Electronics, Cell Phone | featured news

Nokia Oyj won an almost two-year patent dispute with Apple Inc., in a settlement that awards a one-time payment and royalties to the Finnish handset maker. Nokia rose as much as 4.1 percent in Helsinki trading. The agreement will bolster the Devices & Services unit’s second- quarter profitability, Espoo, Finland-based Nokia said in a statement today. The details of the contract, under which Apple will pay an undisclosed sum and royalties for the term of the agreement, are confidential, Nokia said.

It's great news for many that Apple is offering free email, contacts and calendars, but it irks those people who have recently paid the $99 annual fee for the MobileMe service. Here's what they need to know, and what Apple hasn't yet explained.

AT&T has announced the first cities that will get its 4G LTE service. These cities, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio, will see AT&T's version of LTE this summer. Verizon's LTE service, which launched in real (non-beta testing) form late last year, though sans handsets, has vowed to get its LTE service into 175 markets...

The argument that mobile phones are bad for health was maybe due a reprise, so expect at least a round of calls for more research on their impact in the coming days, and possibly for outright bans in some circumstances (like schools). The renewed concern though is not just about mobile phones. WiFi is now in the frame. The panic button was pressed by an influential European committee that has compared the current situation of mobiles and WiFi to previous experiences of tobacco and asbestos.

"Mango," the next major update to the Windows Phone mobile operating system, will include several notable enhancements for consumers, including turn-by-turn navigation, built-in barcode scanning, voice-to-text speech input, on-device podcast support and a music identification service similar to the popular mobile application Shazam, but available within Bing. Mango, also known as Windows Phone 7.5, is due out this fall.

The first numbers are in, and it looks like the Galaxy S II is a sales success. Sammy has sold nothing less than 120,000 units the first three days!

A prototype flexible smart phone made of electronic paper has been created by Canadian researchers.

Microsoft said its Bing search engine and mapping service will be the default options for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices.

Research In Motion shares were sharply lower Friday, after the company issued a steep first-quarter earnings warning late Thursday, heightening fears that the BlackBerry maker is buckling amid competition from Apple and Google.

Motorola Mobility this afternoon posted better-than-expected Q1 results. For the quarter, the company reported revenue of $3 billion and a non-GAAP loss of 8 cents a share; the Street had expected $2.84 billion and a loss of 12 cents a share. The company said it sold 9.3 million mobile devices in the quarter, including 4.1 million smart phones, and more than 250,000 tablets. Revenues were up 22% from a year ago.