News broke earlier this week that Apple has acquired Israel-based fabless flash memory firm Anobit for as much as $400 million according to TheMarker, adding another leading chip maker to the company’s portfolio. Anobit’s NAND flash memory is already used in Apple products including the iPhone and iPad, and the firm’s technology is said to offer several advantages over that of its rivals. As DigiTimes pointed out in a recent report, the move also means Anobit’s other clients are now fo...

NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank have created the “Japan Mobile NFC Consortium,” which will help the three carriers coordinate and adopt an international NFC standard. Currently, all three operators offer an NFC service dubbed Osaifu-Keitai (wallet phone) which uses a contactless-IC smartcard that’s called FeliCa. Unfortunately, the technology doesn’t work overseas where other carriers use Type A or Type B NFC standards, which means Osaifu-Ketai won’t function properly for NTT DoCoM...

Samsung on Thursday unveiled two new dual-SIM smartphones, the Galaxy Y Duos and the Galaxy Y Pro Duos. A phone with two SIM card slots offers a number of benefits; it’s perfect for two people hoping to share a single phone in emerging markets, but it’s also great for business travelers that want to use one account for personal matters and a second as a business line. The Galaxy Y Duos runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and has a processor clocked at 832MHz and a 3-megapixel camera. The Galaxy Y Pro D...

Apple is not likely to succeed in its efforts to ban Samsung’s revised flagship tablet in Germany, the judge presiding over the case said on Thursday. The Dusseldorf court in September banned a local Samsung subsidiary from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany after determining that the design of Samsung’s tablet copied the iPad too closely. “Other designs are possible,” Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said at the time, and Samsung came back with a tweaked Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Nove...

The United States International Trade Commission ruled late Tuesday that Motorola Mobility is guilty of infringing on one of Microsoft’s patents. The patent is related to calendar sync and how one might use a device to schedule a meeting, BBC News explained. Microsoft originally filed a suit against Motorola Mobility in August in an attempt to block sales of several Motorola Android smartphones, such as DROID 2, DROID X and several others, and accused Motorola Mobility of infringing on seven total pate...

Ready for some quality time with Motorola’s new Xoom tablet? The folks from the big glowing red M sat down with us this afternoon and provided a bit of a sneak peak into the world of the Xoom tablet. While the Android 3.0-based device wasn’t running a fully functional version of the new OS, we did have a chance to get a sneak peak at some of the upcoming device’s capabilities. Much of what this thing can do is tied directly to what Android 3.0 can do, which is to say… it can do a whole...

Following Thursday’s fast-paced Verizon 4G LTE announcement, we were eager to get a bit of hands-on time with one of the keynote’s stars, the Samsung LTE Smartphone. The as-yet-named handset is spec’ed to impress — with a 4.3″ Super OLED screen, 1 GHz processor, 8 megapixel rear-facing and 1.3 megapixel front-facing shooters, and more, all running atop Android 2.2. In use, the handset proved to be speedy and responsive, which is becoming quite the common theme (something you won&...

Fresh off this morning’s Verizon/Sling partnership announcement, Sling took some time to show us its best and brightest. We got a chance to see the Windows Phone 7 version of its Sling Player app in action, and were definitely impressed with the quality of the streaming video. Sling mentioned that the WP7 version of its software delivers the highest-quality content out of all of its mobile apps, and based on what we saw today we’re certainly not going to argue with that contention.We also had a ch...

Following our press briefing with the PlayBook early today, we wanted to get a bit more up-close and personal with the BlackBerry Bridge software. Bridge, for those that don’t know, is the bit of technology that connects the BlackBerry handset to the PlayBook and allows for the use of BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry Email, and BlackBerry Calendar on the PlayBook itself. For the time being, Bridge will provide the PlayBook with all of its email, calendar, and BBM functionality — there are no stand...

You have to feel just a little sympathy for the Samsung SCH-i520. Showcased next to handsets with names like Thunderbolt and BIONC, this poor little guy is only identifiable by his model name — it’s simply referred to as the “Samsung 4G LTE Smartphone” in Verizon’s official press release. Aside from the name, the device does boast a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 1GHz processor, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, and Android 2.2… so ...

We have to be up-front about our hands-on time with the newly announced Dell Streak 7… it was brief. We found ourselves with just a few minutes of time to spare between the T-Mobile event and Verizon’s upcoming event though, so we managed to check out Dell’s latest tablet offering. In a nutshell, it was a whole lot like, well, the Dell Streak. Hit the jump for our preliminary thoughts. (more…)

Big Red officially kicked off CES with its keynote address earlier this morning, and now, Big Red it taking the stage for a solo press conference to pimp its new network, hardware, and solutions. You know your friends at BGR are in the house and ready to relay all the pertinent information to you by way of the live blog. Grab some popcorn, an orange soda, and hit the jump. Kickoff is just minutes away! (more…)

With Verizon’s CES keynote in the books it’s time to move on to the next one… T-Mobile. The nation’s forth largest carrier is expected to focus on its 4G network, technology, and hardare. Hit the jump to follow along! (more…)

Following the crazy storm of tech news that rained down from Vegas yesterday, it’s hard to believe that today is actually the official start of the 2011 Consumer Electronics show. But today is the day, and things are set to pick up right where they left off last night. Verizon Wireless CEO Ivan Seidenberg has been called on to deliver the first big keynote today, and the focus will be LTE 4G. AT&T set the ber pretty high yesterday, but Big Red still has the jump with LTE already having been deployed...