are major steps up for the Android ecosystem, marrying enhanced hardware capabilities, better security, and a cleaner user interface with a strong design derived from both Apple's iPhone 6 and HTC's One. But as good as they are, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge come with a few quirks and one apparent bug.[ iOS vs. Android vs. BlackBerry vs. Windows Phone -- find out which platform provides the security you need. | Considering Samsung's Knox security? Discover how Knox compares to Google's Android for Work. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Computing newsletter. ]
Galen Gruman / InfoWorld
The Samsung Galaxy S6 (left) takes numerous design cues from the Apple iPhone 6 (right).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber keeps crashing into laws and regulations in Europe, but it’s keeping the foot on the accelerator.Following raids in Belgium and France, Dutch authorities raided Uber’s Amsterdam office on Thursday as part of an investigation into the ride-hailing service UberPop, which a court ruled illegal in the Netherlands.The raid’s main goal is to obtain records that show the size of the UberPop operation, a spokeswoman for the DutchHuman Environment and Transport Inspectorate said, adding that the authority, for instance, wants to find out the number of UberPop drivers. The raid is still ongoing and is being conducted by the inspectorate in cooperation with the police.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The financial news for Blackberry is potentially bad this week, as it has been for most of the past few years. Some analysts are predicting that the Canadian company will post losses of as much as 7 cents per share, though the consensus seems to be closer to 3 cents. If that happens, it’ll be Blackberry’s fourth quarter out of the last five to show a decline.
Blackberry, as most know, has been suffering through an ongoing and painful fall from grace for quite a while now. In part, that’s because it’s had an awfully long way to fall – at its apex, Research in Motion was one of the most important technology companies on the planet, taking the business world by storm with its Blackberry handsets and doing at least as much as Apple – which gets the lion’s share of the credit these days – to popularize the idea of a phone that did much more than make calls and send texts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook-owned WhatsApp, the popular mobile messaging and calling service, has no immediate plans to offer tools to outside developers to let them build services on top of it.Doing so could potentially introduce unwanted content into the app, slow it down, and disrupt the flow of one-to-one messages and interactions between its users, WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton said Wednesday during a panel talk at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Francisco.Acton delivered his remarks after two developers from the audience asked when, if at all, WhatsApp would offer application programming interfaces or APIs to them.Acton was adamant. For the year, the company is focused on its voice calling service—which is available for Android now and coming to iOS soon—as well as its recently launched Web software, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Havent seen many posts from some friends lately on Facebook? Perhaps you need to reach out directly to them.How often you chat with someone using Facebooks Messenger app is a signal the company uses to determine how to place posts in your feed. If you havent chatted with someone in a while on Messenger, and then you start chatting again, posts from that person might appear higher in your news feed.That was one piece of information shared by Facebook engineers during a session Wednesday during the companys F8 conference in San Francisco.The algorithm Facebook uses to rank posts in peoples news feeds is a complicated one, and it’s always in flux, but the session, titled “How News Feed Works,” shed light on it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook is extending Parse, its suite of back-end software development tools, to create Internet of Things apps for items like smart home appliances and activity trackers.By opening Parse to IoT, Facebook hopes to strengthen its ties to a wider group of developers in a growing industry via three new software development kits aimed specifically at IoT, unveiled Wednesday at the company’s F8 developer conference in San Francisco.The tools are aimed at making it easier for outside developers to build apps that interface with Internet-connected devices. Garage door manufacturer Chamberlain, for example, has already used Parse for its app to let people open and lock their garage door from their smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook’s app for its F8 developer conference stole some of the show’s thunder by sending out, ahead of the event, a notification that revealed what products will most likely be discussed.“F8: Just revealed: Parse of IoT, Messenger as a Platform, and the Teleportation Station,” read the message, which several people posted to Twitter. The two-day conference starts Wednesday morning Pacific time.Parse is Facebook’s development platform for creating mobile apps. The message, if correct, implies that Facebook is entering the Internet of Things space, which aims to connect assorted devices to the Web.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook’s app for its F8 developer conference stole some of the show’s thunder by sending out, ahead of the event, a notification that revealed what products will most likely be discussed.“F8: Just revealed: Parse of IoT, Messenger as a Platform, and the Teleportation Station,” read the message, which several people posted to Twitter. The two-day conference starts Wednesday morning Pacific time.Parse is Facebook’s development platform for creating mobile apps. The message, if correct, implies that Facebook is entering the Internet of Things space, which aims to connect assorted devices to the Web.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over the last six months, I’ve been examining and testing a variety of mobile app builders and mobile back ends. In some cases, the app builders and back ends were part of a single product. In other cases, the app builders or back ends stood on their own.In this roundup, I’ll summarize seven products that are at least partially a mobile app builder. Some have IDEs that run locally on your computer; others give you a Web IDE that lives in the cloud. Some are aimed at enterprise development, others at individual developers or even students.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hutchison Whampoa has agreed to acquire U.K. mobile operator O2 for a price that could top US$15 billion, giving a company that already owns one major carrier an even bigger share of the British market.The deal, which has been in the works at least since January, continues a trend of consolidation among European service providers. Hutchison already owns Three, one of the U.K.’s biggest carriers. Together, Three and O2 would form the country’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, according to news reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The One M9 may be a knockout, but it’s not likely to save HTC. The device looks similar to its predecessor at a time when competitors have multiplied and stepped up their game, making it even harder for the struggling company to make a mark in the high-end segment.Design has, since the launch of the first One model, been HTC’s biggest strength. The One M9, however, doesn’t have the same wow factor as its predecessors since the design is no longer as groundbreaking.“To most consumers the One M9 will look almost identical to the One M8, which preceded it, and that’s a big challenge for HTC,” said Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung, Dell getting Microsoft appsUses of Samsung’s Android devices are getting more choice in software: the South Korean device maker is giving its customers access to Microsoft services and apps on its flagship phones and tablets, while also letting them delete bloatware they don’t want, Computerworld reports. Samsung has been criticized for shipping its phones with too much pre-installed stuff. Meanwhile, Microsoft also announced a deal to get its apps onto Dell’s Android tablets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter has started to let videos play automatically in some people’s feeds, in a test that could allow it to make more money from video advertising.The videos will play automatically for a small percentage of people who use Twitter’s iOS app in the U.S. “We’re running a small test on a few variations on the video playback experience,” a Twitter spokesman said.The test, first reported by Advertising Age, applies both to videos uploaded by users and to those posted by advertisers, but it doesn’t apply to looped videos from Twitter’s Vine service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Freaks and Geeks alum Seth Rogen is set to play the Mac community’s favorite ubergeek Steve Wozniak in the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic (no, not that one, the other one), alongside Christian Bale as Steve Jobs. Hopefully it won’t be Superbad. (Sorry.)
The news comes from Variety, which also reported that “Jessica Chastain is being eyed for an unspecified role.” Perhaps that’ll be a composite character of every woman in Jobs’s orbit—after all, last year’s Jobs (the one starring Ashton Kutcher) was seriously bereft of women actors who weren’t playing Steve’s mother, wife, or girlfriend.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook’s Messenger app has traditionally been used for keeping in touch with friends. Now people can also use it to send each other money. In the future, it could become a platform which other apps could use, if recent rumors prove true.This Wednesday and Thursday at its F8 conference in San Francisco, Facebook will show off new tools to help third party developers build apps, deploy them on Facebook and monetize them through Facebook advertising.Among those tools might be a new service for developers to publish content or features of their own inside Messenger, according to a TechCrunch article. Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At one time, people considered Microsoft a true contender in the mobile space. Just four years ago, some analysts predicted that Windows Phone would leapfrog BlackBerry and iOS to claim the number two spot behind Android. Some researchers expected Microsoft’s market share to hit 20 percent, while others even predicted the company would edge past Android. But we all know how that turned out.Now, the company must execute a comeback. Microsoft has reinvigorated interest in Windows with the upcoming Windows 10, and revealed innovative surprises like HoloLens, a nod to its vision of the future. By many accounts, today’s Microsoft feels fresher and newer than the Microsoft of old. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung both giveth and (allows users to) taketh away.The South Korean device maker is, for the first time, giving its customers access to Microsoft services and apps in its newest smartphones and tablets. At the same time, Samsung is allowing customers to strip away apps and bloatware they don't want on the company's newest phones.Recent posts on the XDA Developers Forum indicate that many pre-installed apps on the upcoming Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones can be removed legally and easily. These apps include Gmail, Google + and YouTube; Samsung's own S Voice and S Health software; and Microsoft's OneNote, OneDrive and Skype, as reported by Forbes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here