EE‘s new 4G plans for the UK have been revealed, but the carrier also has a new movie store, EE Film, for both its own subscribers and those of other carriers. Preloaded on EE handsets, such as the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III 4G LTE, and Galaxy Note II 4G LTE, but also available to other smartphone users to download, EE Film will offer what the network says is the best selection of new releases of any UK rental service, on a par with DVDs.
Over 700 will be offered at launch, priced from £0.79 for rentals, though some of the blockbuster titles – such as Wrath of the Titans and Prometheus – came in at £3.99. Rental purchases last for up to 30 days, though once you start watching you have 48hrs access before the movie expires; that compares well to iTunes’ 24hrs rental period.
Rented movies can be downloaded to a device, or streamed to up to three devices, including over 4G connections. Billing is either to an EE contract bill or via credit/debit card or PayPal; subscribers to other UK networks will have to use a card or PayPal. Users will be able to pause playback on one device and then resume it on another.
EE Film demo:
Until the end of February 2013, EE will be offering subscribers one free rental per week, and if they use 4G to download it that won’t be counted against their monthly allowance. They’ll also get 2-for-1 cinema tickets on Wednesdays, accessed either via text message or the EE Film Store app.
New UK 4G carrier EE has revealed its LTE plans, with a variety of phone and mobile broadband packages as well as some added bonuses each month for subscribers. For regular users, EE will offer monthly plans with unlimited calls and texts, and 500MB of data, for £36 per month; there’ll also be 1GB, 3GB, 5GB, and 8GB packages for £41-£56. Meanwhile, mobile broadband is priced from £15.99 per month for 2GB. Full pricing and details after the cut.
EE’s consumer plans are based on a 24-month contract; if you’d rather go for a 12-month contract, it will cost an extra £10 per month. All subscribers get access to BT WiFi hotspots in addition to their mobile data allowance; if you run out of mobile data, you can add on more directly from the phone, priced at 50MB for £3, 500MB for £6, 2GB for £15, and 4GB for £20. Users will get an alert on their phone when they’ve used up 80-percent of their monthly allowance, and both tethering and VoIP use are permitted.
12-month SIM-only plans – useful if you’ve bought an unlocked iPhone 5 from the Apple Store – will be available from November 9. They’re priced at £15 per month cheaper than the 24-month plans, too, kicking off at £21. If you want a 30-day rolling agreement, that’s also available SIM-free, though you only get £5 per month off the contract pricing.
As for mobile broadband, EE will offer both a USB dongle and a mobile hotspot (which supports up to five WiFi-tethered devices), with 18-month plans. For consumers, they kick off at £15.99 for 2GB per month, rising to £20.99 for 3GB, and £25.99 for 5GB:
If you’re already a T-Mobile UK or Orange subscriber, there are a few routes to transition over to EE. If you joined in the last six months, you can pay a one-off fee of £99 to upgrade a Galaxy S III, iPhone 4S, or HTC One X to a 4G handset and new, 24-month EE agreement. If you buy a 4G handset outright, meanwhile, you can switch over to a new, 24-month EE agreement at no extra cost. Finally, if you’re more than six months into a T-Mobile or Orange agreement, EE will discount the costs involved in jumping to a 4G contract with the new network.
New 24-month EE smartphone prices per consumer tariff:
Subscribers will get access to one free EE Film rental per week, in a promotion running up to the end of February 2013, which can be accessed on a smartphone, or via a PC/Mac; if your device has an HDMI output, you’ll be able to watch it on your TV, too. Downloading that film over 4G won’t count against your monthly data allowance – useful, given each 720p movie comes in at around 750MB, EE tells us – though that might change after the initial promotion ends at the end of Q1 2013. EE says it hopes to continue the scheme, in some form, but that it hasn’t decided exactly how it will work. 2-for-1 cinema tickets will also be offered to subscribers each Wednesday.
EE Film demo:
Those on £41 per month or above plans will also get to choose either a free streaming pass (with offline caching) to the Deezer music service, or a choice of two premium game downloads per month. Alternatively, they’ll be able to choose Mobile TV access, with 19 channels including Channel 4, Eurosport, and Cartoon Network. Subscribers will be able to change their “perk” of choice every 30 days.
Finally, there’s Clone Phone, EE’s insurance policy and backup system for 4G handsets. It works via an app on the device itself, backing up photos, videos, and contacts (along with music, depending on the platform) and, if your phone is lost or stolen, you can track it remotely via your browser, or send alert messages to it. If it’s gone completely, EE will replace it within 24 hours, and you can restore your content from the Clone Phone backup; there’s a £50 excess to pay, but there’s no limit on how many times you can take advantage of the replacement policy.
For an indication of the sort of speeds you might expect from EE, check out our benchmarking tests.
We’ve seen the speeds, we know the handsets and now we know how much it’ll cost you to be among the first to try 4G in the UK. EE has outlined its contract and handset pricing from October 30th, with all of the bundles including unlimited calls and texts. Yep, the new carrier is breaking it down by data, with its entry-level 500MB bundle starting at £36 for 24 months. You’ll have to make an initial payment for most handsets, although the Ascend P1 will be free from the 1GB bundle upwards. Data allowances go up to 8GB for £56 per month, although users can add even more, with an extra 50MB costing £3, or up to 4GB for £20.
Now, if you’re looking to get Apple’s latest on 4G, it’ll set you back at least £20 on the highest data plan. Already got your LTE-ready iPhone 5? Then you’ll have to wait until 9th November, when the network will start offering SIM-only 12-month plans priced from £21. The 4G network will also offer its phones on 12 month contracts for an additional £10 on top of the prices shown above. EE will let users who bought comparable non-4G versions in the last six months (like the One X or Galaxy S III) to exchange their devices for a one-off payment of £100. Alongside the all these pricing details, the Orange/ T-Mobile team-up also spilled the beans on some service features for its new customers — and we’ve got it all covered after the break, including a quick hands-on with its Film store service.
It’s about time. The HTC DLX has most often been rumored carrying a Verizon-style 6435LVW or Droid Incredible X name, and yet it was unveiled first in Japan as the J Butterfly; we really needed the photos just now surfacing at Android Central to remind us that the 5-inch, 1080p gigantophone could still come to Big Red. While nothing’s confirmed yet, the black-with-red-trim design and all too prominent Verizon labeling make a convincing case for the DLX’s ultimate US destination. A helpfully provided phone profile screen might be more interesting to some, as it hints that we might get the same quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB of RAM and 8-megapixel rear camera as in the J Butterfly — Verizon won’t pull a Droid Incredible 4G LTE and tone down the hardware, if this is true. Without any more details, we’re still left wondering just how soon Verizon could commit to launching the smartphone. There’s no guarantees that Verizon will follow KDDI’s schedule and ship in early December.
Update: We’ve been wondering whether the odd name was meant to be short for Droid Incredible X, i.e. “DIX” instead of “DLX,” but our friend @evleaks on Twitter just showed us a list of device PIDs that mentions the latter. @evleaks also suggests that DLX might be short for the codename “Deluxe” for the international variant, just as “ENRC2” was short for “Endeavor C2” (One X+).
Update 2: It turns out the J Butterfly has the codename “Deluxe J” in its bootloader menu, so there you have it. Thanks again, @evleaks!
It’s about time. The HTC DLX has most often been rumored carrying a Verizon-style 6435LVW or Droid Incredible X name, and yet it was unveiled first in Japan as the J Butterfly; we really needed the photos just now surfacing at Android Central to remind us that the 5-inch, 1080p gigantophone could still come to Big Red. While nothing’s confirmed yet, the black-with-red-trim design and all too prominent Verizon labeling make a convincing case for the DLX’s ultimate US destination. A helpfully provided phone profile screen might be more interesting to some, as it hints that we might get the same quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB of RAM and 8-megapixel rear camera as in the J Butterfly — Verizon won’t pull a Droid Incredible 4G LTE and tone down the hardware, if this is true. Without any more details, we’re still left wondering just how soon Verizon could commit to launching the smartphone. There’s no guarantees that Verizon will follow KDDI’s schedule and ship in early December.
Fans of rugged Android phones, rejoice: you only have to wait until this Sunday to get the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro on AT&T. The carrier just announced that it’ll be making its way into stores on October 21st and will run you a whole $100 on a two-year commitment. It isn’t going to be the stellar top-end device many power users crave, as it features a 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display, 5MP rear-facing camera with 720p video recording, 8GB onboard storage, ICS, LTE, Enhanced Push-to-Talk, 810g military-spec certification and EAS corporate email support. It’s a definite upgrade from the Smart, no doubt, but we’re still pining for the day that rugged phones can have the best components and bounce off a concrete floor without incident.
You’ve heard it before: the more things change the more they stay the same. It wasn’t that long ago that we reviewed LG’s flagship Optimus 4X HD, the world’s first quad-core HSPA+ handset. Despite representing the company’s best engineering and design effort to date, it wasn’t quite able to match the competition’s global offerings — Samsung’s mighty Galaxy S III and HTC’s lovely One X. Today, just a few months later, quad-core LTE superphones are the state of the art. Samsung’s selling the global Galaxy Note II, HTC’s just announced the One X+ and LG’s betting everything on the Optimus G — the first handset to feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro together with an LTE radio.
The Optimus G is a pivotal device for the Korean manufacturer, especially in the US, where rival Samsung is massively popular and LG’s success has been hampered by a series of forgettable products (hello, Intuition) and a lackluster track record for software updates. It’s so critical that LG even invited us to spend some quality time with the Optimus G at the launch event in Seoul last month. In the US, LG’s partnering with Sprint and AT&T and there’s strong evidence that Google’s upcoming Nexus will be based on the Optimus G. So, does the company’s latest powerhouse measure up to the competition? How different are the US versions from the Korean model? Does LG finally have a winning formula with the Optimus G? Find out in our review after the break.
Isn’t it better when we work together? British carriers think so. EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have officially created a non-exclusive joint venture, Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, that should speed up the deployment of 800MHz LTE by keeping Freeview over-the-air TV signals clear of interference while the partners bring their low-frequency 4G online. Previously, the networks were bound to form an equivalent company called MitCo that wouldn’t have been active until after the 800MHz auction, preventing companies from getting their wireless houses in order until they’d already made a commitment. There’s also a competitive angle involved to go with the cooperative work, as you might imagine: with EE’s 1,800MHz LTE poised to go live on October 30th, choosing infighting over assistance would only help widen the frontrunner’s lead. Whether DMSL represents altruism or pragmatism, we’ll appreciate knowing that the hurdles to a catch-up in UK 4G will be more those of the technical reality than the usual political maneuvering.
Verizon has quietly confirmed its iPhone 5 sales performance in Q3 2012, with over 650,000 of the latest Apple smartphones sold up until the end of September. Speaking on the carrier’s financial results call, CFO Fran Shammo broke down the “6.8m smartphones sold” stat Verizon initially shared into Android and iPhone, with 3.4m of the former and 3.1m of the latter activated in the three month period.
However, Shammo also gave the percentage of iPhones that were LTE-compatible – 21-percent – and since there’s only one such version, the newest iPhone 5, that doesn’t make the math too hard. Verizon must also have sold around 2.45m older iPhones, which only work on the carrier’s 3G network.
Still, considering the iPhone 5 was only available from September 21, which gives just 10 days of sales until the end of Q3, it’s an impressive tally for Verizon. Over 65,000 iPhone 5 devices must have been activated each day, on average, and Shammo hinted that the number could have been greater had supplies been sufficient to meet customer demand.
That short supply still remains, with Apple’s online store listing a 3-4 week delay before shipments can be expected. Verizon, meanwhile, quotes November 9 availability for the cheapest 16GB iPhone 5, though the more expensive versions are expected October 26.
The last Casio G’zOne handheld to come our way was the Commando, a military-grade device that marked the company’s first foray into Android smartphones. Now it seems there’s another one in the works, at least if a recent FCC filing is any indication. The Casio C811 looks to be a successor to the aforementioned Commando, with its G’zOne branding and features like WiFi and GSM world phone capabilities. Notably, the FCC document reveals the phone has Verizon-flavored LTE plus NFC support, both of which lead us to believe it’ll likely be a mid- to high-end handset. Not much else is divulged from perusing the filing, but we’re sure that whatever the C811 turns out to be, it’ll be just as tough and durable as the rest of Casio’s G’zOne offerings.
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