T-Mobile rolled out its 4G LTE network earlier this year, stating ambitious goals for coverage by the middle of the year, something it ultimately surpassed. It has been a couple of weeks since the carrier’s New York City event, and the company has made a new announcement: most of its 4G LTE network will be
Isis, the joint venture between T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, allows for NFC-based tap-to-pay (and redeem) transactions at the counter. The service was initially rolled out in two locations: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Austin, Texas. Both initial locations were stamped as successful, and now plans have been announced to roll out the service nationwide sometime
Google unveiled the new Nexus 7 today, complete with faster internals, as well as an impressive 1920×1200 7-inch display. Another addition to the tablet is 4G LTE, and it’ll be coming to AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile when the tablet releases the US. The best part is, all three carriers will use the same SKU.
The 4G LTE version will only come in a 32GB flavor, while the WiFi-only models will be available in 16GB and 32GB versions. The LTE-ified variant will cost $349 on any of the carriers. This is compared to the $269 32GB version for WiFi only. That’s $80 more, on top of a data plan you’ll be paying for every month.
However, while the tablet has a launch date of July 30, the LTE version will be arriving “in the coming weeks.” We’re guessing that Google is putting the release date into the hands of the carriers, so we should be hearing from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile at some point in the near future about availability.
We’re also not sure if AT&T or Verizon will subsidize the new tablet. They probably won’t, seeing as how the Nexus 7 is already at a really low price point to begin with, but at least that means users won’t be binded to a contract when they get service for their new Nexus 7. Be sure to keep an out on SlashGear for carrier announcements regarding the new slate.
Nexus 7 LTE arriving as one SKU on multiple US carriers is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you recall, the day after AT&T unveiled its Next upgrade plan, which allows users to pay for a device monthly with various terms for upgrading, T-Mobile sent out some vocal statements challenging the program. This spiraled into a sort of back-and-forth bickering betwixt the carriers, each lauding their respective programs, and now T-Mobile has fired off another jab at its competitor, tossing Verizon’s recently unveiled Edge plan into the mix.
The jabs come in the form of two print ads, one of which goes out today, and another that is slated for release on Thursday. In the ads, T-Mobile features some snippets from various media sources that have likewise criticized AT&T’s Next plan, calling it “underhanded,” “sneaky,” and other sorts of passive jabs. In addition, the company’s CEO Mike Sievert also gave a lengthy criticism of both AT&T Next and Verizon’s Edge.
Said Sievert: “Had AT&T with “Next” and Verizon with “Edge” really taken our lead and unveiled offerings worthy of serious consumer consideration, we’d have to give them credit … On the surface, their programs look okay. For the first time, these old guard phone companies seemed to be acknowledging that a certain segment of customers hates being locked into the same phone for 730 days. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll see they don’t get it at all. Or they don’t want to.”
Under AT&T Next, subscribers have an option of taking on a device without down payment for a monthly fee, which ranges from $15 to $50. The payments must be made for the duration of 12 months, at which point the device can be turned in for an upgrade, or for 20 months if the user wants to keep the device. Using the GALAXY S 4 as an example, which has a monthly price tag of $32, the subscriber would end up paying $640 total if they chose to keep the device, or $384 for 12 months.
Under Verizon’s Edge, users can get a device and have the full retail price of the handset spread over 24 months. If the user wants to upgrade, they can do so at the 6 month point, being required to pay half the cost of the smartphone’s full retail price.
T-Mobile’s criticism of these plans is that they fail to factor a discount into the monthly service price that results from the carrier not having to subsidize the price of the handset by using a contract. With a contract, the cost of the phone is reduced and rolled into the monthly price for the duration of the contract. Without the subsidization – meaning when consumer’s pay full retail price for the phone – the natural assumption is that the monthly price for the plans should decrease to reflect this. And that is where the crux lies.
SOURCE: T-Mobile
T-Mobile calls out AT&T Next again, criticizes Verizon Edge is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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.
Nokia’s new Lumia 925 was made official for T-Mobile back in May, but today, the carrier is finally revealing pricing and availability for the new handset. It’s also T-Mobile’s latest 4G LTE device, which the company ended up also launching more markets for, reaching 157 million people in the US.
The Lumia 925 will be available starting on July 17, with pre-orders beginning the day before on July 16. The phone will cost only $49.99 down, with 24 monthly payments of $20. This totals $530 for the device off-contract. The phone sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor running at 1.5GHz, with 1GB of RAM and up to 32GB of internal storage.
Like the Lumia 920, the 925 doesn’t have a microSD slot, but Nokia and Microsoft partnered up to offer SkyDrive storage for these users with 7GB of free storage for Lumia 925 owners. Since the phone runs Windows Phone 8, SkyDrive is seamlessly integrated into the phone’s software.
The 925 also has an 8.7-megapixel PureView camera, which Nokia has been big on touting lately. The device is covered in a 4.5-inch OLED display with an HD resolution of 1280×768. This is essentially’s T-Mobile’s flagship Windows Phone device, and it’s their first 4G LTE device that’s equipped with Microsoft’s mobile OS, and it can be yours later this month.
T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 925 arriving this month is written by Craig Lloyd & 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.
We’ve been waiting on the Sony Xperia Z for a few months now, and while it’s been available in the US for a while now, no US carrier has picked it up yet. However, T-Mobile announced that the new phone will be exclusively available on their network in the US “in the coming weeks.” The
We already knew that BlackBerry‘s newest QWERTY device would hit T-Mobile at some point next month, but the wireless carrier officially confirmed a date that customers would be able to pick one up. Starting June 5, the BlackBerry Q10 will be available at T-Mobile stores, as well as on the carrier’s website.
Since T-Mobile got rid of contracts and has moved exclusively to pre-paid plans, customers will be paying full price for the Q10, with a $99.99 down payment along with 24 equal monthly payments of $20, totaling just a penny shy of $580 for the device without being tied down to a two-year contract.
Business customers have had the opportunity to snag a Q10 earlier this month on T-Mobile, as the carrier released the device early exclusively to business customers. However, June 5 will mark the full launch of the device, allowing consumers to get their hands on the QWERTY-equipped Q10, which also comes with a 3.1-inch touchscreen display.
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins thinks that the Q10 will be a huge seller, given the claim that tons of users will enjoy the physical keyboard as well as having access to a touchscreen display. The UK’s Carphone Warehouse actually sold out of all its initial stock of the Q10 in a matter of hours, proving that people really want to own the device.
The BlackBerry Q10 was announced back in late January along with the company’s flagship Z10, as well as the BlackBerry 10 operating system. These new devices are essentially BlackBerry’s attempts to try and wiggle their way back into the smartphone wars, where the company has been left behind in recent years.
T-Mobile BlackBerry Q10 arriving June 5 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Nokia’s new Lumia 925 will launch on T-Mobile USA, the company has confirmed, as a flagship Windows Phone for the carrier. The handset, announced in London today, will also be released on China Mobile and China Unicom in the Chinese market; global pricing is expected to be in the region of €469 ($608/£398) pre-taxes and subsidies.
Exactly when T-Mobile USA will begin to offer the Lumia 925 is unclear. Nokia has said that the smartphone will begin to roll out in June, though that’s for Europe and China. The US release is due sometime after that; T-Mobile says it will detail exact dates and pricing soon.
Whenever it lands, it will have LTE 4G on the carrier’s fledgling network, along with the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera which Nokia is so proud of. There’s also a 4.5-inch OLED display and optional wireless charging with a clip-on back cover.
The camera may use the same sensor as in the Lumia 920 and Lumia 928, but it’s paired with a new lens assembly on the Lumia 925. That has a sixth lens component – glass, rather than the plastic of the other five parts – which Nokia says is good for better sharpness and brightness.
Nokia Lumia 925 coming to T-Mobile USA is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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