Todd R. Weiss

Samsung has suffered another quarter of reduced net profits, which fell to $4 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $7.8 billion in the same quarter last year. In this interval, the company’s sales plummeted 19 percent to $45.1 billion from $56 billion. Samsung announced its third-quarter earnings in a conference call with […]

Two U.S. government agencies are suing AT&T Mobility for allegedly throttling down service speeds for at least 3.5 million mobile phone customers despite contracts that allowed the customers to enjoy unlimited data use under their service plans. In a 14-page lawsuit, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allege that the […]

BlackBerry CEO John Chen wants to get it right this time when it comes to enterprise users. In an open letter to current and former BlackBerry users, Chen laid out his case that his company’s upcoming phone—the BlackBerry Classic, formerly known as the BlackBerry Q20—will include the features users already loved about its products, while […]

Verizon Wireless will begin selling the new Motorola Droid Turbo smartphone on Oct. 30, starting at $199.99 for a 32GB phone and $249.99 for a 64GB model with a two-year contract. The availability of the Droid Turbo, which has a 5.2-inch, 2,560-by-1,440 quad-HD AMOLED display and a high-capacity, 3,900-mAh battery that promises up to 48 […]

Verizon Wireless began including Unique Identifying Headers (UIDH) in the address information of incoming Internet data requests from Verizon customers about two years ago, and the controversy continues about whether the practice intrudes on user privacy. Critics of the practice say that UIDHs can ultimately allow Web servers to build profiles of users when their […]

T-Mobile US added 2.3 million new overall customers in the third quarter of 2014 as the company boosted revenue to $7.35 billion, an increase of 9.9 percent from the $6.68 billion in revenue posted in the same quarter in 2013. The company announced its fourth-quarter estimates in a call with analysts and journalists on Oct. […]

Fitbit’s new Surge smartwatch, which the company announced Oct. 27, is its first venture into the dedicated smartwatch marketplace, bringing Fitbit into more direct competition against companies, such as Apple, Samsung, Sony and LG. The new Surge was unveiled by the company in a blog post as a “Fitness Super Watch,” as one of three […]

The new LG G Watch R smartwatch will be available for sale in Europe in the beginning of November and will be coming to the United States soon after, while Sony’s upcoming new SmartWatch 3 can now be preordered through Verizon Wireless, with devices shipping by Oct. 30. Both watches run on Google’s Android Wear […]

For the first time in the department’s history, smartphones and tablets will be getting into the hands of roughly 34,500 New York Police Department (NYPD) officers over the next three years, thanks to $160 million in funds received through a major forfeiture from a French bank in June. The new NYPD Mobility Initiative, unveiled by […]

Android Wear, which was introduced in March, just received two key new features that make it even more important as a wearables software platform: support for in-device GPS sensors and the ability to store music so users can listen right from their devices. The new capabilities were unveiled by Kenny Stoltz, the Android Wear product […]

AT&T customers can now buy an Amazon Kindle HDX 7-inch tablet for only $49.99—half its usual price—if they buy it at the same time that they also buy an Amazon Fire smartphone under a limited time offer through Nov. 20 from AT&T. The half-price tablet deal can be arranged online through AT&T or through the […]

Luxury Smartphones for Status Seekers Starting at $6,900 By Todd R. Weiss Vertu’s New Aster Smartphone Calling it its “quintessentially English smartphone model,” Ventu recently launched the Aster phone, with its 5.1-inch solid sapphire screen, an HD display and a titanium case. Running on Android 4.4. KitKat, the phone includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon quad-core CPU, […]