Windows Phone's no-show at Build drives home Microsoft's mobile neglect
Is Windows Phone a dead platform walking? Microsoft didn't even mention its mobile OS during the Build 2016 keynote, and sadly, it shouldn't come as a surprise.
Is Windows Phone a dead platform walking? Microsoft didn't even mention its mobile OS during the Build 2016 keynote, and sadly, it shouldn't come as a surprise.
Let's face it: batteries suck. The only reason battery life is getting better is because everything else in our devices is getting smaller. That allows manufacturers to make more room for the dang power pack without having to improve anything but the efficiency of the software.
After a PR blunder that involved comparing Apple to Nazism, Chinese firm LeTV is announcing something that's actually worth some attention.
After nearly five years of growth, the tablet market has officially stalled. According to research firm IDC, tablet sales fell 3.2% year over year in the 2014 holiday quarter, with even bigger drops coming from market leaders Apple and Samsung.
Canonical is launching the first Ubuntu smartphone after a year of promises, though it's unclear why anybody but hardcore Ubuntu aficionados would want one.
Nokia-branded smartphones may not be dead--they just won't be made by Nokia, let alone Microsoft.
The deployment of billions of advanced systems across major industries over the next five years will be critical to enabling the vision around intelligent systems.
Take a look at smartphone and tablet releases over time and you'll find a trend: Smartphones are getting bigger, while tablets are getting smaller.
This may be anathema for someone in the business of writing about tech to say, but I'm not all that interested in iPhone rumors. Shipping products are what grab my attention, not unicorns and phantasms. The minute Tim Cook holds up the new device is the minute it's worthwhile to start examining features and specs, and all the speculation ahead of time is usually just the noise separating one Apple press event from the next.
Amazon's Fire Phone is really solid, maybe even great. But unless it's your first smartphone, it might be hard to switch from a more mature platform like Android or iOS. You'd have to be really committed to the Amazon ecosystem--the type who already has a Kindle Fire tablet and probably also a Fire TV and a plain Kindle e-reader--to want to make this device your everyday phone, at least in this first generation.