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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