Motorola’s new Moto X will be Rogers Wireless exclusive in Canada, the carrier has confirmed, with the Android smartphone headed up North in August. Priced from CA$189.99 with a new, two-year agreement, the Rogers Moto X will be offered in either black or white, with none of the color customization options available in the US. […]
O2 UK has revealed its 4G LTE plans, giving carrier EE some competition for high-speed data. The new O2 4G service will go live on August 29, initially in London, Leeds, and Bradford, the FT reports, with the three cities being followed by a further ten before the end of 2013, the carrier has promised. […]
These days, carriers seem to be gravitating towards “less for more” — as in, giving users less while charging more. For those situated in the UK, however, Vodafone’s offering up a new pay-as-you-go arrangement that actually smacks of value. The Red Freedom Freebee plans are pretty simple. For instance, £30 a month nets you unlimited texts and talk within the United Kingdom coupled with 1GB of data. Cough up £40 each month, and that data cap doubles to 2GB. A couple of cheaper plans are available for those who need little more than text messaging and enough data to keep tabs on their email, all of which can be seen in detail at Vodafone’s site.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: Tech Digest
Source: Vodafone
AT&T’s Mobile Share plans have sometimes been too expensive for customers who only need a little data. The carrier will soon be more accommodating, however: it’s adding both 300MB and 2GB tiers on July 26th. The $20, 300MB pack costs half as much as the 1GB plan, and is intended mostly for basic phone users. We’ve reached out for more details on 2GB pricing, but it’s not hard to see this new tier slotting neatly between the 1GB and 4GB offerings. Both new plans should represent better bargains for frugal customers, although they won’t do much for bandwidth lovers — Lumia 1020 customers will likely want some extra headroom.
Update: AT&T tells us that the 2GB plan will cost $50, plus $45 for each smartphone.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, AT&T
Source: AT&T
US Cellular‘s customers have enjoyed the freedom to upgrade their device at the end of their contract without taking on a new contract, something that will be coming to an end July 27th. In addition, the same day will see changes made to its 15-Day Excellence Guarantee policy, adding a $35 restocking fee whereby it used to be free to swap a device for a different one.
The change is in reference to US Cellular’s “One and Done” option, which would allow those who completed one contract term to take on an upgraded device – at the contract-subsidized price – without signing up for a new contract. This is coming to an end, with those customers now being required to take on a new two-year contract when they upgrade to a new device.
And as for the 15-Day Excellence Guarantee, before the change customers are allowed to try out a device for up to 15 days, and if they so choose, to return it for a different device. That could be done sans any fees, but starting later this month, those users will have to pay a $35 restocking fee. The option will still be available, however.
Said US Cellular, “We are continually evaluating the entire experience we offer to our customers. Beginning later this month, all customers will be required to sign a 2-year contract when purchasing a subsidized device. In addition, a restocking fee of $35 will be introduced as an update to the 15-Day Excellence Guarantee policy and will be charged when a customer returns a device during the 15-day time period.”
These changes may be sad news for current customers whose contracts will come to term after the July 27th date, but it isn’t anything out of the ordinary among other carriers. There’s still a little over a week left, so those who qualify can squeak in under the deadline and enjoy the “One and Done” offering.
SOURCE: Android Community
US Cellular putting end to contract-free upgrades for existing customers is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Snagging a subsidized phone after completing a two-year contract with US Cellular has meant not having to ink another 24-month commitment, but it looks like that’s about to change. We’ve gotten wind from an internal source that the firm will return to its old ways, requiring existing Belief Plan customers angling for discounted hardware to hitch their wagon to the carrier for an additional two trips around the sun. These changes aren’t slated to take effect until July 27th, so we recommend pulling the trigger on that upgrade you’ve been eyeing before then.
Update: We’ve just received a statement from US Cellular confirming the changes. Head past the break to read it in full.
[Thanks, Anonymous]
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Nokia has just made the Lumia 1020 official after numerous leaks and rumors. We ended up getting a glimpse of AT&T’s self-leak earlier this morning when they accidentally hit the big green button on a promo video, but the carrier made the phone official today, and it’s coming later this month on July 26th for $299.
The Lumia 1020 sports a 41-megapixel camera sensor, and Nokia is talking it up big time at the company’s event in New York City today. The 1020 builds on the pixel-oversampling technology of the original Nokia 808 PureView, but this new device packs it all into a smaller form factor, as well as squeezes in some other new bells and whistles.
AT&T’s landing page for the Lumia 1020 is already live, and while you can’t pre-order the device just yet (pre-orders start July 16), you can enter in your email address to get a notification for when you’ll be able to reserve your own unit. The phone will come in black, white, and yellow on AT&T.
The Lumia 1020 sports a 4.5-inch AMOLED HD+ display with a resolution of 1280×768, all topped off with a protective layer of Gorilla Glass 3. On the inside, there’s a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. You’ll also be treated with a handful of connectivity options, including LTE, WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, and NFC.
However, though, the biggest feature of the 1020 is its impressive camera on the back. 41MP is pretty intense, and the camera on the inside even includes ball bearings in order to cut down on camera shake to avoid blurry photos. It’s certainly not anything like most smartphone cameras today, and we’ll be getting hands on with the device shortly. Stay tuned!
AT&T Nokia Lumia 1020 arrival only two weeks away is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Ever since Telus dropped its plans to acquire Mobilicity, there have been rumors of other would-be suitors joining the fray. They’re not rumors anymore — Mobilicity has confirmed that it’s in talks with “multiple parties” interested in a takeover. The Canadian carrier isn’t supplying any names, although previous gossip has mentioned Verizon as a possible candidate. There’s no guarantee that Mobilicity will find a buyer and avoid an otherwise uncertain future; even so, we wouldn’t count on the provider remaining independent for much longer.
[Image credit: Andrew Currie, Flickr]
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Verizon
Via: Reuters
Source: Mobilicity
Sony’s Xperia Z has been a sleeper agent of sorts: launched to great fanfare at CES in January, overshadowed by the Galaxy S 4 and HTC One at launch, and yet grabbing upgrade sales from under Samsung’s nose in Europe. Not bad for a company once written off in smartphones, and now Sony is hoping to repeat that success in the US, with a launch on T-Mobile USA. Does the waterproof Xperia Z do enough to distract from the heated US mobile market? Read on for the full SlashGear review.
We’ve already reviewed the original European version of the Xperia Z, and so we’d recommend reading that beforehand. The phone borrows plenty from Sony’s Japanese handsets, with a beautiful 5-inch, LCD TFT 1920 x 1080 display powered by the company’s Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2, a slimline waterproof case with inset toughened glass panels, and a 13-megapixel camera with an Exmor RS Mobile sensor.
It’s a discrete design compared to the HTC One and iPhone 5′s metal chassis, but the plastics (actually glass-fiber polyamide) and glass feel far less like a compromise than Samsung’s plastics on the Galaxy S 4. On the Xperia Z, there’s the feeling that Sony actively selected them, rather than just going for what would be easiest to push off the manufacturing lines. The black version is a fingerprint and lint magnet, while the purple does a better job of hiding them, albeit while also being more distinctive overall.
Physical controls are limited to a volume rocker on the side and a strikingly oversized, somewhat over-engineered power/lock button. At first glance the attention Sony paid to the button seems somehow questionable, but it makes more and more sense the more you use the Xperia Z. For a start, it’s perfectly placed: it falls under a finger no matter whether you’re holding the phone in your right or left hand, and it feels tough enough to outlive Android 4.1.2 as comes preloaded (not, sadly, Android 4.2).
Inside the 139 x 71 x 7.9 mm, 146g chassis there’s Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz S4 Pro quadcore, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage (11.73GB of which is user-available). Connectivity includes LTE and HSPA+ for T-Mobile USA’s networks, along with quadband GSM/EDGE; there’s also WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, Miracast support, and MHL-HDMI output from the microUSB port, with the right adapter. A 2-megapixel front-facing camera is above the display.
For the waterproofing to work, you’ll need to make sure all the ports and flaps are closed. The Xperia Z covers its microSD, microUSB, and microSIM slots with flaps, as well as the headphone socket; we wish Sony had done what Samsung did, and use gaskets to leave the headphone jack flap-free. Once they’re all tightly closed, the Xperia Z meets IP55 and IP57 standards for dust and water resistance.
It’s no gimmick, either. On paper, the Sony can handle a dip in up to 1m of water, or alternatively being sprayed with pressurized water jets, or being dumped in dust or sand. That means you can use it in the pool, at the beach, in the shower, or just reach for it without concern when the phone rings while you’re washing dishes, or have your kids in the tub, or are caught out in the rain. The touchscreen gets glitchy under running water, but works properly underwater, unlike the Galaxy S4 Active.
What’s interesting is how quickly you get used to it. In the pool, we were able to keep an eye on children playing while also maintaining an IM conversation on Google Hangouts, for instance. The resilience came into its own when babysitting, leaving us unconcerned if the Xperia Z got knocked off the table or dunked in a cereal bowl. The fact it does it without even the minimal extra bulk that Samsung applied to the Galaxy S4 Active is impressive.
Android 4.1.2 is a minor disappointment, given how long Android 4.2 has been around, though Sony hides the older OS version under its own skin. It’s a tasteful UI that has much improved in its latter iterations, reminiscent at times of Sense but without some of the bloat that HTC’s interface can suffer from in places.
The on-screen home, back, and task-switcher keys help, fitting in with Google’s own approach on the Nexus 4, and you access Google Now in the same way, with a swipe up from the home icon. Although our preference is usually for pure Android, Sony’s skin does have its advantages, such as in how it can fit a lot of apps onto one screen rather than demanding you scroll around. It’s a good compromise between stock and a carrier skin.
Xperia Z Walkthrough:
A 1.5GHz quadcore seemed excessive when Sony announced the Xperia Z in January, but it’s no longer enough to make the new T-Mobile phone the fastest. Still, it puts in a solid – if not outstanding – showing in the benchmarks.
In Quadrant, the Xperia Z scores 8,008, while in Qualcomm’s own Vellamo, it manages 2,182 in the HTML5 test and 645 in the Metal test. AnTuTu comes in with a score of 20,826, while the Sony completes the SunSpider browser test of JavaScript performance in a laggardly 2,096.3ms.
If the raw numbers prove anything, though, it’s how little benchmarking actually translates to real-world performance. Although on paper the Xperia Z should be a sluggish mess in comparison to its Samsung and HTC rivals, in the hand we had no issues whatsoever with speed. In fact, the phone feels just as spritely – or at times even swifter – than the Galaxy S 4 and HTC One, and we had no complaints about performance.
Sony is proud of its 13-megapixel camera on the Xperia Z, the first Exmor R Mobile sensor to show up on one of the company’s smartphones. We’ve seen a few different approaches to mobile photography in the past six months – including oversized pixels at lower overall resolutions, balancing more average megapixel counts with physical stabilization, and chasing an ever-increasing top end of resolution – and Sony ostensibly falls into the latter category.
In our general experience with high-resolution phone cameras, they’ve been great with detail when lighting conditions are ideal, but quickly suffer when it gets darker. Happily, the Xperia Z doesn’t fall into the same trap.
The camera app itself feels more like a Sony Cyber-shot than a phone’s app, with no less than 36 modes – including sports, portrait, and HDR – which can be manually selected or left up to Superior Auto to pick between. There’s also panorama support and the choice of up to 12-megapixel 4:3 aspect images or 9-megapixel 16:9 images; you can also fire off 1-megapixel stills while simultaneously recording up to Full HD video.
The results are impressive. Superior Auto actually does a surprisingly good job of picking the same mode for each scene as we’d choose manually, and the result is clear and accurate colors, good contrast, and minimal noise. Even in low-light situations, where phones like the Galaxy S 4 began to stumble, noise is kept down and the quality is admirable.
Video, too, looks great, especially when you mix the Xperia Z with water. Colors and contrast are again accurate, though a little muted than, say, Samsung’s defaults. The HDR mode – which works for both stills and video – leans more toward boosting the visibility of darker areas, rather than playing up the color saturation. Both of the following demo videos were filmed on the Xperia Z:
Voice call performance on T-Mobile’s network was solid, and we didn’t experience any dropped calls. The carrier’s gradually spreading LTE network is also worth hunting out: we saw peak downloads of over 53 Mbps and uploads of over 18 Mbps during our testing. Still, you’re more likely to encounter HSPA+ for the moment, while T-Mobile continues to roll out LTE.
Below: our speed test ran especially quick at the NYC special event for this device and T-Mobile’s new collection of 4G LTE announcements.
Battery life has been good, with the Xperia Z lasting for more than 17hrs of mixed use, with push-email turned on, around an hour of voice calls, photography, multimedia use – including streaming music for an hour over Bluetooth – and internet access (though not with the screen turned on for that entire period). Sony also includes its Battery STAMINA mode, which selectively powers off background data use from most apps while the phone is in standby, only allowing those you’ve whitelisted to go online.
For the most part, it works well, though we did have issues with the length of time it estimated it would extend the Xperia Z’s power for on occasion. Of course, you can always turn it off.
The Xperia Z is a surprise. From our original review, we knew it was a solid performer, but even with the Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One on the scene, it’s impressive how well it holds up to – and, in some cases, out-performs – its newer rivals. In fact, with all three flagships having shown their best side, we’re leaning toward judging the Xperia Z as the best all-round Android phone of the moment.
At $99.99 down and then $20 per month – on top of service charges – for the duration of a two-year agreement, the Xperia Z is well priced, too. Great battery life, a highly capable camera, usable durability without the normal addition of heft, and sophisticated, discrete styling add up to a smartphone that rightly deserves the attention Samsung and HTC have been getting.
T-Mobile Sony Xperia Z Review is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
T-Mobile launched its 4G LTE for the first time a couple of months ago with a handful of devices on board that offer the carrier’s faster data speeds. However, during T-Mobile’s NYC event today, the carrier announced even more devices that will support T-Mobile’s LTE network, including the new Sony Xperia Z and Nokia’s Lumia 925.
T-Mobile announced that its 4G LTE network now covers 157 million people in the US, which exceeds their original goal of 100 million people by mid-2013. The carrier’s LTE is now available in 116 markets in the US, with service now live in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, Atlanta, and Miami, just to name a few.
T-Mobile is still keeping their year-end goal at reaching 200 million people in at least 200 metropolitan areas, despite surpassing its mid-year goal. As for T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ network, it’s available to 228 million people in the US.
T-Mobile also announced new devices for their 4G LTE lineup, including additions such as the Sony Xperia Z and the Nokia Lumia 925. The Xperia Z will be available for $99.99 down, with 24 equal monthly payments of $20. The Xperia Z will available on July 17 with pre-orders starting the day before. The Lumia 925 will be available on July 17 as well for $49.99 down and 24 monthly payments of $20.
T-Mobile’s current Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 will also be getting an upgrade to 4G LTE via an over-the-air update. The tablet is available for $99.99 down with 24 monthly payments of $15. T-Mobile seems all-in on 4G LTE, so we should be seeing more devices from them in the future, on top of more locations offering 4G LTE.
T-Mobile 4G LTE expands with more devices, locations is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
