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

The Game Center app, pre-installed on iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch devices, is a social network that allows you to challenge other players in several games. There’s no charge for using Game Center — unlike similar services such as Xbox Live.

How does it work?

You start by creating a specific “handle,” or nickname, and then look up friends. From there, you can challenge them in a number of ways.

Sometimes you simply compare stats and scores through leaderboards, such as how many pieces of fruit you’re able to slice in Halfbrick’s “Fruit Ninja.” Other times, you can challenge players directly in online play, such as a round of “Real Racing 2.”

Whatever happens in your games is automatically tracked through the program. You can see how many friends are on your list (and which ones are currently playing), how many games you’ve played and how many Achievements you have unlocked. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Microsoft has demonstrated that its upcoming Windows 8 operating system will work on ARM-based processors many times in the last few months, but the company has been mum on when that version of the software will be available for testing and what kind of apps it will run. Now, we have more details.

In a post at the company’s Building Windows 8 blog, software president Stephen Sinofsky said not only does the manufacturer intend to release Windows 8 on ARM devices at the same time as Windows 8 for x86/64 chips, he also said Windows 8 for ARM will support desktop versions of familiar Microsoft apps, including versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Internet Explorer 10. Read the rest of this entry »

Never one to  let others hog the spotlight, Google is getting set to launch a new cloud storage service, putting the search giant on a collision course with the likes of Dropbox and SugarSync.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the new service, which is simply called Drive, would allow users to upload and store their music, video, and other files to Google’s servers where they can later be retrieved from any web-connected device.

The service, the Journal says, will feature a smartphone and tablet app for mobile users, similar to those offered by the aforementioned Dropbox, SugarSync, and to a lesser extend Apple’s iCloud. Apple’s service is currently only available to iOS 5 users. In the report, the Journal cites sources familiar with Google’s Drive as saying the service will make it to market in the coming weeks or months. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s finally happened. Google has, at last, released a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android. Unfortunately for the hordes of Android fans out there that have been clamoring for a mobile version of Chrome, this release is only available for Ice Cream Sandwich due to the operating system’s unique hardware acceleration capabilities.

Since Chrome for Android will eventually replace Android’s browser, we decided to pit the two against each other in a mobile browser battle royale. And to spice things up a bit, we also threw the most popular alternative Android browsers into the mix including Opera Mobile, Dolphin HD, and Firefox. To determine each browser’s speed we used a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running on Verizon’s 4G LTE network and ran the browsers through a couple of synthetic tests and some real-world browsing. The results show a browser that’s full of potential, but one that’s slower than many of its third-party competitors.

Read the rest of this entry »

We just got our invitation to Microsoft’s debutante ball in Spain for Windows 8 beta– dubbed Windows 8 Consumer Preview–which will take place on February 29th during Mobile World Congress and will hopefully culminate in the release of a public beta of Windows 8. Though the OS will still need some primping and preening before it’s official release later this year, it’ll give the general public a chance to dance with the new Metro user interface, the same interface overlay that’s currently on Windows Phone. 

Microsoft has stated that their goal with Windows 8 is to optimize the tablet experience while still providing the power and versatility needed for desktop users. Users will be able to purchase apps from the Windows Store for simplified software installation across a variety of devices. We got a hands-on look at the developer preview of Windows 8 and came away impressed not only by the operating system’s touch capabilities, but also by how well it handled on a traditional laptop.  Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Revisit the days of classic game platforms such as the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System gaming on your iPad with these arcade collections and old-school downloads. Each has a “try before you buy” feature so you can find what you like before spending money. Check them all out below.

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Great Single Titles

There are plenty of classics in the App Store. Sega has several for cheap, including the top-selling "Sonic CD" and the action-packed "Gunstar Heroes"; Gameloft's "Earthworm Jim" is a sweet recreation of the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis platforming classic (and comes with the awesome opportunity to launch a cow, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"-style). If you can't get enough "Pac-Man," Namco Bandai has released a free portable edition of its multiplayer arcade game, "Pac-Man Battle Royale". With games this good, you can save those rolls of quarters for something more useful. Like laundry.

Proudly waving the AntiSec hacktivist flag, a hacker known as “YamaTough” has leaked an email exchange that took place between himself and a supposed representative of the security-software maker Symantec before YamaTough released the source code to pcAnywhere, one of Symantec’s flagship consumer products.

The Symantec employee was actually a law-enforcement agent, and offered YamaTough $50,000 not to publish the source code for pcAnywhere and an older version of Norton Anti-Virus.

In the email conversation, which began Jan. 18 and was leaked to Pastebin yesterday (Feb. 6), YamaTough repeatedly pressures “Sam Thomas,” the purported Symantec representative, to wire $50,000 to an offshore account in exchange for destroying the source code to Norton Anti-Virus and pcAnywhere. Read the rest of this entry »