Smartphones with Intel-based x86 chips aren’t dead yet. Intel may have stopped making Atom chips for smartphones, but a partner is keeping that effort alive. Chinese chip maker Spreadtrum is still making x86 smartphone chips based on the Atom architecture named Airmont. The company will ship a powerful eight-core Atom variant for smartphones in the…
In 2010, Apple’s Steve Jobs welcomed the post-PC era when it introduced the iPad. Now in 2017, PCs are still around and on their way to recovery, while slate-style tablets are struggling. Apple remains the top tablet seller, but its shipments are diving, and Android tablets aren’t as hot as they used to be. Unlike…
Almost a year after SAP teamed with Apple to develop business applications for smartphones and tablets, the German enterprise software developer is ready to unveil the first fruits of their partnership. On March 30, it plans to release the first version of SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, a tool to enable businesses to integrate…
BARCELONA — The big themes of Mobile World Congress (MWC) so far center around the internet of things, artificial intelligence and 5G wireless. But you can add in more than 35 new smartphones and a smattering of products and services related to just about anything in wireless communications and mobility. There are 100,000 visitors at…
A cellular base station with 128 antennas may soon help some mobile operators serve many more subscribers in crowded areas. Nokia demonstrated the technology, called massive MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) with Sprint at Mobile World Congress on Monday. It’s one of several types of advances in LTE that could eventually come into play with…
The annual Game Developers Conference is underway this week in San Francisco and you can expect a lot of virtual reality news. And it’s HTC first out of the gate with a bevy of Vive updates—mostly concerning developers, but at least one very important new program for consumers. Let’s start with the latter, as it’s…
Lenovo says it wants to redefine Android tablets, but you won’t find anything spectacular or innovative in its new Tab 4 tablets. The four new tablets, which come in 8- and 10- inch screens, are incremental upgrades to the Tab 3 devices. The new tablets are faster, have better screens and deliver better special effects…
The smartphone world will be rocked with MediaTek’s new 10-core Helio X30 chip, which will bring premium features like Google’s DayDream virtual reality platform to Android handsets with prices starting at US$300. The Helio X30 has the most cores of all smartphone chips, and that makes it blazing fast. With the chip, low-cost Android handsets…
BARCELONA — Samsung promoted its smartphone device testing and upgraded safety review processes during a major press event prior to Mobile World Congress on Sunday, almost without mentioning the disastrous Galaxy Note7 by name. That was the infamous smartphone that Samsung recalled globally — to the tune of 3 million devices — after lithium ion…
Lenovo is working with Amazon to get the Alexa voice assistant into a range of Motorola smartphones, and in the process, looking to depose Google’s voice assistant technology. The partners will first focus on developing an Alexa “Mod,” a block that will attach to a Moto Z modular handset. The companies will then integrate Alexa…