Hasta La Gadget!

Who do you trust to “do what is right?” Your answer to that question will depend on how you interpret it, though we don’t think there’s too much room for ambiguity with the results from Edelman’s 11th annual Trust Barometer survey. It shows the tech industry a clear 10 percent ahead of the rest of the corporate world in terms of trustworthiness, with the automotive (a favorite of ours) and telecommunications (really?) sectors following up in second and third. The results come from the polling of 5,075 “informed” members of the public from 23 nations. We reckon all the companies involved in making the business of chipmaking quite so reputable should pat themselves on the back — unless their names are Motorola, Samsung or Sony Ericsson, those guys’ failures with Android updates haven’t really contributed to the credibility of their industry at all.

Tech industry is world’s most trustworthy, says new survey originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that the iPhone’s in the picture, Verizon doesn’t want data hogs clogging its network.

In a document published today, Verizon outlined its plans to throttle network speeds for customers who consume the most data.

“If you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand,” the document [pdf] said. “Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren’t negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.”

A large number of devices such as smartphones, netbooks and tablets rely on a cellular connection to pull data, and as a result, telecom carriers are resorting to methods such as network throttling and imposed data caps to mitigate traffic. This growing phenomenon of always-on devices ultimately led to the death of the unlimited data plan: AT&T discontinued its unlimited data plan for the iPhone last year, and Verizon’s unlimited data plan will only be available for a limited time before the company transitions to tiered pricing.

Network throttling against data-heavy customers is another move on Verizon’s part to prevent network congestion, perhaps to protect its reputation as the most reliable network. AT&T has not officially announced a similar throttling tactic, but it has expressed similar concern in the past about a small percentage of data-heavy users hogging network bandwidth.

In the same memo published today, Verizon also detailed plans to optimize its network by caching less data and sizing video more appropriately for the device.

“While we invest much effort to avoid changing text, image, and video files in the compression process and while any change to the file is likely to be indiscernible, the optimization process may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device,” the memo said.

This change already appears to be evident: in our tests, video on the Verizon iPhone looked more compressed than it did on the AT&T iPhone.

See Also:

• The iPhone Is Now a Phone. Who’da Thunk?
• Price Chart: Verizon iPhone vs. AT&T iPhone
• Verizon or AT&T: Which Will Deliver the Best iPhone Experience …
• Verizon iPhone Gets Better Coverage, Slower Data, Wired.com Test …
• Verizon Charges $50 More Than AT&T for Off-Contract iPhone 4 …

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Yahoo! Mail is widely available on tens of millions of mobile phones, including those running on Apple iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, and RIM. The issue on the Windows Phones is specific to how Microsoft chose to implement IMAP for Yahoo! Mail and does not impact Yahoo! Mail on these other mobile devices. Yahoo! has offered to provide Microsoft a near-term solution for the implementation they chose, and is encouraging Microsoft to change to a standard way of integrating with Yahoo! Mail, which would result in a permanent fix.

Yahoo: nonstandard IMAP implementation to blame for Windows Phone 7 data leak originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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J’accuse… ! Remember the unnamed third party that Microsoft had found to be abusing 3G data on Windows Phone 7? Secret’s out, and the culprit is none other than Yahoo Mail. According to a statement obtained by Microsoft guru Paul Thurrott, a fix is expected in the “coming weeks,” but in the interim, you can mitigate the pain by going into settings and choosing less taxing options for “Download new content” and “Download email from” — say, for example, “manually” and “the last 7 days,” respectively. At least now you know exactly at whom you should wag your finger.

Windows Phone 7 ‘phantom data’ leaker unmasked as Yahoo Mail, fix due in ‘coming weeks’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One day somebody will write a book called “The rise and rise of Android” and this moment will be highlighted in bold. Canalys’ latest smartphone sales figures show that Android phone makers managed to shift a cool 33.3 million handsets in the last quarter — more than any other smartphone platform out there, including the previous leader, Symbian, which sold 31 million units. That’s a mighty leap from the 20.3 million Android devices the stats agency estimates were sold in Q3 2010. Symbian itself grew from 29.9m in Q3 to 31m in Q4, but Android’s pace of expansion has been so rapid as to make that irrelevant.

Update: NPD’s numbers are in as well, indicating that Google now has a 53 percent share in the US market, while Windows Phone 7 has managed to nab only two percent so far.

Continue reading Canalys: Android overtakes Symbian as world’s best-selling smartphone platform in Q4 2010

Canalys: Android overtakes Symbian as world’s best-selling smartphone platform in Q4 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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