Once upon a time, smartphones were just the expensive cousins of cheap cellphones that could make calls, maybe play a few ringtones, and if you were lucky surf a few web pages. Today smartphones are tiny computers that you can fit in your pocket… which might help explain why more more smartphones were shipped last year than traditional PCs –…

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Research firm Strategy Analytics estimate that about 10.5 million Android tablets were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2011. That’s more than a 300 percent jump from a year earlier, and the increase in Android tablet shipments means that Android devices now make up about 39 percent of overall tablet sales. But one thing that wasn’t in Strategy Analytics original…

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Apple announced recently that it shipped a whopping 15.4 million iPads in the most recent quarter, with iPads outselling Mac computers by a margin of nearly 3 to 1. But how does the iPad fare against the onslaught of tablets running Android, Windows, or other operating systems? Pretty well, actually. According to a new report from Strategy Analytics, about 26.8…

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Tablets and eBook readers may have grabbed a lot of headlines in 2011, but it looks like sales of the devices may have really taken off during the holiday season. The Pew Research Center has conducted surveys over the last few years to see how many people in America have eReaders and tablets — and the numbers nearly doubled from…

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There’s been a lot of talk about tablets such as the Apple iPad and Android tablets saving the news industry. Apple incorporated a Newsstand into iOS 5, which lets customers subscribe to digital magazines and newspapers and keep them organized. Zinio and other companies have created periodical stores for tablets. And a number of publications including the New York Times,…

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You know all those smartphones, tablets, all-in-one computers and other devices with touchscreen displays that are on the market? Apparently people like them, because the folks at DisplaySearch have put out a report suggesting that revenue from touch panel sales will hit $13.4 billion this year. That’s up about 90 percent from last year. Smartphones are still leading the way…

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[/caption]   One of the best ways to improve battery life on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet is to shut off the WiFi radio. Of course, that’s not always practical, but a grad student at Duke University has come up with a technique for managing WiFi networking that uses between 38 and 51 percent less energy. When implemented properly, the…

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It seems like a week doesn’t go by without the launch of a new tablet device for surfing the web, viewing media, reading eBooks, and running apps. But most of the high profile tablets available cost $400 or more. You know what’s a lot cheaper? An eBook reader such as the latest NOOK, Kobo, or Kindle eReaders. They also have…

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It seems like every other day we see a report suggesting that tablets are killing off consumer demand for netbooks, but last week ABI Research released results of survey suggesting that both product categories remain pretty popular. About 27 percent of those questioned said they were “very” or “extremely” interested in acquiring tablets, while the figure for netbooks was about…

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HP researchers say the company could begin commercial production of memory resistors (memristors) by mid-2013, providing an alternative to today’s DRAM and flash memory. The company built the first prototype memristor a few years ago, but scientists had predicted the possibility of memristors in the 1970s. The memristor is an electronic component that takes its place alongside resistors, capacitors, and…

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Tired of waiting a few hours for your cellphone, tablet, or laptop battery to go from 0 to 100? Batteries of the future may be able to charge in a tiny fraction of the time. Ars Technica dug up a report this week from researchers working on a way to construct batteries that could charge in minutes rather than hours….

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Finally, a bit of sanity. Headline after headline this year has claimed that the Apple iPad is eating into netbook and notebook sales because iPad sales are up while netbook sales growth is slowing. You could also make the case that ice cream is eating into netbook sales, because as the summer dragged on, ice cream sales rose while notebook…

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