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While the new iPhones frenzy was going on over the past few weeks, they were not the only games in town. At least three of my pockets had one of the Motorola Droids trio that certainly deserve some attention. Verizon Wireless sent a box full of Droids just as the the iPhone mania was heating up and I have been exploring and enjoying these Google and Motorola-branded devices so much that I haven't had a hankering for the new iPhone 5S. My FedEx box contained the Motorola Droid Maxx, Droid Ultra and Droid Mini. Let's just say I was surrounded by droids, which represent the newest creation from Google and Motorola since they agreed to join forces in August 2011 after Google put $12.5 million on the table. I think we all knew that something big would come out of this partnership, with Google's Android empire and Motorola's reputation for quality hardware. The Droid Maxx is certainly the flagship out of this trio and it has the features to prove it. Right off the ...

As expected, the 5S and the 5C iPhones were unveiled on Tuesday, Sept. 10 with a splash of colors. In the past, a new iPhone announcement was always a magical moment, thanks to all the hype created Apple Inc., the media and Apple fans all around the world. The magic continues with these two devices. The initial excitement surrounding iPhone announcements started on Jan. 9, 2007, at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, when the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs pulled an iPhone 2G out his pocket. The hoopla surrounding Apple smartphones announcement has been gaining traction every since and there seems to be no end in sight. The true Apple fans can probably name them all, starting with the 2G in 2007, the 3G in 2008, followed by the 3GS in 2009 and the 4G in 2010. We're not done. Then we had the 4S in 2011 and the evolutionary, if not revolutionary, iPhone 5 just a year ago. Now we have the iPhone 5S, a souped-up doozy of a device with fingerprint reader techno...

I've had another experience where a particular smartphone was just a joy to carry around. This time, it was the Nokia Lumia 822 from Verizon Wireless. Maybe it was the live tiles of Windows Phone 8 or the seamless integration with everything Microsoft, such as Windows Live and all the features surrounding it. Whatever it was, I took a likening to the Lumia 822 and now I must say "well done" to Nokia and Microsoft. Nokia has been around for the long term and most of us remember them as always having quality hardware. Although the Finnish crew have been making mobile phones since the early 1990s and used to be the King of cell phones, the smartphone craze from Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platform caused Nokia to fall by the wayside. Microsoft has been around since 1975 and needed something significant and exciting in the mobile communications arena. So these two giants teamed up in 2011 to create market-leading mobile products. Before the year was out, ...

The feature phone is not dead. Nokia is bringing new life to these guys from "back in the day" with their announcement of the Nokia 206 today. So long live the alphanumeric keyboard. This classic design has a 2.4-inch display and comes in single and dual-SIM versions. The camera is nothing to brag about at 1.3 megapixels and it also has video capture. But the camera is optimized for sharing pictures - let's say on Facebook - at around 700KB. The downsizing is done automatically. But here is something to brag about. Nokia is claiming 20 hours of talk time in battery life for the single-SIM version, with a 47-day standby mode. That's over month without recharging. The dual-SIM model has a lower 25-day standby time. As for memory, there is 10 megabytes of user memory, along with a slot that accept a 32-gigabyte SD card. Nokia did manage to incorporate some nifty technology into the feature phone platform. Their "Slam" technology allows the sharing of...

Update: Apple Inc. is releasing guidelines to developers for an "Add to Passbook" badge that can be incorporated into their apps and websites for devices running iOS 6. After a few days with the iPhone 5, I figured it was time to go shopping with the Passbook app as my guide. This mysterious app included with iOS 6 will organize gift cards, coupons, passes, tickets and more, with the idea of making your wallet a lot thinner and lighter. But it requires a few advance maneuvers before you head out to the store or look for your boarding passes. It's not as automatic as you would think. The first thing the Passbook app will want to do is connect to the App Store through iTunes and this where things can come to a standstill a hurry, as there are numerous reports from iPhone 5 users about connection difficulties. You might see the dreaded "can't connect to iTunes" message. I experienced the same problem with the Passbook app and iTunes, until ...

The iPhone 5 has started out with a bang, as pre-orders were sold out in around 60 minutes on Friday. So now, we can probably expect lines of fans when the retails stores open their doors on Sept. 21. AT&T announced a sales record for the iPhone 5 over the first weekend of pre-orders, making it their fastest-selling iPhone ever. Some of the hype so far has been all about the revolutionary - for Apple at least - 4-inch display. I say for Apple only, because the iPhone 5 joins several other smartphones with 4-inch displays that have been on the shelves for a while. These include the Samsung Galaxy S, which arrived in mid 2010 and the Motorola Atrix, which made its debut in January 2011. And let's not forget the Google Nexus S 4G1 that came along in April 2011, or the Nokia 808 PureView in February. But perhaps the biggest area of discussion about the iPhone 5 has centered around the redesigned dock connector. The 30-pin connector is history, replaced by a smaller Lightning...

Today is the big day for Apple Inc. to show the world the next iPhone, which might be called the iPhone 5. This device will be the sixth generation of the iPhone since Jan. 9, 2007, when Apple unveiled the original iPhone to revolutionize the mobile landscape. When the original iPhone arrived, most the mobile handset manufacturers, such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, RIM's BlackBerry and other were using QWERTY or alphanumeric keypads, along with small displays and navigational buttons. There has been some early attempts at touchscreen technology by Nokia, IBM with the Simon Personal Communicator, Ericsson, HP, Palm and a few others. But the first-generation iPhone got everything right and brought in a new era of touchscreen displays, icons, digital keypads and something called apps in 2008. Now today's smartphones are just as smart and innovative as the iPhone and it's going to be tough for Apple to stay ahead of the pack and continue to hit home runs. There are t...

Nokia and Microsoft launched new Windows 8 smartphones today at a press event in New York. We can say hello to the Lumia 920 and 820 devices. The two longtime technology powerhouses, who have been in a partnership since February 2011, vowed to use their "complementary strengths and expertise create market-leading mobile products." The new Lumia 920 smartphone is chock full of new features, such as PureMotion HD+, wireless charging and Nokia's PureView camera technology, first seen on the PureView 41 megapixel phone announced earlier this year. The 920 will have a 8 megapixel camera. This new device, shown in a new yellow color that Nokia says won' scratch off, is powered by a sizable 2000mAh battery and a Qualcomm 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor. It'll also be available in red and gray. Nokia is bring their notable mapping technology to the Lumia 920 that'll include daily commute drive times, routes and walking directions, indoor maps and Augmen...

The Nokia Lumia 900 has been available from AT&T since April 8 for around $100 under contract. ​ It joins the Lumia 710 from T-Mobile, which arrived in early January, as the first crop of smartphones in the Unites States running Windows Phone 7, which is a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. The Finland-based Nokia , who in 1987 introduced its first handheld mobile phone, used to be the darling of the mobile phone market. But it has been challenged in recent years by Apple's iPhones and Google's Android devices. Nokia is now moving away from its Symbian operating system in favor of the Windows Phone OS. It's too early to tell whether Nokia will be successful with the new smartphones, but quarterly results that were released on April 19 indicate a challenging road ahead. They reported quarterly losses in sales of $4 billion and an operating loss of $1.7 billion. The handset sales were down 29 percent. The Lumia 900 has only been in the market for a cou...