Derek Kessler is Special Projects Manager for Mobile Nations. He's been writing about tech since 2009, has far more phones than is considered humane, still carries a torch for Palm, and got a Tesla because it was the biggest gadget he could find. You can follow him on Twitter at @derekakessler.
What happens when you take a National Geographic photographer and send him to Africa with a Nokia Lumia 830, a Microsoft Surface Pro 3, and not his DSLR? You still get fantastic photos and video, as evidenced in the above video partnership between photographer Alvarez and Microsoft's #MakeItHappen campaign. The video itself was even shot with Lumia phones (pictures of people taking...
It was way back in May that Microsoft showed off the first demonstration for Skype Translator, and today they started accepting registrations to take part in the tool's early preview (i.e. public beta). The service adds real-time speech translation to Skype, both in voice and video, so it doesn't matter that you and your conversant aren't fluent in the same languages. The preview...
At CES 2014 we at Mobile Nations teamed up with our friends at Geek Beat to bring you #CESlive, a unique live broadcast running every day from the show floor at CES 2014 — and CES 2015 is going to be even bigger than before. For #CESlive 2015 you can add Tom's Guide to the mix, with Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer joining Geek Beat's Cali Lewis and John Pozadzides and iMore's Rene...
Right now it's crazy season for new phones. Between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Android L, the BlackBerry Passport and Classic, and Windows Phone 8.1. There's never been a hotter time for new gadgets. So we want to know what you think — what phones are you looking forward to, what's important to you in a phone, and what you think of your carrier. So we...
AT&T has a new set of international plans, and while they'll still hit your wallet hard, they're an improvement of what came before. AT&T's new plans, dubbed Passport, Passport Plus, and Passport Pro (not to be confused with plans for the new BlackBerry Passport), bring the same data allotments, but at least offer easier billing international data packages than we've seen before...
Blu, purveyor of low-cost Windows phones, can now be found in Microsoft Stores in Canada. The pair of Windows Phones had previously only been available from Blu and Microsoft Stores in the United States. Blu's phones aren't associated with any carrier in either country, so that these prices are off-contract is an encouraging thing: $179 for the Blu Win HD and $89 for the Blu Win Jr....
Sure, the Xbox One might be the current king of the Microsoft gaming console ecosystem, but that doesn't mean the older and thus cheaper Xbox 360 can't also get some love. And some love it is getting, with new bundles hitting shelves for this holiday season. First up is the "500GB Holiday Value Bundle", which not only includes a 500GB Xbox 360 and a month of Xbox Live Gold, but also...
AT&T has plans to start offering Wi-Fi calling support by 2015. The system would allow subscribers to place calls using their phone's Wi-Fi connection instead of the cellular network. If that sounds familiar, it should, as T-Mobile has offered Wi-Fi calling for years now, and even dedicated their Uncarrier 7.0 press event to expanding on the concept. AT&T Mobile and Business...
At IFA 2014 we saw a few new Windows Phones like those from NGM, Archos, and Prestigio, but the Yezz Billy 4.7 had the potential to really stand out. Details about this phone have been scarce since its announcement in May, so when found this phone in Berlin, we knew we'd have to spend at least a few minutes with it. 'Found' might be a bit of a stretch. We stumbled across it. Yezz is...
As much as Windows Phone competes in the high end, the low-end is where the real action is at, and Archos's new 40 Cesium Windows Phone is the latest entrant to challenge Nokia's Lumia 530. And it does so at the same $99/€79.99 price point as Nokia's latest entry-level Windows Phone, while possibly bringing a bit more to the table. At IFA 2014 we had the opportunity to go hands on and...
U.S. prepaid carrier Cricket is, for a limited time, raising the roof on their data allotments. New customers that sign up between September 13 and an as-yet undetermined cut-off date will get anywhere from 500MB to 5GB more LTE data on their plan for the same amount. Existing customers will also get more data on their plans automatically, and they won't have to pay anything more for it...
Prestigio, one of the first new manufacturers to join the Windows Phone platform in a while was at IFA 2014 where they were showing off their new MultiPhone 8400 DUO and MultiPhone 8500 DUO Windows Phones. The pair of smartphones are Prestigio's first Windows Phones, and they aim for a low price for emerging markets. Both phones have a few spec points in common. They're both powered...
Adobe's Creative Cloud video apps will soon offer proper support for the high resolution HiDPI displays available on modern Windows laptops like the Dell XPS 15. The apps have been stuck in low-res mode for what seems like an eternity (even if the Retina laptops are really just a few years old at this point), and so soon users of Adobe Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Prelude CC, and...
I wasn't sure what to expect when I was told there was a Harley Davidson-branded Windows Phone lurking about the halls of IFA 2014. The idea of such fancified devices — be it Samsung's Giorgio Armani Samsung Galaxy S or LG's Prada line — isn't entirely unheard of. And Harley Davidson has become something of a fashion brand in certain circles, though not the same circles as the Armani...
The Nokia Lumia 530 with Windows Phone 8.1 can be had contract-free from UK mobile phones retailer Carphone Warehouse for a cool £39.95. That's a full-fledged smartphone, for under forty quid. Not a bad deal, if we might say so ourselves. Options from Carphone Warehouse to go with that Lumia 530 include Vodafone and EE (well, Orange and T-Mobile, but they're both EE). So what does £...
T-Mobile's scheduled their next Uncarrier event (this one being Uncarrier 7.0), and they're holding it on September 10th. The tagline for this event? "This time it's personal"… whatever that means. Unlike previous Uncarrier events, which have taken over convention spaces and theaters, this one is being held at the T-Mobile retail store at the corner of Market St and 3rd St in San...
If you add a tablet to your T-Mobile Simple Choice plan, starting September 3rd T-Mobile will charge you $10-a-month for the privilege and will double your data allotment in the process. The plan creates a duplicate bucket of data reserved for that tablet, up to 5 GB per month. This is in stark contrast to other carriers, where adding a new device, tablet or otherwise, draws from...
HTC's next smartphone might surprise us with some high-powered specs. In a post on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, HTC says that they will have the world's first octa-core 64-bit smartphone. The current HTC flagship, the One M8 (available in both Android and Windows Phone flavors) packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, a 32-bit chip with a measly four cores clocked at 2.3Ghz. An...
Sprint's not leaving the single-line users out of the party — they're offering a new $60/month unlimited talk, text, and data plan. There's just one catch: You have to bring your own device, pay for one up front, or sign up for Sprint's Easy Pay monthly payments and upgrade plan. That said, if you're a Sprint customer (or are considering being one), that's still some substantial...
There's something to be said for convenience and fashion in one, though we might have to question just how convenient the battery-as-a-bracelet QBracelet really is. The band splits in the middle, with a hinge on one side and your choice of a microUSB plug or Apple Lightning connector on the other. Simply pop it off your wrist and plug into the charge port on your phone to juice up. But...