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.

The Technology Behind the Displays

The LG Spectrum and LG Nitro HD both use True HD AH-IPS technology. IPS, or in-plane switching, is a technology that improves upon the limitations of LCD displays — namely limited viewing angles and a poor color reproduction —  by placing all of the liquid crystals in the same plane (hence the name, “in-plane switching”). An electric current runs through the liquid crystals horizontally (rather than vertically, as in other LCD displays), giving the display a faster response time and accurate color reproduction from all viewing angles.

The advanced high performance IPS (AH-IPS) used by the Spectrum and Nitro HD improves upon regular IPS technology by offering better color accuracy, allowing for easier transmission of light (which lowers power consumption), and increases the number of pixels. The result is a more vivid and sharp display. The True HD, in this case, refers to the fact that the screens offer a 1280 x 720 resolution.

The HTC Rezound, on the other hand, uses Super LCD (SLCD) technology to give it an edge in the number of pixels it can display per inch. In addition, SLCD is said to offer truer blacks than other LCD displays and warmer colors than AMOLED displays.

Last — but certainly not least — is the Super AMOLED technology used in the Galaxy Nexus. Samsung’s proprietary Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (AMOLED) technology uses luminescent organic materials, which emit light when stimulated by an electric current. Because AMOLED displays use light-emitting diodes to create light rather than backlighting (as in LCD displays), they supposedly offer a number of advantages over LCD, including lower power consumption, a higher contrast ratio, wider viewing angles, and faster response times.

Round 1: Brightness

When we compared each of the phones for brightness using a light meter, the difference between LCD and AMOLED displays became quickly apparent. Although LCD supposedly offers brighter colors than AMOLED, the Galaxy Nexus’s 340-lux Super AMOLED display outshines its competitors’ LCD displays. The LG Spectrum matches the the Galaxy Nexus at 340 lux, while the LG Nitro HD’s 324-lux display comes close. The HTC Rezound offers the dimmest display, registering only 278 lux.

At 340 lux apiece, the LG Spectrum and Samsung Galaxy Nexus are tied for display brightness. 

Winner: LG Spectrum/Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Round 2: Viewing Angles

When testing the phones’ viewing angles, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’s Super AMOLED display came out on top. Among the HD smartphones, only the Galaxy Nexus retained the vividness and brightness of its colors when viewed from the side. The True HD LCD displays of the LG Spectrum and LG Nitro HD fared almost as well, while the HTC Rezound’s Super LCD display offered poor viewing angles. 

When viewed at a 45-degree angle to the right, the colors on Galaxy Nexus remained vivid and true. By contrast, the LG Spectrum’s normally vivid True HD IPS display became slightly washed out, as did the LG Nitro HD to a lesser extent. The HTC Rezound fared the worst when viewed at a 45-degree angle, its colors becoming muted and the screen becoming noticeably darker.

The Galaxy Nexus looks just as good when viewed from a 45-degree angle to the left. The Spectrum looks much better than it does on those on the right, with true colors that are just as vivid as when viewed head on. The Rezound, on the other hand, looks even worse that it did from the right. The already dim display became even darker, and the normally vivid reds of its home screen appeared washed out. The LG Nitro HD, like the Galaxy Nexus, looks just as good from the left side as it does from the front.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Round 3: Color Accuracy

We first compared the color accuracy of the HD phones using a tiger wallpaper. At first blush, the colors on the HD smartphones look identical. Upon closer inspection, however, subtle but important differences became noticeable.

The colors on the LG Spectrum’s True HD IPS display were dark and rich. The difference between the Spectrum and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus was most immediately apparent when looking at the tiger’s orange fur and the blue sky framing its head. On the Spectrum, the orange of the tiger’s fur appears deeper in color, closer to red than yellow. Similarly, the sky on the Spectrum is a darker shade of blue than on the Galaxy Nexus.

Looking at the close-up of the tiger on the Rezound, the colors were far less lustrous and vivid than on either the Spectrum or the Galaxy Nexus. The grey-blue sky looks similar to that on the Galaxy Nexus, and the tiger’s normally eye-popping orange fur appears muted. The stripes in the shadow on the left side of the tiger — which are visible on the Spectrum and Galaxy Nexus — can barely be seen on the Rezound.

The colors on the LG Nitro HD’s True HD IPS LCD display are lighter than on any of the other phones, giving the tiger a somewhat washed out appearance.

Winner: LG Spectrum

Round 4: Sharpness

For level of detail, the LG Nitro HD was the worst performer. Its text is grainy, and no matter how many close-up photos we took of its screen, a green distortion always appeared. The LG Spectrum, Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound, on the other hand, looked similarly crisp and clear — until we zoomed in even further.

The LG Spectrum’s 4.5-inch True HD IPS display offers a whopping 329 pixels per inch — and it shows. Even when viewed at extreme-close-up, text on the Spectrum looked crisp.

Because it uses the largest panel, the 4.7-inch Super AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus only sports 316 ppi — less than any of the other HD displays. At an extreme close-up the text still looks sharp, although there was more graininess than the Spectrum and Rezound.

The HTC Rezound’s 4.3-inch True HD IPS display boasts a staggering 342 ppi, the most pixels per inch of any of the HD displays. Unsurprisingly, text on the Rezound looked crisper than on the Spectrum, Galaxy Nexus and Nitro HD, with pleasantly bold letters and clean lines.

Although the LG Nitro HD’s 4.5-inch, 329-ppi AH-IPS display offers 329 pixels per inch — the same as the Spectrum — text on the Nitro HD appeared far more grainy than it did on any of the other displays. 

Winner: HTC Rezound. The LG Spectrum was a very close second.

Round 5: Outdoor Visibility

The visibility of the phones’ displays varied widely when viewed outdoors. The Galaxy Nexus suffered from the least amount of glare: even in sunlight, the tiger’s lustrous coat lost almost none of its luster. By comparison, the colors on the LG Spectrum and LG Nitro HD look washed out: the sky is closer to grey than blue, and the fine details of the tiger are lost. Visibility on the HTC Rezound was particularly poor outdoors — the tiger, sky and snow blend together in a grey haze.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Verdict

Though it didn’t win every round, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and its Super AMOLED display outperformed the competition overall. While the Galaxy Nexus’s 4.7-inch display isn’t as sharp as its smaller-screened competitors and the LG Spectrum’s True HD IPS display boasts slightly more vivid colors, the Nexus’s brightness, wider viewing angles, and suprerior outdoor visibility combine to give it the best HD screen on the market today. 

• Top 10 Smartphones
• LG Spectrum Review
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus Review

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.

How We Tested

To get a complete view of each carrier’s customer support options, we visited two of their brick-and-mortar stores, placed two phone calls to their tech-support hotlines and tried to connect with them via their Web services. For our tests, we used purchased phones (instead of review units) to help ensure we received genuine user experiences.

Our test beds included an AT&T Motorola Atrix 4G, a Sprint EVO 4G, a T-Mobile G2x and a Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid X. To ensure our testing was fair, we posed the same three questions to each carrier’s service representatives: “How can I tether my phone to my notebook,” “How can I upload photos from my phone to Facebook?” and “How do I improve my phone’s battery life?”

Best and Worst Carrier Customer Service

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

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.”

Software is considered to be copyrighted work, so jailbreaking your phone by changing its software could be considered “circumvention.” The penalties, at least on paper, can be severe — up to $25,000 – though it’s unlikely to go that far. “I’d say people will be more at risk of getting threatening letters from lawyers,” said Mitch Stoltz, staff attorney at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF.

Cellphone tinkerers got a reprieve in July 2010 when the U.S. Copyright Office agreed – based on input from EFF — to exempt mobile devices from the DMCA. But the exemption is temporary, and will expire later this year if the government decides not to renew it.

Even now, it applies to only “wireless telephone handsets.” It doesn’t mention iPads and other tablets, though they often run the same software as the phones. It certainly doesn’t cover other gadgets such as game consoles. In fact, Sony sued a man named George Hotz in 2011 for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3 to run additional software and for offering downloads on his website that would enable other people to do the same.

(We asked Sony on Wednesday and Thursday to comment, but they were unable to reply in time for publication. The same happened with Apple and Google.)

For that reason, EFF is asking not only for extension of the phone exemption, but also for protection for hacking tablets and game consoles. Stoltz is upbeat. “We’re pretty confident that we’ve shown that there are a lot of legal and valid reasons for jailbreaking devices,” he said.

Other groups are going further. The Free Software Foundation will ask the copyright office to exempt essentially every electronic device. Brett Smith, their license compliance engineer, was finishing the organization’s comments to the Copyright Office as we spoke to him on Thursday night. “We’ll support an exemption for as much jailbreaking as we can get,” he said. Smith declined to provide a list that would limit what they wanted covered, but he said “yes” to every item we asked about, including game consoles, tablets, PCs, PC software, home automation devices, robotic toys and TVs. Then he added home network routers and modems.

Aaron Williamson, a staff attorney at the Software Freedom Law Center, said his organization is also pushing for broad exemptions. “If you buy anything — whether that’s a phone or a computer or a tablet or a toaster — you have the right to control the software running on that device and have it do what you want it to do,” he said.

Article provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to Laptopmag.com.

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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.

Here are the highlights:

Android versus iOS Security

“There’s this sort of illusion that because the Apple App Store is curated…that they’re somehow testing for security and that you can outsource all of your security concerns to Apple,” said Wyatt. “And I think that’s a pretty false sense of security. At the end of the day, the individual responsible for security is the IT organization.”

Users Don’t Want Dual-Personality Smartphones

According to Wyatt, solutions like Enterproid that provide both a consumer and business profile on the same device are too cumbersome for users. What Motorola is doing with 3LM, a company it acquired last February, is providing a security platform that allows IT managers to create blacklists and white lists of apps, as well as enable password enforcement and remote data wipe. Wyatt said Motorola “really believed in what they were doing because they provided fine-grain device management.” HTC, LG, Sony, Pantech and Sharp also license 3LM technology.

NFC Coming to Moto Devices

In answer to a question about why Motorola has been slow to adopt near-field-communications chips in its phones, Wyatt said “you will see NFC coming out in our products in not too distant future.” She mentioned that adding NFC chips adds weight and cost to handsets, but the biggest hurdle has been the chicken-and egg issue surrounding mobile payments. With carriers, banks and other parties fighting over a piece of the pie, “the controversy around NFC between various constituents” is the biggest holdup.

Ice Cream Sandwich Helps, But Android for Tablets Still Needs Work

Wyatt attempted to explain why, if Android phones sell so well, Android tablets have flopped, noting that Google still has work to do in terms of making content consumption easier. “People see phones predominantly as communication devices that can also consume content. But people tend to see larger screens as content consumption first. The experience in terms of finding content, watching content and being able to buy it more seamlessly are all going to contribute to more adoption on the consumer side.”

The Motorola VP also seems optimistic that Android Ice Cream Sandwich will help bridge the gap between phones and tablets. “Bringing the phone and tablet ecosystems together has to be able to provide a more robust ecosystem for tablet applications. That has to be one of the promises of Ice Cream Sandwich,” Wyatt said. “That’s the hope, that by bringing these two UIs together you solve a lot of the experience gaps between the two and the ecosystem gaps between the two, and you get to more of a shared experience.”

“Life Ready” Rugged Tablets Could Be Coming

One reporter asked whether Motorola would consider making ruggedized tablets for specialized markets like healthcare and education. After all, Gorilla Glass will only take you so far. “We’ve done a franchise of phones that we refer to as Life Ready, which are a step up in terms of ruggedization,” Wyatt said. She’s referring to handsets like the Motorola Defy, which is water- and scratch-resistant, as well as dustproof. “It’s conceivable to think that you would take tablets or other screen sizes and apply the same Life Ready franchise over time.”

On Why Android Updates Take So Darn Long

Wyatt hears the complaints every day, but she also believes that most people don’t understand the real reasons why Android phones are so slow to get the latest software. According to her, skinning the OS isn’t the issue, it’s the multitude of devices available on the market. One of the benefits of Motorola releasing fewer devices is that updates should come faster. Then again, it doesn’t sound like it would hurt if Google gave device makers a little more notice.

‘When Google does a release of software they do not release it for all the different hardware versions that are supported. So hardware is by far the long pole in the tent,” Wyatt said. “They do the software for whatever phone they just shipped. The rest of the ecosystem doesn’t see it until you see it. The clock starts ticking then. So you have a product that’s in the market at the time you’re getting the code for the first time. You have multiple chipsets, multiple radio bands, multiple countries. So it’s a big machine to turn.”

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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.

1. Carrier Options

Most carriers offer reduced rates for calling abroad through special international calling plans. But before you sign up, you’ll have to make sure your phone will work where you’re traveling. There are two types of cell phone systems in wide use: CDMA and GSM. In the U.S., Sprint and Verizon Wireless use CDMA, and it’s also used in South America and most Asian countries. GSM, on the other hand, is used by AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., as well as in most of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

If your phone uses an antenna that’s compatible with your international destination, you’ll still have to make sure that it works on the radio bands used in the area. Certain GSM phones known as world phones (such as the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy S II) can support up to four radio bands, meaning they accept signals from the two GSM signals used in the U.S. as well as the two used in Europe.

Although signing up for an international calling plan with your carrier is cheaper than paying international roaming rates, it will still cost you a pretty penny. “Because of international tariffs, or whatever arrangements U.S. carriers have, it’s almost always less expensive to buy a prepaid phone in Europe to call the U.S.,” explained Consumer Reports’ Michael Gikas.

Calling the U.S. from Germany on your AT&T phone without an international plan will cost you $1.39 per minute, while data will cost $19.97 per MB of data. Under AT&T’s World Traveler plan, however, you’ll pay a $5.99 monthly fee and still pay as much as $0.99 a minute to call Germany. And with AT&T’s DataConnect Pass, you can get 50MB of data for $24.99. That’s better than the carrier’s pay-per-use costs, but still much more expensive than what you’ll pay in the U.S.: $25 for 2GB.

Verizon Wireless customers with GSM-capable phones can also take advantage of their carrier’s international plan. Standard calling rates to Italy cost $1.29 per minute. Under the company’s Global Traveler plan, you can expect to pay $0.99 per minute. Data gets the same treatment as well. Standard data rates can cost you $20.48 per MB of data. With a monthly global plan, though, you can expect to pay $30 for 50MB of data. Go over that and you’ll pay an additional $5.12 per MB. Yikes.

2. SIM Cards

Renting a SIM card is a viable option that can save you more money than roaming fees and most international calling plans. Sprint and Verizon offer only a small selection of SIM-enabled phones that can be used overseas, but all of AT&T and T-Mobile’s handsets use SIM cards.

To install a rental card, you’ll first have to call your carrier and request a SIM unlock code. If you’ve had your phone for more than 90 days and your account is in good standing, your carrier should provide you with the code. Don’t meet those requirements, and you won’t get it.

Both prepaid and pay-as-you-go SIM cards let you make voice calls and provide access to data from your own phone without having to pay onerous long distance fees. Companies such as Telestial, Truphone, and XCom Global let you purchase or rent international SIM cards for as low as $5 a card. Beyond that, you’ll pay the companies’ price-per-minute charges.

Telestial, for instance, charges $5 for its Passport Lite Travel SIM card with $5 of calling credit. Calling the U.S. from the U.K. will run you $0.99 per minute, but received calls in France, Italy, and the U.K are free. Sending a text will cost you a bit more: $0.79. Data runs $0.79 per MB.

Truphone’s cards will cost $29.99 with a $15 starter credit, and the company charges users $0.10 a minute for calls from the U.K. to landlines and cell phones in the U.S. You’ll pay more for incoming calls: $0.17 per minute. Texts will cost you $0.08 to send, but receiving them is free. Data costs $0.15 per MB.

You can also rent local SIM cards from the country you’ll be visiting, explains Ken Grunski, president of global retail sales at Telestial. And while he admits that getting a SIM card in the U.K. may be easier and cheaper than Telestial’s service, Grunski says that picking up a card in most other countries will be more expensive.

The downside to getting a rental SIM card, Gikas says, is that you’ll have to provide the SIM’s number to anyone you expect to be in contact with, since it will differ from your phone’s normal number. You can also expect many of your phone’s features, including e-mail access, to be disabled when the rental card is installed. Most phones’ clocks will also stop working properly when a rental SIM is installed, although resetting them manually will fix that.

3. VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol services such as Skype and Vonage can also provide travelers with a cheap and easy way to get in touch with their relatives back home. “Our general advice is that services such as Skype are definitely less expensive… for making international calls anyway you look at it,” Gikas said.

With Skype, calls to landlines or cell phones in the U.S. cost 2.3 cents per minute on a pay-as-you-go plan or $2.99 per month. Text messaging costs 11.2 cents per text. Skype’s Unlimited World plan lets you call North America, as well as four other countries around the world, for $13.99, and calling another Skype user is free no matter where you are.

Vonage offers similar services through its Vonage World Plan. For $25.99 a month, you can add a mobile extension to your Vonage home number that can then be used to make free calls from anywhere to all U.S. land and mobile lines. Vonage-to-Vonage calls are free.

The problem is that VoIP services require a data connection. And finding free Wi-Fi access while abroad can be tough. That’s why it pays to rent a mobile hotspot that you can pair with your existing smartphone.

4. Rental Phones

If your phone doesn’t accept SIM cards or use the same radio bands as the country you’re visiting, you may want to look into renting an international phone. Companies such as Telestial and Tep Wireless rent out smartphones for a predetermined amount of time and charge you significantly reduced calling rates.

With Tep Wireless, you can rent a phone for five days at a rate of $45 and pay as low as $0.04 per minute for calls to the U.S. Tep can also set you up with an unlimited data connection for $41.30 for five days. That’s a pretty good deal. Telestial’s services will cost you $19 for a basic phone with calls to U.S. landlines and cell phones costing $0.99 per minute. All received calls are free. You won’t get data or Bluetooth with this phone, though the company does offer other handsets that include both.

5. Mobile Hotspots

If you’re traveling for business and want data access on your laptop and/or smartphone, a mobile hotspot is the way to go. Both Tep Wireless and XCom Global rent mobile hotspots and charge based on the MB you use. A standard hotspot rental through Tep Wireless for a trip to France, for example, will cost you $56.33 for the unit and five days worth of data at 150MB a day. You can also add 100MB of data and enable Skype calling for an additional $5.95 a day. If you’d like, Tep can send your hotspot to any destination in Europe for $14.95

With XCom Global, you can rent a hotspot with unlimited data access for up to five devices at a rate of $14.95 per day. USB modems are also available. If you order within 10 days or less of your trip, you’ll have to cough up an additional $29.99 for shipping. Order before that and shipping is free. If you plan on traveling across Europe, the company can also provide you with a European SIM for the hotspot.

Choose Your Connection

No matter how you decide to connect, expect to pay more for data and voice than you would in the U.S. But if you do your homework, you can save big. Connecting with your carrier’s international plan lets you use your phone, but is costly unless you sign up for a international plan. Rental SIMs are less expensive but force you to use a different number. VoIP is a great solution but will require a data connection. Overall, mobile hotspots are probably your best bet, because they’ll supply data to your laptop and smartphone and let you make VoIP calls from your handset with a single device.

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.

Storing corporate data on a user’s personal phone puts that information in the crosshairs of any malicious software the user may encounter through the web or apps. And with app stores—particularly the Android Market—serving as veritable playgrounds for spyware and viruses, the need to protect corporate data on employees’ phones has become more important than ever.

So far, organizations have turned to mobile device management solutions to clamp down on the spread of malware and potential data leaks. But this approach often requires employees to grant their company’s IT department complete access to their personal devices, something most privacy-conscious users find less than desirable. That’s where split-personality or dual-profile software solutions comes in. Offered by companies including Enterproid and VMware, these new solutions separate a user’s smartphone into two profiles: one for work life and one for personal life.

The New Dual Mode

Here’s how the solutions generally work: When logged into your personal profile, you can use your smartphone just as you normally would, without worrying about whether someone from IT can see which apps you downloaded or websites you’ve visited. “It’s really helping with the privacy issue, because as an end user, I may not want IT to see everything I’ve downloaded onto my personal phone,” explained Stacy Crook, senior mobile enterprise research analyst with IDC market research. “It’s about a separation of the data.”

But it’s not just about privacy. The dual-profile approach creates a virtual barrier, ensuring that apps you download can’t interact with any important corporate data stored on your phone. These work profiles also give IT departments the control they need. Logging into your work profile also means you are automatically bound by the restrictions placed on your phone by IT, giving businesses the ability to lock down the app store, camera, and web browser. Log back into your personal profile, and you’ll have access to your phone’s features again.

Because the space is still in its infancy, there are only a few major players working on dual-profile solutions. Here’s a quick breakdown.

1. Enterproid

Although it was only founded in 2010, Enterproid recently teamed with AT&T to bring its Divide dual-profile solution to the carrier’s business users under the name Toggle. Toggle functions by creating a work profile on a user’s phone that can only be accessed via password. By default, you are automatically logged into your personal profile. Only after opening the Toggle app and entering your password can you access your work data. To help differentiate the two profiles, Enterproid has skinned the work side with Toggle-specific backgrounds and icons.

To get Toggle on your phone, you simply download it from the Android Market. Once it’s installed, your IT department connects your work profile to your company’s corporate server. From there, IT can let you download specific apps as well as updates for those apps to ensure you’re running the latest and most secure versions. The software gives IT the ability to wipe corporate information from an employee’s device and manage employee access to company resources.

Employees gain the ability to access their corporate e-mail, calendar, and other data. The software also features a set of native Android business apps. And because they run in your work profile, they are encrypted and compliant with your company’s use policies.

Enterproid CEO and co-founder Andrew Toy said his company jumped behind the dual-profile concept because “it enables companies to have what they want in terms of management and control and security. And on the personal profile, there is no effect whatsoever. The IT guys simply don’t have visibility in that area.”

According to IDC’s Crook, the Divide/Toggle solution is better suited for small and medium businesses because of its simplified method for dealing with BYOD. The one downside to Toggle, however, is that it only works on Android devices.

2.VMware MVP

Best known for its desktop virtualization software, VMware has teamed with Verizon Wireless to bring its Mobile Virtualization Platform to Verizon’s line of Android phones. The service puts a hypervisor on employees’ devices, providing access to a virtualized Android operating system. When logged into MVP, your company’s IT department can remotely manage and provision a corporate workspace on your Android device while leaving your standard Android operating system completely untouched.

“If I decide to go with the VMware/Verizon solution, I’m going to actually have two separate operating systems, one real and one virtual,” Crook said. Users can log into a virtual desktop where they can securely access corporate information. No information accessed through the virtual desktop can be saved or copied to a user’s Android profile either. All information is isolated from an employee’s personal profile.

While MVP and Enterproid offer similar services, they differ in how they are managed. “With AT&T it’s the same instance of the operating system that the data is operating on,” Crook explained. “With the Verizon solution, you are going to have a partition of operating systems. So you are going to have the base Android operating system where your personal information is going to sit and then you are going to have a virtual operating system where your corporate information is going to sit.”

Unlike Toggle, MVP is built into the kernel of a phone’s operating system. As a result, it will be limited to users who have phones with that kernel built in. But Verizon says it is already in contact with its Android OEM partners—including LG and Motorola—to have them include the software on their phones.

And while Toggle could work well for small and medium businesses, Crook told us that MVP is better optimized for an enterprise setting. That’s not to say it’s a better solution. But VMware already has the ear of the enterprise thanks to its other virtualization solutions.

3. BlackBerry Balance

RIM’s BlackBerry is synonymous with mobile enterprise network access. The company pioneered a solution for employees connecting to corporate data while away from the office. RIM is acutely aware of the BYOD trend’s growing momentum and has introduced its BlackBerry Balance service to meet that challenge. Like Toggle and MVP, the service separates an employee’s personal data from corporate data. But unlike those solutions, Balance doesn’t create separate work and personal profiles. Instead, Balance lives directly on a user’s smartphone and is accessible by IT through a standard BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

That, according to Crook, is a result of RIM’s decision to build the software directly into the BlackBerry BBX operating system. “It’s a micro-kernel architecture so there is all kinds of partitioning already going on in the OS that allows them to do the BlackBerry Balance model,” she explained.

With BlackBerry Balance, users are prevented from copying and pasting corporate information into their personal applications. IT can also remotely wipe business information from a user’s BlackBerry if he or she loses their phone or leaves the company.

Users also don’t have to open another program to access corporate data. If an action they are trying to perform isn’t permitted by IT, then they will simply see a blacked out box. For instance, if you try to copy something from your corporate e-mail to your personal e-mail, the copy command will be locked. But like VMware’s MVP solution and AT&T’s Toggle, BlackBerry Balance is limited to a set user base: BlackBerry owners.

Bottom Line

If there is one drawback to this dual-profile approach, it’s that it limits IT departments’ access to employees’ devices, making it a poor fit for industries dealing with extremely sensitive material. Healthcare and financial companies, for example, may need to take complete control of an employee’s phone if it stores sensitive information.

So which of these solutions is best? Because the BYOD market is still new—and dual-profile services are even newer—a clear leader has yet to be established. There are also several other solution providers looking to make some noise in this space, including OK Labs and Red Bend Software. One thing is for certain, though. More and more employees will want to bring their smartphones into the workplace, and businesses can either prepare now, or be left out in the cold.

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Next

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

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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.

1. Dim the Display - Our Android battery saving tips call for dimming the display to 30 percent, but we felt that the RAZR Maxx’s screen was still perfectly legible at 0-percent brightness. The lower your screen brightness, the better your battery life will be so try it at 0 percent and see if it looks acceptable to you. 
   
2. Turn off Wi-Fi  - If you’re at home or the office, connecting your Maxx to the network via 802.11n will save juice. However, if you’re not near an available router, your Wi-Fi radio can significantly drain your phone’s battery so disabling it is a great way to extend your phone’s battery life. We always disable the Wi-Fi when running our own battery test, however, so this tip didn’t factor into the RAZR Maxx’s new score.
3. Turn off Location Services - The Maxx’s GPS radio gulps battery, routinely pinging satellites to get your current location. Just as bad, location-based services like Foursquare that have auto check-in enabled will ping the Internet with your location, another use of  your power-hungry 4G connection.  
4. Turn off Background Data - Any time your phone checks your email, syncs your calendar, or automatically grabs Facebook updates, it’s calling out to the Internet which means that it’s taxing the 4G radio. To really save power, turn off background data in the Android control panel.
5. Switch from 4G to 3G - The RAZR Maxx’s 3G CDMA radio uses a lot less power than its 4G LTE counterpart so, if you’re willing to trade speed for battery life, you can disable 4G in the Wireless and Networks section of the control panel. We first ran the battery test with 4G enabled, to see how long the phone would last with all of the tips implemented but still using Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Afterwards we ran it again using only 3G — with over an hour of additional endurance.
6. Disable Haptic Feedback - That little motor which causes the phone to vibrate when you touch its keyboard or buttons uses a fair amount of juice. Turn it off  in the Sound section of the control panel.
7. Set a Shorter Screen Timeout - Although we suggest shortening your screen timeout time to just 30 seconds, on the LAPTOP battery test we see how how long the phone will last if the screen never times out. We were impressed that the RAZR Maxx lasted more than 10 hours with the screen on the entire time.
8. Use a Plain Black Background - Smartphones using AMOLED displays consume more power than LCD displays when displaying bright colors, particularly white. Switch the RAZR Maxx to an all-black wallpaper to save power.
9. Shut Down Instant Messaging - Nothing sucks juice like Google Talk and other IM programs which have to maintain an active Internet connection all day long, even if you aren’t talking to anyone.
10. Disable Automatic Updates for Widgets - To keep widgets like Weather and News Feed from constantly searching for the latest data, remove them entirely from the RAZR Maxx’s home screens. 

After implementing all of the battery saving tips (save disabling 4G and setting the screen timeout to 30 seconds), the RAZR Maxx achieved that epic 10 hours and 8 minutes of battery life , which was 4 and a half hours longer than the category average (5:39), and more than 3 hours longer than the second longest-lasting 4G phone, the Samsung Droid Charge (6:42). When we ran the test again using only 3G connectivity, and the Maxx lasted a jaw-dropping 11 hours and 30 minutes — almost 6 hours longer than the average smartphone!

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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.

1. Disable push email, fetch messages less often.

Having your iPhone constantly on alert for incoming messages can drain its battery in a hurry, so be sure to turn push email off. You can schedule your iPhone to check for new messages at regular intervals: every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, every hour or manually. We suggest selecting manually for those who want to save the most power. Data will still be delivered instantly to your device when you use an app that requests it, such as Mail.

To turn push email off:

• Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
• Select Fetch New Data.
• Tap the button next to Push, making sure it is in the Off position.
• Select the interval you would like to use in the area below.

2. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

This one’s a no-brainer. Leaving your Wi-Fi setting on means your phone is actively searching for a Wi-Fi connection even after you’ve left your home or office. This process taxes your battery and drains some of its power.

To turn off Wi-Fi:

• Tap Settings > Wi-Fi.
• Toggle the Wi-Fi button from On to Off.

Bonus Tip: If you prefer to keep Wi-Fi on but hate it when your iPhone automatically asks you to join Wi-Fi networks, you can turn that setting off right from this screen.

Bluetooth is another setting that you don’t need to have turned on if you’re not doing anything with your phone that requires this radio.

To turn off Bluetooth: 

• Tap Settings > General.
• Select Bluetooth.
• Toggle the Bluetooth button Off.

3. Manage Location Services.

The easiest way to stop your iPhone from keeping tabs on your location at all times—and draining your battery in the process—is to shut down Location Services.

To turn off Location Services:

• Tap Settings > Location Services.
• Toggle Location Services Off.

However, for some users, turning Location Services off will be a bit extreme, as they won’t even be able to use the iPhone’s stock Maps app. A better idea might be to manage the apps that access Location Services. For example, do you really need your camera app to broadcast your precise location?

Here’s how to fine-tune Location Services:

• Tap Settings > Location Services.
• Turn the button to the Off position for any app that you would not like to use your location.

If you’re really concerned about location eating up battery power, you can tweak System Services. We recommend toggling off the switches for Setting Time Zone (unless you’re traveling and need this to be activated), Location-Based iAds and Diagnostics & Usage.

How to tweak System Services:

• Tap Settings > Location Services.
• Select System Services.
• Set the radio buttons to Off for those services that you would prefer not to request your location.

4. Use Wi-Fi to download content instead of 3G.

Whether you’re downloading a big app, a movie or a TV show, it’s best to get that content over a Wi-Fi connection instead of 3G. You’ll likely have a faster connection via Wi-Fi, and the time it takes to download will be shorter, which saves power. Plus, 3G is more power hungry than Wi-Fi.

5. Manage Notifications and types of alerts.

An iOS 5 device can notify you every time there’s a new alert, lighting up your iPhone’s screen to catch your attention. The problem is that your display uses power, and over time all these little reminders will add up to less endurance.

Here’s how to manage Notifications:

• Tap Settings > Notifications. You’ll see your apps listed under the heading In Notification Center.
• Select an app whose notifications settings you would like to tweak.
• Choose your alert style: None, Banners or Alerts. None is self-explanatory. Choosing between Banners and Alerts is more a matter of personal preference. The former style makes the app’s notification appear as a 3D-animated strip across the top of your screen. Alerts appears as a standard pop-up window in the middle of the display.
• Scroll down and turn “View in lock screen” to Off. Your phone screen won’t light up when you receive a new notification from a given app.
• On the Messages app, set Repeat Alert to Never. If you don’t clear the notification from your lock screen, your phone repeats the alert every 2-minutes (and each time the alert repeats, it lights up your screen).

Bonus Tip: Move multiple applications to the “Not in Notification Center” group.

Here’s how to do it:

• Tap Settings > Notifications.
• Select Edit in the top right of the screen.
• Tap and hold the three horizontal lines on the right side of an app listed in the “In Notification Center” menu.
• Drag the app’s bar to the “Not in Notification Center” area, and the app will no longer display alerts.
• Repeat for as many apps you would like to move to the “Not in Notification Center” menu.

Top 10 iOS Battery Savers

• Tips 1 through 5
• Tips 6 through 10