Hasta La Gadget!

The world of smartphones changes mighty quickly, and if you blink, you’re bound to miss the latest and most delectable devices. That’s where we come in, to provide timely roundups of everything your friends expect you to know, along with the insight that you crave. To bring you up to speed, in our December buyer’s guide, at first blush you might have thought we were doing an overview of the best Android phones on the market. That’s because of our 16 highly-esteemed handsets, a whopping 13 of them had Google’s operating system at the core. As you’ll see, the landscape has changed somewhat, and these new contenders that have come out swinging.

We’ve broken down this buyer’s guide by mobile carrier, each including the best handset money can buy, our favorite QWERTY alternative, and the most well-rounded budget phone available (with $79 as the absolute ceiling). For smaller US providers, we’re providing a single selection, though we’re confident it’s a good one. You’ll definitely be presented with some difficult choices, but that’s merely a testament to the abundance of stellar phones that aggressively compete for your dollar. With that said, let’s dive in — it’s roundup time.

Continue reading Smartphone buyer’s guide: the best phones for Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and more!

Smartphone buyer’s guide: the best phones for Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and more! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 May 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T last year discontinued unlimited data plans for iPhones and transitioned to a tiered pricing structure. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

An iPhone customer has filed a lawsuit against AT&T, claiming that the telecom company is overcharging him for data services.

Filed by Patrick Hendricks in the Northern District of California, the lawsuit seeks class-action status, alleging that AT&T is committing unlawful and fraudulent business practices by regularly overbilling customers for data transactions.

“AT&T’s billing system for iPhone and iPad data transactions is like a rigged gas pump that charges for a full gallon when it pumps only nine-tenths of a gallon into your car’s tank,” the complaint says (pdf).

This lawsuit emerges as the broadband industry gradually shifts toward limited data plans, putting a price on a fixed amount of internet usage. In recent years, AT&T, Comcast and multiple small internet service providers abandoned unlimited data plans in favor of tiered pricing structures.

Wired.com’s Ryan Singel, who has extensively reported on the broadband industry, says the reasoning behind the shift to capped data is not to reduce costs — bandwidth costs are extremely low and keep decreasing — but rather to mitigate network congestion due to limited infrastructure.

AT&T in June 2010 transitioned to tiered data pricing for the iPhone, and Hendricks’ lawsuit suggests that AT&T exploits limited data plans by charging for invisible data transmissions that aren’t visible to the customer.

Hendricks’ lawyers claim that they consulted an independent firm that conducted a two-month study with iPads and iPhones and found that AT&T was overstating web server traffic by 7 to 14 percent, and in some instances by more than 300 percent, to inflate charges.

The lawyers also claim that the firm conducted another test, in which it purchased a brand-new AT&T iPhone and immediately shut down all apps and disabled push notifications and location services. The firm left the phone untouched for 10 days and found that AT&T billed the test account for 35 data transactions, totaling 2.3 megabytes of usage.

An AT&T representative told Wired.com that Hendricks’ complaint made incorrect claims. The company provided the following statement to Wired.com:

Accurate billing is clearly important and, unfortunately, there have been some incorrect claims about our data usage billing practices. We properly charge for all data that our customers send and receive, including data activity that runs in the background on smartphones and other powerful data devices. Data usage for emailing, downloading applications, browsing the web, downloading a video or streaming music is all applied to a customers’ data plan. So are real-time updates to applications, such as weather updates, sports scores, or stock tickers. Particularly for smartphones, tablets and other advanced mobile devices, applications are often constantly running in the background and engaged with our network. And, AT&T captures your data activity nightly to create a bill record in our systems. This will appear on your bill to be a late night “charge,” but in fact, the time stamp reflects the time that your device established a connection to the network, not the time that you sent or received data.

Wired.com checked an iPhone billing statement and did not discover any erratic charges that would support Hendricks’ claims. However, this account was tied to an unlimited data plan.

It’s worth noting, however, that in the tests cited in Hendricks’ complaint, the phone’s cellular signal was not shut off, which would still allow for some data transmissions to occur in the background, such as network diagnostics, as well as transmitting information about data activity for billing to AT&T. Therefore, that part of the test seems questionable.

iPad and iPhone customers: Do you think AT&T has overbilled you for data? Respond in the poll below, or post your observations in the comments section.

Do we sense just a wee bit of jealousy here? Not to be outdone by Verizon’s Windows Phone darling, AT&T swiftly reacted to the Trophy’s official launch by whipping the long-expected HTC HD7S out on Facebook and stamping a seal of approval on it. With the go-ahead in place, we can expect to see the new device going on sale June 5 at a penny under $200. This may be a tad steep when comparing its WP7 brethren, but it’s not an unusual starting price for many of AT&T’s top-end smartphones. If you like to fill up your inbox with the latest “email alerts and special offers,” drag your cursor to the source link below.

HTC HD7S coming to AT&T on June 5 for $200 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HTC Inspire, one of five AT&T Android phones that will now be able to sideload apps like Amazon's Appstore. Jim Merithew/Wired.com

After years of restrictions, AT&T will now allow Android smartphone customers to install applications downloaded outside the official Android Market.

The recently launched Samsung Infuse is the first of AT&T’s phones capable of installing apps from outside sources, including unofficial app stores or web links, a process called sideloading.

Eventually after some software updates, all AT&T Android smartphones will be capable of sideloading, according to AT&T.

“Over the next few weeks, we will also roll out this capability to existing devices in our base for which an upgrade is possible,” an AT&T spokesman said.

The HTC Inspire 4G, Samsung Captivate, HTC Aria and LG Thrive will receive the over-the-air upgrade. AT&T is also working on bringing this upgrade to the Motorola Atrix, although AT&T is waiting on a “future maintenance release” for the Atrix in order to upgrade the phone.

What AT&T isn’t saying, however, is that you most likely have Amazon to thank for this.

On March 22, Amazon released its Appstore for Android phones in the form of a standalone app. Those who wanted to access the 3,800 Android applications — including a new version of Angry Birds — from Amazon’s market were required to download the Amazon Appstore app from Amazon.com.

The problem was, AT&T’s phones wouldn’t let you do that. Users could only download apps available on the official Android Market, and because of Google’s policy of not allowing competing app stores to exist within the Android Market, Amazon’s Appstore wasn’t allowed in.

AT&T customers unable to access Amazon’s Appstore weren’t happy, and took to the forums to express frustration.

“Every day, Amazon releases a new app for free,” one upset customer wrote on AT&T’s own hosted message boards. “We continue to be left in the dark … Why can’t you just allow us to install 3rd party apps on our supposedly ‘open’ Android devices?”

On the same day as the Amazon Appstore announcement, however, AT&T changed its position. On March 22, AT&T told Wired.com, “We’re working to give our Android customers access to third-party application stores.” With the release of the Samsung Infuse this week, AT&T customers will finally have access to sideloaded apps.

Amazon confirmed to Wired.com that it had been in discussion with AT&T prior to the Amazon Appstore launch in March, and that Amazon is currently “working closely with AT&T to help make it as easy as possible for AT&T customers to have access to the Amazon Appstore for Android.”

On other non-AT&T Android phones where sideloading is allowed, users must check a box in the application settings menu for the phone “to allow installation of non-Market sources.” After checking the box, a small disclaimer pops up, letting you know it’s your fault if you download malware and screw up your phone. AT&T confirmed that a similar process will be available to the five listed AT&T phones in the coming weeks, as well as future AT&T Android phone releases.

According to an AT&T, the company wasn’t allowing sideloading because of security issues. In an interview with AllThingsDigital, AT&T CTO John Donovan said that “although there was a vocal minority clamoring for such access,” the vast majority of AT&T users prefer a secure phone more than one that can access any and every app out there.

“I’m a gigantic new services risk-taker,” Donovan told AllThingsDigital. “I’m not at all a risk-taker as it relates to security and privacy.”

A security researcher previously told Wired.com that allowing your phone to download apps from unofficial sources required some security compromises.

“As soon as you flip that switch and go away from the Android Market, which is the one place where most people go, then you are putting yourself at some risk,” security analyst Charlie Miller told Wired.com in a previous interview.

But with the release of Amazon’s Appstore, AT&T seems to be more of a “risk taker” than CTO Donovan let on. Maybe the clout of a multinational online retailer can make a company loosen up a bit, even if it supposedly means being less secure.

Sprint is on a bit of a roll recently. Sure, there were some problems with its Google Voice integration and the company is still losing money, but it’s adding subscribers at an impressive rate and now it’s tied Verizon for the number one spot in a recent customer satisfaction survey. The American Customer Satisfaction Index showed Sprint had made significant gains in the last three years, rising from dead last amongst the big four with a score of 56 in 2008 to match Big Red’s field-leading 72. At the same time, both T-Mobile and AT&T saw small drops in their satisfaction scores, with AT&T hitting 66 points — its lowest rating since the launch of the iPhone. Of course, with T-Mo hemorrhaging customers and the reanimated husk of Ma Bell claiming the ignominious title of most dropped calls, we can’t say we’re particularly shocked.

Sprint joins Verizon atop customer satisfaction survey originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 May 2011 00:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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