Hasta La Gadget!

The Facebook Phone will be coming to the UK with EE exclusively, this being the first time that EE has had an exclusive of such magnitude with the HTC first. This HTC first device will be available this summer on EE’s own 4GEE service but no pricing or release dates have yet been released. In the United States, the HTC first will be coming to AT&T on the 12th of April, 2013 – so we must assume this release won’t be long after!

The HTC first is the first Facebook Phone right out of the box, it working with the new Facebook Home Android app experience. This software creates a full Facebook experience for anyone using it as their homescreen launcher, decidedly separate from Android’s core. With this app you’ll be getting Facebook Home updates on the 12th of every month (according to Facebook) and you’ll have full access to your Facebook content.

UPDATE: See our HTC first hands-on here and now!

You’ll be seeing the following unique bits and pieces coming from this EE release of the HTC first as well:

• EE Film – the only service in the UK which combines 2 for 1 cinema ticketing, listings, trailers and digital film downloads in one place
• A discount of £5 per month on EE superfast Fibre Broadband – so they can get blistering speeds at home and on the move
• Fast track customer service by dialing ‘33’ from their handset
• Clone Phone Lite – giving people free storage to back up the content that matters most

Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on the HTC first as well as our Android Hub for more Android excellence through the future! In our brand new Facebook Home tag portal you’ll find all you need to know about this new experience and about the future of Facebook on your smartphone!

EE nabs HTC first exclusive in UK is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

AT&T will enable HD Voice for the iPhone 5 later in 2013, slamming T-Mobile USA’s exclusive on the high-quality voice call system in the process, execs at the carrier have confirmed. News of the incipient tech turn-on came on Monday, with AT&T senior VP Kris Rinne revealing that the network sees HD Voice as “part of our voice over LTE strategy,” AllThingsD reports.

HD Voice, also known as wideband audio, involves squeezing more frequency data into each call, pushing the limits closer to what the human ear can actually hear. In a regular voice call, that might be as little as 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz (the human voice, meanwhile, can range from 80 Hz to 14 kHz); however, HD Voice extends that to somewhere in the region of 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz.

The end result is a more realistic, natural sounding voice call, though it takes its toll on bandwidth. AT&T’s plan is to use VoLTE to address that, taking advantage of the thick data pipe 4G allows to easily accommodate the better quality calls.

However, that means VoLTE has to be up and running before AT&T can think about switching HD Voice on, something the carrier has in mind for later in the year. It will also explore LTE Advanced, which can deliver more bandwidth, among other things, by aggregating channels.

News that AT&T is to hop on board the HD Voice train is likely to come as a disappointment to T-Mobile USA, which cited the technology as one of its differentiators after confirming it was finally going to offer the iPhone 5 from early April.

AT&T: Sorry T-Mo, we’ll offer iPhone 5 HD Voice this year too is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

See where an appropriate amount of public pressure will get you? As promised, Rogers’ long-due rational unlocking policy is in full effect. You can now pay $50 to have Rogers unlock a device bought on contract if it’s either fully paid off or has been on the network for 90 days, making it easier to take your phone on a vacation — or to a rival carrier, if you also pony up any relevant cancellation fees. Likewise, you won’t have to make a phone call now that retail staff have resources to unlock devices in-store. We can’t say that the gesture delivers more freedom than buying already unlocked hardware like the Nexus 4, but those lured into a contract by a sweet deal on an iPhone 5 or HTC One won’t have to feel completely fenced in for the whole three years.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: Rogers RedBoard

This week the T-Mobile iPhone 5 was revealed with a pricing structure closer to that of an automobile than what’s been common amongst smartphones over the past several years. While you pay just $99.99 USD initially, you then move forward with $20 payments for 24 months. Then your costs for data, voice, and text are separate (but still integrated into one bill in the end). Here’s the real breakdown, step by step.

The iPhone 5 will cost you different amounts depending on which carrier you buy it from – and depending on if you purchase it “off contract” or not. You also have what might appear to be three different kinds of purchases on your hands now:

1. On-contract (each of the top three mobile carriers in the USA with 2-year contracts)
2. Off-contract (paying one since price once in one lump sum with no contractual obligations)
3. T-Mobile

With your T-Mobile purchase, you’ll be paying $99.99 USD down for starters – that’s half the price (essentially) of the $199 you’ll pay if you’re purchasing the device with a 2-year contract with any of the top three mobile carriers in the USA.

1. $199 with subsidy costs built-in to your data/voice/text plan (you can’t see it, but it’s there).
2. $649 (we’ll stick to the 16GB version since T-Mobile is advertising that model as their hero with $99.99 down and so forth)
3. $579.99 ($99.99 down with $20 per month for 24 months)

So why would you want to purchase an off-contract iPhone 5 from Apple for $649 then have it working with T-Mobile data? You wouldn’t. That’s absurd. If you want to purchase an iPhone 5 to use with T-Mobile, you can do so cheaper by buying it from T-Mobile with their “Simple Choice Plan” structure (that’s what the hardware pricing plan T-Mobile is pushing is called).

Purchase an iPhone 5 with any carrier using a 2-year contract and you’ll be paying an amount of cash built-in to your monthly payment well past the time that T-Mobile would allow you to be finished. With T-Mobile, there’s a clear separation between your monthly bill for the hardware (that you’re paying off) and the mobile service. With every other carrier, you continue to pay for the hardware forever – or until you end your service.

T-Mobile iPhone 5: hardware pricing breakdown, step by step is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Starting April 12th, Apple retail shops as well as Apple’s online store will begin selling the new and gently tweaked A1428 model of the iPhone 5. For those paying attention, that’s the same model number as AT&T sells today, but Apple’s enabling support of the AWS bands from the factory on the new guy — and sadly, Apple affirmed to us that it’s not something that can be enabled via a simple software update for A1428 iPhone units already in circulation. To say that another way, existing iPhone 5 owners on AT&T cannot simply apply a software patch to have AWS support added. You’ll need to buy a new phone next month.

That said, the A1428 edition of the iPhone 5 that Apple will start hawking on April 12th (in lockstep with T-Mobile’s launch date) will arrive unlocked out of the box. By default, Apple will sell these at full MSRP in a “SIM-in unlocked fashion,” as confirmed to us by an Apple representative here at T-Mobile’s event in New York City. Of course, those wishing to pay T-Mob’s advertised $99.99 up front price will also be able to do so right at an Apple store, but eager jetsetters that are simply looking for a frictionless way to purchase an unlocked iPhone 5 that works on both AT&T and T-Mobile’s LTE bands have but a few weeks to wait.

Oh, and yes, we confirmed with Apple that the new A1428 will indeed support AT&T’s LTE network. In other words, your T-Mobile iPhone 5 will run uninhibited on AT&T’s LTE network if it’s unlocked. To boot, Apple is quickly phasing out the existing A1428 hardware, and will soon replace all of them with the new, AWS-enabled model. In theory, that would mean that iPhones purchased through AT&T (after April 12th) would also ship with the appropriate firmware to let AWS support run free, but of course, then you’re up against AT&T’s far less friendly unlocking policy. For US users anxious to snag a truly unlocked iPhone 5 that’ll hum along on pretty much every LTE band in the developed world, Apple informed us that its 24-hour locations will begin selling these promptly at 12:01AM on 4/12. For those who order from Apple’s online site, you’ll need to phone up T-Mobile to have the unlock applied.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, AT&T, T-Mobile

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