adeelarshad82 writes "Wal-Mart has announced that it will sell a post-paid wireless service powered by T-Mobile, which will be targeted at families. Users who sign up for Wal-Mart Family Mobile service will not have to sign a contract. The first line will cost $45 per month, and each additional line will cost $25 per month. Each line will have unlimited talk and text, so overage charges will not be an issue. For data access, each phone will come pre-loaded with a 100MB card known as a WebPak, which is shared among all lines on an account. Data does not expire, and refill cards can be purchased in Wal-Mart stores or online. The WebPak can also be used to make international calls at 5 cents per minute to any landline number in about a dozen countries."

crimeandpunishment writes "Get ready for 'super Wi-Fi.' If the FCC works out the last details of new spectrum rules, they'll open up the so-called 'white spaces'... the vacant airwaves between broadcast TV channels ... for wireless broadband connections. If the plan goes through, it will lead to Wi-Fi with longer range and stronger power. The stumbling blocks have included concerns about interference with TV signals and wireless microphones, but the FCC plans to vote next week on rules meant to resolve those issues."

angry tapir writes "Researchers at Fujitsu Laboratories have developed a wireless charging system that they say can simultaneously charge a variety of portable gadgets over a distance of several centimeters without the need for cables. The system, which will be detailed at a technical conference in Japan this week, could begin appearing in mobile phones and other products as soon as 2012, the company said. Fujitsu's system is based on magnetic resonance in which power can be wirelessly sent between two coils that are tuned to resonate at the same frequency."

An anonymous reader writes "A 15" laptop from Acer that is currently in production features dual-multitouch displays, one for the main display and one as the keyboard/mouse. It has a 2.67GHz Intel Core i5 processor and runs Windows 7. No release date or pricing information yet as this unit is still heavily in production/testing phases." Replacing a keyboard with a touchscreen sounds like a mixed blessing to me, but not everyone agrees. Witness the (great big) Kno dual-touchscreen e-reader, and the Toshiba Libretto W100 dual-screen mini-laptop, now shipping in Japan.

mikesd81 writes "According to Gartner research firm, Google's Android smartphone operating system will in a single year have leapfrogged competitors like Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry and Microsoft Windows phones in global popularity, and will challenge Nokia to become the world's most popular mobile OS by 2014. Gartner says that the explosive growth of Android will give it 17.7% of world wide sales by the end of 2010. ... Analysts also say there are number of things that could derail Android's growth, including Oracle's lawsuit over Java patents."

indogiree writes "Engadget reports that India has just awarded the manufacturing contract to HCL Technologies. The first shipment will supposedly only contain the 7-inch model and is set to arrive on January 10. It's unclear if the $35 price has stuck or whether India's been successful in plans to drive the price down to $10 eventually with the help of large orders and government subsidies. HCL Technologies plans to initially produce 100,000 units. Among the key features of this India-based tablet include 2GB of RAM, web-conferencing, PDF reader, unzip, WiFi, camera and USB connectivity."

Ponca City, We love you writes "The Mercury News reports that former hacker Jonathan Zdziarski has been tapped by law-enforcement agencies nationwide to teach them just how much information is stored in iPhones — and how to get it. 'These devices are people's companions today,' says Zdziarski. 'They're not mobile phones anymore. They organize people's lives. And if you're doing something criminal, something about it is probably going to go through that phone.' For example, every time an iPhone user closes out of the built-in mapping application, the phone snaps a screenshot and stores it. Savvy law-enforcement agents armed with search warrants can use those snapshots to see if a suspect is lying about whereabouts during a crime."

Brad Linder of Liliputing posted an interesting analysis today about Google's reluctance to endorse Android for tablets. Linder argues that while there may be legitimate concern that Android just isn't polished enough for devices without phone access (because some apps need it), it would be smart for Google to segregate the apps themselves, so users can simply know which apps will work on Wi-Fi-only tablets. But from Google's perspective, he observes, "pushing a version of Android that isn't exclusively for phones could be all it takes for Chrome OS to be dead on arrival."

nk497 writes "A Cambridge-based firm has come up with a way to bring touch interfaces to phones without touchscreens. According to TouchDevice, the system uses the microphone to turn any surface on a handset into a touch-sensitive input panel by analysing sound signatures. 'For example, where icons are displayed on a non-touch screen display, you could tap on there and it would activate the application,' said founder Mike Bradley. TouchDevice believes there are two markets for the technology: firstly to augment input potential in touchcreen smartphones, and secondly as a way of adding touch to 'dumb' displays. The system should be making its way into devices by early next year."

eldavojohn writes "Bloomberg Businessweek has an article of interest resulting from a three-hour interview with Foxconn founder Terry Gou (single page), whose company manufactures 137,000 iPhones a day. The article profiles Gou's rise to Foxconn but also offers some interesting tidbits you might not know. On why he is not opening factories in the United States, Gou frankly states, 'If I can automate in the US and ship to China, cost-wise it can still be competitive. But I worry America has too many lawyers. I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day.' If you're interested in how a modern day Henry Ford thinks, you can read the rest about the man steering the ship of the world's largest producer of electronics components and China's largest exporter. This unprecedented transparency was part of an agreement Gou made with his customers during his delayed response to an increasing number of Foxconn suicides."

cgriffin21 writes "Apple is being praised for loosening of some of the restrictions in its Application Developer Program license agreement that open the door for app developers to work in Flash for the Apple iPhone, iPad and other devices. And no one is happier about the change than Flash-maker Adobe itself. They wrote, 'This is great news for developers and we're hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple's restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.'" Apple also received praise from Google over their reversal, which may have been prompted by an FTC probe. Reader Stoubalou adds that Apple shed more light on the app review process by publishing a list of guidelines (PDF) the violation of which may get an app rejected from the App Store.

Barence writes "Sony has launched a new range of touchscreen eBook readers — and is breathing new life into the concept of public library books. The readers offer support for free eBook loans from local authority libraries. If you're lucky enough to be a member of a local library supporting the service (50 have signed up so far in the UK) you'll be able to visit its website, tap your library card number in and borrow any book in the eBook catalog, for free, for a period of 14 or 21 days. The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."

unts writes "UK chip designer ARM [Note: check out this short history of ARM chips in mobile devices contributed by an anonymous reader] today released the first details of its latest project, codenamed 'Eagle.' It has branded the new design Cortex-A15, which ARM reckons demonstrates the jump in performance from its predecessors, the A8 and A9. ARM's new chip design can scale to 16 cores, clock up to 2.5GHz, and, the company claims, deliver a 5x performance increase over the A8: 'It's like taking a desktop and putting it in your pocket,' said [VP of processor marketing — Eric Schorn], and it was clear that he considers this new design to be a pretty major shot across the bows of Intel and AMD. In case we were in any doubt, he turned the knife further: 'The exciting place for software developer graduates to go and hunt for work is no longer the desktop.'"

I'm Not There (1956) writes "Broadcom, the world's largest manufacturer of Wi-Fi transceivers, open sources its Linux device drivers. This is a big win for Linux users, as there are a lot of users that face Wi-Fi problems when they use Linux on their laptops. With these device drivers now open source, distributions can ship them out-of-the-box, and that means no Linux Wi-Fi problems for new devices and upcoming distributions at all."

cgriffin21 writes "T-Mobile Thursday finally confirmed what it's been hinting at for a while: The HTC G2, T-Mobile's HSPA+ successor to the HTC G1, is on the way. It'll be an Android 2.2 phone and run on T-Mobile's HSPA+ data network, which while not a 4G network offers what T-Mobile is calling 4G-like speeds up to 21 Mbps. T-Mobile hasn't confirmed pricing or exact availability but said it would open the G2 to presales for existing customers at the end of September."

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year Apple caused major upset among developers by updating the iPhone developer program license with clause 3.3.1. It basically stopped the use of cross-platform compilers, meaning Adobe Flash could not be used to develop an app for the App Store. The move also put into doubt which other development platforms could be used and generally caused a lot of confusion. Apple has just significantly relaxed that policy and allowed for the use of development tools, as long as 'the resulting apps do not download any code.'"

mspohr writes "Just hours after Apple released iOS 4.1 to great fanfare, hardware hackers found a way to jailbreak devices that run the new operating system. More surprising still, there doesn't appear to be anything Steve Jobs can do to stop them in the near future. The exploit in the boot ROM of iOS devices was first announced by iPhone Dev-Team member pod2g. It was soon confirmed by other hackers, who said that because the exploit targets such a low-level part of the operating system, Apple won't be able to stop jailbreakers without making significant hardware changes."

coondoggie writes "This month the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will begin looking for technology that will let wireless communications work through the most extreme interference. From the article: 'The CommEx program will assess next generation and beyond jamming threats and then develop advanced interference suppression and avoidance technologies to successfully communicate in the presence of severe, traditional, and novel types of interference that are orders-of-magnitude more severe than what are currently addressed by the most advanced systems, DARPA stated.'"

bsk_cw writes "According to Computerworld's Serdar Yegulalp, there has been a lot of talk about whether the iPad will take the place of the netbook — or, in fact, whether it will eat into the market share for more mainstream desktop and laptop computers. But, he continues, the iPad has a long way to go before it becomes a netbook killer — if only because it has created a space all its own."

An anonymous reader writes "Following Qualcomm, Samsung is also close to launching a new smartphone processor with two cores. Based on ARM architecture, the new Orion processor promises five times the graphics performance of current chips and to enable 1080p video recording and playback. Next year, it seems, dual-core smart phones will be all the rage. Apple, which is generally believed to have the most capable processor in the market today, may be under pressure to roll out a dual-core iPhone next year as well."