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An Indian company has launched an 'Islamic smart phone', featuring a full copy of the Koran, a GPS application which points to Mecca and a calculator for Zakaat charitable donations.

If you are like us, every day you pick up a smartphone and you send email, visit with friends on Facebook, send a text message or even log into your bank's website and pay a bill. These modern day conveniences have become routine. We all believe that our passwords are secure, our data is protected, and life is easier if we don't have to write a check to pay a bill or dig around and find a stamp to send a friend a quick note. But this morning we are no longer sure. The tech world is in a fury,...

A security researcher, Trevor Eckhart, recently made a startling discovery. Hidden inside every Android and iPhone is a program called Carrier IQ (CIQ), which is capable of monitoring virtually everything you do on a SmartPhone. And then it has the ability to send all that data back to your wireless carrier and then who knows where it will wind up and how it will be used. Perhaps these phones have become too Smart for our own good. This is our worst nightmare potentially being realized. With our freedoms being eroded at a rapid rate, this is a biggie. A cellphone...

An Android app developer has published what he says is conclusive proof that millions of smartphones are secretly monitoring the key presses, geographic locations, and received messages of its users. In a YouTube video posted on Monday, Trevor Eckhart showed how software from a Silicon Valley company known as Carrier IQ recorded in real time the keys he pressed into a stock EVO handset, which he had reset to factory settings just prior to the demonstration. Using a packet sniffer while his device was in airplane mode, he demonstrated how each numeric tap and every received text message is logged...

An Android app developer has published what he says is conclusive proof that millions of smartphones are secretly monitoring the key presses, geographic locations, and received messages of its users. In a YouTube video posted on Monday, Trevor Eckhart showed how software from a Silicon Valley company known as Carrier IQ recorded in real time the keys he pressed into a stock EVO handset, which he had reset to factory settings just prior to the demonstration. Using a packet sniffer while his device was in airplane mode, he demonstrated how each numeric tap and every received text message is logged...

17 November 2011 We know the Internet has dangers. Everything we put onto the information superhighway should be considered chiseled into marble. Meanwhile, those smartphones that so many of us carry are tantamount to carrying hostile spies in our pockets. If the battery is charged and in the phone, the phone is a homing beacon whether it’s on or off. Now add services such as Facebook, and those excellent phone cameras with geotagging, and there is a combination for disaster. This has relevancy for our troops in Afghanistan. During certain missions, I would not even take my smartphones. On or...

ALLEN (CBSDFW.COM) – There’s a new secret to saving money and getting free stuff in your everyday life. It almost sounded too good and too simple to be true. Our investigative team went undercover to check it out, and you can do it, too. Clipping coupons could soon be a thing of the past. Now, there’s an app for your scissors! Saving money can be as easy as swiping your finger, or touching a button. Lynette Shofner of Allen never leaves home without her smartphone. “If I’m going to spend money, it’s going to be at a discount,” Shofner said.

Samsung targets iPhone 4S sales ban in France, Italy 9:29am EDT SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics said it will file patent-infringement claims in France and Italy to ban the sale of Apple's new iPhone less than a day after it was unveiled, intensifying a legal battle between the two top brands. It will also file legal cases in other countries to stop the sale of the iPhone 4S after further review, the South Korean maker of Galaxy smartphones and tablets said in a statement. Samsung has emerged as a credible challenger to Apple's mobile devices and the two companies are...

October 5, 2011, 9:16 AM GMT. Forget Dual-Core, Here Comes the 64-Core Smartphone Chip. By Nick Clayton A “core” is essentially an independent processor on a chip. But it is not quite a case of the more, the merrier for every computer, tablet or smartphone chip. Software has to support multiple cores and there is a trade-off on power consumption. Nevertheless, the presence of a dual-core processor is a key element in premium, high-performance smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation and, of course, the newly-announced iPhone 4S which Apple says is twice as fast at processor...

Why did Google just pay a 60% premium for MMI? One word: iPhone - "Motorola Mobility's total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers....We expect that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android ecosystem. However, our vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community....

Sony has announced via its webpage the development of a new type of LCD display that uses either half as much power as current same-size LCD displays, or the same amount of power, but doubles the brightness. Called WhiteMagic, the new LCD screen, currently just 3 inches diagonally, achieves these results by employing a third, white pixel to create images on a screen. For the most part, most LCD displays use just three backlit pixels - Red, Green and Blue (RGB) to create one dot of color on the screen; the various colors are produced by filtering the light that...

Look down a list of Windows Phone 7 smartphones being offered without a contract and you’ll notice the price hovers around the $300-$400. There are some $200 models, but they are few and far between and make a few feature compromises to achieve the lower price point. The price of buying a smartphone outright is clearly high, but Microsoft has stated that is about to change, and come 2012 you will be able to pick up a Windows Phone 7 smartphone for around $100. That revelation was announced to a crowd of people attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011...

I am trying to set up my college son so that his NON-EXCHANGE-based Outlook will sync his Outlook calendar AND TASKS/TO-DOs with a to-be-acquired smartphone. Preferably over the air, but will accept a daily dock and USB-sync. The hard part has been locating a program that will work when you are NOT using EXCHANGE, and also one that WILL sync TASKS and TO-DOs. I've been out on the forums and not found a best fit yet, so I thought I'd ask the smartest people in the world - FReepers. Also, a lot of folks seem to report issues with calendar...

(Credit: Matt Hickey/Cellebrite) The Michigan State Police have started using handheld machines called "extraction devices" to download personal information from motorists they pull over, even if they're not suspected of any crime. Naturally, the ACLU has a problem with this. The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information. The problem as the ACLU sees it, is that accessing a citizen's private phone information...

Gartner, Inc., one of the world's most respectable market research firms, has announced [press release] that its research supports our hypothesis that Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows Phone 7 smartphone OS will become the market's second largest player when the phase-out of Nokia Oyj.'s (NOK) Symbian OS is complete. In a research report released this week, it estimates that this year the platform will only rise modestly from 4.2 percent market share in 2010 to 5.6 percent in 2011 (still behind Symbian, in fifth place). But by 2012 it will jump to a 10.8 percent, switching places with Symbian. And three...

Are the glory days over for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone? Market researcher IDC thinks so. In its smartphone forecast released Tuesday, IDC sees Apple’s global market share hitting a plateau of 15.7% in 2011. It sees Apple’s share of the market dipping to 15.3% by 2015. IDC predicts that Apple’s smartphone sales will grow at a compound annual rate of 18.8% from 2011 to 2015, while the overall market grows at 19.6%.

03/23/11 Cheap Chinese Smartphones Poised for World Conquest Chinese smartphone makers are about to take the global market by storm with their rock-bottom prices, especially in price-conscious Europe. ZTE, ranked fourth in terms of global handset shipments in 2010, is selling its San Francisco smartphone via Tesco Mobile of the U.K. for 80 pounds per unit (around W145,000) based on pre-paid calling plans. By contrast LG Electronics, whose smartphones are almost identical to the San Francisco, sells its handsets in the U.K. for 150 pounds. Although the LG gadgets boast better finish and trim, they are twice as expensive. â—†...

AT&T has started to issue warnings to customers unofficially tethering their smartphones to its network. In an email to unauthorized tetherers, the company writes, “Our records show that you use this capability, but are not subscribed to our tethering plan.” The correspondence goes on to note that users will be automatically enrolled in the $45 per month “DataPro for Smartphone Tethering” plan if they ignore the warning. “The new plan – whether you sign up on your own or we automatically enroll you – will replace your current smartphone data plan, including if you are on an unlimited data plan,”...

Motorola's Xoom tablet, the first serious Google Android rival to Apple's iPad, will ship without Adobe Flash support. Big shocker. (Not really.) This is surely a disappointment to Motorola, Adobe, and Google. But to anyone who has been watching Adobe fumble with Flash on mobile devices for as long as we have, it's hardly a surprise. Since the middle of last decade, we have heard Adobe time and time again promise to ship versions of Flash for mobile devices that can perform adequately without destroying battery life. We still haven't seen one, and apparently the Xoom won't initially ship with...

Though we still like to think of Intel first and foremost as a computer CPU company, the fact of the matter is the company is trying its hardest to expand their horizons. Among their expansion efforts are a push in to the smartphone space, and to further that Intel is at Mobile World Congress 2011 making their latest smartphone-related announcements. The first announcement, and of course the one nearest and dearest to our hearts, is on the CPU side of things. Medfield – Intel’s next-generation Atom-based smartphone SoC is now sampling and will ship later this year. Intel still hasn’t...