Android

Apple wins preliminary sales ban against Motorola devices in Germany

Hot on the heels of their big victory against Samsung here in the United States, Apple's legal team has just won another important decision against Motorola in Munich, German.

The German court has just awarded the Cupertino company a preliminary sales ban against Motorola's phones and tablets in the country, ruling that they infringe on Apple's patents...

Everything you need to know about today’s iPhone 5 event

The iPhone 5 is finally here.

After Apple in 2011 unveiled the iPhone 4S -- when everyone and his mother expected the iPhone 5 -- the wizards of Cupertino introduced a smartphone for everyone. Want something smaller? Check. How about a big screen? Got you covered. Need power? No problem. Although this was the first post-Steve Jobs iPhone rollout, there was enough technology and geekitude on display today that even the Man in Black would have had a tough time fitting in just one more thing.

Most of the rumors about the iPhone were confirmed. The iPhone 5 sports a 4-inch (1136 x 640) display enclosed in an aluminum and glass shell. That larger display is becoming defacto on smartphones. Not to be outdone designwise by Android, Apple pushed suppliers to use an in-cell manufacturing technique that embeds the technology used in an edge-to-edge touchscreen, eliminating the need for a separate layer.

Twitter enables web uploads on mobile site from iOS 6 and Android ICS devices

One of the cool enhancements in iOS 6 Safari is its broader support for standard HTML elements, including a regular HTML input element used on literally all sites requiring media uploading capability.

This support for media uploads lets Safari understand the standard Upload button that invokes a file picker on your desktop and replace it with standard iOS media picker.

Up until now, you could only test this on certain web sites, like the desktop Facebook interface in mobile Safari. Today, Twitter enabled on its mobile site photo uploads from a browser on iOS 6 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich devices, here's how it works...

Apple to launch Russian iTunes Store with tracks under $0.99

Apple is planning to open an iTunes store in Russia later this year or early 2013, a local business journal reports. The Russian iTunes Store could offer music cheaper than in the US. While licensing deals are still underway, the Cupertino, Calif. digital music giant is expected to unveil tracks costing under $0.99, the newspaper says.

The supposed deal could prop up flagging Russian sales of digital music. While physical music sales are in free-fall, even digital music purchases -- which have been growing elsewhere -- dropped by 40 percent to levels not seen since 2009. The chief reason: "a culture of copyright infringement," according to music industry group IFPI. The nation's leading music service is operated by vKontakte, which also offers file-sharing, according to the IFPI.

Apple’s chief counsel is ‘field marshal’ in Android battle

If Apple's "thermonuclear war" on Android had a leader, it would be Noreen Krall, chief litigator for the Cupertino, Calif. iPhone maker. Indeed, Bloomberg's profile of Krall describes her as Apple's legal "field marshall."

"Krall has become a familiar sight in courtrooms around the world as Apple’s chief litigation counsel," Bloomberg writes. Even before Apple won a $1.05 billion patent-infringement decision (now being appealed) against Samsung, Krall thanked junior members of the legal team for all the hard work...

Report: Malware targeting Russian smartphones 40 times more than US

All smartphones are not created equal -- at least in the eyes of malware authors. A smartphone in Russia is 40 times as likely to be infected by malware than the same iPhone or Android handset in the U.S., according to security researchers.

Product manager Derek Halliday of mobile security expert Lookout tells All Things Digital the 40-to-1 difference represents "a pretty massive gulf."

Insiders say Amazon could unveil smartphone tomorrow

We're nearing the end of the two-week run of product announcements leading up to Apple's iPhone event. Last week, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Note 2. And today, both Nokia and Motorola showed off new hardware.

Tomorrow, Amazon will play the final opening act with a media event in Los Angeles, where it's expected to unveil a handful of new Kindle tablets. But according to a new report, it may have a few surprises up its sleeves...

Android marches: 480M devices, 1.3M daily activations, 70,000 tablets per day

Google chairman Eric Schmidt shared some headline-grabbing updates related to the Android platform during today's unveiling of the refreshed Razr family by Motorola Mobility, now a Google division. Most notably, we learned that Google now counts a whopping 480 million Android devices in the wild.

That's a cool 80 million units improvement over a total of 400 million activations announced at Google I/O on June 27-28 of this year. Yes, Android smartphones and tablets collectively outsell all iOS devices combined. Afraid? Don't be, Google actually beat Apple on that metric back in June.

Daily activations surged from a million Android devices back in June to today's number of 1.3 million daily activations. No matter how you look at it, that's a very, very impressive figure, one proving there's no shelter from the Android carpet bombing. But what about tablets?

Motorola unveils new flagship handset: the Droid Razr HD

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Motorola just wrapped up its "On Display" event in New York City, and as expected, it had some new hardware to show off. The company unveiled the Droid Razr HD, the Droid Razr Maxx HD, and the Droid Razr M.

With a subsidized price of $99, the Razr M is the cheaper of the three handsets. It has a 4.3-inch display and runs on Verizon's LTE network. Then there were the stars of the show: the Razr HD and Razr Maxx HD...

New survey shows 1 in 3 US smartphone owners have an iPhone

Android handsets started really picking up steam in late 2009 with the release of the Motorola Droid. Shortly after that, Google's mobile platform took over the smartphone industry and it has since controlled around 50% of the US market.

But Apple hasn't taken the challenge lying down. Thanks to its iPhone 3GS-4-4S lineup covering all price points, and its new partnerships with several smaller carriers, Apple's handsets now account for a healthy 30% of the same US market...

Angry Birds spinoff Bad Piggies arrives September 27 for iOS, Android and Mac

Two months ago, we learned that Finnish developer Rovio is working on a new Angry Birds pig game said to be focused on the piggies and slated for release just in time for the pre-holiday rush. Then last week, Rovio posted a teaser that offered a few glimpses into the upcoming game that turns the formula on its head by challenging you to to protect the eggs you’ve grabbed from the birds. Today, Rovio released a few more details and confirmed that Bad Piggies (that's the official title) will be released for iOS, Android and the Mac on September 27...