Why Buying a Cheap Smartphone Isn’t So Dumb Anymore

Samsung, HTC, Apple

If you’re in the market for a smartphone, and don’t want to pay a lot–or anything–up front, you can still do pretty well without cutting edge specs. Here’s why.

How Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android Left BlackBerry in the Dust

ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDER HO FOR TIME

With the dramatic rise of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices, it’s easy to forget that just a few years ago BlackBerry was the premier smartphone on the market and a veritable status symbol.

$150

Google

The long-awaited Galaxy Nexus just went on sale today at Verizon for $300 with a two-year contract. Amazon, however, has already discounted the phone to $150 in its own wireless store.

Muggers Demand iPhone, Turn Down Android

Michael Nagle / Getty Images

A pair of robbers near Columbia University in Manhattan demanded iPhones from their victims, but refused to take one person’s Android phone.

Big Deal: A Major New Player (eBay's PayPal) Enters the Daily Deal Market

Reuters

Without question, Groupon has been a tremendous business success story thus far, inspiring the legions on copycat daily deal sites, along with the previously unheard-of notion that coupons can, in fact, be cool. The latest major force to leap into the field dominated by Groupon and LivingSocial is PayPal, which is expected to start rolling out mobile daily deals in early 2012. Given the soaring popularity of daily deals over the past few years, though, the question worth asking might not be why PayPal’s entering the market, but what took it so long?

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched.”

Amazon

Amazon revealed that it’s selling Kindle e-book readers like hotcakes: over a million per week for the past three weeks.

Is Your Cell Phone Listening in on You?

Getty Images

Carrier IQ and other smartphone apps allow for unprecedented surveillance. And it’s all legal.

36.6 Million

Can Facebook get you a job? Well, on the face of things, no. Clearly, you’d have to have something approaching the right qualifications and skills to actually get the gig. But social media is definitely helping; according to a new study by Jobvite and MBA Online, one in six workers used social media to help [...]

Our Favorite Things: Last-Minute Gift Ideas (Day Four)

Getty Images

So you’re rich, filthy stinking rich, and you want to know what to get, well, probably for yourself, since who else can afford to buy you this stuff? In keeping with my colleagues’ Santa lineup, I guess that makes me Blitzen, whose name with a simple twist of your brain’s linguistic cortex might come out “Blingzen”, and that’s what we’re looking at here—some of the world’s most expensive tech-bling!

Of Course Bill Gates Isn’t Coming Back to Microsoft

REUTERS/Anthony Bolante

Bill Gates has shot down reports that he’ll ever go back to work full-time at Microsoft, the company he co-founded 36 years ago.

Facebook Makes New 'Timeline' Design Available to Everyone

Facebook

Let the chaos begin! Facebook’s new scrapbook-like Timeline design is now available to all users. Some of you will love it! Some of you already love it! Some of you will hate it! Some of you already hate it! These are Facebook changes we’re talking about, after all.