Any respectable company wants to grow its user-base. Companies can't stay stagnant, they have to grow, or they will be eaten up by their competition. Microsoft isn't going to be eaten up any time soon, but their smartphone platform isn't growing -- at least not compared to their competition. It shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone who has been following the news: Windows Phone is still a distant third in the smartphone race. What's a mega-corporation like Microsoft to do in this situation? Try to steal Android users, of course! Android and iOS dominate the market, and Microsoft knows ...

If recent rumors hold true, Google and LG could be working together on the next Nexus smartphone, possibly dubbed the Nexus 5. Before we dig into that rumor and what it could mean, let's look at some history. Google first partnered with HTC to build their "Nexus" line of smartphones. I put "Nexus" in quotation marks because I consider the T-Mobile G1 (aka the HTC Dream) to be a "Nexus" phone. It was the first commercially available Android-powered smartphone and it ran the "pure" Android experience. That sounds like a Nexus to me. Up next was another HTC phone, this time the Nexus One. ...

We all know how important batteries are in our modern electronics. They're also becoming an increasingly vital part of our vehicles. For people in both camps, the latest news from Toyota is disheartening: Li-Ion batteries have a "memory effect". Ni-Cad Batteries When the traditional, land-line telephone evolved from a corded beast into a clunky -- but wireless -- beast, there was much cause for celebration. The battery technology of the day was Ni-Cad (Nickel Cadmium). Batteries based on this technology were used in everything from cordless phones to satellites orbiting the planet. There ...

You're not going to see it advertised on billboards or during your favorite television program. Your local cell phone store isn't going to tell you about it either. It's something quite remarkable, and something that even the mighty Google couldn't do. Let's get some background under our belts, shall we? GSM is a wonderful technology. It has opened the world to mobile communications. That's basically what the acronym stands for -- Global System for Mobile Communications, originally Groupe Spécial Mobile. Using systems based on this technology, a subscriber can place their "identity ...

One billion is a large number. If you had a billion one dollar bills and lined them up end-to-end, you could give them to me and I'd retire tomorrow.  Seriously though, you could wrap them around the Earth at the equator -- almost four times. One billion is a very large number. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, is pretty optimistic about Android. One would imagine that any CEO of any company would be relatively optimistic about whatever their employer produced. In this case, it's a little more than simple optimism. Eric Schmidt thinks that Android is on track to surpass one billion units ...

Ever since "Cupcake" Google has made a tradition of naming the versions of their mobile operating system after something sweet. When they released the follow-up to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) and called it "Jelly Bean" we weren't' surprised. When they released a followup to that, however, Google bumped the version by a minor point (4.1 to 4.2), but kept the name the same, referring to it as "another flavor of Jelly Bean". It was a little odd and broke with tradition regarding their code-naming scheme, but it really wasn't anything more than a curiosity in the timeline of Android. ...

iOS is getting boring. Yes, it's simplistic. Yes, the design is clean. Almost anyone can pick up an iPhone or iPad and immediately know how to use it. Therein lies the largest strength -- and the most notable weakness in Apple's mobile operating system. Android, on the other hand, comes in almost limitless packages with a different look and feel from every manufacturer -- and if you don't like it you can swap out that look for another as easily as installing an app. That flexibility, however, comes with a significant learning curve whenever you switch devices, or are asked to use someone ...

Ask any small child and they'll tell you: all bubbles pop. For many kids, popping bubbles is exciting and entertaining. Whether it's soap bubbles, bubble wrap, or bubble gum -- like it or not, every bubble is going to pop -- eventually. That's not the sort of bubble that we're talking about here. We're talking about "market bubbles" like the dotcom bubble (that burst in the 1990's) or the housing/real-estate bubble (that popped around 2007). The kind of bubble that we're referring to has to do with market saturation, pricing, and many other complex and convoluted factors -- in this case, ...