The first question most of you would have after reading the title of this article is, "Why would I even want a used cell phone when new ones are cheap or free (with certain wireless post-paid contracts)?" That’s a good question, and I have a good answer in two parts. 1. Battery life has not improved, and in fact has become worse with many newer...

One of the best-running platforms on a smartphone and several featuresphones is Java. If you have a multimedia-capable handset that’s not Android or iOS-based, all the apps you have are probably Java-based. New touchscreen smartphones these days are really cheap and in some instances well under 50 bucks new. Okay, you’ve got a smartphone but...

You don’t have to go far in the PCMech community to find people who don’t own a smartphone, citing that they "hate smartphones". Smartphone haters hate two things primarily:Wireless plan contracts of any kind The ridiculous prices of the phones themselvesIt’s never the actual phone that these people hate, because if it did sell...

When referring to the amount of data you can use per month before being charged for overages on a wireless carrier, that’s called a cap, or to be more specific, a bandwidth cap. The cap you’re subjected to varies depending on which wireless carrier you use. A simple web site that will tell you up-to-date information on what the cap is for your...

There have been several attempts to get broadband internet available to you while driving. Technically we already have this via smartphone, but manufacturers want a integrated-into-automobile solution because they feel we as consumers could use it. The latest iteration of this is 4G LTE in the car, and I can honestly say yes, that would actually work. Previous...

PostSecret, the popular tell-all-your-secrets web site, shut down their iPhone app that allowed people to post their secrets 100% anonymously via electronic means (prior to that it was by mail-in postcard only and has gone back to operating that way). Cited reasons for the closure of the app were, "…absolute anonymity made it very challenging to...

On the eastern side of the United States, today is best described as an ice cube – even for Tampa Florida where PCMech is based: Even though it happens rarely, cold snaps causing freezing temperatures do happen in Florida. In a truly cold area for this time of year, like Boston, Massachusetts, that’s where you see the Fahrenheit numbers really take...

Every few years or so the electronics industry gets all stupid and introduces way too much of a specific tech at us way too fast. As of right now, which Forbes has confirmed, there’s too much mobile crap out there; so much so that it leaves people literally fatigued. And yes, it is all crap. When you have too much of any one specific type of electronics...

As far as desktop use is concerned, Opera has little to no presence. However, on mobile platforms, Opera is #1 worldwide. Yes, that means Opera is used more than Android’s browser is. Why does Opera have so much popularity on mobile? Because it runs on just about any smartphone that exists. If your phone no matter what it is can run apps and access the...

The 800G from LG is a phone available in the US through prepaid carriers Tracfone, NET10 and others. The one I have uses the Tracfone carrier. As I’ve said before on more than one occasion, I’m a cheap cell phone user and hate post-paid cell phone contracts with a passion; this is why I use low-end prepaid cell phones instead. The 800G is an...

Yesterday, I went in for my biannual teeth cleaning at the dentist (in the US, dentists schedule routine cleanings once every 6 months). After the cleaning was done, I receive the dentist’s reminder card at the front desk stating that my next visit is scheduled for May 2012. Now while it’s true the office will call me a few days before the day of...

Although I live in Florida now, from age 0 to 30 I lived in New England, so I have a pretty good idea what it means to deal with harsh weather conditions and winterize things appropriately. Something that most people don’t give a thought to are the operating temperatures for mobile devices. Every one sold states in the manual what the minimum and maximum...

A friend of mine visited Florida all last week and this friend’s only computer that was taken was an iPod Touch, which most of you know as "an iPhone without the phone part". For all intents and purposes, that’s a fairly accurate description of what an iPod Touch is. Something that truly amazes me about iPod Touches and other devices with...

Most of you out there had that phone in the past which you miss dearly because everything about it was "right". You probably stopped using it only because you changed carriers, am I right? In case you weren’t aware, Sony is phasing out feature phones, and that truly marks the beginning of the end for the feature phone – at least in the US....

There have been a few times in computer history where the Mac vs. Windows (or Windows vs. Mac or whatever) has been at the forefront of technology news. When Windows 95 was released, all the Macheads went nuts because they instantly pegged the interface as a direct rip-off of MacOS. One of the most popular phrases was "Win 95 = Mac 85" in reference to...

As most of you are aware, Skype is now owned by Microsoft, who has already put up a web page promoting the product: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/ You can also see Microsoft branding on the www.skype.com web site. There has been wild speculation about what Microsoft will do with Windows Live Messenger now that it has Skype. Will Windows Live users be...

What’s the advantage of an unlocked phone? When you have a phone that’s unlocked, it means you can use any carrier the phone is compatible with. Important note: Check the details of each phone (links are provided below) to see which carriers the phone will work on. Ordinarily most people think phones of this kind are ridiculously expensive at $300 or...

In the part of Tampa Bay Florida where I live, Verizon Wireless is one of the worst carriers to use. Text and multimedia messaging work fine, but for voice calls, forget it. Dropped calls are common, and when it doesn’t drop, a voice call is choppy at best; the sound is similar to someone jiggling a headphone connector where the signal breaks in and...

In the article just before this one I talked about the LG500G from Tracfone; a smartphone that can be bought new for 30 dollars. At present, a feature phone’s rock-bottom price is 10 bucks, but if QWERTY smartphones continue to drop in price, will this mean the end of the feature phone? To put this in perspective, a QWERTY phone was $100 just six months...

In the world of wireless phones, the two major types are feature phones (sometimes called "dumbphones") and smartphones. What’s the biggest difference between a feature phone and a smartphone? The smartphone is MMS-capable; feature phones are not. In order for a phone to qualify as MMS-capable, it must be able to take photos and/or video and...