consumer electronics

Features

• Near field communication use growing outside smartphones

  A growing number of smartphones have near field communication (NFC) capabilities to make mobile payments, but accessories and ultrabooks also now increasingly have the same technology.

• Location-based services: Are they there yet?

  Mobile users are more connected to the Internet than ever. As of December 2011, ComScore estimated that there are 97.9 million smartphone users in the US - nearly a third of the total population.

• Smartphone screens are getting bigger

  Smartphone screens are getting larger, although vendors will likely continue to offer many sizes to woo a wide variety of users.

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  Analysis: Why Linux is a desktop flop

  It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows.

• BYOD battle: A tale of two opposing IT viewpoints

  EdSouth is a bank holding company active in the student-loan arena, and Arrow Container Corp. manufactures cartons and containers. Their ideas about letting employees use their own mobile devices at work for business — what's often called "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) — couldn't be more different.

• Hot for this quarter: The best smartphones

  Device manufacturers are starting to roll out some of their marquee smartphones in an effort to generate some buzz before Apple inevitably drops its newest iPhone this (northern) summer.

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  In depth: Nokia's great Windows Phone hope - Beauty without brawn

  Nokia may sell more cellphones than any other company in the world, but it's been all but excluded from the United States for years -- and it's seen its global sales steadily shrink as the iPhone and Android smartphones have become the darlings of buyers in an increasing number of countries. Nokia's relevance has been fast receding, and its Symbian, Maemo, and MeeGo efforts became a pattern of failure for a company that just didn't get it. In response, a year ago, Nokia bet its future largely on Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's answer to Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

• 'Siri, I have some some suggestions for you'

  When Apple's new iPad was unveiled last week , one of the features users had hoped for didn't come with it. Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant that's been such a hit on the iPhone 4S, wasn't among the tablet's new features. (Apple did add a dictation feature, but it has none of Siri's interactivity; all you can do is one-way dictation.)

• This year's mobile screens will stun and amaze

  It seems like all phones and all tablets do all things for all people these days. Every single smartphone and touch tablet has become just about everything anyone could ever want in a mobile device.

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  I dumped my iPhone 4 for the Android Galaxy Nexus

  I like a lot of things about my iPhone 4. For starters, the whole "antennagate" thing was overblown. Lots of phones drop bars if you grip them a certain way while in a weak signal area. (My new Galaxy Nexus does.) And although I live in a dead zone for both AT&T and Verizon, right out of the box my AT&T iPhone 4 got noticeably better reception than my original iPhone. A simple iPhone 4 case prevented any loss of signal reception due to hand shielding.

• Smartphone data shake-up: The end of 'unlimited'

  Americans like living large. We have all-you-can-eat buffets and all-you-can-stream entertainment. And, until recently, we had a virtually unlimited trough of mobile data to digest on our always-available smartphones.

• 2011's biggest security snafus

  Perhaps it was an omen of what was to come when the city of San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2010 couldn't get a backup system running in its Emergency Operations Center because no one knew the password.

• What smartphones will be like in 2012

  Since the advent of the first modern smartphone--arguably the original Apple iPhone in 2007--the power of these mobile computing devices that also happen to make phone calls has advanced by leaps and bounds.

• Want Siri on your Android phone? Try these apps

  Wouldn't you like to have your very own gofer dedicated to doing all the menial tasks you hate? That's a big part of the appeal of the iPhone 4S: Siri, the voice-driven virtual assistant, turns anyone with a couple hundred bucks into a CEO attended by a full-time lackey. But can you get the same kind of slavish devotion from an Android phone?

• Car tech: The connected car arrives

  Automobile technology has become so advanced that today's cars are essentially computers with wheels. So why aren't we using them to surf the Web, communicate with other cars or order food at nearby restaurants?