North Korea is reportedly working on a smartphone for citizens, despite the fact that citizens of the country have limited access to the Internet.

The new Android-based device is called the Arirang. According to reports, it features a touch screen and a camera. This past weekend, Kim Jong Un visited the Pyongyang factory where the phones are reportedly being made, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. While Un reportedly praised the factory for making the devices in North Korea, it is likely that the devices were only assembled in North Korea from Chinese parts.

Here is more from the North Korea Tech blog: “Despite KCNA’s reporting that the handsets are made at the factory, they are probably made to order by a Chinese manufacturer and shipped to the May 11 Factory where they are inspected before going on sale.” (Via CNN).

Laws against phone unlocking have not stopped the activity. In fact, since the practice was outlawed in the United States back in January, it has risen by 71.09 percent, according to metrics from Mobile Unlocked, a UK-based website that helps consumers jailbreak their phones.

The company analyzed the activity in December 2012, before the law went into effect, and compared the findings with the number of times phones were jailbroken in June 2013, a few months after the law went into effect.

Here is more from Mobile Unlocked: “As a proportion of visits to our site, US traffic numbers have fallen. Traffic from the US accounted for 8.45% of visits to our site in December 2012, and just 7.14% in July 2013. This shows that some people are now shying away from unlocking their phones, whereas before they were willing to find out more.” (Via VentureBeat).

Google Chrome’s latest Canary Build has some great swipe features that looks really promising. Swiping left to right will move you back and forth in your browser history. There’s also a feature to “enable pinch scale” that lets you pinch to zoom.

The touch features are needed if Google’s Chrombook is to compete with Internet Explorer on Windows 8, which already has those features. We’ll let you know when the new update rolls out for everyone.

Currently, the new browser is made for developers only and “can sometimes break down completely.” If you want to test drive  the new features, you can download the browser here. It gets updated every night.

Via the Verge

Sony’s latest Hong Kong ad campaign for its waterproof Xperia is a cute story about how Water and Sony became BFFs. It doesn’t have a catchy tune like Australia’s Metro Train’s Video, Dumb Ways to Die, but who doesn’t like to have friends?

In this first video, Water meets Sony after killing off some other less-waterproof “friends,” including an iPhone jumping rope.

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Worldwide smartphone shipments is expected to reach 1.5 billion units by 2017, up from 712 million in 2012, according to a new report from IHS Inc. The Mobile & Wireless Communications Report revealed that smartphone shipments will reach 897 million units this year and will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.8 percent every year until 2017. That equates to 1.1 billion units in 2014, 1.2 billion units in 2015, and 1.4 billion units in 2016.

At the same time, Apple’s iPhone may be hitting a brick wall. The company shipped only  37.4 million units during Q1 2013, which fell below expectations. IHS predicts that even if the company releases a new iPhone in the second half of the year, 2013 iPhone sales will likely reach 150 million units, not a huge increase from 2012 when Apple sold 134 million units. Read more

Researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have developed a new microbial fuel cell that harnesses the power of human pee to power mobile devices. The fuel cells contain bacteria that converts urine’s magical chemicals that bacteria can turn into electrons that then turn into tweets.

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The xkcd web comic shared “How To Freak Out a Mobile App User” today, a quick comic that posed an impossible installation problem for smartphone users.

What do you think?

The image includes this not to make mobile app users even more crazy: “Remember, the installer is watching the camera for the checksum it generated, so you have to scan it using your own phone.”

(Mobile image via Mosman Council)

It’s not uncommon to hear reports about people using their smartphones in bed, but it’s pretty surprising to hear that 9% of U.S. adults admit to having used their smartphones while having sex.

According to the 2013 Mobile Consumer Habits study from Harris Interactive released by mobile payments services company Jumio, also revealed that The study also showed that 20% of adults aged 18-34 admit to having used a smartphone while having sex. Not surprisingly, 12% of the adults surveyed in the study admitted that their smartphone got in the way of their relationship.

But adults aren’t just using their phones in bed. They use them all over the place. According to the report, 12% of people use them in the shower, 19% of people use them at church, 35% use them at the movie the­ater, 33% will check their phones during a dinner date and 32% will pull out their phones at a child’s school func­tion. (Via The Los Angeles Times).

Florida’s new ban on internet cafes is being challenged as unconstitutional since its broad wording could be interpreted as a ban on all electronic devices, including personal computers, smartphones, and tablets. According to Miami Law firm Kluger, Kaplan, Silverman, Katzen & Levine the law was essentially created in haste to amend the law to define a slot machine as “a device, system, or network is a prohibited slot machine or device if it is used to display images of games of chance and is part of a scheme involving any payment or donation of money or its equivalent and awarding anything of value.”

The law was intended to ban physical slot machines posing as internet cafes, but the vague law can also be interpreted as a ban on machines or systems that can be used to play games with rewards of any sort.

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Pocket Spacecraft’s Kickstarter aims to send legions of tiny disk-sized spacecrafts with low cost, open source technology. The pocket spacecrafts are actually smaller than CDs and thinner than paper – capable of transmitting information to your smartphone while being launched out of the atmosphere on a larger, commercial Cubesat Mothership. Depending on your investment, your personal spacecraft will be headed back to earth via the planet’s gravitational pull or  landing on the moon as short-lived, lunar explorers. They can’t just roll around forever right?

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