Samsung has announced that it’s the first smartphone provider accredited for joyn ‘Blackbird’.

Blackbird is the latest version of the GSMA’s joyn service, which was launched in 2012.

Office stationery retailer Staples and mobile card payment provider payleven have set up a distribution agreement that’ll see the payleven Chip & PIN card reader made available in all Staples stores across the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

payleven offers a Chip & PIN card reader that can be used via Bluetooth with an Apple or Android smartphone. Businesses simply pay a 2.75% transaction fee whenever they use payleven to process a credit or debit card payment.

Consumers think mobile video calling services provided by mobile network operators would be better than those provided by third-party ‘over the top’ providers.

That’s according to a survey commissioned by telecoms software specialist OpenCloud and carried out by YouGov across the UK, France, Germany and the USA.

Vodafone is enabling customers to add loyalty cards and membership cards to its ‘mobile wallet’ app.

Although the application hasn’t yet been launched in the UK, it’s already available in a number of European countries.

Figures from Ofcom’s latest European Broadband Scorecard show that the UK leads the EU’s five biggest economies when it comes to mobile broadband coverage, mobile broadband take-up, mobile broadband choice and general internet usage.

The comparison rated the UK against the other countries in the ‘EU5’: France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Mark Bridge writes:

The adage that “the customer is always right” has apparently been disproved by a recent survey of mobile phone users.

Mobile News reports that virtual networks Virgin Mobile and Tesco Mobile outperformed their network partners in a recent customer satisfaction survey carried out by research firm YouGov for price comparison website uSwitch.

Mark Bridge writes:

I knew I’d seen it before. Towards the end of last week I read about a study from the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania that said it was pretty easy to identify passwords from smudges on touchscreen mobile phones.

James Rosewell writes:

Yesterday I received the following text message from O2: “You’ve gone over your data allowance on your mobile. You need to cut down or get a bigger Bolt On to keep using the internet.” I thought this was strange as I’ve an unlimited data bolt on applied to my O2 UK contract so I decided to telephone O2 customer services to find out a little bit more. Here’s what happened.

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists – the best mobile blogging (and podcasting!) of the last seven days – is online at Tam Hanna's new TamsBada site. As always, you'll find a wide variety of mobile-related subjects and discussions.

Mark Bridge writes:

Supermarkets. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Actually, that’s not true. Most of us seem to be happy enough with a half-price bottle of wine but less convinced about globalisation and supplier relationships.

But none of that’s bothering me today. Instead, I’m troubled – as I have been for several months – by the TV commercial for Tesco’s prepay mobile phone tariff.

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return to review their mobile industry predictions from last year. Which mergers, partnerships and developments did they forecast correctly... and which didn’t work out as planned?

Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

In today's programme Mark Bridge talks to Chris Millington, who's Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland.

They discuss the state of mobile retailing in the UK, the future of wearable devices and - as you might expect - smartphones for seniors.

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.