Two weeks ago, Janna Van Hoven tried to download "The Golden Girls" theme song as a ring tone for her new cell phone. After an hour of fiddling with her phone, she gave up, unsure if the ring tone was even available. She wanted it as a reminder of her college days, when she sat around with her friend watching the television show. "I wanted that ring tone so it would play when my friend called me. But I had to go through different menus and search through all the songs and sometimes it was hard to find the search option," said Van Hoven, 26, of San Francisco.

If you've ever been struggling with a foreign language dictionary abroad, wishing that you could simply speak into a machine and have your chat translated for you, NTT (News - Alert) Docomo may be ready to make your wish come true. The company, which is Japan's number one cell phone carrier is about to begin offering a new real-time speech-to-speech translation service that you can use both in person and over the phone during a call, according to Geek.com According to Japanese news services, the solution is the first automated chat translation service in the world that is available on a standard cell phone. The new product combines several cutting-edge technologies: advanced speech recognition, machine translation and text-to-speech conversion of the translated results, says Geek.com. The services to power the solution will be cloud-based, says NTT Docomo.

An Amazon application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) emerged Saturday. The original application, which was first revealed in a Business Insider report, requests the FCC for a five-month experimental Special Temporary Authority to operate on selected channels on some mobile bands. This is the first time that news has emerged about Amazon working on mobile technology. Could it be that the company is secretly working on an Amazon Alexa smartphone? It wouldn't be a completely outlandish notion, even if it's true.

Drones took up a lot of floor (and air) space at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, but one of the most impressive displays of new drone tech came from Qualcomm. The chipmaker showed off the latest iteration of its Snapdragon Flight Drone Platform, which allows for flight control and machine learning in real time onboard a drone. With machine learning, drones can fly autonomously without knowing beforehand what they might encounter. Other drones have artificial intelligence that can do things like follow a moving object or avoid obstacles too, but Qualcomm's tech shows more advanced computing that can actually understand what the drone encountered in mid-air and create a flight path. Qualcomm put together a set at its booth at CES that resembled the inside of a cluttered warehouse, showing how its drone processing and decision-making technology is nimble enough to allow drones to operate indoors and in unpredictable settings without using any GPS.

Samsung Galaxy S8 is tipped to launch by the third week of April, reports reveal. Ahead of the launch, rumors regarding the flagship device is making rounds on the internet regarding the display, camera set-up, battery, storage capacity and more. Well, there's one very interesting feature the Galaxy S8 is confirmed to come packed with, guess what? Well, Samsung Galaxy S8 will be equipped with a newly developed digital assistant called - Bixby. Being just a rumor all this while, Samsung finally confirms Bixby's arrival.

Google's secretive X R&D lab, a division of Google's parent company Alphabet, has pulled the plug on its drone project that would bring internet access to millions of people – Project Titan. It has been confirmed by Alphabet that engineers were told to look for other positions within the Alphabet/Google community. Although the project has been killed, the mission is still alive – the firm will continue to use Project Loon as a way to connect rural and remote areas of the world. X, a division of Google's parent company Alphabet, has pulled the plug on its project that would bring internet access to millions of people – Titan. The news was first reported by 9To5Mac, which received a statement from an X spokesperson.

When it comes to smartphones, artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the next big thing. Most smartphone companies are either building their own AI-based voice assistants or lending it from someone else. Samsung is reportedly working on its own voice assistant named Bixby, which will be a replacement for the company's S-Voice functionality. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have the Assistant, Cortana and Alexa, respectively, while Huawei is borrowing Alexa from Amazon. Unlike many other functionalities that are similar across smartphones, there is room for customization when it comes to voice assistants.

The still-unannounced Huawei P10 has surfaced again in newly leaked renders. This time around, however, it appears as though the device's full specifications have been leaked as well. The Huawei P10 will be powered by the 64-bit octa-ocre 2.3GHz Kirin 960 system-on-chip (SoC) with a Mali G71 GPU, 6GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage, according to Android Headlines. The leaked low-res render of the Huawei P10. As for its external design, the Huawei P10 appears to have a dual-curved display while still retaining the metallic frame.

Futurewei Technologies Inc. (DBA Huawei R&D) is a U.S. Based branch of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., the leading global information and communications technology solutions provider. Established in 1988, Huawei Technologies is a private high-tech enterprise specializing in research and development, the production and marketing of communications equipment, and providing customized network solutions for telecom carriers in fixed, mobile, and data communications networks. Through our dedication to customer-centric innovation and strong partnerships, we have established end-to-end advantages in telecom networks, devices and cloud computing. We are committed to creating maximum value for telecom operators, enterprises and consumers by providing competitive solutions and services. Our products and solutions have been deployed in over 170 countries, serving more than one third of the world's population.

Amazon's "artificial intelligence" software or should we say smart assistant, Alexa, was the quiet star of CES 2017, appearing in a huge range of products, from fridges to smart lamps, to cars. Alexa has even made its debut in its first smartphone, the Huawei Mate 9 – Alexa, and this could be the start of a new trend in 2017 that sees smart assistants become important flagship differentiators. Of course, Google and Apple have been at this for a long time already, and Google Now is already baked in to every new Android smartphone release these days. So really the age of the smart assistant has been here for a while already. However, Google Now certainly isn't a unique selling point for manufacturers looking to stand out in the competitive high-end market, hence why custom assistants are starting to pop up.