Mobile, Cell Phone | featured news

Apple Inc. (AAPL) sent out invitations to a Sept. 12 product event in San Francisco, where the company is expected to unveil a redesigned iPhone. “It’s almost here,” Cupertino, California-based Apple said in the invitation, whose image includes a ‘5’ in shadow, possibly in reference to the new product’s name. At the event, set for 10 a.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple will introduce a new iPhone with a larger screen and thinner body, two people with knowledge of the plans said in July.

An interstate drug trafficker hauling a motorhome filled with marijuana isn’t the most sympathetic defendant. But a federal court’s declaration that Melvin Skinner pretty much should’ve known his pre-paid cellphone could be tracked via GPS — and therefore cops didn’t require a warrant to track him — has repercussions that privacy advocates say deserve your attention.

A bevy of big-name retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best-Buy Co. and Target Corp., are teaming up to create a company that will give customers another way to make purchases: with their cellphones.

More details about the presumably imminent release of the next iPhone have emerged, if the typically anonymous spate of Internet sources are to be believed.

Nokia agreed to sell its software-development business Qt to information-technology firm Digia, as the ailing Finnish handset maker continues to divest assets in a bid to return to profitability.

AT&T is shutting down its second-generation, or 2G, wireless networks by 2017 as it continues to upgrade its systems to faster technology and better use its limited airwaves.

California Friday legalized hands-free texting and email while driving using voice-operated technology, with Governor Jerry Brown signing Assembly Bill 1536 into law. It takes effect Jan. 1.

Since clinching the Republican nomination two months ago, Romney advisers have significantly stepped up their digital campaign, hoping to catch up with President Obama in an arena he dominated in 2008. Romney has hired data analysts and mobile-app developers from places including Google and Apple, unwilling to concede the traditionally liberal-leaning Silicon Valley talent pool.

Federal, state, and local law enforcement requested about 1.3 million cell phone records from wireless carriers in 2011. It's the first time cell phone carriers have reported on the staggering surveillance numbers. Millions of innocent Americans are having their privacy invaded via the dragnet requests.

Nokia’s latest smartphones may be chasing the ubiquity of iPhones and Androids, but the Finnish phone maker hopes that vivid colors, simple form factor and the “instinctive” user interface on its latest Lumia range will help claw back thinning margins and faltering profits. The trick is to appeal to trend-setters, much like Apple‘s iMacs first did nearly 15 year ago. Are its designers and managers living in a parallel universe, or can they pull it off?