Michelle Maisto

Yahoo wants a smarter Siri, and it’s hoping Carnegie Mellon University can help develop it. Yahoo has made a $10 million grant to the university, which will conduct a five-year project on a mobile assistant solution that’s for now called InMind. A highlight of the partnership is an “industry-first” mobile toolkit that will provide researchers […]

T-Mobile CEO John Legere said the company was working on something special for BlackBerry users—a mea culpa of sorts—after BlackBerry owners made clear they were offended by a T-Mobile offer to upgrade to the iPhone 5S. Using a BlackBerry was an intelligent choice they had made, not a situation they were stuck in, folks made […]

Google and Movidius, a designer of ultra-low-power vision processor chips, designs, software and more, are working together to create “intelligent, vision-based applications” that will significantly push the capabilities of today’s smartphones, the pair announced Feb. 20. As part of the agreement, Movidius’ Myriad 1 vision processor platform will power Google’s Project Tango—an Android-based smartphone product […]

Passwords and user names—memorizing them, or even just keeping track of them—are a hassle that plenty of companies are trying to solve. Among the latest efforts is the PasswordBox app for Android and iOS, which now includes a function called 1-Tap. PasswordBox, for smartphones and tablets, stores all of a user’s log-in information for apps […]

Ericsson Takes Pulse of Networked Society: 10 Takeaways From Q4 Data by Michelle Maisto Global Mobile Broadband Subscriptions By 2019, the world’s mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to increase from today’s 2 billion to 8 billion and the amount of data sent by each smartphone is expected to triple. That means that in 2019, over […]

With net neutrality threatened by a January court ruling, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has said it plans to propose new rules that will reinstate its Internet-protecting power. On Jan. 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a judgment in the case of Verizon vs. the FCC, which challenged the […]

CEO John Chen has sent a strong message on behalf of the latest company under his wing: Don’t mess with BlackBerry. T-Mobile last week emailed some customers, telling them, “Now is the time to upgrade to iPhone 5s,” under a thick magenta banner stating: “Great offer for BlackBerry customers.” And Chen fired back. “I can […]

Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S 5, will fill feature a fingerprint sensor built into its home button, Sammobile reported Feb. 17, “confirming” the rumor. The information, it said, came from “insiders.” According to the report, “The sensor itself works in a swipe manner, which means that you would need to swipe the entire […]

In a world of fast-growing mobility, Ericsson continues to quantify that growth. In the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the company, which plays a major role in building out the networks supporting and transporting the growing amounts of mobile data, revealed that 109 million mobile subscriptions were added worldwide during the fourth quarter of 2013, bringing […]

LG G Flex: 6 Inches, a Curve, but Nothing to Call Home About by Michelle Maisto LG G Flex: First Curve in the U.S. The LG G Flex is now available on the T-Mobile network. It runs Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) and has a 6-inch OLED HD display that curves slightly from top to bottom. […]

“The Internet of Things (IOT) knows no boundaries … or at least it shouldn’t have to,” Rusty Lhamon, director of M2M at T-Mobile, said in a Feb. 18 statement, announcing eSIM, T-Mobile’s latest “un-carrier” move. eSIM is a ready-to-use SIM card for connected devices—from connected cars to wearables and navigation devices—that eliminates international data roaming […]

The LG G Flex smartphone is instantly distinctive, thanks to an OLED HD display that’s 6 inches on the diagonal and curved, its top subtly curling in toward its bottom. But after a few days of living with the G Flex, I still can’t figure out why anyone would need either of these things. Even […]