We've seen a big uptick in interest lately towards bringing a proper console-quality gaming experience to smartphone users. While the processing power has been there, the larger issue has been about control – touchscreens are fine for plenty of things, but traditional gaming ain't one of them. On the Android front, we've seen projects like NVIDIA's Shield attempt to meld console-style controllers with a smartphone to overcome those limitations. There's a similar movement taking place over on iOS, and that accessory pictured up above just might be one of the first Apple-certified ...

We recently had the opportunity to review the Sony Xperia Tablet Z, an experience we enjoyed primarily because of the device's innovative hardware: a 6.9mm-thick, 495g chassis that manages to squeeze water- and dust-resistance onto its list of features. Pocketnow is currently in the midst of reviewing the BlackBerry Q10, a peculiar blend of yesterday's design cues with a modern OS - and we're enjoying the feeling of real physical keys under our thumbs again. The third-generation Apple iPad and Microsoft's Surface RT also share space in our office, and we love the sturdy (if heavy) hardware ...

Synthetic sapphire crystals have one big thing going for them: they are fantastically resistant to scratching. That might make them seem like the ideal material for a smartphone display – and we've already seen them in luxury phones like those from Vertu – but they're also not without their problems: they're expensive to produce, and though they have excellent protection against scratches, they're still subject to shatter damage. Still, that no-more-scratches business is so compelling that we've been following the technology in hopes of a sign that it could one day come to a more ...

It took Apple quite some time to make an iPhone with a larger screen. Now some even larger iPhone rumors are popping up on the interwebs and Reuters is citing some sources who are allegedly familiar with matters. Let's break the rumors down into categories. As far as size is concerned, the larger iPhone rumors are talking about the possibility of 4.7-inch, even 5.7-inch screens. They refer to next year, 2014, and the report hints "at least two" larger Apple phones. "They constantly change product specifications almost to the final moment, so you're not really sure whether this is the ...

Who's the person responsible when a smartphone company really nails a handset launch? Who do we blame when a product bombs? While there are any number of engineers, designers, marketing folk, and executives involved with the release of a new device or service, when it comes to giving one of these corporate entities a face, more often than not we look to the company's CEO. Sure, up on this same level we can find all matter of presidents, board members, and chairpeople (persons?) overseeing a company's business, but in the end it's the Chief Executive Officer making the managerial decisions ...

At long last, iOS has been made different. It seems that since 2007, we've complained about being frustrated by sameness. Well, that sameness is now a thing of the past because iOS 7 is a deep change. It touches every toggle, every app, every menu of iOS, and it represents a dramatic modernization of the mobile operating system that propelled the smartphone industry forward six years ago. We got a hold of the developer preview, which seems to be quite stable, in our iOS 7 hands-on. Battery life seems worse than the latest stable version of iOS 6, but overall stability and performance ...

Today is the day every iOS fanatic has been awaiting for years. From the time iOS was first announced to the last major update, iOS 6, the operating system has looked mostly the same. Apple added features along the way but, for the most part, it has always been the same iOS. For the last six years, the interface has remained mostly unchanged. And few viewed that as a serious problem. The vocal minority and us tech writers have griped about it for years, about how stale iOS has become as new and existing operating systems have been graced with new looks and groundbreaking features. But the ...

Today's WWDC 2013 keynote kicked off much how we were expecting it to, and after Apple spent a few minutes talking about the state of iOS/OS X union, as it were, it jumped right in to the new OS X, which it's calling Mavericks. While there was some very cool stuff there, we're just a smidge more interested in the mobile side of things. Luckily for us, after it got done showing-off a slew of its new computers, Apple officially announced iOS 7. Tim Cook started by bringing us up to speed with some iOS stats. Apple's sold 600 million devices running the platform since its inception, and ...