pcworld.com: GPS, electronic compasses, and new software will soon let our phones show us around town.

The United States leads the world in operating systems, Web 2.0 startups, and drunken teenage starlets. When it comes to cell phones, however, we might as well be Albania. With the exception of the iPhone, a truly game-changing (yet flawed) piece of technology, all the cool handsets appear first in Europe and Asia.

The main reason why we lag: Because people in Europe and Asia are more dependent on their cell phones than on their PCs, high-speed mobile broadband service has developed much faster. Buying a handset overseas is a lot like buying a computer–you can mix and match models and service providers. Here we’re still mostly locked in to one carrier per device. [ read more ]