Gadgets, Smartphone | featured news

With only sporadic access to text messaging and the Web, many in Hurricane Sandy's no-power zone quickly cobbled together systems for passing along information and arranging when and where to meet.

Microsoft is working with Asian suppliers to test its own smartphone design, suggesting the computer-software giant is increasingly adopting a similar business model to that of rival Apple.

A new study finds that teens who had access to the Internet on their cellphones were more than twice as likely to engage in sex with a person they met online compared with those without access to the Internet on their phones.

Hurricane Sandy may have stopped Google's Android event, but it couldn't stop the Google website. There will be no swanky event in downtown New York City, but Google's Android team has taken to a blog post to announce the latest Android devices, including the long-rumored Nexus 4 phone made by LG and Nexus 10 tablet made by Samsung.

Blackberry is still a very respected brand across the developing world - but it is undeniable that it has lost its cachet in the US and Europe. Turning that around and pulling the company out of its death spiral all depends on a new operating system, Blackberry 10.

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.

The phone once coveted by the elite and the powerful is becoming an object of ridicule as Androids and iPhones corner the smartphone market.

Google wants smartphones and wearable computers to be integrated instead of intrusive, allowing us to ask them to do things without ever lifting a finger... If people are discussing the migratory patterns of monarch butterflies over dinner, for instance, phones will be able to hear that and present a map, she said. Or when you meet someone, your glasses could show you the person’s LinkedIn profile and your last e-mail exchange. “It’s the integration of the digital and physical worlds so no longer are they two relatively separate spheres where you have to make the connection between them,” Ms. Maes said.

Thousands of teenagers who can't take their cellphones to school have another option, courtesy of a burgeoning industry of sorts in always-enterprising New York City: paying a dollar a day to leave it in a truck that's parked nearby....

Research In Motion shares rise in after-hours trading as the maker of the Blackberry posts a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.