Nokia Lumia 820 owners can customize their phone with 3D printers

Nokia is embracing the 3D printing community by releasing files that will let smartphone users create their own custom shells. Owners of its Lumia 820 smartphone will be the first to have the opportunity, the company said in a blog post on Friday. The move is mostly about marketing, as Nokia looks for ways to make its products stand out, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media. The...

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iOS app revenues still four times higher than Android, but Play store growing fast

A new report from mobile app analytics firm App Annie shows that, while revenues for iOS apps are still four times higher than those of Android apps, the gap is beginning to close, thanks to spiking sales in the Google Play store. The report is the first of a monthly series that the company will make publicly available via its blog. MORE MOBILITY: Exclusive: Nokia seeks to block sale of some RIM products SMARTPHONE...

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Apple's iPad Mini, iPhone 5 head to China

Apple today announced that it will start selling the iPad Mini, fourth-generation iPad and iPhone 5 in China over the next two weeks, putting those new products on shelves in time for the January 2013 kick-off of Chinese New Year sales. Analysts expressed surprise that the new iPads -- particularly the diminutive 7.9-in. Mini -- were reaching the Chinese market, having previously predicted that the tablets wouldn't start shipping...

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Users see random reboots on two Windows Phone 8 smartphones

Hundreds of early users of two Windows Phone 8 smartphones have complained of recurring and random reboots on Nokia's Lumia 920 and the HTC 8X smartphones. More than 65 similar posts had been filed by users on a Microsoft support forum early Monday, while 165 complaint posts were made at the Windows Phone Central forum. Many complaints blamed the Windows Phone 8 mobile operating system for the reboots, although...

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Hottest Android news & rumors (in brief!) for the week of Thanksgiving

(Author's note: Since I'll be way too full of turkey and stuffing and all the rest of it to fill you in on the latestAndroid news on Thursday, here's a brief update on what's happening early in the week. Enjoy!) Big screen? No big deal for Samsung, apparently -- last week's murmurs that the South Korean giant was maybe sort of going to think about a full HD screen on what may or may not be the Galaxy S 4 crescendoed into...

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Samsung releases smaller, faster 64GB smartphone memory

Samsung on Thursday announced a new 64GB memory chip for smartphones and tablets, which it says is 20 percent smaller and a third faster than current technology. The company said its new 64GB eMMC (embedded multimedia card) reads data sequentially at up to 260 megabytes per second and writes at up to 50 megabytes per second, 10 times faster than Class-10 rated external memory cards. The chips are made using Samsung's 10-nanometer...

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Now that you've been using Time Machine regularly to back up your computer, you should be fully prepared if your Mac crashes or if you need to move data from one Mac to another. Restoring data from Time Machine is just as easy as backing things up in the first place. Restore a single file or folder If you're just looking for a certain file or folder, start by connecting the external drive you use for Time Machine backups or making sure you can connect to your Time Capsule. Click on the Time Machine item in the menu bar at the top of your screen (it looks like a clock with an arrow running counter-clockwise) and choose Enter Time Machine. Here, all of your saved backups appear in chronological order. Use the visual timeline on the right hand side to scroll through your backups and look for specific items or folders. Older dates are indicated in pink on the timeline; the most up-to-date data on your Mac is indicated in white. (You'll see the word "Now" in bold, white letters on the timeline.) Not sure which backup might hold the last copy of your missing file? Try a Spotlight search in Time Machine based on keywords. You'll see a search field in the corner of each Finder window in the Time Machine view. Type in the file name or keywords from the file, and Spotlight will search through your backups to find the latest copy. Once you think you've found what you're looking for, use OS X's Quick Look to make sure--select the file and then press the spacebar to view the file without having to launch its parent application. Select the file or folder and press the Restore button. The file will automatically be copied to your desktop or to the file's original folder. This may take some time, depending on the size of the transfer. Restore an entire system Sometimes you may want to restore your entire system from a backup, say in event of a crash or when your computer is acting badly and you'd like to dial back the clock to a kinder, gentler time. If that's the case, first connect your Time Machine drive. Then, start up your Mac from the Mountain Lion recovery partition by pressing (and holding down) Command-R at startup. This launches Recovery Mode, which is a portion of your drive that Mountain Lion treats as a separate volume. It includes a few essential utilities for restoring files in case of an issue. For this to work, you must have a complete Time Machine backup that includes all system files. The Mac OS X Utilities window appears. Select Restore From Time Machine Backup. This command will erase the destination drive--your Mac--so only use it if you're restoring an entire volume to its original source or to a replacement drive. (Read the next section for setting up a new Mac or transferring data between Macs). Click Continue until you reach the Select a Backup Source window. Select your Time Machine drive and click Continue. In the Select a Destination window, select your Mac's hard drive. (Using Recovery Mode erases your Mac's hard drive before restoring from Time Machine, but once the process is finished, you'll be able to log in and use your Mac normally). Transfer data between Macs

HTC and Verizon Wireless on Tuesday announced the Droid DNA smartphone, which comes with Android 4.1 and a 5-inch high-definition display that the company said is the most advanced in the market today. The Droid DNA display can show images at a 1920 by 1080 pixel resolution, at 440 pixels by inch (PPI). That beats the iPhone 5, which has a 326 ppi display, and Samsung's Galaxy S III, which has 306 ppi. The display has a Gorilla...

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