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...

Whether you have a smartphone or a featurephone (a.k.a. "plain" or "dumbphone"), to the best of my knowledge every cell phone has the ability to text – even if you have a dirt cheap off-the-shelf prepaid phone bought from a convenience store. The key to knowing what your cell phone’s email address is to know its SMS (simple...

On average, people will replace their cell phones every 1 to 4 years, depending on the term length of contract they have. Usually it’s the situation that when a post-paid contract is up, the carrier will offer you a new phone either for free or with a steep discount. If your carrier has a storefront (like a Verizon Wireless store), they can take your old...

It’s a sad truth that there’s a rather large chunk of the United States that has internet connectivity that barely qualifies as "broadband". Personally, I believe anything under a solid 768k on the downstream is slow – and there are still places that can’t even eke out 512k. Bear in mind I’m talking about desktop computer...

Good news for all of you iOS fans – the long-awaited WordPress for iOS 2.8 is out! In addition to fixes (you find them in any release), this one boasts some new, cool features (you don’t find them that often). Your iOS blogging is now one step closer to getting awesome! Let’s start with the good news first. The two new major features are Quick...

Because of CES mobile technologies there’s a whole bunch of articles surfacing "IT’S THE END OF THE PC (AND MAC)!" Um, no. There are many reasons why smartphones and tablets won’t replace desktop computers. Very little of this list has to do with functionality and everything with the human factor. 1. Limited multitask ability Smart...

In tech circles the big thing right now is mobile, mobile and more mobile for all smartphone platforms – and this includes the introduction of advertisements with the most-known being Apples “iAd” platform. (iAd by the way is the most ridiculous title for Apple’s advertising platform because you as the consumer are not advertising...

When it comes to TLDs (top level domains, i.e. COM, NET, ORG, etc.) on the internet, several attempts have been made to generate the popularity of COM. All have failed, but that doesn’t mean the people who give us alternatives to COM stop trying. One of the weirder TLDs out there is TEL. This is billed as a mobile calling card of sorts.. I think. Right off...

It is a sad truth that there is no such thing as a universal mount to hold the mobile devices we put in our cars and trucks. In addition, almost all of our devices are powered by disgustingly huge cigarette lighter plugs because most cars do not have USB ports. On top of that, most modern car dashboards can’t hold anything because they’re bulbous and...

2010 has had a bit of a rocky start. Apple’s iPad isn’t even for sale yet and everybody hates it. Google Buzz has ignited such a privacy firestorm that many claim it’s the worst product launch the big G has had in 12 years. Ouch. Microsoft continues on its trend of choosing the worst possible product names, this time with Windows Phone 7...

For those that remember internet in the late 1990s, you remember your dialup being slow, there was no such thing as tabbed browsing, web sites were clunky/cumbersome and difficult to navigate, low screen resolutions of the time meant lots and lots of scrolling, and well, you get the idea. Thankfully we don’t have to deal with that anymore, right? Wrong. A...

Some people believe the iPhone was the game-changer concerning what you could do on a mobile device. I say no, because the Danger Hiptop (a.k.a. the T-Mobile Sidekick) predated the iPhone by four years all the way back in 2003. I state this because the ability to do things ordinarily reserved for PCs and laptops only have been on mobile devices for well over 5...

The phrase traffic shaping is a polite term for bandwidth throttling. It’s when an ISP purposely slows download speeds during peak usage hours of the day. This includes weekends. And if you hadn’t heard, traffic shaping is most likely going mobile. If it happens industry wide, it’ll be a joke to label 3G as fast after that. The people who get...

Wireless phone chargers come in all shapes and sizes. And that’s annoying. What works for one phone probably won’t work for the other. Granted, there are many phones that can be charged via USB – but – some require "special" mini-USB chargers to be used (Motorola springs to mind) so the universal nature of USB is out the window...

It was only a matter of time, but Intel has brought out the big guns and now has quad-core available for laptops. Five of them, to be exact. Surprisingly, it won’t be that expensive. According to the article linked above, you can score an Acer Aspire laptop with an 18.4-inch screen (that’s frappin’ huge for a laptop) for $1,799. Not bad...

I’ll answer that question even before I start this article: Yes, you are. And you always have been since the first time you used text messaging on a mobile wireless network. The reason you’re getting screwed is because those who are computer savvy even to the most basic degree understand that when you charge 20 cents for 140 bytes of data or less...

Microsoft Skymarket coming for Windows Mobile 7 apps Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It 20 tech habits to improve your lifeThanks for...