The HD smartphone revolution is here. With the recent release of the LG Spectrum, Android users now have four HD (1280 x 720) smartphones from which to choose: the Spectrum, Samsung Galaxy Nexus,  HTC Rezound and LG Nitro HD. Not all HD smartphone displays are created equal, however, so we decided to evaluate each phone’s panel for brightness, viewing angles, color accuracy, sharpness and outdoor visibility. Which HD smartphone display came out on top? Read on to find out.

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Cellphone shoppers generally judge wireless carriers based on their networks’ speed, size and—above all—reliability. But reliability extends to customer service. Will your carrier be able to help when something goes wrong? And can you get your questions answered in a timely fashion?

With that in mind, we performed a survey of the country’s four largest service providers—AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless—to determine which offers the best service and which could use some lessons in customer appreciation. Read the rest of this entry »

Best and Worst Carrier Customer Service

• Introduction and How We Tested
• AT&T
• Sprint
• T-Mobile
• Verizon
• Final Verdict

Don’t like the way your smartphone works? Maybe you want more control arranging the app icons on your iPhone. Or you want to get rid of the obscure airG Chat social network app that Virgin Mobile installs on your Google Android phone and won’t let you remove.

Today, you’re free to hack around those restrictions. And you don’t always need to be a tech whiz. With some iPhones, for example, you have been able to visit the website jailbreakme.com with your phone’s browser and just press a button. After that, it’s “jailbroken,” and you can install apps from anywhere, not just Apple’s App Store.

These changes aren’t always purely for fun. Some deaf people have hacked Android phones, for example, to allow them to make video calls using a sign-language interpreting service called SVRS.

But soon, all that could be illegal if jailbreaking is ruled to be copyright violation. Today is the last day that the U.S. Copyright Office is accepting input on whether it should continue allowing you to jailbreak your phone. Technically, doing so could violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, a strict law against “circumvention of technological measures applied to copyrighted works.” Read the rest of this entry »

Motorola’s Christy Wyatt sounds pretty sick of hearing about the supposed airtight security of iOS. In fact, the senior vice president and general manager for Motorola’s fairly young enterprise-mobile-device unit argues that Apple’s platform provides a “false sense of security.” That’s not an easy argument to make at a time Google continues to pull malware-infested apps from the Android Market, but Wyatt insists that Motorola is doing more than the competition to make Android devices enterprise-friendly.

During an hour-long roundtable discussion with a small group of reporters, Wyatt also sounded off on NFC’s chicken-and-egg problem; potentially designing rugged tablets for vertical markets; and what Android needs to do to be more competitive with the iPad. She also shed some light on why it takes so long for Android devices to get the latest software updates.

Read on for the highlights.

Between hotel costs, airfare, and dining out, overseas travel can get expensive quickly. But nothing can empty your wallet faster than calling home from halfway across the globe. It’s not uncommon for travelers to unknowingly rack up more than $1,000 in international roaming charges. Then there are the data costs; you could pay as much as $20,480 for one gigabyte of data.

Thankfully, there are several options to help keep your calling and surfing needs from draining your bank account. International calling plans—along with pre-paid and rental SIM cards—can save you money, but they require a compatible handset. Rental cell phones, mobile hotspots, and VoIP services will also save you some cash, but they have some drawbacks as well. Read on to find out which option is best for you.

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You know that sinking feeling. That sense of desperation when your gadget’s battery meter says 10 percent . . . or less. Without your phone—or tablet or laptop—you’re lost, unable to work, unable to communicate with loved ones. And the really scary thing is that the lower the battery meter gets, the faster it seems to deplete.

Over the past few years we’ve seen some pretty amazing advancements in mobile technology. There’s now quad-core processors inside tablets, high-def displays for phones and don’t forget 4G. Meanwhile, laptops are now so thin you can practically floss with them, but there’s less and less room for beefy batteries.

So what are the juice-starved masses supposed to do, walk around with a power cord hanging out of their pocket? No, but there are plenty of small tweaks that can make a big difference. “When I pick up some of my friends’ phones, I look at all of the stuff that they’ve downloaded once and don’t realize that it runs a background service,” said Rob Chandhok, senior vice president of software strategy for Qualcomm. “You get to a point where you have to get some help in managing that.”

To help you squeeze more juice out of your gear, we’ve rounded up dozens of tips and broken them down by platform, including Android, iOS, Mac and Windows. The good news is that tech companies aren’t just leaving users to fend for themselves.

• Top 10 Battery Saving Tips for Android
• 10 Ways to Increase iPhone / iPad’s Battery Life
• 10 Tips to Extend Your Mac Laptop’s Battery Life
• 11 Ways to Increase Your Windows 7 Laptop’s Battery Life

It’s not quite Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it’s pretty close. Software developers and corporations are working on ways to give your smartphone split personalities: one dedicated to work and the other to play. The BYOD, or “bring your own device,” movement—along with the “open” nature of Android—is helping make dual-purpose smartphones a growing trend.

One of the benefits of BYOD is reduced overhead for companies because they can minimize or eliminate hardware and wireless plan costs. Encouraging employees to use their own smartphones can also reduce calls to the IT department, as employees generally have a better understanding of their personal devices than corporate-issued ones.

But with those benefits come significant risks. Read the rest of this entry »

In the rush to embrace all things touchscreen, most of today’s top smartphones don’t have physical keyboards. For many users, however, touchscreen keyboards — even those with strong haptic feedback — just don’t offer the speed, accuracy, and springy tactile feedback that they crave. If you prefer the feel of real keys beneath your fingers as they fly across the keyboard, read on to find out which keyboard-equipped smartphones are worth your consideration.

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Motorola Droid 4 (Verizon)

When we got our hands on the Motorola Droid 4 at CES, we gushed that the Android phone boasts the best keyboard we've seen on a slider. The phone features a 5-row keyboard with pleasing tactile feedback and edge-lit keys.

The Droid 4 comes equipped with a 1.2-GHz processor, an 8-MP camera with 1080p video capture and 16GB of memory. The phone can also connect to Verizon's 4G LTE network, unlike its predecessor, the Droid 3. Although its 540×960p display isn't as sharp as those on the latest HD phones, and its qHD screen offers somewhat limited viewing angles, the Droid 4's excellent physical keyboard should go a long way toward making up for these deficiencies.

The Droid 4 will be available on February 10 for $199.

View Our Droid 4 Hands-on Video

• Top 10 Smartphones
• The Best Smartphones of 2011
• Motorola Droid 4 Hands-on Video: Best Slider Keyboard Ever

The Droid RAZR Maxx from Motorola is already the longest-lasting 4G smartphone currently on the market by a wide margin, enduring 8 hours and 25 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test (continous surfing over 4G at 40 percent brightness). However, by implementing our top 10 battery saving tips for Android phones, we were able to extend that time to a whopping 10 hours and 8 minutes of speedy 4G LTE goodness.

Follow these steps to Maxx out your Droid RAZR Maxx.

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Upgrading to iOS 5 delivered a lot of powerful new capabilities to the iPhone and iPad, from Notification Center to iCloud. But these features can take a toll on battery life. There are plenty of other power-hogging settings and activities you need to be aware of in order to make your device last. Admittedly, applying all these battery tips can make your iDevice rather dull. Our advice? Choose the fixes presented below that you can live with.

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Top 10 iOS Battery Savers

• Tips 1 through 5
• Tips 6 through 10