Smartphones, iPhones, BlackBerrys and beyond...

RIM today unveiled the world’s first touch-screen BlackBerry device, the BlackBerry Storm 9530.

Apple boosted its share of the US consumer smart phone market by 55 percent after cutting the price of its iPhone and rolling out a 3G model this summer, a research firm said Monday.

Research In Motion (RIM) diversified its BlackBerry line Wednesday by introducing a "flip" or clamshell model, a popular form for mobile phones.

Sony Ericsson wants Windows Mobile developers to start working on applications for its Xperia X1 and on Wednesday it announced a tailor-made SDK (software development kit) for the upcoming smartphone.

The Nokia N96 smartphone has started shipping, the Finnish phone giant said Wednesday.

If you're an Apple iPhone user and security's not on your mind, you're at risk; at risk of having a Web mail account hacked; at risk of having your online identity stolen; and at risk of losing valuable personal information, such as wireless service account data, that could result in financial losses, among other disasters.

How the two 3G smartphones stack up against each other

Nifty designs, snazzy interfaces, and music and video galore: We give you the skinny on a dozen trend-setting mobile phone models that are slated to debut soon.

In Part 1 of this series, I looked at the mechanisms available to IT staffers to activate, deploy and configure iPhones in business environments. But the biggest new business-oriented feature available on the iPhone, thanks to the iPhone 2.x firmware (included with the iPhone 3G and available for free to users of first-generation iPhones or for US$9.95 for iPod Touch users), is the addition of ActiveSync for accessing Microsoft Exchange.

Most iPhone users don't care that they can get a root prompt on their phone, and most wouldn't think of opening the device to a world beyond iTunes. Well, these iPhone apps aren't for most users. If you're an IT pro wanting to use the iPhone or iPod touch to monitor and control other systems, or to satisfy other geek needs, these jailbreak and native apps are for you.

InfoWorld has been all over this week's official launch of Android, the new smartphone platform from Google. With its slick interface and open application platform, Android shows every sign of giving Apple's iPhone a run for its money when the first phones begin shipping in late October.

I was all set to give this week's column over to a new register-direct implementation of a JavaScript interpreter that's many times faster than all currently available implementations. It's not exactly growing hair on a billiard ball, but a nitro-boosted JavaScript will put a shine on AJAX and keep my most beloved language on track to becoming the gold standard for dynamic languages.

Most of the world, it seemed, drank the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid about the new iPhone being a BlackBerry killer when the Apple CEO first announced the device earlier this year. But after nearly two weeks with the new iPhone 2.0 software on my iPod Touch, I can tell you that Apple has not yet delivered on that promise.

I have no excuses - I should have known better than to let my gadget envy get the better of me. But, with all the new way cool features added to the iPhone 3G and the fact that my existing AT&T plan allowed me to upgrade at US$199, I decided to join the other crazies in line last Saturday afternoon and spend 2 hours to get my hands on a new iPhone 3G. I've spent more than 20 hours since then trying to get it to do what I needed it to do (i.e., synchronize with Outlook, stay charged up for more than a day, not die when I touch a button, etc.) and then I spent another 3 hours yesterday trying to return it. For more about why I now feel like a moron, read on...

With the iPhone 3G launch now a week behind us, it's time to look back and see how the second coming of the iPhone turned out.