Ubuntu OS coming to smartphones

Rumors come and go quickly in the tech world. A report from TechCrunch stirred up rumors that Apple was planning on buying the navigation app Waze. But CNET has learned that Apple has no plans to acquire Waze. It wasn't a radical idea, since Apple already works with Waze as a partner for Apple's mapping software.

Apple is, however, addressing a bug in the Do Not Disturb feature of iOS 6. The company said it won't be fixed until January 7. Do Not Disturb will silence incoming calls, alerts and notifications for a particular time period. But for some reason, the feature remains on past the set time frame, causing some users to miss messages unless it is manually turned off within settings.

Sprint could be launching its own prepaid service on January 25, according to the documents posted on the Android Police blog. Sprint owns Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, which already focus on prepaid. But this would be the first time a Sprint-branded phone can be purchased with a prepaid plan.

Ready for another smartphone operating system? Ubuntu, which is an open-sourced operating system for PCs and TVs, is launching an operating system for smartphones. This isn't something you'd see in stores anytime soon, but it will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas.

Also at CES, we'll learn more about the Smart Evolution Kit for Samsung TVs. Last year, Samsung said it was working on a device that users would attach to their TVs to give it a system upgrade. We'll learn more about this product on Monday at the show.

Bridget Carey 
http://news.cnet.com/8301-33692_3-57561906-305/ubuntu-os-coming-to-smartphones/