Stories by Al Sacco

Last week, I took a Basics of Business Photography class led by Bob Ring and Don Toothaker of New England Photo Workshops. The goal of the session was to get participants to think more strategically about photography. Though it was not focused specifically on smartphones, I learned a number of helpful lessons that can be applied to camera-phone photography. During the past couple of years, phone photography has also become a bit of a hobby of mine, and I have some tips of my own to share.

Last week, CTIA - The Wireless Association held its annual MobileCon event in San Jose, Calif. I spent the week hustling back and forth between keynotes, panels, interviews and mobility sessions. I also spoke to a number of interesting sources from companies such as Dell and Good Technology.

When you hear the term "wearable technology," you very likely think of one, or all, of these things: Google Glass, fitness trackers such as Fitbit and Nike+ or smartwatches including Pebble and Samsung's new Galaxy Gear.

This post has been a long time coming. I started covering Research In Motion (RIM), now BlackBerry, for CIO.com in 2005. That was less than 10 years ago, but the world was a different place, especially when you're talking technology.

Shortly after obtaining a new iPhone 5S, CIO.com's Al Sacco, an unabashed BlackBerry user and Android loyalist, set out to find the best iOS apps that aren't available for other mobile platforms. He came with up these 15 must-have iPhone, iPad and iPod touch downloads.

Apple last week released its latest iPhones, the high-end iPhone 5S and midrange iPhone 5C. Among the most notable features is the iPhones' iSight camera.

One of the best things about Google's Android OS is that it runs on a variety of different devices. So if you want an Android tablet, but a particular piece of hardware doesn't have a feature you want or need, you can keep looking until you find the device that's right for you. And there's certainly no shortage of Android tablet options.

At last week Samsung's "Unpacked Episode II" event in New York City's Times Square, the company announced three new products: The Galaxy Note 3 smartphone; the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) tablet, and the most unique and notable new gadget, the Galaxy Gear smartwatch.

With the iPhone 5S and 5C expected to hit Apple stores next week, here's a look back in time at the evolution of the smartphone that started it all.

Here are four ways Microsoft's planned Nokia purchase could have far-reaching effects on Microsoft, Nokia, BlackBerry, feature phones and, potentially, the entire mobile industry.

When you picture a modern factory environment, you probably envision workers in hardhats, brightly colored vests and worn-down boots rushing back and forth between shiny machines. Lots of "Caution" signs, beeps and blinking lights. Piles of pallets being moved on fork loaders. Staffers checking boxes on documents attached to clipboards.

A few weeks ago, I received a Nokia Lumia 1020 review unit in the mail. The device is Nokia's current flagship Windows Phone smartphone, and though I'm honestly not a big fan of Microsoft's mobile OS, Nokia makes great hardware. And the Lumia 1020 device has one notably-unique feature: A 41-megapixel digital camera.

In July 2012, I had a long, thoughtful chat with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins about everything BlackBerry. Our conversation came at a crucial time for the company. The BlackBerry 10 OS had already been delayed multiple times, the company was at the center of endless doom-and-gloom rumors and Heins, who took on the chief executive reins just six months earlier, had a whole lot to prove. (Read the full Q&A with Heins here.)

I've been using Google's latest Chrome-OS-powered Chromebook laptop computer, the Pixel, for the past three months. At Google's annual I/O developer conference in May, the company distributed Chromebook Pixels to more than 6,000 attendees, and I walked away with a Pixel review unit. Though I don't feel qualified to write a full, in-depth review--at least not a good one, as I've used the same two laptops for the past four years--I do have a number of noteworthy impressions to share.

Nokia's brand-new Lumia 1020 Windows Phone packs one of the most unique phone cameras on the market today. Carl Zeiss Tessar lens; 41MP (forty-one-megapixel) PureView camera; 1/1.5" sensor size; f/2.2 aperture; 26mm camera focal length; 15mm minimum focus range; Xenon flash with 4.0 m operating range; yada yada yada.