The hard times at renowned Swedish telecoms manufacturer Ericsson continue as CEO of near seven years Hans Vestberg stepped down. Today, the company announced his immediate departure, remarking that "the time is right for a new leader to drive the next phase in Ericsson's development..."

Some ringtones become extremely famous. Take the Marimba for the Apple iPhone. Still heard on television shows and motion pictures to this day, the ringtone is one of several played on piano by pianist Tony Ann, and memorialized on video. Ann also plays the famous T Jingle default ringtone. This tune is so connected with T-Mobile, that as soon as you hear the first few notes you know that someone near you is a T-Mobile customer...

Quick question: do you remember the first cell phone you ever had? Do you remember how that felt like? Because we sure do. Back in the days, owning a personal cell phone for the first time was a milestone event for many of us. It was a step towards greater independence, kind of like buying your first bike or car...

To find the first phone with stereo speakers, we have to travel back in time pretty far. To about 2005, to be more precise, when LG launched a phone with stereo speakers on Verizon. But even that model was beaten by a few months by a phone that did not get a U.S. release...

The smartphone industry is still evolving pretty quickly and has been doing so for the past couple of years. True, smartphones can trace their origins a long way back, yet the true "boom" only happened after the market welcomed a certain prominent "fruity" manufacturer that acted as a catalyst and kickstarted the industry into a renaissance...

Sony, LG Electronics, HTC, Lenovo, Meizu, ZTE, Huawei, and Xiaomi, are all expected to include the 20nm-built MediaTek Helio X20 in upcoming smartphones...

What if the past wasn't what it was? What if some of the most popular phone devices ever created were not featurephones, but smartphones instead? This isn't just a rhetorical question, at least not today, for we have two dozens of absolutely stunning renders of the Nokia 3310 and Sony Ericsson T28s that paint exactly that kind of picture...

As the industry entered maturity a few years ago, so did we arrive at a winning form factor. Unlike in the past, today smartphones are generally very similar in terms of their overall looks and shape, with relatively little variance. This isn't to say that companies like Apple and HTC, for example, aren't crafting some really unique and great-looking devices, but the current status-quo is definitely a far-cry from the phone industry heydays of wonder...

Sony's SmartBand Talk is the follow-up of the company's SmartBand – a wearable that lacked any type of display and was only meant as a fitness / health tracker. Now, SmartBand Talk combines this with another tech Sony has been experimenting with – the e-paper watch – and brings us a water-resistant fitness band with an e-ink display. Additionally – the “Talk” in SmartBand Talk comes from the fact that the wristband accepts voice commands, so there's that mystery unveiled.

Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and BlackBerry were ruling the smartphone market a decade ago, and pretty much everything has changed since then...

IBM's Simon, long referenced as the first smartphone, went on sale to the general public on August 16, 1994, meaning that the commercialized smartphone just turned twenty, inducing some nostalgia and the need for a retrospection. Man is a social animal, and ever since the invention of this information highway called the Internet, we wanted to carry it with us everywhere we go, complete with all the tasks we are used to do on our computers. There have been numerous efforts to do just that, from the first IBM Simon or Nokia's Communicator series, through the various Windows Mobile handsets, to the iPhone launch and everything that followed...

At this point, one thing is certain - some 99% (or more) of all upcoming smartphones will be employing the rectangle-ish candy bar form factor. We wouldn't argue that compared with their once-popular rivals - flip phones, slider phones, clamshell phones, and others - the candy bar-shaped devices have withstood the test of time and the consumers' approval alike...

Nowadays, we can hardly be surprised by how a certain handset looks. Most devices come in the candybar form-factor that works so well with large touchscreen panels. And while that's all good, it also means that some of the color and extravagancy of the market has been lost along the way...

Love it or hate it, those behemoth 6-inchers are here to stay, it seems, and no matter how excellent of a screen-to-body ratio they sport, with that screen diagonal they are proving to be quite problematic in many everyday interactions a typical handset goes through...

Cameraphones have become ubiquitous. Nearly all of the phones on sale today, even many of the dirt cheap ones, have a camera of some kind. It hasn't been always like this, however. Remember how in the early 2000's, a built-in digital camera was something that only the best phones could brag with?...

Just the other day, we showed you leaked photographs of the Huawei Ascend P7. The handset is just 6.18mm thick. As we noted previously, the Apple iPhone 5s, a pretty thin handset in its own right, weighs in at 7.6mm thin. But there was a time, not so long ago, when some handsets were as thick as the proverbial brick. Check out how thick the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini was just four short years ago...

How would you like to own a piece of cell phone history – a classic handset from over a decade ago? Turns out that's totally possible. Many iconic cell phones are still on sale online even though their manufacturers have long discontinued their production and support. Here's what we managed to come across after a little digging...

Mobile ad network Chitika kept an eye on internet traffic generated by Android tablets over a three month period ended in August, using a seven-day rolling average to measure the web traffic coming from different slates; the metrics firm discovered something quite interesting. When the Nexus 7 (2013) refresh was launched, it did nothing to increase internet surfing by Android tablet users...

The Sony Xperia S, which is still packing quite a punch, by the way, is alive and well, as its manufacturer has now initiated the roll-out of an Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update designed for the venerable smartphone...

We just love it when we bring news of impending software updates! So, which are the lucky phones this time? We guess that question is completely useless as you've surely read the title already, but anyway - it's time to pop the champagne if you're an owner of the Xperia S, SL, acro S or ion...