An Android app that helps you catch your smartphone or tablet thief is an idea whose time has come! If you are the owner of one of these phones, a stolen phone is one of the worst fates that can fall upon your phone, behind being left behind or falling in a toilet. Well now Android users can rest assured that they now have a way to increase the chances of recovering their phones; with the Lock Cam app, by Lookout Mobile Security service.

The verdict is in: Samsung must pay Apple $1.5 billion for smartphone patent infringement. The lawsuit, filed by Apple Inc. last year, accused Samsung of copying the design of iPhones and iPads. Jurors on Friday produced a 20-page verdict, agreeing with Apple’s assertion that Samsung’s smartphones copied the design of the Apple iPhone, in both design and features. Apple lawyers produced pictures of the Samsung smartphones both before and after the introduction of the iPhone.

A UK-based company, Masabi, that provisions ticketless ticketing via smartphones and other mobile phones for trains in the UK, will be bringing its service to the U.S. this summer. Boston’s train system, run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) will be giving the Masabi system a trial run this summer and, assuming all goes as expected, the Masabi service will be deployed system-wide in the fall.

Internet security firm Symantec (proprietors of, among other things, Norton Anti-Virus) have released the results of research that they have dubbed the “Honey Stick Project”. In Project HoneyStick, researchers “lost” a total of 50 cell phones in various cities around North America, including NYC, Washington D.C., LA, San Francisco, and Ottawa, Canada. The aim was to see what the average citizen would do with a found cell phone: would they try to reunite it with its owner, or would they do something more sinister with it? It turns out that the answer is “both”.

Digital marketing analysis firm comScore has released a report showing that in terms of marketshare, there are now more (vastly more) Android phones in use than iPhones. With nearly 40% of all smart phones in the U.S. being Android phones, compared to the Apple iPhone having just a little over 25% of the market, Android seems to be eating Apples for lunch. Just how many people are using Android phones as to compared to the number of people using iPhones? Read on…

If you think that you may have a sexually transmitted disease (“STD”, which used to be known as “VD”, or venereal disease or – as it’s known in the UK – sexually transmitted infection or “STI”), such as syphilis, herpes, chlamydia or gonorrhea, or even HIV, and want to get yourself tested without having to leave your house, well, now there’s an app for that. Or, there will be, once the eSTI project goes from prototype to drug store.

Not to be outdone by Verizon, who raised their fee for early termination of a cellphone agreement to $350 last fall, AT and T has announced that, effective next week, on June 1, the early termination fee (ETF) for AT and T smartphones and AT and T provisioned netbooks will be $325.00.