Mobile Miscellany: week of May 13th, 2013

Mobile Miscellany: week of May 13th, 2013

If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a new handset from Sony to the US and UK, updates to Nokia Creative Suite and three new (and very inexpensive) smartphones from Blu Products. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of May 13th, … [Read more...]

Sprint closes deal to buy US Cellular spectrum, adds 420,000 customers

Sprint closes deal to buy US Cellular spectrum, adds 420,000 customers

Sprint was clearly hungry for capacity when it bought spectrum from US Cellular last fall, and it's at last getting its fill -- some of it, at least -- by closing the deal today. The carrier has officially taken possession of 20MHz in airwaves across Midwestern cities like Champaign, Chicago and South Bend, as well as 10MHz in St. Louis. The customer handover isn't quite as grandiose as was mentioned in November, however: Sprint is ultimately … [Read more...]

BlackBerry software chief on updates and BB10 for healthcare and financial services

BlackBerry software chief on updates and BB10 for healthcare and financial services

During BlackBerry Live this week we got to speak with Vivek Bhardwaj, BlackBerry's Head of Software, about the future of BB10. In light of the the platform's first major software update rolling out to its devices, we asked about the plans for future releases. Bhardwaj told us that the plan is for them to come at a regular cadence of one major code update per year, with other, incremental updates for specific devices sprinkled in as needed. A … [Read more...]

Google Glass ‘prescription edition’ makes a cameo at Google I/O

Google Glass 'prescription edition' makes a cameo at Google I/O

Google I/O is always full of surprises, and we came across yet another elusive bit of hardware on the show floor today: Google Glass "prescription edition". No, it's not actually called that (we made up the name), but what you're looking at is definitely Glass that's been neatly integrated with a pair of prescription glasses -- in fact, it looks a lot like the version of Glass that Google recently mentioned on its blog. We don't really know … [Read more...]

Sonic the Hedgehog arrives on Android, headed exclusively to Nintendo on the console side

Sonic the Hedgehog arrives on Android, headed exclusively to Nintendo on the console side

USSR and the USA. Batman and Joker. Christoph Waltz and... well, everyone. It's pretty tough to look at the world's best-known rivalries and exclude one of history's finest -- that being, of course, Sonic and Mario. The gritty battle between Nintendo and Sega gave fans on both sides plenty to converse about over the years, and one might say that the video game industry as a whole benefited from the back-and-forth. Now that Sega is a shell of its … [Read more...]

Telus agrees to acquire Mobilicity for $380 million, despite Canada’s push for increased mobile competition

Telus agrees to acquire Mobilicity for $380 million, despite Canada's push for increased mobile competition

Regulators in Canada have been making a push to enhance competition in the mobile space, with Industry Minister Christian Paradis going so far as to lay out a set of rules for the nation's upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction that he promises will give citizens "more choices and more access at better prices." Granted, that ideal world only works if the carriers can stay afloat long enough to bid. According to William Aziz, Mobilicity's own chief … [Read more...]