Software, Smartphone | featured news

The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company....

The Linux-based Ubuntu operating system is to work on smartphones, allowing users to run full-scale programs on handsets designed for Android.

Google Maps have found their way back to the iPhone. The world's most popular online mapping system returned late Wednesday with the release of the Google Maps' iPhone app.

App developers have turned cellphones and tablets into powerful tools, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry but making huge sacrifices in the process.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can't afford to be wrong about Windows 8. On Thursday in New York, Microsoft unveiled a dramatic overhaul of its ubiquitous Windows operating system. It will go on sale Friday, fused into more than 1,000 PCs and other devices. If it flops, the failure will reinforce perceptions that Microsoft is falling behind competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon as its stranglehold on personal computers becomes less relevant in an era of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Even if you’re not planning to upgrade your iPhone to the iPhone 5, that doesn’t mean you have to sit out the smartphone refresh fun. Apple’s going to release the next version of its operating system, iOS 6, to the public Wednesday, which will come with an improved version of Siri, a new mapping app and calling features, such as the ability to set a “do not disturb” period.

This is an entirely stunning statistic: Apple's iPhone sales are now worth more than all of Microsoft: One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer.

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.

Far from throwing their existing users under a truck marked Windows Phone 8, Microsoft have promised an update that will keep their handsets up to date, and add functionality to their smartphones. It's just a shame they didn't do very well in telling the world that bit of the Windows Phone story.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced features of its upcoming Windows Phone 8 mobile OS, including built-in turn-by-turn navigation, a secure "wallet" system, a new, faster browser and live tiles that can be custom sized to better fit the Start screen. Perhaps most importantly, the company revealed that the next wave of Windows Phones will really be Windows Phones, because when Windows Phone 8 comes out, it will share a "common core" of software with Windows 8.