Todd R. Weiss

About 23,000 United Airlines flight attendants will be getting Apple iPhone 6 Plus smartphones from the airline starting in the second quarter of 2015 to beef up and expand the company’s customer service in the air around the world. United announced the iPhone 6 Plus initiative Dec. 10, touting a wide range of expected benefits […]

A new study about potential health risks to humans from mobile phones and power lines concludes that exposure to these magnetic field sources is not harmful, according to researchers at the University of Manchester in England. The research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, found “no scientific evidence that exposure to electromagnetic […]

Data generated in motor vehicles by “connected car” systems will have to comply with newly written privacy principles as of January 2, 2016, as automakers work to better protect the personal data that is collected through on-vehicle systems. The privacy principles, which were created on behalf of The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM), the Association […]

Title II regulatory powers by the Federal Communications Commission over the Internet would not be good for American industry and would threaten long-term investment in its infrastructure, according to some 60 members of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) industry group that oppose such proposals. In a four-page Dec. 10 letter to the FCC and leaders […]

The next-generation replacement for Samsung’s Galaxy S5 smartphone might hit the market with several new internal components when the updated Galaxy S6 is eventually unveiled to consumers in 2015. Instead of a Qualcomm processor in previous Galaxy S4 and S5 smartphones, the upcoming Galaxy S6 could include a 1.8GHz Exynos Octa-core 7420 64-bit processor, as […]

Emergency calls to 911 are mission-critical, but for callers who make 911 calls using mobile devices from inside structures built of concrete and steel, it can be difficult for 911 systems to accurately identify the precise location of the mobile caller. That will hopefully change in the future as the big four U.S. wireless carriers—Verizon, […]

Unlimited family shared data plans are back temporarily at T-Mobile with new plans starting at $100 for two lines per month, and $40 per month for each additional user. The new unlimited data plans, which are only being offered temporarily, though no expiration date has been set, were unveiled Dec. 9 by T-Mobile. The offer […]

Blackphone, the security-focused smartphone, will get updates to its PrivatOS operating system in early 2015 that will add separate containers, or “spaces,” so that users can keep their work and personal apps separate without mingling them on the devices. The new “Spaces” feature will let users create separate self-contained areas for apps, data and accounts […]

Drivers in Iowa will soon be able to pull out their smartphones to display their state driver’s licenses after a new electronic driver’s license mobile app becomes available sometime in 2015. But the free new app is being touted as more than just a tool for drivers who forget to carry their license, Mark Lowe, […]

By 2020, some 75 percent of smartphone buyers will be able to spend less than $100 to get a full-featured device that fills their greatest mobile phone needs, while by 2018, some 40 percent of businesses will be using WiFi in their offices to replace wired connections for a wide range of devices, according to […]

The Federal Communications Commission is asking the big four wireless carriers in the United States to turn on anti-theft features in their smartphones by the end of March in 2015 to help protect consumers from phone theft by making the devices useless to thieves if they are stolen. Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC, […]

BlackBerry Passport smartphones will be used to help connect doctors and medical researchers to huge stores of patient genetic information as part of a cancer genome project that is working to fight against the deadly disease. The project is bringing together Passport smartphones and a secure clinical genome browser application that will give doctors unprecedented […]