Michelle Maisto

Google€™s Android delivers €œless gain and more pain€ for application developers, compared with Apple€™s iOS, says a June 7 report from analytics firm Flurry. The news comes as Apple prepares for 2012 World Wide Developers Conference, which starts June 11. Apple and Google, with their competing platforms, represent one of the more dramatic rivalries in […]

The average tablet price, during the first quarter of 2012, fell 21 percent to $386, compared with a year ago, IMS Research reported June 8, citing data from its quarterly tablet tracker. While low-end tablets with much in common are having to compete aggressively on pricing, the dramatic first-quarter drop is largely attributed to the […]

Nokia Asha 305 The Asha 305 features a 3-inch wide QVGA (WQVGA) resistive touch-screen, Bluetooth and dual-band connectivity, a 2-megapixel camera with video, and a Nokia Browser that crunches data in the cloud, reducing data consumption for users by 90 percent. Nokia Asha 305 The Asha is an Easy Swap dual-SIM phone, meaning users don’t […]

Prepaid wireless carrier MetroPCS has brought phone maker Huawei€™s first 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) smartphone stateside, with the June 8 introduction of the Activa 4G. The Android-based smartphone runs version 2.3, known as Gingerbread€”which, despite being two iterations old, is actually on 70 percent of the Android devices currently used worldwide, according to Flurry. It […]

Sprint-owned Virgin Mobile plans to celebrate 10 years in business by becoming the second prepaid mobile carrier to offer customers the Apple iPhone 4 and 4S. Virgin announced June 7 that it will begin selling the Apple smartphones June 29, and customers will be able to pair them with its Beyond Talk unlimited data and […]

Apple reportedly has a plan to muscle Google Maps, the most-used application after iTunes, off its next-generation iPhone, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing people familiar with the matter. With the Apple-Google relationship souring, following Google’s entry into the smartphone space with first the Android platform€”now the market’s top-shipping OS€”and more recently Google’s acquisition […]

Acer America has a slimmed-down, sped-up offering in its new Aspire V5 notebook. Introduced June 7, the notebook runs third-generation Intel Ivy Bridge Core i3 or i5 processors and is 30 percent trimmer than Acer€™s comparable 2011 offering. The end of the school year waves the white flag for back-to-school releases€”as Dell this week also […]

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has discontinued the 16GB version of its PlayBook tablet. The device currently sells for $200 at Best Buy and elsewhere, while a 32GB version is priced at $250 and a 64GB version at $300. “We continue to remain committed to the tablet space, and the 32GB and 64GB models of […]

Google€™s Android operating system will maintain its position as the top-shipping smartphone OS through 2016, but this year will represent its peak, research firm IDC said in a June 6 report. Analysts expect the smartphone market to grow slowly but steadily on the backs of three major platforms: Android, Apple€™s iOS and Microsoft€™s Windows Phone. […]

Toshiba introduced the Portege Z930 Ultrabook and R930, R940 and R950 ultra portables June 5, all running Intel Ivy Bridge processors. Lest the machines risk being lost in the dozens upon dozens of new machines to run the third-generation processors, Intel executives have said that more than 100 Ultrabooks have been designed around them. Toshiba […]

Nokia, as part of its quest to get the next billion people onto the Internet, has introduced the Asha Touch family of devices€”the Nokia Asha 305, 306 and 311. These phones bring Nokia€™s total number of Asha phones to 10 and push the envelope on what most people consider a feature phone to be. While […]

Lenovo U410 Ultrabook Lenovo’s U410 Ultrabook measures 0.83-inches thin, weighs 4.18 pounds, can pair up to a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor with 1 terabyte of storage and Nvidia GeForce graphics, and get up to nine hours of battery life. When it arrives in the United States later in June, pricing will start at $799. […]