In the coming years we can expect mobile operating systems to become more efficient, more capable, and more flexible, and there's little doubt that the phones they run on will last longer, be thinner and faster, and have better cameras, screens, speakers, and build quality. The platform and device builders have the most to lose - competitors can spring up out of nowhere, they can pivot...
We will always advocate picking your carrier before picking your phone, but sometimes the allure of a specific phone can be too much to overcome. Millions switched to AT...
Chances are you've encountered it at some point. You go out into the country, or into a certain part of town, and you lose signal from your carrier. But another network is out there, and it picks up the slack. You're roaming. Unlike the buffalo of yore, roaming onto other carriers isn't a carefree experience. It wasn't until recently that no-cost-to-you roaming agreements were in...
Cellular carriers are strange entities. They offer devices that in the grand scheme aren't that expensive for what they are, but yet have customers conditioned to expect them to be much cheaper and not think about the long-term cost. They built empires around multi-year contracts, but in an age where mobile technology was advancing at a rate that was positively lethargic compared to...
Talk Mobile 2013 has so far touched on the big rocks of devices, operating systems, and services. Now it’s time to touch on the biggest and most expensive rock in the mobile device system: the carriers. Most of us get locked in to two or three year contracts that can add up to thousands of dollars over the life that contract. Our choice of carrier determines so much. It sets not just...
Talk Mobile Clouds week dove head first into the world of clouds, bridging the internet, mobile, and desktop computing in one fell swoop. It was less about the individual features of each cloud service and more about how these clouds fit into our lives, how they can improve our digital lives, and where they're going in the future. As always, your feedback is tremendously important to...
There are many visions for the future of computing, and by-and-large they all involve some form of distributed storage and processing. Sure, our computers, tablets, and smartphones will continue to evolve and become more powerful, but so too will cloud services and the internet infrastructure that connects it all. Whether we're looking at connected headset displays, constantly-syncing...
Put everything in the cloud, they said. Sync your files, back up your phone, put it all online, they said. It'll be great, they said. And then the cloud stopped working. It was temporary, but for a while, everything stopped. Your email didn't come for a few hours. Your music was out of reach. That file you desperately needed for your presentation only came up as a 404. The cloud was...
Our media lives in a world of clouds, and those clouds have to be frustrating and secure. Who's gonna do it? You? You, media consumer? I have greater obstinance than you could possibly fathom. You weep for your MP3 and you curse the studios. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that your your music, while delightful, doesn’t belong to you. And my...
If we talk about cloud services, there are several major players in just the storage-and-syncing category, plus dozens more smaller entities. Some are tied to a specific platform, some are entirely platform agnostic, and yet others are best when paired with the platform with whom they share a maker, but yet still work alright most everywhere else. So how are we supposed to pick a...
The cloud. It has become just about synonymous with internet data storage, and for good reason. No longer does uploading your data to a server mean that you're uploading to a specific server. Now your data is stored on a network of servers, and can be accessed from practically any web-connected device, be it through dedicated apps for smartphones and tablets, automatic drag-and-drop...
With everything that we do on our mobile devices, security is becoming more important than ever. Even more so when we mix professional business onto those same devices. How do you keep it secure? How do you balance work and personal on the same device? That was Talk Mobile Security and Enterprise week, so let's dive right in to it.
For years, the password was as secure of a means of authentication as we needed. Unless you were in charge of nuclear codes, a basic password of maybe a dozen characters was enough. Problem is, as the power of our computers increased, so did the power of the computers used by the database hackers and code crackers. Today your basic password takes mere minutes, if not seconds, to break...
There was a time when the smartphone was a tool of the businessman. The BlackBerrys and Treos and Windows Mobile smartphones were connected corporate networks - and often issued by those corporations. Over the last several years that has changed dramatically, with smartphones becoming the province of the consumer. So prevalent has smartphone usage become among the general public that...
Our smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming repositories of our personal information. It's a treasure trove of data that could be used to build a frighteningly complete picture of you as a person. It's more than just your contacts, calendar, memos, and photos - it's your web history, your calls and text messages, your banking data and social network logins. People say "my...
Nobody’s entirely sure how it started, but it’s a trend that’s taken the corporate IT world by storm over the past few years. In all likelihood it began with a CEO walking into the CIO's office with his new shiny new iPhone and saying "Steve, put my email on this." "But, Sir, we issued you a BlackBerry," Steve, the CIO, pointed at the stack of BlackBerry Bolds on his desk. "We all...
Look at your smartphone. You likely have at least one email account on it, along with the associated contacts and calendar. You have your memos and to-do list. There's your browsing history. Your phone history and text messages. Years of photos. Probably Facebook, and maybe Twitter or Google+. You might have a banking app, stores you frequent, or a travel app with your airline tickets...
It was meat and potatoes time for Talk Mobile: platforms was the topic. Spanning everything from hardware to software to services, Talk Mobile Platforms week was easily the most engaged set of discussions we had so far. It really encompassed the ethos of Talk Mobile: stop talking about the specs and let's talk about what really matters. Your feedback is tremendously important to us and...
Smartphones have come a long way from the days of the Palm, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile phones of yore. Heck, they've come a long way in just the last few years. What were once merely appliances, simple tools of siloed information and conduits are now adaptable powerhouses that have worked their way into nearly every facet of our lives. We're more connected than ever before, and...
There was a time when the word 'ecosystem' referred exclusively to the environmental version, describing the interdependent parts of a biome. Today that term has been expanded to modern electronics. No longer are our devices lone islands that reach out into the void for content. Today they're supported by an array of services, perhaps most importantly those from the manufacturer that...