Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome to Wednesday evening, everyone. Today, T-Mobile and MetroPCS announced that their rumored merger was indeed real, and not long after, T-Mobile CEO John Legere released a new video explaining the deal. We heard more about the iPad Mini today, with the Wall Street Journal claiming that it’s already in production and comes with a 7.85-inch screen, while accessory maker Cygnett released cases for the iPad Mini a little bit early. Speaking of iPad, we found out today that Apple ships a whopping 188,000 iPads per day, which is just plain absurd.

The Kindle Paperwhite has officially sold out, so expect a wait of 4-6 weeks if you order one today, while listings for a 32GB variant of the Nexus 7 and the Galaxy Nexus 2 popped up in a warehouse database. Apple will require approval for third-party Lightning accessories, and EE’s 4G network will go live across the UK on October 30. Oracle says that the rumors aren’t true and it isn’t planning to purchase NetApp, while Google was awarded a patent for its smartwatch today as well.

A tape featuring an eerily accurate Steve Jobs Q&A session from 1983 was made public today, and an Apple job posting suggests that an all-new SoC is on the way. The FTC has hit a former scareware distributor with a massive $163 million fine, and iFixit gave us a look inside the new Super Slim PS3 today. iFixit also told us that the amount of toxins in smartphones is on the decline, which is only a good thing, and HP CEO Meg Whitman is saying that the company will probably have issues making a profit next year.

The first presidential debate is tonight, do you know where you’ll be watching it? If not, we have a few suggestions for you. The budget-priced Nokia Lumia 510 was spotted in the wild today, and Facebook has started testing promoted posts for all regular users. Apple struck up a deal with biometrics firm Microlatch today, while Twitter Surveys were introduced as a paid service for advertisers and Sony’s PlayStation Mobile launched on the PS Vita and select Android devices.

Finally tonight, we have a couple of original articles for you to check out – Don Reisinger asks if there can ever be another Apple, while Chris Davies goes hands-on with a BlackBerry 10 Alpha B device. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: October 3, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re thinking that T-Mobile will be grabbing one whole heck of a lot of LTE now that MetroPCS has joined the team, you’d be right – sort of. What the team has announced today is that should their merger work out, they’d be turning off MetroPCS’s 1XCDMA network by the end of 2015 with sharing occurring between them and T-Mobile amounting to at least 50Mhz of wireless spectrum in key cities across the USA. With the spectrum they share, T-Mobile and MetroPCS would begin rolling out a “20×20″ LTE network that’d be potentially twice as fast as Verizon’s network.

We’ve yet to see how exactly this sort of speed would be possible given the fact that that’d be up to four times as fast as MetroPCS’s own current LTE in most of the cities they’re currently in. Cities included in the combined network of T-Mobile and MetroPCS would be New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco. This update would have MetroPCS getting rid of their 2G network, knocking its CDMA usage from 10Mhz down to 5Mhz and replacing that with LTE.

MetroPCS would replace the other 5Mhz CDMA block with HSPA+ then by 2015 – that’s fast speeds all around the block, as it were. The talk given by T-Mobile and MetroPCS today outlined how they’d like to work with an LTE network based entirely on the AWS “Band 4″ with their HSPA+ and GSM living in the PCS (1900Mhz) band. This would have GSM being the roaming band while AWS would keep their LTE devices speedy in the main cities covered by their service.

This merger will also make both companies into one larger group, but they’ll remain the number 4 network in the country regardless, still not quite catching up with the top three as far as spectrum and subscribers go. Have a peek at our recent line of posts on this merger in the timeline below to learn more if you’d like – big things in the mobile universe here in the USA, that’s for sure!

T-Mobile MetroPCS merger tips LTE rollout on AWS is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

European wireless provider Deutsche Telekom (who owns T-Mobile) is rumored to be closing in on an acquisition deal with regional carrier MetroPCS. If and when the buyout happens, the German wireless carrier is planning on using MetroPCS’s resources to bolster up T-Mobile‘s US network. Representatives from both sides are planning to meet tomorrow and could could agree on a deal the same day.

T-Mobile currently has around 33 million users, making it the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the US behind AT&T, Verizon, and the Now Network. With the acquisition, Deutsche Telekom will look to boost its T-Mobile customer base to compete with its large rivals and hopefully take over third place, which would secure the US carrier as a prominent wireless provider.

UPDATE: AllThingsD has confirmed that Deutsche Telekom is meeting with MetroPCS to ink out a deal. However, it’s said that “significant issues have not yet been finalized, contracts have not yet been signed and the conclusion of the transaction is still not certain.”

UPDATE 2: MetroPCS has sent out an official statement for investors that reads as such:

“MetroPCS today confirmed that it is in discussions with Deutsche Telekom regarding an agreement to combine T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS. There can be no assurances that any transaction will result from these discussions, and the Company does not intend to comment further unless and until an agreement is reached.” – MetroPCS

It’s not yet known as to how much Deutsche Telekom will pay for MetroPCS if a deal does end up going down, but shares of MetroPCS jumped as much as 23%, giving the company a market value of just under $5 billion. The acquisition would give T-Mobile an additional 9.3 million prepaid customers. T-Mobile will most likely see some big changes coming its way, especially since the company just hired a new CEO last month. The carrier has seen its share of hardships — its lost around 10% of its customer base in roughly two years’ time, and the carrier doesn’t directly offer the iPhone to its customers, which could be a factor in their lowered subscription rates.

Deutsche Telekom rumored to be buying MetroPCS [UPDATE: talks confirmed] is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve entered the last full week of September, which means that autumn, pumpkins, and little children asking for free candy are all in the near future (for some of us anyway). Today we found out that the iPhone 5 managed to sell 5 million units in its first weekend of availability, and that iOS 6 has been downloaded by 100 million users since it was released last week. Some enthusiastic analysts were left explaining their generous iPhone 5 sales predictions today, while others were saying that the iPhone 5 could top 50 million sales by the end of Q4.

Apple TV was upgraded to iOS 5.1 today, while the company reminded iCloud users that former MobileMe accounts will be downgraded to 5GB of free storage on September 30. Verizon says that its version of the iPhone 5 will remain unlocked, while iOS developers were sending out updates for their apps left and right. One of these developers was Google, which launched an iOS 6/iPhone 5 update for Google Chrome, with Sparrow promising that iPhone 5 support will be coming soon.

Samsung released a list of devices that will soon be updated to Jelly Bean, and T-Mobile was seen trying to pull attention to its 4G network, which is due for some upgrades soon. The Aakash Android 2 tablet was revealed today with a super low price tag, and Facebook did its best to dispel rumors that private messages are popping up on public timelines. Google’s stock hit an all-time high today, breaking company records set back in 2007, and Sony announced some new super-slim external batteries for mobile devices.

Toshiba had some skinny offerings of its own to show off, unveiling the new Canvio Slim 500GB hard drive, and camera samples for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus 2 leaked out today as well. Experts warned that BlackBerry growth has become stagnant and that BlackBerry 10 may not do much to help, while YouTube enhanced its caption translation tools for content creators. In one of the most surprising stories of the day, Myspace began showing off its incoming redesign, and it actually looks really good. Meanwhile, we heard about a particularly nasty Borderlands 2 bug, and Sony reiterated plans to support the PS3 through at least 2015.

Finally tonight, we have a new column by Chris Davies that examines why iPhone 5 users may eventually save the poorly-received Apple Maps app in iOS 6. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, so go out and enjoy the rest of your night!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: September 24, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re the owner of a Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone on the T-Mobile USA network, and happen to like super heroes, you’re going to love this. T-Mobile USA has announced that it, and Samsung are going to be enhancing features for all Galaxy S III smartphones on the T-Mobile network. That means new features will be added for both new buyers and existing customers.

The updated feature set will begin rolling out on September 25. The coolest part about the updated feature set is that Samsung and T-Mobile will begin offering the Marvel film The Avengers free for new and existing customers. The movie will be available as a virtual download for existing customers via the Samsung Media Hub and will be preloaded on new S III devices.

The movie will only be offered for free on the T-Mobile network. T-Mobile customers will also be able to wirelessly share the content to compatible TVs via the AllShare Cast feature and the AllShare Case Wireless Hub. The Avengers is being offered on September 25, which is the same day the movie hits Blu-ray, pay-per-view, and DVD.

The AllShare Cast Wireless Hub is a new accessory that will sell for $99.99 with availability set for September 24. Using that hub, T-Mobile customers will be able to watch streaming content from the smartphones on the bigger screen in the living room. It’s very cool to see T-Mobile and Samsung offering the biggest movie of the year at no cost to all T-Mobile S III owners.

T-Mobile USA offers free copy of The Avengers to Samsung Galaxy S III owners is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.