COMPANIES

A group of developers have been very resourceful and found ways how to unlock root access for almost every Ice Cream Sandwich-operated smartphones, which they made available in a forum in XDA Developers.

Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Meyer hinted on Tuesday of the company's next plans about the booming mobile industry in relation to the Internet, which the company used to dominate several years ago.

In the pre-technology age, televiewers use the long stretch of time when commercials are shown for bathroom breaks or get some food or drinks from the refrigerator or pantry. Newspaper readers, in turn, simply turn the page or just ignore the print ads.

HTC’s Droid DNA is one powerful and impressive smartphone and thanks to Amazon, this handset earned higher consumer points with recent price cuts from its original U.S. retail point of $US199.99 to $US149.99, which comes with a Verizon contract.

CyanogenMod 10.1 for Google’s big tablet Nexus 10 is now ready for download at get.cm, providing Android lovers the chance to take the plunge on the extended world beyond the realms of JellyBean.

Popular blogging site Tumblr was hit on Monday by a malware attack which resulted in the posting of self-propagating and offensive measures on streams of users.

After so many years of depressing sales, Ford Motor Co. decided to revive and rename its Lincoln luxury brand. On the 3rd of December, Lincoln Motor Company is due to be introduced. The rebranding is aimed at reviving sales of Lincoln models. And what is more the Lincoln's first Super Bowl ad and television commercials are to be presented as well.

Centuries-old The Times of London, owned and published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, is partnering with Google via a deal that will see the English publication’s digital version on Nexus 7.

South Korea’s Samsung has invaded the United Kingdom by placing five Galaxy handsets in the November list of uSwitch Tech’s 10 most popular smartphones, with the million-selling Galaxy S3 heading the pack.

Nokia has been getting lots of attention lately, thanks much to the Windows-powered Lumia 920, and is likely to further broaden it audience reach soon via a looming deal with China Mobile Ltd, reports said.

Australian air passengers may soon find themselves on the same flight as mining billionaire Nathan Tinkler. The reason is that Mr Tinkler, who owns several companies, lost his $15-million private plane and corporate helicopter because of the collapse of a company he owns due to unpaid debts.

Android lovers wanting to enjoy the latest features and more of the Google mobile platform need not to wait for say Samsung or telcos to deliver the updates, which come excruciatingly slow.

Despite stubborn claims by Microsoft that its Windows 8 launch is going along just fine, analysts have expressed doubts on the manner that the revamped operating system has been unfolding so far.

It’s official, many more lusting after the Nexus 4 will never get their hands on the Google handset this December, which the internet giant said is sold out for the holidays and will not ship until January, at the earliest, next year.

In November, Google Chrome surpassed 1 per cent of web usage in smartphones and tablets. The market increase is from Android users so far, although the Chrome has been released to iOS in June, it only accounted for 0.01 per cent in the same month.

There are reports that Facebook, the most popular social networking site, is in talks to acquire WhatsApp. The hit mobile messaging WhatsApp denied the report as a rumour.

Supply of Nokia’s Lumia 920 was getting scarce in the past few weeks due mainly to solid demands and apparently the Finnish mobile phone maker was caught off guard by the overwhelming reception generated by its new flagship smartphone.

With the recent release of Windows 8, all-in-one PCs with bend, twist, turn, and touch features are all over the market. These hardware capabilities are all state-of-the-art and considered breakthroughs in computer technology.

Analysts agree that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) would cut on its Tuesday, Dec 4, policy board meeting the overnight cash rate by 25 basis points to 3 per cent. The move would bring down the key lending rate to a three-and-a-half-year low or the same level in April 2009, the height of the global financial crisis.

The new super-thin 21.5-inch iMac is quite a view and getting inside the new Apple desktop is most definitely an engineering marvel, as proved by the latest discovery of teardown specialist iFixit.

What’s so sexy about the new Lumia 920? Nokia chief designer Marko Ahtisaari points to the Windows smartphone’s natural ability to fuse what is both physical and digital, creating an advance device that remains in touch with being ‘human and organic’.

A report by Malaysian daily The Star on Sunday said that the country logged 24 cases of electronic hacking involving RM3.3 million in losses. The hacking of smartphones took place between January and September 2012. The reports highlights the vulnerability of smartphones to cyber hacking and other malicious threats through the mobile phones' short messaging service (SMS) which is celebrating 20 years of use on Dec 3, Monday.

Several smartphone units are now capable of controlling other devices such as TVs, cable boxes and Blu Ray disc players. Usually, smartphones have built-in applications to perform such a task, but in some cases, applications can fill in and only require wireless connection to execute the task.

South Korean technology giant Samsung will release the world's first flexible smartphones in 2013, BBC reports. However, Samsung has yet to officially confirm if the new technology would be on the next Galaxy S or Galaxy Note smartphone or if it will roll out a new line of Galaxy Flexible smartphones.

Twenty years ago, 22-year-old British engineer Neil Papworth sent the message "Merry Christmas" to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone from his office computer. It was the world's first text message and since then the number of people who use the short messaging service on their cell phones had grown to 4 billion.

Sony announced on Thursday the return to store shelves of its Xperia Tablet S after it temporarily pulled out the units due to a technical glitch. With its return, the device's phablet war with a similar device, the Microsoft Windows Surface, is expected to be revived.

By the end of 2016, at least 17 million mobile phones will be using 4G services in Australia with the spontaneous growth of smartphones and other mobile devices using this kind of network. That means within four years, almost half of all mobile connections in the country will be on 4G LTE.

By all indications, the Lumia 920 is fast-becoming a hero phone for Nokia, which analysts said represents a much-needed push for a struggling firm that has seen lacklustre product debuts and market battering in the past few years.

Toyota Australia has expanded its hybrid family once more with the addition of the new luxury-spec Toyota Prius V i-Tech.