Tag / Smartphones

I’ve covered the smartphone industry long enough to know that when someone touts a new phone capability as the next must-have feature, they’re most likely wrong. Yet I recently wrote a story that proclaims Google’s Tango technology as just that. What is Tango? And what’s so great about it? Tango is tough to describe pithily. […]

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Ever wondered why your smartphone is a specific size/shape/color? Or thought about who designed your phone or came up with its name? We spend so much time with our smartphones that it’s natural to speculate how these devices came to be. And many of the stories behind these gadgets are truly fascinating. However, the super-competitive […]

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Normally it’s tough for new smartphone makers to stand out in the jam-packed smartphone market. One notable exception is the China-based start-up Xiaomi. Over the past year, Xiaomi has racked up a number of superlatives and accolades for its stylish, reasonably-priced phones and innovative business model. Though Xiaomi didn’t ship its first smartphone until August 2011 and only sells […]

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The rapid-fire pace of the smartphone industry made my newly published book, The Smartphone, (more information here) a moving target. Every time I thought I was done writing, news would break and I would need to update the manuscript again. I kept making changes to my book as late as I possibly could, which was risky, […]

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I realize updates have been infrequent on this blog. The main reason: I was busy writing a book. You can now see what I’ve been laboring on – my book, The Smartphone: Anatomy of an Industry was published on September 9. As the title makes plain, it’s a book about the smartphone industry. Though it’s a […]

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Figuring that people are intrigued by T-Mobile’s no-contract plans, but unsure how the (relatively) new plans compare to the competition, I wrote a short guide for the July issue of Money magazine. The article looks at four common types of smartphone users: a value-oriented, four-person family; a price-conscious user who tends to hold onto his/her […]

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