Hasta La Gadget!

Sprint has just announced its second quarter 2013 financial results, and while it’s pay as you go plans are paying off in terms of income, shutdowns and charges caused a huge loss. The company posted $7.2 billion in earnings, its “highest ever” total and an eight percent increase over last year, but also took a net loss of $1.6 billion for the quarter. It’s chalking that up to a huge depreciation charge of $430 million and another non-cash hit of $623 million due to the Nextel platform shutdown, which is finally complete. However, the company added that over 4 million Nextel subscribers were “recaptured” to the Sprint platform since the transition commenced in early 2011. The shutdown and loss were anticipated, though and apart from that, Sprint said it’s in good place, having achieved “record levels of… postpaid subscribers, service revenue and postpaid ARPU.” It also completed its acquisition of Clearwire (at last) and US Cellular’s spectrum and customers, while itself being captured into Japanese carrier Softbank’s orbit. (For its part, Softbank managed a whopping 238 billion yen ($2.4 billion) in net income during the quarter.)

The operator now has 4G-LTE coverage in 151 markets, including 41 that are new as of today, including Philadelphia, the Bronx , Brooklyn, Jacksonville, Nashville and Oakland. As for subscribers, post post-paid customers are up from last year, but pre-paid clients are down due to “planned deactivations related to regulatory changes.” All of that resulted in an increase in churn (turnover) year-over-year to 1.83 percent. Eighty-six percent of its postpaid handset sales were smartphones, including about 1.4 million iPhones sold during the quarter. Going forward, the company just launched a raft of new data plans, including an Unlimited offering that guarantees customers who sign up will get to keep it for life. We’ll have to wait and see whether that and all the other machinations this quarter will finally push the company into the black.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Sprint

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Source: Sprint, (2)

There’s an accessory line in the making said to be coming from Nokia in the form of a so-called “Treasure Tag” NFC dongle. This device has been tipped to The Verge as an invention strikingly similar to what we’ve seen from Tile, bringing NFC-enabled miniature pieces of plastic that attach to your every beloved device and valuable. Here with Treasure Tag, Nokia will allow you to track a collection of tags in real time, using none other than Nokia Lumia devices’ LiveSight app to track these tags in augmented reality.

This system will be working with a combination of Bluetooth and NFC, the actual accessories appearing in at least one form: on a loop made with materials not all that different from what we’ve seen from the company in their ever-expanding Lumia-friendly family. There will also be a Treasure Tag app that’ll work with the tags exclusively, showing the location of each sensor on a map.

The phone you’ve paired the Tag with will be able to be located with a long press on the tag, the phone sending out a notification noise until it’s located. The Tag will be able to be found by the phone with the Treasure Tag app.

The tags will be powered by batteries – long lasting “six months of use” batteries, that is – that will be on all the time. An NFC tag cannot send out a signal on its own without a power source, while this system will work with both Bluetooth signals – Bluetooth 4.0, in this case – and NFC to keep your machines together.

Even in Bluetooth 4.0, the range of this technology stays within 100 m (330 ft). Bluetooth 4.0′s interaction with Bluetooth LE (Bluetooth Low Energy) allows the sensor technology to work with low energy, and doesn’t increase its range – it lowers it to half, in fact – making this next-generation innovation have little effect on Nokia’s proposed set of accessories.

So if you’re leaving your keys in the car and you’ve walked through the park and through downtown, you might not be able to see the sensor anymore. This setup would be much more for an “I can’t find my keys in the house” sort of situation.

Nokia “Treasure Tag” will keep your keys in place with Bluetooth and NFC is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Despite the fact that the Moto X hasn’t even been officially announced (unless you count Eric Schmidt’s Idaho flaunt-fest or Dennis Woodside’s D11 talk as “official”), there’s a lot we already know about the device. What we haven’t heard for certain yet are which carriers in the US will offer the new handset, though FCC docs and other leaks have revealed AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as likely candidates so far. Does T-Mobile fit into the mix? Whether or not the UnCarrier will really pick it up, a variant of the Motorola X known as the XT1053 has made its way through the FCC approval process with all the bands you’ve grown to love and use on other T-Mo devices, such as AWS HSPA+ and LTE (along with bands 2 and 17, making this theoretically compatible with AT&T as well). This is a pretty clear indicator that worst-case customers will be able to purchase an unlocked version of the device with the right frequencies in tow. Additionally, we noticed evidence that 802.11ac will also make an appearance. Have a look at the docs for yourself below, if you so desire.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Google, T-Mobile

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Source: FCC

It’s not the first time we’ve seen NFC embedded in odd products – the folks at Geak have even tried to make ring of their own – but here with John McLear’s invention, uses appear unlimited. Here with what’s called – quite simply – “NFC Ring”, McLear suggests that you’ll be able to do anything a standard NFC tag would be able to to, including linking to webpages, sharing codes and URLs, and sending commands to phones (just so long as they’ve got the right app to do so). What’s not to like?

These rings are designed to look stylish, too. They’re not bulky, not made of plastic and blasted out with bright colors – they’re metal. And they’re not just a simple piece of aluminum, mind you, they’ve got several layers of materials. Inside and throughout most of the ring you’ve got a lovely titanium/steel mix which makes up most of the color of the ring – from there it gets interesting.

NOTE: The tag this ring works with attaches – if you wish – to an official NFC Ring app, which at the moment has some limited built-in profiles. Various options for other apps exist as well – this NFC ring works with a standard NFC protocol for reading and writing, so go wild!

To hold the whole mix in, there’s a clear RFID passive coating front and center – this can be worn above your finger, below your finger, wherever – just know that this bit is the part you’ve got to tap to have your devices recognize the NFC tag within. Below this cover layer is another inlay cover, this above the NFC inlay with NTAG 203 chip itself.

Below that is a bit of RFID reflective material to make sure you’ve got the signal as strong as possible, and the whole device is made to be solid and work forever. The first run of rings – according to McLear – will take 2 weeks to make and will be a run of 1,000 rings. Have a peek at the “making of” journey here and let us know what you think!

VIA: The Verge; Fast Company

NFC ring aims to open doors, literally is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If there’s anything better than WiFi, it’s free WiFi, but that’s usually hard to come by in public places, but that’s quickly changing. San Francisco has been desperately trying to get with the times for a few years now, and thanks to a large chunk of money donated from Google, the city will be implementing WiFi into its public parks.

At least 31 parks in the city will get free WiFi, and Google’s $600,000 donation will cover the costs of the equipment, installation, and maintenance for the WiFi for two years. After, we’re not sure what will happen, but it’s nice to know that residents in the city can go out and get free WiFi where available, thanks to Google and the government.

Of course, this won’t cover the entire city with WiFi, but many of the popular locations around San Francisco will have free WiFi available, and the network will be added on to the city’s current WiFi offerings at San Francisco International Airport and City Hall, with hopefully even more places to come in the future.

City-wide WiFi was first proposed back in 2007, but that was eventually shot down when the city couldn’t come up with the necessary resources to make it happen. However, this may be the first step into making that plan possible afterall. However, it’s anyone’s guess as to how San Francisco will continue to fund the project after Google’s donation runs dry, but we’re guessing they’ll work something out.

VIA: SFGate

IMAGE CREDIT: Idleformat

Google providing free WiFi in San Francisco parks is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.