Hasta La Gadget!

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.

If you’re seeing the reports today of a “confidential presentation” making a case for Foxconn creating the iPhone 5S in time for June 2013, you’ll know how vague leaks can get. What we’re seeing here is an information source that points us toward a launch of the next iPhone well within the bounds of predictability with Apple’s past launches and suggests a couple extra doozies we can just as easily dismiss as believe outright. The report seems to have been delivered to TechCrunch where their source says they’ve got information so specific, it’s like nothing a source of their caliber has had before.

The source, they say, is a manufacturer operating out of Shenzhen, China, and is likely set to release some iPhone-friendly accessories at the launch of the next model. What’s not entirely clear is how the information they possess seems to be so pinpointed. Where every launch of the iPhone (or any Apple product, for that matter), has accessory makers only getting Apple certification of products after the device they’ve revealed is shown to the public.

In this case, Apple is said to be working directly with Foxconn and this one manufacturer of products (again, likely accessories), to be revealed right as the iPhone 5S is revealed, launched as it is launched.

You can read this one of two ways. On one hand, we could be looking at a whole new age for Apple where they’ve become willing to work with manufacturers of devices and accessories that function with Apple-manufactured hardware at a level more extensive than basic Apple certification. On the other hand, it could all be bunk.

Have a peek at our iPhone 5S timeline below to see if this device rings a bell for you before it’s revealed later this year!

iPhone 5S tip suggests rather unique Apple launch is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

T-Mobile announced earlier this week that the iPhone 5 would be coming to the carrier, which marks the first time that T-Mobile has officially carried Apple’s phone. However, while AT&T models of the iPhone 5 can be updated to support T-Mobile’s AWS bands, jailbroken iPhones can’t be tampered with in such a way, or else the jailbreak would be lost. However, a new jailbreak tweak fixes this.

If you’re jailbroken and want to make your AT&T iPhone 5 compatible with T-Mobile’s LTE network, there’s a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to do that without messing up your jailbreak status. All it takes is adding a repository to Cydia, installing a patch, and editing a bit of text. There’s 15 steps in total, which can seem daunting, but take it one step at a time and you should be fine.

However, do this at your own risk. If you’re jailbroken, then you probably will be familiar with the process, but it’s a bit more complicated than most jailbreak tweaks. As in, it’s not as simple as downloading a Cydia tweak and installing it. You’ll have to open up iFile and dig deep into the phone’s file system to edit some text files.

We wouldn’t be surprised if a handful of AT&T users switched over to T-Mobile and brought along their iPhone 5, so this tweak will definitely be of use to all those jailbreakers out there. T-Mobile’s plans are something we’ve never seen before in a major carrier, so while it is a bold move for the company, it may catch on quickly.

iPhone 5 jailbreak tweak allows AT&T users to hop over to T-Mobile is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The iPhone is now available on all major U.S. carriers. But is T-Mobile’s unique pricing plan worth it?

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.