cell phones news stories on Newser

Chief Sends 10 Cops to Find Son's iPhone

Matt Cantor — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:37:05 CDT

Berkeley's police chief is in hot water for sending 10 officers to find his son's stolen phone—with four of them spending two hours each of overtime on the case. But Michael Meehan says anyone else would have received the same assistance, and anyway, it's the field supervisors who decide...

Cell Coverage Brings Deadly Risk for Tower Climbers

John Johnson — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:17:17 CDT

Next time someone is carping about spotty cell coverage, keep in mind this investigation by ProPublica and PBS' Frontline : Fifty tower climbers died in accidents between 2003 and 2011 as the industry raced to get everyone connected. A slew of factors contributes, from inadequate training, to shoddy equipment, to a...

Obama 2012 Makes Donors Ditch Phones at Fundraisers

Evann Gastaldo — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:56:33 CDT

President Obama’s re-election campaign is asking donors to not only open their wallets, but fork over their cell phones before entering small fundraisers, a practice that veterans of other campaigns find very odd. The practice of turning over cell phones is common in secure spaces where state secrets would be...

4.5B Spam Texts Flooded Our Phones Last Year

Neal Colgrass — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:05:15 CDT

Getting spam on your cell phone? You're not alone: Spam text messages in the US soared 45% to 4.5 billion last year, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "I don't even get that much junk mail in my Gmail account," says a journalist in Washington, DC. "This is my phone....

Cell Phone in Bathroom Forces Emergency Landing

Rob Quinn — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:25:00 CDT

"Don't charge your phone in the bathroom's shaver socket" may become a standard airline warning after an emergency landing yesterday. A Delta Air Lines flight from Istanbul to New York City landed in Dublin after one passenger left his phone—with its charger wrapped around it—in one of the...

Netherlands' Angel Statue Will Take Your Call

Matt Cantor — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:59:51 CST

A Dutch town has a guardian angel—and her cell phone gets 30 calls a day. The Little Angel, a sculpture outside the ancient St. John the Evangelist Cathedral in 'S Hertogenbosch, was born out of a 1997 design contest to replace the church's worn-down figures. In addition to the...

Cell Phone Vigilante Jams Calls on Philly Buses

Kevin Spak — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:40:05 CST

Riders of Philadelphia's No. 44 bus have been complaining a lot lately of lost cell phone calls, and NBC 10 found out why: A man, whom they identify only as "Eric," is jamming them. Reporters tracked Eric down after an NBC employee saw him using a handheld jamming device on...

Have an AT&T Unlimited Plan? Not Anymore

Matt Cantor — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:57:21 CST

Amid growing controversy over data "throttling" —in which smartphone users on so-called unlimited data plans risked seeing their speeds slowed dramatically—AT&T is taking a simple step: It's effectively ending unlimited data. The company is setting a cap of three gigabytes' usage, beyond which "unlimited" users will face throttling. The...

Court OKs Warrantless Cellphone Searches

Rob Quinn — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 04:33:05 CST

The police don't need a warrant to search a suspect's cellphone for its phone number in order to obtain a history of calls, a federal appeals court. The three-judge panel, ruling on the case of an Indiana man convicted of drug charges on the basis of call records, likened cellphones...