The Best Android Phones

It's hard to believe that it's been little more than three years since Google's open-source Android mobile operating system hit the scene. When the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, was released, the mobile landscape looked very different. Most people carried simple handsets that focused on making calls. If you were lucky, you could listen to music or play games on your mobile phone. Back then, you didn't have to have a smartphone that ran thousands of apps to let you, in the palm of your hand, do many of the things your computer could do. Apps weren't even a thing yet. Apple had only released the iPhone 3G and launched its groundbreaking App Store a couple of months earlier.

It was the introduction of Android that helped propel the app-based smartphone to what it is today. The thing Android offered, which Apple's iPhone couldn't, was choice. Since it was an open-source platform, several hardware manufacturers could use the OS on their handsets, and a variety of wireless carriers could offer those phones—and they did.

The Fastest Mobile Networks 2011

With smartphone innovation moving at a breakneck pace, new tablets hitting the market all the time, and an increasing number of people using cellular modems and mobile hotspots to get online on the go, access to speedy data coverage is becoming more essential every day.

But you shouldn't believe the hype: All "4G" is not the same. In a 21-city test across the United States, we found that Verizon's new 4G LTE network is much faster than other mobile Web options, with speeds that often exceed home Internet connections.

There's no question that 4G is spreading across the nation, but there's a lot of confusion over what 4G exactly is. AT&T, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless aren't just using varied technologies; sometimes they're implementing the same technology very differently. So we sent six drivers on a cross-country road trip in Ford cars with lots of mobile phones and custom software designed by network testing firm Sensorly to see just how fast these 4G Internet connections really are. (See How We Tested for more details.)

Last year we tested with laptops. For our second annual test, we switched to phones, to more accurately reflect how Americans are using the mobile Internet. According to research firm NPD, as of the first quarter of 2011, more than half of all new mobile phones purchased in the U.S. were smartphones, and analysts have projected that will grow.

We didn't test voice quality or dropped calls, which we've already surveyed, as part of our annual Readers' Choice Awards. The tests for this story were all about mobile Internet. We ran more than 140,000 tests in 21 cities. Not all the networks were available in all the cities, as you'll see on the individual city pages. Most notably, cities generally have either Cricket or MetroPCS as a local option.

Cool New iPad 3 Cases

Apple's new iPad packs a new processor, better graphics, an ultra-sharp display, and improved cameras. But even with all that extra power packed inside, the new iPad looks just like the old iPad. Visually, there's only one thing setting the two tablets apart: The new iPad is just .03 inch thicker. That's less than a millimeter—.76mm to be exact. Just enough to make you wonder if an iPad 2 case will fit on a new iPad.

The good news is, many of the cases made for the iPad 2 will fit the new iPad. Apple's ownSmart Cover, for example, will work with both the iPad 2 and the new iPad. But compatibility isn't guaranteed, especially with, say, a shell that snaps on to the back of the tablet. To make things clear, most case manufacturers are releasing new iPad-specific case lines (or some call them iPad 3 cases). And that's what we've rounded up here: Cases that are guaranteed to work with the third-generation iPad.

The 100 Best iPad Apps

Apple announced on March 5, 2012 that Where's My Water? Free represented the 25 billionth app downloaded from the App Store—that's a lot of downloads. Of the over 550,000 apps that live in Apple's marketplace, over 170,000 are native iPad apps that run the gamut from news to business to entertainment. That's an extraordinary amount of software battling for a home within your iPad, iPad 2, or new third-generation iPad. There's no doubt that some are great and some are…not. So the vital question is: how do you find the gems among the garbage? The most basic answer is to read App Store user ratings and reviews, but that's a potential time-suck of massive proportions. Besides, the wisdom of crowds isn't always all that wise. The better answer would be to check out PCMag's picks for the 100 best iPad apps. We've dug through the sludge so that you don't have to do so.

How to Buy the Best Tablet

It's difficult to remember a time before tablets, but it's been just two short years since the originalApple iPad hit the scene, and the current tablet market was born. Since then, we've seen scores of manufacturers trying to snag a slice of the tablet pie, which so far, has been dominated by Apple, now on its third iPad iteration, which sold 3 million units in three days when it was launched last month.

According to IDC, of the 28.2 million tablets shipped in the last quarter of 2011, more than half of them were iPads. Google, the other major player in the tablet space, has also made some nice market share gains with its Android operating system, thanks in part to Amazon, with its budget-friendly, sub-$200 Android-based Kindle Fire (Best Deal: $199.00 at Amazon), which captured 16.8 percent of tablet sales in the same time period. What's most interesting about all of these stats, however, is that overall tablet shipments were up 155 percent from the same time period in 2010. It seems as though the tablet is here to stay.

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The Top 10 Best Desktops

Desktops have come a long way from the boring, beige boxes of old. Now, you can get something as sleek as an all-in-one desktop or as flashy as a boutique gaming box and even a compact (and cheap!) nettop. The price for desktops these days start as low as $250 and as high as, well, $5,000 and maybe more, but a powerful desktop can be had for about $800. The editors of PCMag.com test hundreds of systems each year to help you find the best desktop. In this story, we help you narrow your choices by collecting the top 10 desktops on the market today.

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